The Half-life of Banana Skins

The following is an article written on Facebook by Neil Osborne, which I'm putting up here because then everyone can see it :-). Over to Neil...

Subject of great debate when riding with John Gouk and fellow LEJoGers back at the beginning of July was the decay, or not, of banana skins when hurled into passing hedgerows and fields. Is this littering or just returning the skins to nature? My view was that it was the latter.

On returning home after riding with John and friends, I started a less than scientific experiment with 3 or 4 banana skins thrown to the ground between my cucumber plants to establish how long they survived.

Please see result after just under seven weeks of exposing the skins to the elements on the surface of the soil and the occasional watering from me (for the cucumbers). The banana skins are near to being composted and mostly easily crumbled although the stalks are a bit tougher and the paper sticker is still easily recognisable and will need longer to decay.

I conclude from this that it is still acceptable to discreetly discard banana skins while out on my bike provided they are not festooned with plastic stickers.

Reflections while waiting for the airport taxi...

In the Breadalbane Hotel (pronounced like pedalbin our Scots assure us) in the stately but downheel room.

This trip has had so much in it it's impossible to keep it all in the mind at the same time. In fact that's always been true - when I first put the end-to-end map on the fridge a couple of weeks before the start of the trip, it was in comprehensible that cycling that far could ever happen, it was just too big. Now I've done it, like a lot of achievements, it's lessened because I've done it. It still doesn't fit in my head though...

Best bit? Mmm, Cornwall and Devon were great, because of sun, warmth, interesting roads and great scenery, and the novelty of my companions and finding the rhythm of riding every day. Finding the places to stop for coffee and lunch was always interesting, we met so many interesting people and found such cool places. Discovering the back ways in the most urban landscapes is very satisfying and a bit of a miracle every time - so much life so close to humans, it reveals the true and unmediated nature of being. Scotland is lovely, relatively empty and very welcoming, but is very cold, not to speak of wet! Maybe the best bit has been feeling good about myself, feeling my body work to get up hills and balance to come sweeping down the descents, and the fantastic feeling of being alive brought by really living in the moment for a change.

The bike was great, not letting me down once. The rear mechanism got a bit sticky, but a cable refresh at West Calder fixed that. Otherwise, it outpaced everything else, braked well and treated me to a good ride all the way. Martin Taylor said it looked like an old friend when he saw it in Worcester, and I denied it, but it has become one since. That was the first week though, to be fair!

I brought too much stuff, so I could have saved a few kilos that would have been handy on hills. Didn't use the shackle lock or the microfibre towel, which weigh a bit. I could have got away with two sets of cycling gear but it would stink more! Overall, planning was good and things worked out well.

Taiji Views

I thought it would be interesting to take a photo of the view from my taiji spot each day, but unfortunately I didn't do it every day! There was a nice one from the Weston Park Hotel lawn across the Bristol Channel, but I deleted it to make room for other pictures before I started uploading to Dropbox!

Northam, Rachel and Rob's garden corner

Bamford, across the road from the Quarryman's Rest

Hindley, Coaching Inn Roof Terrace

Morecambe Bay, from disused pavilion on promenade

On the lawn at the Queens Hotel, Lockerbie

Across the path from the Bridge of Tilt Hotel, Blair Atholl

Inside the foyer at Mackenzie's Highland Inn, Aviemore

On the lawn at Morven House GuestHouse, Alness

River Helmsdale from riverside park, Helmsdale

Rena's BnB lawn, Thurso

Breadalbane Hotel room, Wick

In The Moment

As a group of largely type A personalities, we are however agreed on one thing. Rather than be constantly anxious, fretting or even just mindful of the future, we are all totally in the moment on this trip. It's partly the previously mentioned intensity, also the meditative nature of repetitive physical movement, but for me, more than anything, it's the fact that I really don't care what happens at any other time than now. If tomorrow, or even in the next hour, it rains, I don't care - I'm going to be riding my bike. If it's hilly, or windy, or even if the bike breaks totally, I'm going to keep going. This is in strong contrast to my usual tarty approach to life! So basically there's nothing to think or worry about - it's simple. I'll keep going today, and see about the next day when it gets here. Lovely. And very very life changing, or so I hope.

The people you meet

The scenery is great, but the people scenery is amazing too.

