Excited? not me....

Hahahahaha, yeah right! I've been up since 4am thinking about tomorrow.

Well I wish it could be Christmas, every day
When the kids start singing and the band begins to play
Oh, I wish it could be Christmas, every day
Let the bells ring out for Christmas

Imagine that song - but with Sweden where christmas is...

Thats how I feel just now. Everything is prepared. All that we have to do is get to the airport and from then on in theres no turning back.

See you in a week - I'll have loads of pictures, maybe some movies and definitely some stories!

2 days to go...

Tonight is the penultimate night. Whats being done? I'm preparing the maps - each cyclist will receive maps for each day broken down into 15 mile sections. This means we will all be able to get to where we need to be and should we be separated - reduce the chances of getting lost.

Today we had some excellent news in the form of replies to emails about the cycle. First of all Rock Radio mentioned the cycle on the lunchtime show - unfortunately I didn't hear this but am hoping its helped raise a bit of awareness of the site!

Then around 4pm I spoke with a reporter from The Metro - a free paper on public transport in the UK asking for a little more information about the cycle, Jack and Melanie and why we were doing the cycle. I explained we were - most of us anyway - desk bound for work so the cycle itself was not an easy task!

I am hoping - as is the reporter - that the story will be in tomorrows edition of The Metro!

On that note, I'm off to make sure I've got enough t-shirts, socks and toothpaste for the week...at least these days I don't have to worry too much about shampoo!

Remember, whilst we are away, I'll still be posting here with updates, I may not be able to get you pictures until I get back but you'll be able to read about the thrills, spills, monotony, rain, shine...whatever happens you'll know about it! Well...as far as cycling is concerned anyway!

And so it begins...

Last night was a really productive one. We managed to get a route almost sorted. Booked 4 of the 7 nights accomodation. And designed the tshirts - mostly.

The Tshirts are being very kindly paid for by the company Tom works for (Northern Marine Management Ltd.). I used to work for them too and have to admit that if it wasn't for working with them after university I would never have got where I am today, nor would we be doing this cycle for charity.

The Shirts (printed by http://www.streetshirts.co.uk/) are going to look like this - and no I am not showing you the front as its a surprise (and we dont have the high res images yet for them anyway).

We'll be staying in hostels most of the time; it's something I've never done but am looking forward to it. Specially since I emailed some last night about 10pm (UK) and got responses from them before I went to bed - despite them being hours in front of us! Now thats what I call service!

The Upshot of this is that so much stress has been relieved that I actually woke myself up from a dream because I was laughing so loud in it.

Honestly, despite knowing that we are going to be in pain most of the time we are cycling and that its a long long cycle, I am really looking forward to the trip. It's going to be an amazing journey of self discovery and time to figure out my real priorities in life.

New Design

Ok, I don't like following the crowd so I am not going to stick with the google site for the blog any more. Instead I am going to redesign the site to look like this...

The design is far from finished but heres the jist of it. The Polaroid will hold a random image, the camera film a link to the gallery, the diary is the blog and the map is a list of routes we're cycling and anything we encountered as well as times, distances and pictures (linked to the gallery).

Let me know what you think!