Journeys across the globe for adventure and sustainable transport
It was all a matter of balance. I have to put my back ones right to the back and the front ones far forward. Nic is playing with hers in different ways but its all about the balance and needs to be adjusted every day. interesting. At least we can go fast down hills now and the bikes won’t fall apart.
Also I’ve had chain issues as I damaged the chain in London but quick links are the schiznit and they fixed it up quick smart.
Things that good
- Neoprene booties
- camp stools
- GPS is good fun
- removable arms on bike tops
- accupuncture needles.
- cameras
- sleeping mats (it is worth carrying the good big ones)
- pillows (mmm comfy black wolf pillow)
- tent is going really well especially the set up features
- flouro vests on back of bikes for visibility, we can be seen from miles away
Things that are bad
- wobbly panniers (large imbalance at front end)
- GPS (needed to spend the money on detailed maps for it) the one that I have is not really for road navigation.
- food is too heavy.
- we have too much gear.
- screws and nails on the road
- toyworld waterbottle cages aren’t good enough
- trent’s short camera lens is faulty so only have the telephoto.
- Nic’s seat needs to be better. Already having a few issues. This was the best of the 5 seats that she tried out and so more research or luck was needed there.
Our clothes aren’t quick drying enough, need less cotton.
The main equipment is holding up ok so far but the front panniers are creating a weight imbalance on the bikes that is causing massive speed wobbles at anything over 25 km/h. We will be playing with that in Paris but if it continues the stress on the frame will be too much and our arms will wobble off.
Tc
First off, please accept my appologies if there are loads of typing errors in this entry as I am slowly learning my way around a french keyboard and it is very hard to change after so many years of being an anglephone. We’re currently in Paris but I’ll start off with our journey setting off in London and the day and a half into dover.
I was stoked to have so many friends brave a sunday morning and the vocal Tamil protesters dressed in their union jack ponchos to come down and fairwell us at parliament square. Also huge hugs go to the 5 that rode out with us. Even though they put up with me taking q wrong turn after 5 minutes on the road and they survived that wonderfully traditional english weather that London had spent all week saving up for us.
We got on the bikes as big ben started striking 10 am and with a bit of drizzle on our backs headed for Elephant and castle and the A2. It got pretty soggy by the time Clemo and Shannon turned back for home and so Jen, Nic and I pushed on by ourselves. The sun did poke through occasionally but the wind was consistently across our noses and the rain meant that we were already breaking out the best of our cold weather gear. The neoprene over booties are a golden idea and recomended to all.
A note to my geol friends. Glaciation sucks when the bedrock is soft chalk. I no longer like ice ages after nearly bursting a pfoofer trying to get all my gear up some of the valley sides on the way to dover. In a day with solidly unfavourqble winds and the mushy legs of someone just starting a journey the added pain of seriously steep hills was entirely unwelcome. Still I managed to ride up everysingle one of the hills, even though I had to use every gear that I had.
We did have a nice pub lunch outside the M25 and ended up free camping in a beautiful little english feild just east of Sittingbourne. The sun had poked its head out long enough to set and we had a carvery dinner at a pub down the road. (how good is England for pubs!!!) The night passed without incident and we set off at 7 the next morn into a stiffening southwesterly and more hills.
We did a breaky stop in Canterbury and had a poke around the cathedral. The cathedral is a pretty cool one and I seem to have gotten over my ABC syndrome (Another Bloody Church). The town of canterbury was also pretty cool and after a few hours we hit the wind and hills and rain again to get to dover.
We chilled in Dover for a bit before getting on the ferry and cruising across la marche. We caused quite a stir by snoozing under the tables but after that we’d hit country 2! Woohoo. Also we knew that we were leaving England because the sun came out as we hit Dover and we sailed into the sunset in France.
Tc
So tomorrow is the big send off and the beginning of the adventure. Geez its getting exciting. We managed to pack everything into the panniers and it actually fit. Nic has been spending a bit of time making sure that our bikes are set up correctly and that our kit fits well. The few hundred bucks for her to do the course on setting up the bikes was so worth it. My achilles has been giving me so much trouble the last few days but between the setting of the gear and the acupuncture its really improving. Yay for Nic.
