Lots of little details which I am trying (perhaps too hard) to get right. Sometimes things are best resolved on the day rather than wasting energy thinking about them beforehand, and I do like this quote from Ian Wallis in one of his Journals on this site:

• Have the attitude that the only bad outcome is life-changing stuff (like being chucked in a Chinese jail). Anything else, a fractured leg or broken bike is a mere inconvenience.

But I do need to get the bike working the best I can.  And I have experienced a night in a military jail at Aden in Yeoman which might have been life changing if friends had not aided my release….

So this morning I cycled to SJS in Bridgwater to buy……a pair of Pedal Washers.   A 30 mile round trip for a couple of washers costing 99p!   I only learnt about Pedal Washers last week but they do have a purpose as without them the pedals can either screw themselves too far into the cranks and jam or alternatively not tighten properly and come loose.  One or the other.  Pedal Washers are made of hard stainless steel so the steel pedals can be bolted up tight against the softer alloy cranks.  I wonder why they are not always fitted?

Perhaps more importantly I am learning how to navigate with Ride-with-GPS (RWGPS) which I have as an App on my phone.  I personally prefer paper maps but detailed maps of India are impossible to get and inland, away from the coast, navigation will be harder than last year when I just kept the sea on my right and the land on my left.  The program can tell me where to go by visual prompts or audio and the audio may be all I can use if sun glare means I can not see the screen of the phone when it is inside the top panel of my handlebar bag.   The App is designed for cycling so should choose a cycle friendly route but there is the risk that some of the smaller roads in the database may in fact be footpaths and not rideable, eg be too steep or end at deep river crossings.  I am also taking a compass and a 1:1,500,000 map (covering all of Southern India) which just shows major towns and roads.  Of course the biggest risk of relying on RWGPS is that at my end I loose / break my phone or simply run out of battery (yes I do have a powerbank).

Photo below of a Junction I reached last year, and with the sun overhead and no compass, deciding where to go was not easy!  RWGPS would have been very useful.

Heart

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