We were in Paris at the end of the Tour de France last year, we grabbed Cavs attention with our Isle of Man flag (ok, it was a tea towel). He came over and signed it for us. Needless to say it hasn’t dried any dishes!
Posted by Mike
…or rather they will be. The bikes that is. After much research and discussion (should we take our bikes with us, buy them there, use hard cases to transport them etc) the decision has been made. Mike has today ordered two Evoc bike bags, one blue and one black. We can’t get the bags in Bristol as they’re out of stock until the 13 August (and that’s a bit too close to our departure date for comfort), so Mike has sourced and ordered them from a shop in Croydon.
We’ve watched this You Tube video showing how to pack your bike – it looks pretty easy, let’s hope it is! Our plan when we get to Vancouver is to pack the bags and post them down to San Diego the warm shower hosts we’re staying with. With luck they’ll be all ready and waiting for us to repack the bikes in before we fly home.
When I said ‘warming up’ I was thinking of warming up the legs – not the temperature. As it turned out the legs barely got warmed up (barely doing 12 mph today, on our trip to Hamburg it averaged 18-20 mph), but the temperature definitely rose. I learned from the Easter trip not to wear cycling gloves that would leave a spotty sun tan pattern on my hands. Today I wore solid gloves and now have a white stripe around my wrists and completely white hands. I think some strong lotion is needed before we head west.
I’m the leader for today’s CycleOut ride today – part of the Bristol Pride celebrations. It’s a gentle 40 or so mile ride ending up at a joint BBQ with the Bristol Bison gay rugby club. It’s going to be very sedate as most of the riders are not used to the long distance riding that me and Mike do. In fact it is too sedate for Mike who has opted instead to go for a ‘fast and furious’ ride with our friend Andy. I’m sure that they’ll ride further and be home well before me! 40 miles will be about a third of an average day on our USA trip – barely warmed up by then.
Of all the things that I could be preoccupied about on our trip it’s weight that is featuring pretty highly right now. We’ll be travelling light – by which I mean mega-light, only one small pannier each. This means packing very small and with the minimum of weight.
Last week with the help of the kitchen scales I weighed various items of clothing, passports, shoes, sunglasses etc and so far my luggage is weighing in at just under 3kg. Pretty good, but can I do better? Well I could loose a few grams off the waist (and I’m working on that), as for the luggage the weight reduction challenge continues.
Posted by Matthew
In just under 7 weeks we’ll have arrived in Vancouver, unpacked our bikes, put them together again (they need to be dismantled and packed into bike bags before they can go on the plane) and set off on the first stage of our trip.
The first stage takes us towards Seattle – a perfect destination for coffee and some therapy!
Matthew and Mike Travel from Bristol 