This week in London has been really fun. Cruising around london on the bikes and doing loads of sight seeing. I’ve been revisiting some old haunts and trying to be a decent tour guide for Nic. The problem is that I keep forgetting important landmarks are there until we’re halfway through wizzing past them and then I flail wildly trying to get nic to look at them. I’m hoping that we haven’t missed too much important stuff. Catching up with quite a few of the crew that are here in London has been great and last night at the Crabtree pub was awesome to see some many familiar faces so far from home. The ride home from the pub was interesting after a few beverages. We managed to do a small pub crawl of some old london establishments before getting to the meeting. I had to get Nic to try some of the warm flat beers that I grew to like while I was living here and she had to see the Maple leaf pub to get a taste of home.
Its been also a bit weird for me to be back in London and I’ve kinda been looking at it through rose coloured glasses the last week. Only seeing the good stuff that I used to do and avoiding the stuff that drove me away. I still love the achetecture of this amazing, animal of a city and I’ve been trying to stick to the edict of only looking up when I’m tourinig the city. Looking up makes London such an interesting place as you can have several thousand years worth of stories right there in each of the buildings that you pass. It will be cool to get on the road tomorrow though and see if all of this planning was any good and if we’ll be suited to the ride and keeping it going.
Also from this week is the fun story of the Azerbiajani embassy. We had prepared all of our paperwork a few months ago for that visa and had it all sorted for when we got here to London. So after a bit of fun navigation through Kennsington we found the consulate in a basement. We walked in and a well to do diplomat asked if he could help. I said that he could and pulled out all of our paperwork. He took one look and said that it wasn’t any good and he couldn’t help us. I knew that the paper work was good and so questioned a little. It turns out that the paperwork was good until 4 weeks ago when the foreign ministry of AZ made a snap decision to change their whole system. Thanks guys. The diplomat also said that the only way that I’d be able to get a visa was to go to the embassy in my home country. Australia doesn’t have an AZ embassy so he helpfully pointed out that I should be able to get my visa if I went to Jakarta. Woohoo. Holiday to indo. Well actually after I did some deep questioning of the guy and his country’s wonderful system I found out that I could actually get some people in Baku to have the papers forwarded to Istanbul and we could pick up the visa there. Thanks for nothing mister diplomat. Anyway a few emails and another 50 US dollars I have got the paperwork sorted again and now it turns out that we’ll have to spend 2 weeks in Istanbul waiting for visas rather than the one that I’d planned but I can think of loads worse places to spend 2 weeks than Istanbul.
Tonight we are meeting Jenn at Heathrow airport so that she can join us for the first leg of teh journey to Paris. It’ll be great to share the initial part with a good friend and she will be our first guinea pig on how others joining the ride will be able to put up with us. Hopefully we can set her gear up and get her un-jetlagged by the morning as being slightly crazy and having only standard northamerican amounts of holiday time she is cutting the timing of the journey really fine. 1 night in London before leaving and then 1 in Paris at the end. Good luck getting back to work Jenn.
Anyway its time to go for now and go enjoy the last of london before we start living out of our panniers but hopefully I’ll be able to update this regularly.
Hugs to all
Trent
Well we arrived at the place that we’re staying in London this afternoon after what can only be described as an epic journey that once again made me really glad that I won’t have to get on a plane for well over a year now. The trip was a 4am start on Friday. then a quick flight to sydney. Pick up the bikes and stuff and criss cross sydney a few times. Then back to the airport for the short 8ish hours to bangkok and then onto heathrow, an hour late. Those of you that have done the trip can understand the pain. Those that haven’t can only come close by placing tight elastic bands around their thighs and sitting in a small cardboard box with a malfunctioning tv and the smell of armpits and farts wafting across your nose occasionally. We finished our journey with a quick set up of the bikes in heathrow airport and then rode the 40 km across to crystal palace. Ok, its not really 40 km but we did ride that far as my knowledge of the london road system has faded a bit in the last few years.
We did make it to a warm welcome and all is good but the flat tyre count is already up to 2 for Nic and 0 for Trent. We maybe should count these 2 as one happened on the plane and I may have inadvertently caused the second one while trying to pump up the tyre. Oops.
Anyway thats enough for now as I’m off to have a nanna nap before heading out to see the night sights of london town again.
