Assembly

Well here we are. James arrived in Ulm yesterday, Kieran and Gillian managed to arrive today - despite some aggravation in arranging transport from Frankfurt airport. It's nice to be all together and getting ready for the trip.

The main job has been putting the bikes together, which seemed to go smoothly enough. At least James didn't swear THAT often! We have been the beneficiaries of very generous hosts, Christoph and Karin, who have given us the run of their house - which we've been sharing with their very polite children as well. Monika will be cooking us dinner tonight...

Tomorrow will be the test, with a plan to take the bikes for a short ride to make sure they don't fall apart once they get going. There will also need to be a trip to the bike shop to pick up a last few things (including a new speedo for James, a casualty of the transport). Apart from that, it's recovery from jet lag for two of us, and then getting ready for the grand depart on Friday.

Preparations - the other stuff

The other thing is packing. We'll take panniers, and an additional backpack. which is not really a lot of space for a month travelling through Europe, including spare tyres, tubes, tools and clothes. And don't forget the chamois cream... Below shows the bed with James' attempt to line up all his gear. There's a bit more to add - computer, chargers, possibly some long pants. We think it will all fit. We hope it will all fit. IT HAD BETTER ALL FIT!

We've had a bike delivered to Ulm, James' mate Christoph has kindly agreed to be the staging point and take delivery of some odds and ends in advance, as well as putting us up for a couple of days so we can get ready. Hopefully everything is just about in place, we just need to figure out how Gillian and Kieran get to Ulm from Frankfurt airport with two giant bike boxes, how James manages to go to two conferences and then get from Deauville (France) to Ulm with only what he needs for the bike ride. And hope we've got all the hotels booked right, that James can sort out the navigation for the route, that it doesn't decide to rain for a month in Eastern Europe in August...

Preparations - riding

So it turns out there's a lot to think about when you decide to do your own self-supported ride down the Danube! Bikes, getting them there, gear, hotels - and training. So, we think we're getting on top of it. Lucky really with just a few weeks until d-day, 2nd August.

Yesterday was the big training ride, with panniers and testing out James' fancy GPS turn-by-turn navigation. 66km from 10am to 4pm or so, not too bad. A lot more climbing than we will see on any of our days on the real trip (1000m, might be more than we do for the whole route...). And also breaks for coffee and lunch, as per the plan for the real thing. Some photos on the right show some of what we were doing along the way (stopping to enjoy Canberra's views over Lake Burley Griffin, and getting ready to get back on the bikes after coffee). Everyone seems to have pulled up OK, and Kieran and Gillian did a big ride a couple of days before, which is a promising sign. Being able to do successive long days will be the key to having fun, as opposed to hating every second of the trip.

Relive 'Danube practise ride'