my bike is heavy

bonjour

my bike now has mudguards and a wing mirror installed, and is pretty much ready to go. as usual i had to call in the specialist help of ben at cycle:recycle as i had given up after approximately ten minutes of faffing around and realising that mudguard fitting was not within my limited bike capability or patience levels. also the mudguards i had bought didn’t fit, so i used an old mudguard from helie’s boyfriend ben, which was destined for the car boot sale, and another old mudguard from ben the bike man. they fit perfectly which is well pleasing.

in terms of training i still haven’t done much, which is fine, as james has done even less than me, and it wouldn’t be fair if i did anymore. i did cycle up to the motorway yesterday (not on to it) and was nearly blown over by some sideways wind (it’s the high part of the m62). this was well worth the effort for the  down hill on the way back. obviously i then stopped for tea and cake at a local church which was having an open day. i was going to go up the tower with helie and ben on a tour, but it was far too claustrophobic so i ate some more cake. interestingly the tour was being led by my old latin teacher from school. i told him i couldn’t remember any latin, but that it wasn’t his fault. then i cycled home.

in other news, we tried to have a car boot sale yesterday to earn a little bit of money in these trying times (i heard on the radio that this recession will last at least another 10 years). as the forecast was so bad, with the remnants of hurricane katia heading our way, we decided to find an indoor sale instead of the outdoor one we had planned on doing. woke up on sunday to the most beautiful weather: obviously that was a wrong decision not getting up at 4am to do the original outdoor sale. anyway we drove around bradford for 2 hours looking for the indoor sale, which seemingly didn’t exist. then looked for another one which also didn’t exist. then stopped in a hotel car park and drank coffee from our flasks and ate a kit kat and generally felt deflated and wanted to tip all our car boots full of car boot stuff over a cliff. instead came home and ate some cake. i did win a tenner on saturday’s lottery so it’s not all doom and gloom. that’ll pay off about a hundredth of what i’ve put in to the lottery so far this year, but nevermind that’s not the point.

anyway here are some pictures of the bike. that's your reward for reading this far on today's pretty boring blog update. perhaps the hurricane has blown away my creativity...

bike with panniers on and tent and handlebar bag. the tent is wrapped up in my thermarest sleeping mat because that's the best place for it. it'll be covered in a bin bag so it's protected. pretty futuristic huh.

 another view. check out the lovely turqouise tent. its turqouiseness is the main reason i bought it.

 a clever attachment that means you can still have a bike light even though you have a handlebar bag in the way of things. i've put a reflector on there too now. the more reflectiveness the better.

some stickers to customise the bike so i don't confuse it with anyone else's bike. that's the tibetan flag to remind me of my tibetan friends and their journey. 

nothing else to report today. other than i'm pretty excited about setting off on thursday and living on my bike for a while and only having to think about my bike and my tent and what food to eat along the way. it's been a bit of a challenge knowing what to pack and what to not pack, you can't take much stuff with you.

will try to do a few more bike rides this week, hurricane permitting. i leave on thursday on the train to taunton to james's, then to plymouth on friday for the night ferry. 

adios/au revoir