Tc
Well the excitement is mounting as we are in our last week before heading to London. We’re just now trying to make sure that we have everything that we could possibly need so that we can find out in a few weeks that we don’t really need it and that the stuff is too cumbersome. If only I could learn this lesson early. Also we have a plethora of media commitments (by plethora I actually mean a quick interview with the local paper in Torquay) and a few last minute catch ups before hitting the road. I’m just figuring out the video camera and hopefully I’ll be able to put together something of a doco on this whole adventure. I’ve also been uploading all of the google maps of the journey into the GPS so that we only get semi lost in the wilderness and don’t get eaten. Speaking of getting eaten I’ve got to try and source myself a slingshot in Europe to counter act the presence of overly friendly dogs in the small out of the way towns. They (appart from stone throwing kids) are the touring cyclists worst enemy and I’m hoping to be able to deter them as much as I can.
Anyway I’m getting excited and jumpy and nervous and wired and anxious and ….. so th esooner that we get to start the better.
Tc
Nic powers away from the guys in the background.
Trent's last burst of energy
So here is a quick run down of how the ironman went in Port Macquarie.
For those that don’t know the Ironman is an excessively long triathlon.
The swim is 3.8 km, the bike ride is 180.2 km and the run is 42.2 km. That equates to a really long way.
Nic finished the event in 14 hrs 25 min, I finished in 12 hrs 47 min and we did the event with my mate Jeremy who kicked all bums and did it in 12 hrs 21.
I never would have thought so but the swim was the easiest bit of the thing by far. There were 1400 people that started the event and so the start of the swim was what I expect its like to jump in a washing machine.
I decided that the transitions were there for a nice relaxing time and so took ages in them but that was all good because there are people in the transition area that are there to wait on you hand and foot. They helped to get off the wetsuit, they handed me jelly beans, they dried between my toes and they lead me in the right direction.
The bike ride was just nasty. It was set up on 3, 60km laps. The first and last 10 km of each lap consisted solely of really harsh hills (some that most bikes actually struggled to get up in the rain because the wheels couldn’t grip the road) and the middle 10 km of each lap (5km each side of the turn around) was hilly as well. Our training in townsville consisted of no hill riding as there are no hills here and so we weren’t really prepared for this. My achillies was really suffereing by the last lap but I got through in just over 6 hours. Nic knew that the ride would be the hardest bit for her and so she made sure that she took a few breaks and after pushing through a bunch of breathing difficulties she did the bike in fine style.
The run was actually on a really good course. The laps were kind of a butterfly shape of out and back then out the other way and back. The first out was all flat and the second half had some big hills but it was ok and the crowds along the run were awesome. Our race number bibs also had our names on them and so every one was cheering you on personally and it was a real boost. I ran the first half of the marathon in 2hrs 15 and I was pretty happy with that but my legs weren’t in a mood to cooperate and so my calves started to cramp badly. As a conssequence the second half of the run took over 3 hours and I finished in the dark. Nic did the first half lap of the run faster than me and ended up with a marathon time of 5 and a half hours. Thats pretty ace for someone that says that running is their least favourite thing in the whole entire universe.
We were really happy to have had Jenn come to visit us from Canada to watch the event and having her out on the course, cheering us on was great. Jenn deserves great big hugs and best wishes for her own marathon that’s coming up.
The weather on the day was almost perfect for hurting yourself with overcast lightly drizzling conditions to keep us cool and hydrated and the wind wasn’t too bad but I wish that it had have been behind me more often.
As a wrap up I’m pretty sure that I won’t be doing another one of these in a hurry. Its awesome to say that we’ve now achieved one of the hardest regular things that a person can do to their body but I had much more fun on the half or olympic distances. I think that after we get back from teh bike ride we’ll do a little concentrating on the shorter ones and try to have a life at the same time as the training. If anyone needs some tips on the training for one of these then let me know and I’ll tell you some people that may help.
Tc
We’ve just got our new home for the next year and a bit. Its a tent from Wilderness Equipment and is apparently so good that they invented another season for it. Thats right its a 5 season tent. I think the fifth season is supposed to be the monsoon but who really knows.
The tent weights 3.5 kgs and fits nicely in the paniers. Its supposed to be a snug 3 man tent but they have to like each other lots and lots if they were to share this tent. It is easily big enough for the two of us but three blokes is a bit of an ask.
The tent is a First Arrow with a siliconised fly for extra water resistance and light weight. The cool thing about it is that you can take down the tent part of it while the fly still stands up and so if its raining the tent itself doesn’t get wet even when you’re packing up or setting up.