The Week St Mary's Methodist coffee morning was brilliant. We passed the chapel/hall on the way into the village, in the rain after the closed pub, and It wasn't until Ish worked out it was actually Thursday that we decided to go back to check it out - result. Another cycling touring couple, Scots & Dutch, travelling from Harwich to Lands End were already there, lots of discussion of routes, places camping vs B&B. They met in a kibbutz in Israel after university, and went back to live in Holland, 30 years ago. But the gems were the locals - mostly old folk, apparently something else on this week or there would have been more. One younger guy, born in Reading, moved to the village from Gloucester 15 years ago, after a breakdown - a great story, involving a gardening business, Morrisons and now an EBay dealer, having quit his job after an interview with the company psych in which he was advised to change his life! Do what you can while you can... He was welcomed and supported by the village, and loved it. Another lady came from Muswell Hill, having married a Cornishman met while staying with an aunt in the Land Army, moved back later - her son born in Cornwall now proud to be Cornish! The Zimmer frame lady had just moved a few weeks ago to the village, sheltered housing, from somewhere near. All so friendly and welcoming. All those lives...

The Canadians met in Mousehole - keen cyclists in Canada and the U.S., extolling the virtues of NA cycle trips. They were in England for the first time, for three weeks and keen to know of other places they should visit. Incredibly, bumped into them in St Ives the following day, where he leapt out in front of me and Bill demanding our papers, just as we were descending a hill on a blind hairpin bend, and stopped in the middle of the road! Bonkers, but well-meant.

Technology - enough is enough!

In order to save buying a dedicated unit I'm using my iPhone as the core GPS and mapping gizmo. It also records my heart rate and pedalling cadence. However, the screen is hard to see and operate on the move, so it's paired up with a Wahoo RFLKT that shows useful info and pops up navigational prompts from the app on the phone. There's also a Bluetooth heart rate chest strap and a speed/cadence sensor linked to the phone.

Because no single app does everything, I'm using RideWithGPS for route planning and navigation and Pocket Earth for high quality pre-loaded maps. RWG is ok, a bit slow and seems to lose contact with the sensors but maybe I'll crack that in time. 

PE is great for working out what to do when we get lost, and has handy points of interest for many places. The best data logging app is Wahoo's own, but that doesn't show real time maps or do navigation, and switching between apps seems to mess up the GPS usage so I have stopped using it for now.

Making sure I don't lose power to all this is the 10AHr battery, which can be plugged into the iPhone in its waterproof case when the battery gets flat. It's enough to run things for 4 days!

Update: I'm using RWG with the iPhone screen on all the time, since the battery pack allows this. This really helps navigating through towns!!

I've yet to bring the GoPro into play will try it out on its headstrap soon. That will use the GoPro iPhone app to permit pic down load and function selection. I'm thinking of single shots at 30 sec intervals rather than video! Too boring otherwise.

Update: I tried using the GoPro on a couple of days, in Scotland. The first day I took some video with it, which worked ok, but I didn't tilt it back enough to see ahead well enough, so lots of low-level shots :-s. The next day I tried taking pictures, but I don't think I'd charged it properly, because I managed to take one and then the battery went flat! The video is cool though, it captures the atmosphere of the ride well.

We are also using two different dedicated Garmin devices, with Bill and Ish - it's great to have multiple views of a route as they all have different interpretations and cross-checking on tricky lanes helps a lot. Plus we all get involved which is good - responsibility shared when we get lost!

Minty Arse Lard - Surviving The Road

Since we're doing this trip with no additional support, and it's three weeks, stuff gets washed - here's a typical bedroom window post-shower! I'm very pleased with the ease of doing this, and how unsmelly stuff gets.

When I first considered doing this trip, for real rather than just "LEJOG - wow that would be cool", I had a recurring knee pain which I took to the sports therapist I use. I suggested that in an ideal world is have a blonde 24 year old masseuse to loosen me up every evening, and he suggested the Foam Roller as a more practical alternative. An instrument of 21st century torture, it appears to be keeping my legs in better shape, repaying its enormous weight and bulk :) it is strapped on the pannier rack in a plastic bag and serves as the wet gear repository when not actually massaging.

Panniers are a pain because everything is basically dropped into a bucket,and gets jumbled about. There's also a 50% chance that you'll undo and ratch through the wrong one. I can't easily fix the first problem other than using ziploc plastic bags to separate things, but I've imaginatively labelled them Bike and Stuff to increase the chances of picking the right one when we stop for a break and I want something. In fact I've got quite a slick routine going now, with the split of materiel and bags, so I can get into the room and crack on with a shower right away, or find that all-important wallet or item of clothing during the day.

And the moment we've all been waiting for... Most critical to this operation is the chamois cream, or as ex-colleague Amgus has it, minty arse lard :) I have two pots so there's no chance of running out, and it gets reapplied mid-afternoon if required. We're taking it easy, 50 miles a  day, and maybe 8 mph up to now, which means 9 hours sitting down - the TdF guys only do 5, so I'm happy that the cream is working to spec!