March 23rd, 2006 | categorizilation: all categories,planning/prep
I’ve thought it would be handy to have some cards to hand out to people when I tell them about my trip. Especially I wanted something with the website address on it. This is a design that I came up with over the last few days. The bike silhouette was traced on Macromedia Flash Basic.
Also on the drawing board is a letter-head. All just in the name of fun really. Mind you it’s nice to know that you have something that makes you look legit if I ever end up asking organisations for support.
March 21st, 2006 | categorizilation: all categories
This is to see if this flickr blog posting thing works. This is to see if this flickr blog posting thing works. This is to see if this flickr blog posting thing works. This is to see if this flickr blog posting thing works. This is to see if this flickr blog posting thing works.
This is to see if this flickr blog posting thing works. This is to see if this flickr blog posting thing works. This is to see if this flickr blog posting thing works. This is to see if this flickr blog posting thing works. This is to see if this flickr blog posting thing works.
March 21st, 2006 | categorizilation: all categories,recumbent bike
I arrived back in Beppu yesterday from three days riding around Oita Prefecture (and a wee bit into Miyazaki). The event was the Annual Oita Charity Bike Ride, organised by the Oita JET group. The charity was raising money for schools in Vietnam (www.roomtoread.org).
The total distance of the ride was 270km. 100km the first day, 90 the next, and 70km the last day. Weather was rain on the first day, fine the next two. For me, this ride was a good opportunity to test out the new recumbent to see if all the hype about them being good for long distance riding is true. It certainly lived up to expectations on the route that included some very hilly costal sections. Here are my findings:
Minuses:
Pluses:
My pet phrase for the three days was ‘I remember the days (of sore bottoms, wet feet etc)’. Riding a recumbent really does make cycling a no-brainer.
As for the one minus that I noticed over the course of the trip, I’m confident that this is just a matter of strengthening my legs in the new movements of riding a recumbent. Also, so long as you change into a low gear and spin, the hills aren’t that big a problem.
March 17th, 2006 | categorizilation: all categories,planning/prep,website
The mish for the last day or so has been to include an RSS feed of my own blog to my own site. The feed is displayed on the home page, so that people can see the most recent blog entries, along with a short excerpt from them.
The thing that I am having trouble with at the moment is how to reduce the amount of words displayed in the excerpt. Does anyone reading this know how to do this? I’ve changed the excerpt length option in the WordPress admin to 20 already, but I’m still getting about 50 words.
‘Tis a mistery…
March 17th, 2006 | categorizilation: all categories
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March 16th, 2006 | categorizilation: all categories,equipment,recumbent bike
OK, so this bike is hard going up hill. But I’m sure (I hope) that it’s just about getting my legs used to the new movements. I’m sure speed up hill will increase.
However, going down hill is another matter. It’s incredible. Not only is it fast, it holds the corners far too well. The long sweeping corner on the way home from work that scared the living daylights out of me even going 30km/h around on my road bike, can be done at almost 2 times that speed with no qualms what-so-ever. I was half way round the corner yesterday and happened to look at my speedo – 57km/h. I wasn’t even trying to push it. Kind of scary when you think of the possible carnage should I hit a patch of grit on the road.
Braking is also amazing. The disc brakes really pull the bike up very efficiently. It is hard sometimes to tell if the back wheel is locking when going downhill though. With wind in the ears you can’t hear it skidding.
March 14th, 2006 | categorizilation: all categories,planning/prep,website
I redesigned the header of the site so that a random photo displays each time a page is refreshed or accessed. It is simply a div with an image background randomly displayed, with a gif file masker to make the corners appear round:
The white area is actually transparent, allowing the photo underneath to show through.
March 14th, 2006 | categorizilation: all categories,planning/prep
I had my initial jabs today in preparation for the trip:
Total cost for these four jabs was 17,850JPY. I have to go back in three weeks time for another round of Hepatitus jabs and for a Typhoid jab. The Typhoid one has to be imported into Japan especially – 25,000JPY for that one injection alone! Ouch. But I guess that’s a lot cheaper than getting treated for the disease…
The doc I saw was an interesting chap. At least 60 years old, Japanese, and surprisingly good English. My appointment was for 1:30pm, and there were no indications that I would be getting injected until about 2:30pm. For a solid hour we yarned about travelling. His first time abroad was a year-long stint in Tanzania studying virus strains. “About 40 years ago. Ha ha ha.” Very jovial doc.
The nurse that actually did the jabbing wasn’t accustomed to giving a person four injections at once, so was just about to inject a second injection in my left arm (my right arm already had two), when a senior nurse noticed and scolded her for not doing a jab in each arm and a jab in each bum cheek. No ill effects so far, so I’m sure I’ll survive.
March 4th, 2006 | categorizilation: all categories,equipment,planning/prep,recumbent bike
Ah yes. After many months of waiting and confirming what I wanted, the bike has finally arrived. The bike is a German made HP Velotechnik Street Machine GTe (review: Bentrider Online), but I ordered it from Myron at Blue Ridge Cycleworks in Virgina, USA. Basically, Myron has a set price for the frame-set (frame, shocks, rear carrier), and then the customer tells him what other components to put on it. After reading some stories of cycle tourists ending up having to finish their tour short because of faulty cheap components, I went for good quality components.
Blue Ridge Cycleworks was good to work with. I would reccommend them to anyone not in a hurry. They have the cheapest prices I could find on the net (I emailed about 20 recumbent dealers in the US), and Myron seems to know his stuff. Do be aware however that they are only a ‘part-time’ shop – as stated on their website. Plenty of chilled out patience is required.
The bike was shipped in two boxes, so there was quite a lot of putting together to be done. However the bike is pretty self-explainatory. They only trouble I had was getting the bolts for the swing-arm joint to line up. But that could have been alleviated by having another pair of hands.
First impressions of the bike were ‘this is heavy’, and ‘this is smooth’. Heavy compared to my road bike, that’s for sure. But try carting 25kg plus of gear across the Eurasia continent on a road bike. I am glad the GTe is solidly built. The suspension is very smooth. No pogo under hard pedalling.
It prooves to be seen how long it will take my legs to get used to the new pedalling movements.
