Day 0: London to John O'Groats

Snafu #1: left house with large bag, and stopped at the bank to get some cash, only to discover I'd left my cash card at home. And I didn't have any keys to go back and find it. Thankfully, my MIL was nearby with both an ATM card and a phone. She was still giggling when she brought me some money, due to the fact that last October they came to visit without their cards and made withdrawals from the Bank of Porpoise for the duration of their trip.

(Apologies if these posts are a bit disjointed, but they may get done in bits and pieces)

Inverness is colder then London, partly sunny and spitting rain at the same time. I had a window seat on the plane, and as we came in to land, I got a glimpse of the landscape we'll be riding through: green, green hills, broad expanses of countryside without apparent habitation, and beyond it all, the Moray Firth leading to the North Sea.

Snafu #2: getting stuck in the very back of the bus for the 3 hour trip to JOG. It was ok for the first hour, but after that the roads got increasingly small and twisty, with predictable consequences for global nausea levels. This part of Scotland is characterized by green fields quartered by amazing stone walls, more sheep then are really necessary, windfarms and oil rigs and rampantly flowering gorse bushes. It bodes well for tomorrow's route!

Base camp is an amazing production. Lines of tents, a massive bike corral, and a main tent for feeding this massive bunch. There are showers, wireless, what seems like a million crew folk running around helping out. Beyond it all, are the open fields and the blue sea, a lovely breeze blowing to keep the midges away. And finally, I'm getting excited. This is going to be amazing.

More details then you wanted to know

I'm not sure if these are in the correct order or not, but the important thing to take away is the amount of up and down that these profiles indicate. We're I'm going to (try to) ignore the slope of some of these lines - to do otherwise invites madness and whimpering in a corner under a dusty wool blanket. Let's just say I'm glad I dropped £75 on a cassette with a pie plate on it (a 12-28, if that means anything to anyone other then my husband and the rest of the cycling geeks reading this).

The light of the train bearing down on me in the tunnel is getting a lot bigger and brighter. My plane takes off for Inverness at 11:30 Friday morning, then it's 3 hours by bus up to JOG. Everyone ready?

Counting down

On Saturday, the girls and I took my packed-up bike to the truck that will take it up to Scotland. Once it was dropped off, the inevitability of this whole thing really sank in. Now the bike's on its way, I guess I have to go up and join it, don't I?

To stave off panic, I spent part of the weekend indoctrinating the next cycling generation. She is certainly her father's daughter: I remember taking off the training wheels and learning to ride as a very long, painful process. Dev took ten minutes for hysterics before she even started, ten minutes of my holding on to the bars to help her balance, and then she was off. And so, so pleased with herself!

The Route

The RAB route has been released to the riders, and while I don't want to spoil (hahahahahahahaha!) things by revealing too many details, I will tell you this:

Stages range from 91-114 miles with anywhere from 1100 to more then 3200 meters of climbing. Grand totals of 953 miles and 20,569 meters.

*blink*

*blink*

*blink*

Uh oh...

Three weeks and a bit

Three weeks from tomorrow I'm climbing on a plane and heading up to Inverness, where I'll climb on a bus for a multi-hour trip to John O'Groats. Hopefully my bike will meet me there, and on June 11th, we'll head off with 600 other insane enthusiastic cyclists for the lovely beaches of Cornwall and Land's End.

Part of this event is raising money for ParalympicsGB, the organization that supports the British Paralympic team as they prepare for the London 2012 games. I've set up an online fundraising page here - if you are able to donate in any way, it is greatly appreciated.

In return, I promise to post a daily update reporting on the ride: the route (the hills!), the weather (please no horizontal rain, 'kay?), the absolutely spectacular scenery, and the experience of riding 953 miles in nine days.

Phew. Wish me luck!

Best kitchen clean up music ever

I'm pretty sure that almost-40-year-old semi-housewives and preschool girls wearing purple fairy wings are not her target audience, but Boo and I had fun dancing around the kitchen tonight while the rest of the family went to puppy class.

And why am I admitting this on the internet again? Must check my list of reasons to blog...oh yeah, embarassing myself was at number 42 on the list. No worries.

D day

For the last two years, my enjoyment of the English spring has been somewhat hampered by massive snot production and bright red, Twilight-esque eyes (although I don't think the vampires eyes were quite so watery...). After 36 years without any real allergy problems, I have fallen victim to my immune system. Last year I tried my mother-in-law's suggestion of local honey, but I either didn't start taking it early enough, or it doesn't work for me. Thankfully, over the counter allergy meds seemed to do the trick.

This year's immune implosion occurred at precisely 11:34 pm BST on Tuesday, April 5, 2011. I was minding my own business, watching bad TV and knitting, when all of a sudden my nose exploded. By the time I went to bed, we were out of tissues. Yesterday we took the girls and my brother-in-law on a 6 hour round trip car journey to Aldeburgh, on the east coast, and I wanted nothing more then to lie down on the (lovely) stoney beach in the bracing sea breeze and take a nap (albeit with my head turned to the side so I didn't drown in my own excretions). Today was marginally better, but nowhere near good. Or in the same neighborhood as functional, which is more important, seeing as it's the Easter holiday and I'm on child/dog duty more or less non-stop for the next four weeks. And those lovely pills that kept me going last year? They seem to be an unnoticeable bump in the road to my runaway IgE load.

Himself pointed out that our ornamental cherry tree on the back deck has just started to bloom. I wonder if that's the culprit? If so, we may be generating some lovely cherry wood items at this time next year...