Its a nice mat green colour so that it will blend in with farmers fields nicely and they won’t chase us off when we’re camping.
Ooh and my favourite thing is that it has a clothes line built into the inside of it to dry off the bike shorts as we sleep.
It has about forty five thousand zips on it which means that you can open it in 96,000 different ways but that basically boils down to the fact that I’m going to get taggled in a zip at 3 in the morning on my way to the loo and I’ll pee my pants at least twice on the journey. However, at non desparate moments the zips really help ventilation so there will be a plus side.
We’re going to test it in the wild soon and I’ll post photos when I do.
Tc
So I have found a tour guide willing and apparently able to take us from Kathmandu to Lhasa and beyond.
The itinery that he has proposed is
Day 01: Kathmandu to Kodari border (Nepal/Tibet border)
Day 02: Border to Nyalam
Day 03: Nyalam acclimatization
Day 04: Nyalam to Beyound Thong La
Day 05: Beyound Thong La to Tingri
Day 06: Tingri to Rongbuk
Day 07: Rest day at Rongbuk and hike up to EBC
Day 08: Rongbuk to Tingri
Day 09: Tingri to Shigar
Day 10: Shigar to 5-km N. of Gyatso La
Day 11: After Gyatso La to Lhatse
Day 12: Lhatse to After Tso La
Day 13: After Tso La to Shigatse
Day 14: Rest day at Shigatse
Day 15: Shigatse to Gyantse
Day 16: Rest day at Gyantse
Day 17: Gyantse to Before Karo La pass
Day 18: Before Karo La pass to Nagarste
Day 19: Nagarste to after Khamba La pass
Day 20: After Khamba La pass to Lhasa
Day 21: Lhasa
Day 22: Lhasa
Day 23: Lhasa
Day 24: Lhasa to after Ganden monastery
Day 25: Ganden to after Rutok
Day 26: Rutok to Sumdoka
Day 27: Sumdoka to Gyamda
Day 28: Gyamda to Beba
Day 29: Beba to Nyintri county
Day 30: Drive to Rawu Lake
Day 31: Pashu to Pamda
Day 32: Pamda to Gyalthang
Day 33: Drive to Lijiang
He will be driving near us in a land cruiser and carrying the gear. I originally thought that this might be a bit of a woose out but then I figured that just riding over the Himalaya was probably achievement enough without the gear.
Its not exactly the most sustainable way of transporting stuff but its seriously the only way that I’ve found that even looks promising to get through Tibet. I figured that the overall benefit of the ride would outweigh that slight addition to pollution.
Other people are also very welcome to come along for that section and if you contact me I can let you know the costs involved (not the cheapest but pretty fun) and all the more hairy details involved in getting you there and to see Everest Base Camp.
I’m pretty stoked that I’ve found this guy and hopefully the Chinese will open Tibet soon and we can make sure that we get through.
Yipee
Geography
Area is 56,542km (that fits 160 times into Canada) with a population of 4,453,500.
currency – kuna
Capital Zagreb,
Broken into 5 regions
-Istria and Kvarner Area
-Central Croatia
-The Northern Counties
-Slavonia and Baranja
-Dalmatia
Its place in the world is Central Europe,
The country is 40% mountainous (sucks for bike riding) and its wildlife consists of bears, wolves, wild bores, Aussie tourists, lynx, badgers (see badgersbadgersbadger.com), foxes, roebucks and chamois. The bits that aren’t mountainous are nice plains and there they farm goodies like maize, wheat, soya, wine (mmm wine) and nasties like tobacco and things that Interpol would love to know about.
The coastline is about 4800 km long and is pretty. They grow lots of stuff there like olives, lemons, vines, lavendar and broom.
Languages
The official language of the country is Croatian but there are three dialects of it. Without the use of an appropriate keyboard they are really hard to write but we’ll make the best effort that we can with a dodgy English keyboard.
The dialects are
Stokavski – southern and eastern Croatia
Cakavski – Istria and Dalmatia
Kajkavski – Zagreb and “The North”
Arts
They are pretty big in the sculpture scene in Croatia but they have some nice architecture because they are in the middle of the eastern and western European influences. There’s a big melting pot of influence in there. That’s about all the stuff on art we could stay awake to note.
