“Testing, testing…”

It’s a rare and special event when you find yourself sat in front of a room full of people, a mix of close friends and complete strangers, having your legs waxed for the first time. And I dare say it’s equally rare and special to find a friend willing to stand up next to you and go through the same thing, so thank you Rob Ricketts for standing alongside me. I’d also like to say thank you to the staff at Look Mum No Hands for being so helpful and patient with us last night. We spent a good ninety minutes running around testing cables, and jumping up and down ladders, as we sought to rid ourselves of technical demons. It’s a fantastic café and if you haven’t been I highly recommend it.

It was one of those moments in life where you have to take it by the scruff on the neck and just get on with it. Despite being really keen to make it happen, it had been playing on my mind the entire week, and I must have considered bailing on the idea so many times. But from the moment they cut the music and handed me the mic, there was no turning back. “Testing, testing…”.

It was great, the presentation came out better than it had in our hurried rehearsals earlier in the day, questions were asked and answered, wax strips worked, and grimaces were heard. And if nothing else my suspicions that I am overdue a haircut were confirmed by the audience. Overall I really enjoyed the experience. Sure, I can think of things I would change for next time, technical issues be damned, but nothing about it would put me off doing something similar again. And I’m certain that the leg waxing vultures circling around the front more than enjoyed themselves. Thank you to everyone that came to hear us speak, and for all your donations too. We raised well over £100 on the evening! And of course, it’s not too late to donate.

Even more enjoyable was the relaxed evening that followed, catching up with some old friends and meeting some new people. I know that having people rooting for us back at home will keep us going when things get testing once we hit the continent.

Speaking of testing, that’s what Rob and I got up to today. Checking out most of our kit, making sure it’s all in good order. Best to discover any problems well in advance of the bank holiday weekend. We started off by brewing up some coffee with the help of the Trangia we’re taking with us.

Followed up by playing house a bit more, pitching our tent out in the garden. It’s a snug two man tent, but it should serve us well- and I think we’ll both smell as bad as each other, so no worries there. We discussed the potential pitfalls of a tent that pitches inner first, we concluded that we’d have to hope we don’t get too much rain.

Next up was fitting a new chain and cassette on Rob’s bike, and then working on fitting his rack. I can’t stress how important it is to get these things ticked off well in advance. It would have been no fun running around looking for a solution for fitting a rack to his bike this time next week. The supplied p-clips were flimsy at best, and too small to boot. So after a short tour of the local bike shops we settled on a pair of fuel line clamps from Halfords of all places. Great success!