Spending Money

Once again I feel I have to remind you that a lack of entries into this Blog is, again, purely due to nothing having happened.

I feel somewhat obliged to write something, however, to cater for the unlikely event of anybody actually reading this.

Anyway - onwards and upwards. Upwards towards Manchester in fact, where I'm going this weekend. Bike buying time is nearly upon me and I have reduced my options to three possible machines. During my week off next week I will be visitng numbers one and two (in no particular order) - Hewitt (near Blackpool) and Thorn (in Somerset). Both independent bike shops who claim their bikes are the 'best value tourers in the country'. Whether that is true is, hopefully, what I will be finding out.

Number three is a slightly more simple affair, being an 'off the peg' model by a company called Dawes, which you can find at most local bike shops.

All three cost about the same, all three look about the same, so it's my mission to find out which one 'does it' for me.

Passing the time

After the initial excitement of getting the website going and being in the paper, you may be forgiven for thinking that I have already lost interest in updating this Blog.

You would be wrong - it is simply the case that nothing has happened!

That's not strictly true, as I will explain below, but we must keep in mind that it is still over a year before I leave.

So what has happened? Well, I've written a few more letters to people asking for sponsorship. And I plan to buy the bike in the next few weeks. After months of researching bikes, frames, components, weights, sizes, colours and specifications I am well and truly fed up with thinking about it all and am tempted to go to the LBS*, give them a wad of cash and take whatever they give me. Of course, I won't do that. But I feel like it sometimes.

The other thing that has been happening, which is in some way connected to the search for sponsorship, is the planning of the France trip in the summer.

This is now becoming very much a reality - I have even booked the time off work! - so I am finalising routes, campsites and ferry crossings. Unlike the big trip, this one will be a highly organised affair (organised in terms of me knowing where I'm going to stay each night, what food I will be eating etc.), maily beacause I'm running on such a tight timescale.

One thing I've realised while planning the France trip is that my affiliation with the British Heart Foundation needn't be limited to 'the big one'. These 'training' rides that I have planned are of big enough proportions to warrant their own mention, and I have been doing so in my 'sponsor' letters. What they make of it all remains to be seen.


*I am slightly ashamed to admit that my extensive bike and equipment research has involved a certain amount of time spent reading internet forums, from where I picked up this abbreviation - LBS = local bike shop. I'm not proud of this.