testing the planned method for blogging in Italy

after many many tries I’ve got MS live writer up and running..thanks Lawrence and Pete and am now checking to see that it works as I’d like..ie I write my blog up daily off line and download it when I can.
so now I’m going to add a photo
and then join up to the internet and download…eh voila!

so it worked..the pix was added off line and it took but a nanosecond to upload it..thereby hopefully decreasing my phone/internet bill ...I got badly stung a coupla years ago and am now quite paranoid on the topic.

Now if I can find a mini mouse for my mini lap top I'll be happy...this mouse pad is diabolical and could cause me eventually to go into a towering object throwing rage.....!..hold that thought......might make a sprinter out of me after all!!!!!  LOL

Results of body, bike and brain testing

4 days of masochism......Easter has come and gone and I barely noticed it.  I've forgotten to say Happy Easter to anyone and haven't eaten a single Easter egg and all because I felt the urge..no not the urge..more the need to test out body, bike  and brain ahead of my May/June adventure.  

Non cyclists might wonder why I'd need to do this since I've been riding at least 4 days a week since the late 90's..surely that would give me the confidence to cycle anywhere.  However that's like saying a daily walk to the shops is good training for the Kakoda track.  My training to date has been for races of perhaps 90-120 minutes duration and so the sessions have been  ~2 hour long with a strict eye on watts/heart rate /speed/cadence whereas what I'm about to do is grovel up hill and down dale for  100-120km a day for 5 days on end before I get a day off. 

So what did I find out?

 Body

• Butt: Chamois creme is my new best friend.  I've never really bothered much with it except for the hour, but either my seat isn't quite straight or one of my cleats isn't quite right since on Sunday I had a bit (did I say a bit!) of skin discomfort in my right butt/ischial tuberosity area (sit bone) which resulted in me standing up on the pedals quite a bit especially going uphill.  The side benefit of this was I got a lot of 500m TT training in.  
• I also had twinges in my right wrist and right tibialis anterior(shin muscle)..???who would know why.
• Back: sore on Saturday, ok after that...core work to happen. 

Bike

• Saddle..not quite sure here.  I ride a Specialized Jett which has been fine up until Sunday.  Maybe a bit skewed, maybe past its use by date.
  
  
• Camelback...def a bit of a naff look on the road..not PRO at all, but its solves my long standing tendency to under-hydrate.
  
  
  
  
• Baggies..I've got a small under the saddle baggy for repair kit (looks cool) for use when I've got camelback on  or a huge one (looks naff) for repair kit and rain jacket when there's no camelback.
  
  
• Top tube pannier..with the camelback on, I'm really struggling to get things out of my pockets while riding  and so I've bought one of these off ebay to see if it sorts out the problem....it should arrive this week.

 I dunno...what's next?... Audax? and after that perhaps sporting one of those  rear view mirrors on my helmet!

• Brakes I might need to get the levers adjusted a bit as I struggled to get them to slow the bike down enough for me on the steep downhill on Pigeon Banks Road (I'm a bit of a scaredy cat on really steep downs hills).  If you live in Melbourne, you need to ride this road..its off the Kangaroo Ground Warrandyte Road and although its starts off benignly, pretty soon there's a feral downhill followed by vicious undulations.  One day, when my strength/weight ratio is better I might try riding it the other way..this time there were cars slowly struggling to get up the slope as I went down.

Electronics

• I've ditched the SRM powercontrol in favour of the Garmin 705 and am having great fun looking at the % climb as I grovel. 
• Camera...a sunny day, sun glasses and contact lenses means any photo I take is "sight unseen"..a new definition of point and click!
• Camera in my phone..one day I'll work out how to get the pix out of this stewpid Samsung phone.  There's not even a users manual on the Samsung website ..not that I'm into reading manuals at the best of time(!).  However since I'm not going to be using this particular phone in Italy..that's not a problem I have to solve in a hurry.

So, with 5 weeks to go before I fly out and 12 more days of fronting up at the salt mine......things are on track...