Culture
They Croats love their religious festivals with lots of traditional costumes and traditional drinking. As with most of Europe these are packed into the summer months (yay we’ll be there in summer).
Our Route takes us through
Central Croatia
It’s the least touristy region and has been a meeting point for loads of ancient dudes over the centuries. We’re most likely to stop at Zagreb, Sisak and Glina. We’re hoping to have a look around the Mirogoj cemetery in Zagreb as it’s renowned as one of the most beautiful spots a dead person can be in the world.
We take a quick duck through Bosnia and then back into
Dalmatia.
That’s the most touristy because it has lots of awesome coastline and people say that it has an Italian feel but without all of the Italians. We’ll probably stop in Dubrovnik, Cavtat and Konavle. Apparently Dubrovnik is pretty swish if you avoid infernos night club and it’s a nice medieval walled city.
It took me ages to figure this out. It probably shouldn’t have but it did cos I suck.
If you are taking pedals off then make sure that you have a proper open ended spanner for the job. I used to use a tiny little shifting spanner but it kept slipping and I stuffed up a few pedals. So I went out and got a proper, thin profile, 15 mm, open ended spanner. Who would have thought that the right tools for the job would have made things easier. Derr!!
Any once you have your spanner fit it to the pedal right next to the crank. To figure out the way to turn it to undo the pedal, try to turn the nut in both directions. The direction that turns the pedals in a backwards direction (the non-drive direction) is the right one to undo the pedals. Then put your foot on the pedal to hold it still and turn the spanner. Presto, the thing should loosen up. Then repeat the process on the other side. Its the non drive direction thats the key to knowing which way to go.
Also when putting pedals back on make sure that they go on the correct side or you’ll really stuff your bike up and cost yourself lots of money.
Hope that helps someone out there.
Tc
Rated M (this one has a few rude words in it)
There are lots of people that are shitscared to travel with their bikes or they think that it’s not possible.
Well it very much is possible as I’ve done it bloody heaps.
The first thing is the packing of the bikes and the packing medium.
I know of 3 things that you can pack your bike into
1. The good old and simple, cardboard bike box. The kind that the ‘brand spanking’ new bikes turn up to the bike shop in. They are available free from all bike shops. Well unless the bike shop owners are real tight arses. I have actually had a guy try to charge me once but I laughed and went to another shop down the road.
To prepare your bike to travel in one of those you need to take off the front wheel and remove its axle. You’ll need to leave the back wheel in place but remove its axle. The pedals are pretty important to take off and chances are you’ll need to make sure the handle bars are off and only attached by the cables. To do all this you’ll need your fingers for the quick release axles, a set of allen keys for the handle bars and a suitably thin, open ended spanner to get off your pedals. (See the soon to be posted tips on taking off pedals for which I’ve only just figured out a surefire method) Make sure that the pedals, nuts and axles are tied up tight in a placky bag so that they don’t fall out of the holes that inevitably form in the box during travel. I also duct tape a bike shoe under my front forks to make sure that they don’t punch through the bottom and I wrap the rear derailleur in foam or soft goodies and I stick something protective under the front gear crank. You can then pack the rest of the box with all your other gear, as it fits, but make sure to wrap it in placky so that it doesn’t get grease and crap all over it. Nic prefers the bike box method (comment veto used by nic on what I was going to say) The box does offer a fair bit of protection for the bike and the chuckers (or luggage handlers as they call themselves) tend to treat a box with at least a smidgen of care. Also if you put a nice strap around it then it is much easier to carry. One problem is that you need to use a mountain of sticky tape to seal them up and if you fly through the US the arseho.. I mean.. customs officials tend to want to rip them open then in their lovely manner, not seal them up again which leaves your possessions free to explore as many airports of the world as they can.
2. Bike Bags. This is the current way that we are getting our bikes on and off of planes and I think that they are the schniz dingle. We bought a soft, padded bike bag each for $150 CAD. They can cost anywhere from $100 to $300 and the quality can vary greatly. Ours are a little on the lower quality end (and as such, I got a great deal on them) but with a padded base, special wheel pockets and other pockets for all the goodies they do pretty good. The process to put the bike in the bag is to just take each wheel off and remove the axles from each and then slot it in the bag and zip it up. The shoe duct taped to the forks and some extra padding around the rear derailleur are recommended (Nic’s copped a fair knock on one flight). There is loads more room to put all of your extra junk in with the bike bag and with both wheels being on the side of the bike it means that the whole thing fits within standard airline luggage size requirements and so you don’t need to pay excess baggage for it (well provided that it doesn’t weigh a ton with all your crap wrapped around it). It helps to make sure that the bag is covered with fragile stickers and has “THIS IS A BICYCLE” written all over it as my back wheel recently endured a pretty nasty buckle from the wonderful staff at jetstar when they mistook it for normal luggage and stuck it on the moving belt in Townsville.
