Bikes Packed

Well it's time to pack up the bikes in their travel bags. How hard can it be?  The kid from Chain Reaction knocks down his bike and bags it within a sub-8 minute YouTube vid. Should get both bikes done by coffee time then. Hah!  First bike took until lunch time. I think he's had a bit of a practice before filming. I had the advantage of working with no pressure, in the dining room (Anne was out), with clean, non-oily bikes and a work stand to dismantle them on. I suspect that repeating this exercise at the end of the holiday in extreme heat and humidity may be a little more challenging. But let's not get ahead of ourselves ... I've got to reassemble them both under just those conditions before that. The reason for such an early pack was to ascertain the weight. Well, each bike-&-bag combo comes to 21.5kg. That just leaves a safe 3kg each to throw in saddle bags, tools and spares, toilet bags, mobile hospital, helmets, and as many energy bars as will fit. Then comes the challenge of getting everything else for the holiday into a carry-on bag that doesn't exceed 7kg each. It's gonna be tight. 

Countdown Continues

"Make sure you have spare spokes in your kit list" said the Holiday Instructions (amongst many other things).  Well we do for the Hewitt tourers, but not for the hard-tails we're taking to India so off to Evans I trot with the four wheels to be measured up. Hmmm. It turned out that my wheels had aluminium spoke nipples rather than the brass nipples on Anne's wheels. Which of course meant, after 15 years, that I had nipples comprising largely of aluminium oxide, many of which were actually cracked!  So, £80 worse off, I collected my rebuilt wheels yesterday and am now waiting for a frost-free day with winds below 20mph to take a ride and check them out. 

Getting Closer

Training for February's epic is not going well. Christmas interfered with proceedings and many frosty mornings disincentivised any forays into Aberdeenshire's countryside. Must try harder now that it's warmed up a bit. 

We have now received the full details of the itinerary with safety notes and daily routes. There was a bit of a sharp intake of breath when we found that one day had a distance of 114km with 2500m of ascent. Thankfully, cross-referencing the notes revealed that this includes an intermediate transport through a tiger reserve, so not as much hard work as it first appeared. The bikes are ready to pack but I need to source some spare spokes to complete the recommended list of tools and spares. 

Really looking forward to it but we're just a bit worried we may be the oldest/least fit in the group of 16. It's also the first time we have toured in a group and wonder what it will be like not having complete independent control of the day's events. But then, it is India, so the support on hand far outweighs the loss of independence. Meanwhile, our training rides are increasing; they are just in temperatures around 28C less than we are expecting!