April training run takes us (me) home.

Ready for the off – again – as we prepare for the April training run. We’re heading to Celyn Brithion back home in Wales.

It’s a beautiful spot right at the heart of a beautiful country (not that I’m biased). I’m really looking forward to the long corners and steep bends that the road up to Dolgellau offers. We may even have time to drop in on the family.

The run is only around 188 miles one way, but that should be more than enough to blow the cobwebs out and get used to long days in the saddle. I’m trying to work out at the moment if we should blast across the A40 all the way to Breacon and then go up and over the hills, or if we should go up along-side the M1 and M6 through Birmingham and Shrewsbury and then break across mid-Wales. Perhaps we’ll do both – should make for an interesting ride!

Stunning Photography

We’re very luck here in Journey To Russia towers… we have a genius photographer with us. His name is Stace and he can’t half shake the right end of a lens around.

Here are some of the amazing shots he took of our Dartmoor run – he wasn’t even trying to take brilliant shots as we were all for the most part just worried about where the next cup of tea was coming from.

You can see all the photos from the run on our Flickr stream – make sure you comment 🙂

The beauty of Dartmoor

A safe distance

Its morning

Nice line up

Sunset

I like to think I’m brave

This weekend saw the second annual St George’s Day ride out to Dragon Hill up by the White Horse in Oxfordshire. We had a stunning ride around some of the most beautiful places in England… sometimes I can even go as far as saying that some places were as pretty as Wales is… but only some.

The ride went without major incident, and I even managed to get everyone around the route with only one mistake – and that was only an overshot junction rather than a wrong turn 😉

St George's Day Ride

The reason I consider myself brave? This is what I turned up wearing to lead the ride…

Hack Day 2007

I don’t normally talk about work here – but this is really really cool.

For the last few months I’ve been bursting at the seems to talk about this – Hack Day 2007 – it’s going to be held at the amazing Alexandra Palace – known to us biker sorts as the home of the London Motorcycle Show (now at ExCeL) – and now the Superbike Magazine Bike show.

I was dead chuffed when we decided to hold it there. There’s so much history for the BBC there, and it seems perfect to me that the place of birth for TV, is the place of birth for a whole load of amazing stuff that can be distributed in so many cool ways. Ally Pally was the first place that broadcast regular HD TV transmissions way back when TV sets were 4” wide…. it just seems fitting that we’re now trying to work out how we wire the worlds most advanced studios (at the time) for wi-fi!

From the backstage.bbc.co.uk blog

We mentioned this some time ago to get the dates in you diary – but now the time has come for you to sign up!

http://hackday.org will take your applications – the wording on the site is a bit ‘official’ but that’s what happens when lawyers attack.

The event is going to be truly amazing, Tom and I (not to mention a whole army of really passionate people at both organisations) have been working our bums off to make sure it’s going to be THE event for hackers in Europe. Essentially 400+ developers will descend on Alexandra Palace on the 16th and 17th of June – there’ll be truck loads of pizza, beer, wi-fi and shed loads of help.

The plan is arrive Saturday morning, register and listen to some funky people talk about funky stuff, before 24 hours of hacking madness begins – we’ve got the run of the palace overnight so you can pull apart and build ’till the wee small ours before grabbing a nap in a quiet corner. Once the hacking is over and done with you’ll be able to present your ideas to everyone on the main stage – just before we announce the winners and the evening gig starts – the band is MASSIVE – not telling who it is yet (it’s not Beck).

We’ll be handing out extra tickets for the Sunday night gig – so if you get on the list you’ll be able to bring along a couple of friends for that night.

So you have no excuse – if you’re part of backstage.bbc.co.uk – then you’re right in the middle of the community that will rock this years Hack Day!

Read more about this –

Never, ever, ever, let me work on your bike

The last couple of days have seem me desparately trying to do the very simple job of replacing my chain and sprockets. I say simple because it is at most a couple of hours work.

For me, it’s turned into a nightmare.

1 – Couldn’t get the bolts off the sprocket.
2 – Couldn’t get the old chain off
3 – Sheared a bolt on the disk side of the rear wheel
4 – Tried to put the chain on with too many links in
5 – Couldn’t get excess links out of new chain
6 – Took too many links out of new chain leaving me with a £50 for a new chain tomorrow.

So in total this job has cost me £300 in new tools, £50 in parts, and extra £50 for the new chain.

I don’t think I can afford to service my own bike.

One should never start a job…

…that you can’t finish.

Blast. I have had the most frustrating afternoon. I started what I thought was a pretty straight-forward job. Replace my chain and sprockets. Nice and simple, just get the back wheel off, break the old chain, take off the sprockets and then put it all back together.

What I didn’t learn on the nice pristine bikes in college is that nuts with loads of road crud on them, that have been on there since new don’t like to come off. That a ‘cheap’ £50 chain breaker hasn’t got a hope of knocking out those studs (I hope it’ll rivet the new chain back together or that was a waste of money), and that what I really need is a compressor, an impact wrench and an angle-grinder.

Tomorrow morning will see me blowing a wad at Machine Mart. Still, even with buying the kit it’s cheaper than taking it to Honda, and it’s teaching me some important lessons before the September off.

Darn it

April Training Run – almost ready

We’ve chosen the location, we’ve bought new kit, and we’re ready for the off!

Well, almost. I still need to change my sprockets and chain, Stace needs to re-configure his luggage after buying a new 2 second tent with a smaller ‘wing factor’, and Patrick needs to ride-in and make sure his recent head bearing replacement has taken.

Next week we’ll also be announcing a stunning partnership with another site… so keep your eyes on the RSS feed 🙂

A rather strange photo – a coffee machine?

If you’re wondering what that last post was all about then allow me to explain – it’s a Mini Outdoors Espresso Maker.

This fantastic little machine makes a perfect espresso just about anywhere my Trangia or a fire will go. It’s smaller than a standard mug so I should be able to squeeze it in my pack somewhere. The only problem I can see is how on earth I’m going to take beans with me for three weeks!

I think I’ll take pre-ground beans in a 500ml water bottle – that should last me nearly a week, and then I’ll just have to buy some more from Russia…. should be good coffee in Russia.