Final prep

How did this creep up on me so fast? Do I really need breakages and new modifications at this late stage????

The fancy Peak Design wireless charging mount would be great in an environment with no sudden movements but on the bike riding on road verges or potholes it just fell off once too often to be tolerated. Luckily I have a few phones with the Note9 having a great bombproof mount that I will attach instead. Shame to lose the Pixel 7pro that I had completely degoogled but have removed a lot of the Google and FB related spyware from the Note9 and added a considerable number of apps to assist with the journey ahead.

If you have Signal installed and would like to be part of the chatter around my journey then follow this link https://signal.group/#CjQKIEkQmImlOxcOgk249QSt919hL_iylp2eYCSo8IjeTGD_EhA1tWZeXVLUR5Cvga-sp_V9 to join the solarbent chat group.
I have set it so I have to approve members so it doesn’t get filled with bots and spam so give me a little time to approve you.

My flat is in the process of being evacuated – 4 piles – dump, put in storage (very minimal), donate to the family or take with me. Imogen dehoused most of my Arachnids and did a wonderful job of making my bathroom look civilised again – thank you, thank you, thank you.

Brent came to the rescue tonight as he created a much more robust and functional phone mounting system for me. My “instrument deck” is much more functional now with clear views to the CA3 giving me accurate stats of what energy I am harvesting and what I am using, the watch is positioned well showing the Varia radar info of vehicles approaching from behind and the phone is within reach and able to be used for navigation, music, podcasts, audiobooks and taking voice notes.

I had a bit of success selling things today on TradeMe – getting there but may have to leave some stuff for the children to do what they can with. I am left with a dilemma as the winner of the auction for the Brompton mistakenly put an autobid of $141000 when they really wanted to put $1410 and not surprisingly won the auction at $1790. They now want me to sell it to them for $1410 or relist it. As I want this sorted before I head away I have accepted their offer.

At last I have the bike packed up and ready to fly. Bike box at 32kg and trailer bag at 23kg. Time to fill a bag with toothbrush, undies and other important stuff up to 23kg and I’m ready to go ๐Ÿ™‚

Melbourne looks particularly dismal for the start of my meanders so I think I will head toward Adelaide instead of spending time south of Melbourne.