Friday 29 April 2016

A week until we set off from home

To speed up our journey northwards, Nick will be catching a train to Rugby, and I'll pick him up from there.  That neatly puts us out of London, in the right direction and sidesteps the Friday afternoon/evening traffic.  I just have to ensure that I leave home in good time and don't get stuck in some earlier traffic of my own, leaving him lurking around the station for ages.

The countdown timer reflects when the cycling will start, which is why there is a discrepancy between its countdown and my Departure countdown.  It will take many many hours of driving to get up to John O'Groats.  We are hoping to get there early afternoon on Saturday, take a little time out to explore, and then have a very early night.

We went out for dinner last night, just to have the evening off thinking about this trip, and I think we succeeded.  We only mentioned routing a couple of times, and stopped talking about it as soon as we realised what we were doing.

Nick is having a 'late start' day today, and is replacing bits on the road bike that he took off for the service it had on Monday.  He plans to start work around 11am today, which of course means that he will be at work far later than usual, and get back home again really late too.  This isn't too much of a bother for me in terms of planning stops, because he is quite good at checking the roads/paths he'll be cycling at lunch time and sending any adjustments, so his odd working hours for today shall have a minimal impact on planning.

Technology is proving to be a bit of a downer today.  Nick and I each have two phones ... a personal one, and then Nick has one that we call the bike's phone, and I have one that we call the van's phone.  Well the bike phone has died.  Rather annoying really, because its only a few months old, but it was a cheap pay as you go phone purchased in a hurry following a prior phone failure in the middle of a long ride.  Will have to order something today.  Nick's phone will become the bike phone, my phone will become Nick's phone (he never usually gets new phones, because he's quite heavy on them), the van phone will stay the van phone, and I will need to buy a new phone for me.  I love the Nexus we have for the van, but two identical phones ... nope ... things will not go well, I'll always have the 'wrong' one with me.

***  Have temporarily solved the phone problem but getting a cheap £20 phone off amazon for same day delivery.  We only need it to last a couple of weeks, and £20 is a 'small' price to pay to not have phone shopping distractions today.

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