2011 – Europe and Japan

No person need go hungry on tour

Posted on by kymdt



No person need go hungry on tour, originally uploaded by kdt.

The caravan is an amazing temple to consumerism. Like a Christmas Pageant on steroids a very long cavalcade of vehicles with pretty young things gyrating to pulsating dance music travel for the length of each stage. Alternating between taunting and delighting the crowd. The objective is to get the spectators to worship the products. This year a sausage maker is celebrating 40 years – the crowd sings its Happy Birthday in French. The sweet manufacturer has the crowd chanting its name. The bottled water supplier sprays the crowds with water while conducting acrobatic contortions from a slow moving truck. There are banks, newspapers, betting operators, television channels, the police and fireman are represented.

The photo is some of the stuff we have collected in two days. We need buy no more water, madeleines, sweets, snack foods while in France. I have a hat for every occasion, a baguette back (one of the best), pens, bottle openers, washing detergent (yes, that’s right we can wash our clothes), hand clappers, and to Helen’s delight three massive PMU hands.

After 5 Panches (A no alcohol beer freely served to the crowd), Helen was a convert. Oh did I mention the fresh bread and Nutella! If only I were a kid!

If only it passed through poor districts or visited the homeless!

A rainy start to stage 4 in Lorient

Posted on by helenhmk



Last Import-19, originally uploaded by Helen K.

Rain has a tendency to put a dampener on events – especially while on holiday. However for us, it gave us the advantage.

We drove in early to Lorient…. And spent 25+ mins walking to the start, as today’s TDF started near the submarine base (makes sense – away from the centre of town). It all looked good, slightly over cast, and cool. The biggest decision of the morning was “do we wait near the actual start or go where cyclist will be signing on?”. Given we had 3 hours before the start, we decided to go with the sign on area, even though we weren’t on the barrier to get the best view.

Entertainment during this time took the form of TDF sponsors giving out food, newspapers, and a range of promotional products which are meaningless to us. There were kids, men in costumes, and a band, but at 10:30 the overcast sky started to rain on their parade – and us.

The Saturday morning technology report!

Posted on by kymdt



Technology!!, originally uploaded by kdt.

Well every holiday seems to involve a series of compromises in relation to the technology required to take photos and blog. This time we’ve ditched the hacked Dell Mini running Mac OS X and external hard drive. We have replaced it with two iPads, a photo back-up (Sanho iPad Hyperdrive), wireless router (for fixed internet in hotel rooms). Don’t forget three cameras!!

Well for those contemplating this setup I can provide some advice. The iPads work wonderfully well. Flickr Stackr is a great App fro managing your Flickr account (You can’t use all of the Flickr online functions on iPad’s Safari), Photoshop Express is great for a quick crop, rotate and touch-up. I can not be so glowing about WordPress application for blogging, it seems to have unexplained problems uploading sometimes. I find Flickr’s blog to WordPress function the easiest way to get a photo onto the blog.

The biggest problem is that a typical holiday could involved 40gb of photos, no iPad can handle that. The largest available is 64gb and with Apps and Music that is cutting it fine. So here steps in the Sanho iPad Hyperdrive. It is a portable, battery powered hardrive. It pretends to be a camera card so it can upload photos to the iPad. It also offers incremental backups. Sounds great? It did, we bought one. It has, in my opinion, very flakey operating software. I have had to format the harddrive twice and it seems to have problems with incremental back-ups. In no way would I recommend it someone for a road-trip.

So what gives? Well Apple has made a great platform with the the iPad, but Apple either needs to release a larger iPad (128gb or 256gb would be nice) or it needs to offer a better way of having external storage. Until that time it is a bit of a hassle for a long-road trip. I also hope that the next version of iOS makes it easier to delete events or photo albums on the iPad, currently it seems you can only delete a photo at a time! Ickkk that could cause RSI!

Your on the road technical advisor!

Foodie report…

Posted on by kymdt



St John, originally uploaded by Helen K.

Went to St John Restaurant last night!

