Competition time

We thought it might be fun to have a puncture sweepstake.  Let us know how many punctures you think we're likely to get over 6 months.  The winner gets a tacky South American souvenir of our choice, painting of Machu Picchu on a grain of rice, miniature panpipes, alpaca poncho and other 'things that money can't buy' surprises.

Post your bets on our comments page and we'll keep a running tally as we go along.

Sabotage. Already...

We've decided to store our bikes and other expedition essentials in a bunker at a secret location deep in the English countryside. 

Over the weekend there was a serious breach of security at the bunker.  Under cover of darkness a team of saboteur mice broke in and made an attempt to eat our bikes.  They started by nibbling at the tan leather saddles and then must have been scared off before they managed to get on to eating the handlebars, the wheels and all the rest. 

Mice - like the saddle eaters.

Apparently mice love the fat in leather.  It is the perfect appetiser before sitting down to eat an entire bicycle.  Or in this case two...

Bikes are here, so is the tent

Finally we've got our hands on the crucial bit of kit.  It's very exciting and we've both become massive bike geeks.  Lucky we're off to the other side of the world, I can see people are already beginning to tire of our bike chat.

We're stuck for names although Brenda and Leonard has quite a nice ring to it.

Leonard the bike ...  before the mice got the munchies

Bikes a go-go

Woooooh.  Just got an email from Andy at St John St Cycles to say our bikes are ready for collection ...3 weeks ahead of schedule. www.sjscycles.co.uk/  I couldn't recommend them more highly, they've been absolutely brilliant. 

This feels like the missing piece of the puzzle and now I can turn my mind to the un-ending kit list which keeps on growing and is slowly morphing into a long, pleading letter to Father Christmas. I used to think the only person that could possibly get excited about outdoor gear was Ray Mears.... I was wrong. 

54 days to go. New saddles? Old saddles?

Last week we went down to Somerset to look at bikes.  It was a very successful trip and once we'd met Andy, King of Bicycles, and had a go on the bikes we had no doubt that we'd found the right thing for the job.  Andy spent the whole afternoon talking through what he thought we'd need for the trip, and recounting various moments from his own recent adventures in the Andes. 

We've got to wait 6 weeks before delivery, so for the time being the only thing we've got to show for our bike shopping is a pair of Brooks B-17 saddles.  Brooks have been making the exact same saddle for the last 111 years.  It seems strange that in all that time no one has come up with a more comfortable thing to sit on, but apparently the B-17 is still the best bike saddle in the world. 

61 days to go. Don't we need to get fit?

I thought I should start to keep some record of our training programme.  We wanted to talk to experts about this, but couldn't find any who would give us advice for free, so have designed our own bespoke training programme based on three guiding principles:

1. Preparation is everything.

2. If you don't do stretches you'll be in agony the next morning.  

3. If you're not fit enough when the trip starts you'll soon get fit.

Last week we managed two spinning sessions.  Each one lasted for 75 minutes and seemed to produce a lot of leg pain and sweat which must be a good sign that our training programme is hitting all the right notes, albeit it with some irregularity.

I cycled to work for the first time as well last week.  Taking a substantial detour on the way home meant that I covered 22km on Friday, before cycling to Richmond along the canal on Saturday morning, which was another 30km because the canal is quite wiggly.

These bike-based elements of our training programme have been complemented by a variety of stretching exercises and things designed to stop various back niggles becoming more than niggles.

The difficult thing is going to be finding hills of the size required to allow us to adequately train for crossing the Andes.  If anyone knows of anything of a similar scale in close proximity to London we're all ears.  The good news is that the first stretch of our journey from Ushuaia heading north doesn't appear to be too too hilly.  The bad news is that it is just about the windiest place on Earth.  Given that getting blown off the road seems to be a fairly frequent occurance in Tierra del Fuego, the gentle breeze beside the Regent's Canal doesn't provide much by way of practice for the uninitiated.  The more we think about it, the more important our third training principle seems to be....

Tomorrow we're off to meet Andy, king of bicycles.  Hopefully he's going to make our bikes for us.  He's crossed the Andes by bikes several times so (to use a totally misleading analogy) it's a bit like buying a space rocket from Neil Armstrong.  Hopefully once we've got bikes sorted everything should start to fall into place, and with the flights booked too there is no turning back now.

b

Testing, testing ... 67 days to go and counting

The flights are booked, it's official we're off to South America on the 10th January (10/01/10 ... it looks cool doesn't it!)


This blog will be a way to keep in touch with friends and family but more than anything it's going to be a wonderful memento of our trip. We hope you'll enjoy following our progress as we cycle (slowly at times) across South America. We'll be setting out from Ushuaia, the southernmost city in the world, on January 16th and our aim is to make it all the way to Lima for our flight back on 7th July (Jerry and Jennifer, if you're reading this, don't panic, I promise to get Ben back in time for your wedding!)


At the moment nothing feels quite like a reality but we're slowly getting to grips with everything we need from bikes and tents to jabs and visas, there's lots to think about.


Anyway, we hope you'll follow our highs and lows as our dream slowly becomes a reality.


The countdown begins!