With 10 days to go until I leave Norwich the tour preparation is stepping up a gear, as it were, although I’m still working for the next 5 days so am juggling priorities. Needless to say a slight amount of panic is setting in when I review what I’ve got left to do, but I’m definitely getting there.

Incidentally if you received a strange email from me earlier indicating a new blog post but with no title or content, sorry, user error, just downloaded a new app for creating blog posts and it, or rather I, did somerhing odd; using ‘Blogo’ incidentally, as it lets me write posts offline which will be vey handy.

User error

Saying that I’ve just stopped using ‘Blogo’ to finish this post as it’s starting to irritate me by inserting images in the wrong place, then not letting me move them without errors, and then taking ages to save. I’ll have another go with it tomorrow but it might have been a waste of money, we’ll see, again could be user error! If anyone has a good recommendation for an app I can use on my Mac for editing WordPress blogs let me know; Blogo got me so wound up my laptop nearly suffered from defenestration.

Packing my life up for six months is proving to be quite an exercise, especially as I’m renting out my house whilst away. The good news is the agency has found tenants, and as I’m renting the house out furnished I only have to put a limited amount into storage. Despite the fact I can leave most of my furniture in place, I still have a lot of boxes full of stuff; it’s amazing how many books, DVDs, CDs, and just random tat one accumulates over the years. I wonder if I’d really miss it if I just got rid of it all? So lots of packing going on in between sorting things out like Travel Insurance, Landlords Insurance, Gas and Electricity checks, getting a new battery for my car after it broke down on top of a multi-storey car park (really won’t miss not having a car), removing my old shed and building a new one.

Shed burning; out with the old and in with the new

Removing the old shed was fun, especially burning some of it to limit the amount I had to transport to the dump. It was certainly a lot quicker to take down the old one than to build the new one, although I did end up singeing a bit of my lawn due to a minor bout of pyromania.

I think I’ve got all the tour kit I need now, minus one dry bag which I’ve either temporarily misplaced or thrown out by accident. I had a go at getting it all together this evening and am concerned it might be slightly more than I took with me around the coast of Britain, but there again I am going for longer and it will be colder to start off with. I think I’ll refine it over the next week to ensure I won’t be lugging around excess weight for no benefit.

Nordkapp to Tarifa kit

Talking of packing stuff, I received an email from someone with a link to the parcelhero blog site with advice on how to pack up your bike for shipping. Some quite handy tips, however I’m going to stick with using the CTC big plastic bag option; you just slide in your whole bike, and as it’s clear but tough plastic, and the baggage handlers can easily see what it is, there’s apparently less chance of damage. I’ll still have to pad it out a bit with pipe lagging in various places, and cardboard to protect certain bits, but should be a lot less hassle. Here’s that link anyway:

http://www.parcelhero.com/blog/general/how-to-pack-a-bike-for-shipping

More news next week on route planning and further preparation. Quick thank you to family and friends who have been ably assisting me with various pre-tour prep tasks to date, very much appreciated.