The Garage Sale

The Garage Sale went really well, we're now officially camping in our house.

Already there's a change of plan

Our initial plan was to ride from London, down to Somerset then up to Scotland and then catch a ferry to the Shetland Islands and then another ferry across to Norway.  Great plan except today we start looking at ferry times and the ferry from the Shetlands to Norway stopped running in 2008!!!  No problem, we dont have to go to the Shetlands we'll catch a ferry from the Scottish mainland...no no no, there are no ferries from the UK to Norway.

We could catch a plane from Scotland to Norway but it's such a bummer packing bikes that we'd rather not but we might be forced to.

This is a bit of a bummer because we really want to see Norway so we'll have a think about it and see.

and why wouldn't we want to cycle here???

Reducing our life to eight panniers

If nothing else this little adventure is forcing us to evaluate the importance of 'stuff'.  Sandy and I didn't think we had collected that much in our time in Darwin but we are still putting a lot of things we haven't touched for ages on to the 'lawn sale' pile.

Slow tyres

Yesterday I swapped my Schwalbe Marathon Supremes (26x1.6) for Marathon XRs (26x2.0) and what a difference, it felt like I was towing a trailer.  The Supremes roll so well I think I lost 2kph on my 29km commute to work today.

The Marathon XR is/was the flagship expedition touring tyre form Schwalbe and is bloody heavy at 790g.  It rolls OK but acceleration is very very bad.  I do like the larger volume of the 2.0" tyre though, nice and cushy, I think I will go wth 2.0" Supremes when the 1.6"s wear out.

I will be using the XRs on the first stage or our trip from Perth to Busselton via the Munda Biddi Trail which will be mostly off road so I wanted a bit more tread.  I will be putting the Supremes back on as soon as we get to Busso :)

I might be bagging these tyres but if I was planning on riding across lots of dirt (or just crap) roads then these are what I'd use.

We are now homeless

Not quite but the settlement went through on the house today so just have to wait now until we fly out to start our adventure.

This will be Sandy and I soon

It's getting close now.

Had the last of our vaccinations today, signed the final settlement docs for the sale of the house so there's only a few more things on the list to do.....OK there are alot but it feels like with four weeks to go we are going to be able to get everything done in time.

We have a lift-off date

We fly to Perth on the 13th Feb then cycle to Bussleton for the big party then head to London around the end of March.