We’ve got a change to our primary, planned date now. – We’re shifting it – essentially using our planned rain date as our primary. This is for a couple of reasons, butt the primary reason is that Jon has already got a saddle sore. – Without going into too many details about his sore, let’s just say that he’s recovering from an injury which is making sitting for prolonged periods of time difficult. He had hoped it would have healed and recovered by now and it’s showing good signs of getting better by the day, but he needs the additional two weeks between our planned date and our initial rain date for some further recovery.
I’ve considered all of my options, and bearing in mind how enthusiastic Jon is about doing this ride, and also the difference it will make having someone like Jon to do this with; I am more than happy to put this back by a couple of weeks. Our new planned date for the ride is Monday, 6th March @ 3:30am, leaving the BP Connect in Warkworth.
I’m a firm believer that to make these things work, you’ve got to remain flexible and practical, and so this is a relatively small change in plan.
We’ll be putting the additional two weeks to good use; I’m planning on fitting some Auxiliary lights (bright CREE LED, 18W spots, x2 per bike) to ease the riding during the dark, we’re getting some fresh tyres put onto the R6, and Jon’s planning on having the R6 for a week’s worth of general riding before it all kicks off.
I’ve recently been doing work on the GPS based route planning. We’re aiming to use two Garmin Oregon GPS units for this; ones which are waterproof and can sit, mounted on the bike’s yoke. I’ve been struggling with the ‘routable maps’ on these units and I had a major breakthrough with these last night with a new version of NZ OSM Maps, freshly downloaded and added into BaseCamp and onto the devices. – I need to add these to the older of the two GPS units too and make sure it works as well as my primary one does.
Fundraising continues to go well. Thank you very much to everyone who has supported us so far. We’ve raised ~$1,333 of our $1,600 target to-date.
I’m hopeful that the additional two weeks which we’ve got now will also help us to hit that target before we do the ride. - Jon has decided that embarking on his own fundraising effort is too difficult, so if you were considering sponsoring us both, or were waiting for him to get his ‘*arse into gear*’, then perhaps don’t wait any longer, just sponsor me instead. :)
