Dave and Jen For Oxfam

Put me in front of a keyboard, define an audience and watch the word count click over to maximum. Somehow I managed to turn a post about Jen baking muffins into a reflection on Major Donor support during the current instabilities of the financial world. I blame the smell of so many sweet baked goods for the verbosity in earnest. All I really needed to say was: Muffins!!! How good are muffins??? Jen’s lucky workmates get to eat muffins all this week, if this batch is anything to go by. This is her tongue in cheek (or possibly “crumbs on desk”) response to an amused conversation about little old ladies and cake stalls. They might have to be quick though, as a certain Squishy spied in the photos below has a decidedly hungry look in his eye. A look I know well…

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It’s a scene from a movie where the protagonist has been introduced, gone through some ordeal and come out the other side with a purpose, with intent, with direction, with… with a montage! If we had a montage there wouldn’t be much of an ordeal so it would simply show us riding, planning, riding, fundraising, riding, reading and, just to keep the theme, more riding. It would also be a somewhat cliché montage with one of those flipping calendars The best I could find in a quick search online was this one, which is really quite naff I’m afraid, so you will have to use your imagination. See where I’m going with this? Calendar? Time? Flipping? Five weeks to go? Five weeks to go!!

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After the beautiful day we had riding from Burleigh to the seaway on the Gold Coast last weekend, this weekend’s session pales in comparison. One of the great realisations of the ease of which we covered the 34km last weekend is that the distance or time in saddle is not an issue. The vast majority of that trip was on road with some fun compacted off-road trails near the end giving way to the odd stretch of loose sand. We definitely need more experience off-road and we continue to enthuse about heading to the trails in Nerang or The Gap.

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The first Dave and Jen video! Filmed on the tracks up near the Gold Coast Seaway during the training session we wrote about earlier, this is our first foray into capturing the experiences of being a part of the Oxfam Cambodia Challenge for 2008. Be sure to check our Vimeo and YouTube pages for more, and of course be sure to support our fundraising for Oxfam Australia!

http://www.vimeo.com/2265180

After the ride yesterday we have our hands full with stripping the sand and salt off the bikes, reliant on the excellent Rocklube chain lubrication in simplifying the process and not laughing at the backpack and helmet strap suntan lines we have accumulated. As busy as we are there is of course always time for a countdown post and we find ourselves now 6 weeks away from flying out for our adventure. As expected things feel busier and busier but our weekend away has given us a feeling of being in the eye of the storm. More fundraising, planning and exercise await.

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With a weekend of great weather comes the temptation to use our weekly longer rides as an excuse to slip down the coast for some ocean-side fun. A temptation we don’t so much as give in to as ask to catch up, speeding away down the highway with the bikes in tow. Aiming for a late afternoon ride we pull up at Burleigh and are happy to see sunshine and a gentle offshore breeze. Putting frames together and helmets and gloves on we don’t leave until making sure Squishy is packed safely. yes, im getting used to Jen’s insistences that i ensure the safety of a stuffed animal, which sounds even more naff when i type the word “stuffed animal”. Lets call him “mascot”.

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Today was National Ride To Work Day. Apparently. Not being familiar with the initiative I only found out about it by way of a friend asking me how it went. We shared puzzled looks and hit the internet. The website is typical of Australian government initiatives and quite frankly looks abysmal. I’m not even going to punish myself by commenting on government copy writers using phrases like “maximise the return on your bike parking investment”. That way madness lies.

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Seven is an interesting number. No really it is. There are seven classes of plastics used in packaging applications. Windows 7, the upcoming Microsoft operating system is sometimes referred to as just “7″. There will be about seven people in the world who will like it. There are seven Earths in Islamic tradition. In Sega’s Sonic the Hedgehog video game franchise, there are seven Chaos Emeralds. Pirates talked of seven seas. Seven is the only number less than 15 which cannot be represented as the sum of the squares of three integers. Seven is the number of weeks until we got to Vietnam and Cambodia.

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After a week of long riding, long roads and riding along roads in a line, we decided to spice it up a little. Whilst the weather threatened dubious, we found ourselves giving in to the desire to hike in to a campsite and play with nature for a while. Upon Jen’s most excellent suggestion and surreptitious planning, a schedule of ferry times, tickets and campsite bookings took place and landed in a mysterious pile in front of me. The words “Moreton Island” appear in size 18 Arial font. In bold. Atop the paper stack lay a list of what to pack. There were things like tents, ropes and backpacks. No bikes however. A riding training session without bikes you ask? Well, read on.

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I wrote a “quick” post on how to use this site that wore through 8 keyboards and would annihilate the Amazon rainforest if i ever printed it. This is the second attempt at writing it and my first attempt at brevity. There are some useful things to know about how to get the most out of this site and its all very interesting. I promise.

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