The restaurant was quite noisy with a couple of large parties. Service was generally good, with a few long waits tarnishing the experience a bit. The food however is absolutely wonderful. It is a clean, minimal and traditional. Nothing over complicated. It highlights the best of British food.

He had potted pork with pickled cabbage, saddle of rabbit with courgettes with sides of spring vegetables and potatoes. Followed by shared Chocloate Cake and course of freshly backed Madeleines (awesome!!). She had brown shrimp and cabbage salad, pigeon and radishses.

I’d recommend everyone visit. It is a good contrast to the more complicated French food and it shows that the British traditions certainly have much to offer.

East is West

Posted on by kymdt



Boris Bikes, originally uploaded by kdt.

Cycling in a big city can be exciting. London is pretty calm compared with Beijing and Shanghai the traffic is slow and generally respects bikes and the road rules. Perhaps, the hardest thing isn’t the environment around you but the inner compass.

We had plans to cycle to the Victoria and Albert Museum. It was “close” and Boris Bikes were just around the corner from our hotel. After some very slow credit card transactions we got ourselves a 7 day pass and got our first bikes from the racks.

We arrived at our first turn, we had a choice of going left or right at the Strand. I was convinced that right was right and Helen was convinced that left was right. I’ve been known to be disoriented in cities before, so we followed Helen’s conviction.

We cycled along the Strand and took some turns in the “correct” general direction. I could see any signs or monuments, but Helen was convinced. As we cycled along she said “Look St James we must be getting close”. All I can say is that St James is quite popular. We kept going. I was feeling increasingly out of the way. Finally I demanded the iPhone and noticed that we had gone the wrong direction!!

Right was Right.

We ended up cycling past Kings Cross, along Euston Road, then down Bloomsbury Street, Shaftesbury Avenue, Picadilly Circus, Pall Mall.

We then arrived in front of Buckingham Palace. There seemed to be 10 million people there. Asking a local bobby we found out that it was changing of the guard. Here is a random holiday tip. The best time to cycle around Buckingham Palace is at about 11:00. No traffic!

Oh, btw, we did manage to the V&A eventually.

Lorient – Contador

Posted on by helenhmk



Lorient – Contador, originally uploaded by Helen K.

Anyway, back to Lorient. Once the heavens opened up, I decided €10 was a worthwhile investment in a poncho. Especially, given the umbrella was in the car (“it’s not going to rain”), and we were wearing summer clothing – much like everyone else. Admittedly, we weren’t at the front of the railing, but good enough to have a view of the cyclists arriving to sign on. However, those in front of us did have a jacket and an umbrella, but didn’t posses the ability to stand in persistent rain, and decided it was all too much, and left. Ah victory was ours! We were now on the front railing – perfect opportunity for photos, even if the rain continued.

Much like the Tour Down Under there was the traditional commentator (25 years going strong in the role), talking about the local town, the route and the entertainment. The town band arrived…. went on the stage but the rain prevented them from actually playing. The TV interviewers and commentators who spent time setting up earlier, packed up – all too much rain for them to persist. However we remained – given the advantage point we weren’t going to let a little rain move us.

About an hour after it started raining, the cyclists began to arrive. They rode up, leaned their bike against the railings, walked up the stairs, and signed on. The commentator called out their name and any significant races they had won. This was sometimes difficult to understand given the French accent. Once signed on after shaking the hand of local official, they proceeded down the stairs got on their bike, grabbed a powerade bar, and rode to the starting area.

Standing there, in the pouring rain, watching the “who’s who” of pro cycling in one spot was quite amazing. Seeing Contador, the Schleck brothers, and Evans, was absolutely fantastic. There were so many cyclists in the space of 20 minutes…. It was hard to keep up with who had arrived, but despite the rain, we continued to take photos.

Within 20 minutes, the cyclists were all signed on, the presentation was over and we had 15 minutes until the start. Still feeling the buzz from the presentation we thought walking along the neutralized section would provide a good advantage as the cyclists rode by. However, it started to rain again, and as we were walking past the start, there appeared to be plenty of room. We took a position, took more photographs until they rode off.

Ah…. It was a fantastic experience, despite the rain.