The bike bags are mainly good because they pack down into a sack that you can carry with you. As such we can now ride to the airport and put the bikes in the bags in the departures area and then go and check in.
3. Proper bike box. This is the way that will most protect your bike but it is also the most expensive. These little beauties will set you back at least $400 (some are over $800) but your baby should arrive undamaged. (Your bike will be ok too). I’ve not travelled with one but I’ve seen them being trollied and pulled around airports and they seem all the go if you are willing to outlay all the cash to get one.
Also if you need packing tips on how to get the rest of your gear into your hand luggage then please see the marvellous tips presented by couchsurfing guru, polyglot and good bloke Benny http://www.irishpolyglot.com/travel/how-to-take-as-much-as-you-like-in-your-hand-luggage/en/
Well I’m still struggling to get them to answer their phone at the consulate but I’ll hopefully have good news soon.
This weekend the bikes will get their first run around the block on magnetic island. Yay for tropical islands to test our touring gear.
Well I figured that I better start getting down and dirty on this blogging thing so that I can keep up to date on how things for the trip have been going.
We picked up our bikes last night. They look and feel pretty schmick.
We have gone for a Long Haul Trucker from Surly. The frame is a dedicated touring frame with a long wheel base so that its more stable and a long chain stay so that my feet don’t hit the paniers with every pedal.
The complete bike set us back $1800 AUD each.
The only difference between the bikes is that Nic’s is a 52 cm frame and mine is a 54 cm and that her’s is green and mine is the wierdly named ‘Truckaccino’. Thats obiously code for light brown but I’m not that hip with the bike colour lingo. We wanted exactly the same set up so that we can interchange parts when I inevidibly crash or when Nic gets her fifteenth flat tyre for the day.
The wheels are 26 inch rims – I went these because I figure that mountain bike gear is easier to find in remote places.
The frame is steel. I went with that because a) its cheap and I’m a tight arse and b) because people that use it rave about it and people that don’t use it don’t really rave about what they’re on. (Kind of like the mac vs pc thing)
The shifters are simple, oldschool bar end shifters and the brakes are good old v-brakes. None of that disc or caliper nonsense for us.
The bike is designed to be as simple and hardy as possible and the bits that count, like the wheels and bottom bracket, are top of the line stuff. Even I should be able to fix it on the road. Although to help that I’m going to go and sit down with the bike mechanic and learn a thing or two before we head off. I don’t want to be trying to figure out which way to tighten a spoke to unbuckle my wheel on the top of a tibet mountain pass while a yak tries to get friendly with me.
The place where we got the bikes is pretty cool. The bloke is really helpful and trying to get us the best gear we can get. So if you are in Townsville drop into Off and On Bikes on Ross River road.
The funny thing about bike shops is that some of them have a good name but are actually really shit because all that they want to do is sell you the most expensive gear at a ridiculously inflated price. For example, I rang the blokes that import our bikes into Aus and sussed out all the details and how much they should cost and because of the wholesale vs retail thing I had to find a shop in town that would bring them in. I went into one shop and told the bloke all that I knew and the costs and everything and when he looked into it he still tried to charge an extra $200 on top of the recommended retail price. I laughed at him and went straight to another shop.
The paniers that we are going for are the Tioga dry bags. These are 42L each front and back and are cost $400. There are 2 other brands that we’ve found that are fully waterproof. They are Orleib and Topeak. The topeak ones were too small and a bit commuter oriented and the ortlieb ones were $660. The orlieb is supposed to be the bee’s knees of all paniers but I’ll let you know in future updates if saving the $260 up front was worth it.
We’ve now got to go out and buy our camping gear and get these visas sorted. The camp gear should be easy (a little expensive but easy) but the visas are a nightmare. I can’t understand why consulates refuse to pick up their phone and help me. Argh. but that is for another story so I’ll go for now.
