Essential travel kit: my Garmin Edge 605

Without which I would be literally lost.  Now that I've discovered that I can actually type in addresses and search for local museums and get directed there it's functionality for me has greatly increased.  The only problem?  Garmin has recently brought out the new Edge 800, touch screen, faster, lighter & better looking....

Garmin Edge 605

vs the new Garmin Edge 800

More seriously though the things that bug me about the 605:  it can be a bit slow to find satellites
it's way too slow in recalculating routes.
There were only major roads on the GPS before I purchased the Europe NT map set, so do consider the approx £80 of the map cost as part of the package cost when contemplating purchase of this GPS.  I did consider getting just the UK maps, but I have used everywhere from Sweden, Finland, Norway, Denmark, France, Germany and I wouldn't be without it.  Of course with only basic software I had the impression that the machine ran faster.  I bought the maps in the CD format rather than SD card.  I'm not sure if the SD would have been faster because it's not on the hardware, but with the CD I can plan routes on my computer (which I never do) and I could also just put one country on the GPS at a time if I were organised.

More new kit

a little USB drive Samsung 4GB mp player – who would have thought that you could get 4GB of storage for under £30? I had hoped that my old iRiver from 2004 would make it on the trip, but the battery got to the point that I was lucky to manage to transfer the music off it even when plugged in via a double USB cable as well as a power cable, it still kept shutting down due to low power. I was a bit sad as I thought it would last forever, but what can you do, the new one is heaps smaller & lighter & has a 20h battery life.....

Do we need a camping shower???

We got a 10L water container, which has as a separately purchasable accessory a shower head, but will we ever in the wilds of Western Europe be shower deprived and secluded enough to use such a thing? Any thoughts would be appreciated!

She's leaving home

The removers came today, it is truly amazing how much stuff we managed to pack into that little flat.  It was a bit stressful for the 2 packers as they had expected less than half of what we actually had (by volume), and they actually had 2 more jobs booked in for that day.  My laptop was amongst the things to be boxed, so I'll be updating this blog when I have access to Julian's netbook.  And maybe get one of my own.  I was really set on the idea of the Lenovo Skylight as it looked perfect in terms of battery life, size, weight and connectivity, unfortunately the release date has been pushed back until July, which is truly a bit late for this trip.

Trip Planning

I never realised how hard planning this little 6 month jaunt would be.  And I'm not talking about finding destinations and organising to land and camp at friendly airfields.  Oh no that was the easy work.

It sounds stupid, but one of my major problems has been finding appropriate travel insurance.  Our bikes are by no stretch of the imagination the most expensive bikes out there, but there seems to be a single item limit of £250 for most insurance policies.  And then if it ever comes to claiming, we'll have to prove that we secured them properly.  Quite how I do that when the bike is no longer there is a completely different issue.  CTC the UK cycle club / advocacy group do cycle touring insurance.  But not for long stay.  Hmmmm.

And then there's the connectivity problem.  Computer manufacturers (yes I mean you ACER) seem to make it very difficult to find a choose the netbook to suit your needs.  We would like 3G connectivity & have discovered that there are a few appropriate machines, as long as we look out for the G in the 12 letter& number product code and don't get confused by the complete absence of a mention of it in the description.  Grrr.

Unfortunately although netbooks are designed for travel, I haven't found an easy & satisfying way of getting internet connectivity when travel.  That said I haven't managed it in the UK either, with our O2 dongle working in Norfolk, some of the time at not much slower than the old 56kb modems...

Power supply I think I've got sorted with the Energiser/Xpal 18000 that can charge & discharge at the same time: this means that I probably won't take any other power cables with me & just rely on this as a less messy approach.

Oh and how could I forget the datatag, they haven't replied to my question us to their presence outside the UK - it's nice that UK police check for datatags on recovered bicycles, but will the Danes???  And the main use of datatagging is really to make your object a less desirable object for the thief to steal - as it proves that the good in question is stolen, which leads to their prosecution if found in their possession.  But if the thief has never heard of the system???

Ah the joys!  Can't wait to finally get in the air.

Back in London again

We're about 2 days work (maybe 3) from putting the plane into the paint shop, but.... the paint shop is only ready for us in 2 weeks time.  So we're back in London, letting my fibreglass allergy rash die down, organising the house and relaxing.  Well ok, it feels like I'm constantly putting on loads of washing, but apart from that!

We picked up the Leatherman we ordered on Amazon from the post office today, it's a really neat little tool.  I got the extra bits kit so that we can take it with us everywhere and have the right hex driver for each job on the bike / plane, as well as screwdrivers etc.  I'm also eyeing off the saw blade for bread cutting.  It has a very nice strong steel blade as well & I'm not sure whether we shouldn't grind off the latch mechanism to avoid the possibility of having it confiscated as a 'weapon'.

Tonight we're going to an Argentinian steak house with friends, in what was meant to be a celebration of getting the plane ready for paint, so it's going to be a bit of a pre-celebration, oh well!

Onwards and upwards....

I can't believe how long it is since I last posted.  We've been up and back from London a couple of times, organising things for a friend + family to stay at our flat, and then going down to London to spend some time with them.

As regards the aeroplane I've mainly been working on the doors.  They may not look like much but there's a lot of trimming to fit the door frames (as done by Julian to my wavery blue line), attachment of door hinges, retrimming, adding in the rain gutters, trimming again, then putting in the door seals.  Funny thing is that a seal isn't the really useful bits of rubber that seal, but a less useful more hard piece of rubber onto which the useful bits are stuck.

Julian's been busy working on the wings - cutting holes (tricky as the distance from the outside of the wing and the embedded fuel tank is 5mm, so you want to go easy with those power tools!), putting tubes through and sticking the upwards curving wing tips on etc.  (I shan't get too technical here as frankly it didn't mean much to me until recently!)

Today was a bit of an easy day in a way, a lot of driving around to pick up parts (and drop a few off) and some aimless meandering as we tried to find the really good local butcher.  When we finally did find it Julian almost drove into the middle of what appeared to be their abbatoir - a smallish piece of concrete with a good scattering of what looks like salt and a few remaining tufts of hair.  We got some fantastic skirt steak for a stir fry. This is a really nice cut, that is highly prized in France for making the official 'steak frites', but can be a bit hard to come by  elsewhere.  I also picked up along with bacon a small piece of black pudding to try out for breakfast tomorrow.

We're finally testing our camping gear: after a lot of research I've gone with the Optimus Terra cookset - two pots that fit neatly into a neoprene bag, plus a frypan on top which is also a lid.  The neat thing with this set is that the bag means that you can bring your rice or pasta to the boil, then keep them hot (and cooking) in the neoprene bag whilst you cook the accompaniment in another pot on the stove.  I went the whole hog and got the kettle to match as well, on the theory that it will be a huge luxury to have a non garlic tasting cup of something with breakfast, and since the kettle fits inside the cook set it won't take up any extra space.