Wednesday, 6 August 2014

Chianti Wine Festival

The details are now available at the web site here.

Clearly we can only sample from some of the 55 wineries and partake in a subset of the food events, given that we only have two days. Sounds like fun!

There is an associated program of events including fashion, food and music. All within around 200m of our hotel.

Tuesday, 5 August 2014

The weather

Our trip is now getting close enough that it is worth starting to monitor the weather forecast. As of today, this is what Accuweather indicates for the period of our trip:

7th  Florence         18-28 Partly sunny
8th  Florence         19-29 Mostly cloudy with a morning shower
9th  Lucca            21-29 Mostly cloudy
10th Florence         19-29 Partly sunny, afternoon thunderstorm
11th Greve in Chianti 19-27 Sunny
12th Greve in Chianti 16-26 Sun and clouds
13th Arezzo           15-22 Mainly cloudy
14th Sansepolcro      14-22 Mostly sunny
15th Sansepolcro      13-24 Sunny
16th Novafeltria      14-22 Mostly sunny
17th Longiano         16-22 Sunny
18th Rimini           18-25 Mostly sunny
19th Florence         17-28 Partly sunny

Monday, 28 July 2014

My packing list

EVOC travel case: 22Kg as packed

  • Bike with bidon and pump, phone case
  • Hex driver set, pedal spanner, zip ties
  • Underseat bag with tube, tyre levers, multi-tool, inflater, puncture kit
  • Container with chain lube, degreaser, tyre sealant, chux, spare CO2 cylinders, spoke tool, valve tool
  • Spare tyre and spare spokes

Salewa backpack: 7Kg as packed

  • Knicks*2, jerseys*2, gloves*2, socks*2, cap,
  • Arm warmers, spray jacket, baselayer, 
  • Helmet
  • Socks, hankies, knickers (3+)
  • Hat, swimmers
  • Shirts (3+)
  • Shorts
  • Trousers
  • Cycling shoes

Salewa day pack:

  • Electrolytes, chamois cream
  • Tail light
  • Handlebar bag, GPS, map case
  • D-lock
  • Cycling glasses in soft case
  • Bathroom bag+basic pharma+sunscreen
  • Detergent for four washes
  • Camera spare battery, wifi module, charger and gorillapod, USB chargers
  • Fresh shirt and undies

Pacsafe shoulder bag: waiting on phone, glasses and wallet

  • Wallet, passport, ticket
  • GoPuck with the three USB cables, second microUSB cable
  • Camera and second lens
  • Phone, headphones, Kobo
  • Glasses in case

Wearing:

  • Light jacket, LS shirt, shoes, socks, knickers, trousers with plaited belt

Saturday, 7 June 2014

I'm routed!

I had made the decision to move the "master" copy of the routes from Garmin Basecamp to GPSies.com because of the better routing capabilities. The issue with Basecamp is that a route can only have a single mode of travel (such as car or bike) and the routing algorithm makes it impossible to (for example) hop from a road to the parallel cycle path, or go the wrong way down a one-way street which although it would be hazardous in many situations is perfectly normal inside the "old town" area of many cities such as Arezzo and Florence.

Having decided that I was happy with the GPSies routing, the next question was how well it would transfer into sensible turn by turn navigation on the Garmin GPS, so today I tested it out. I went to GPSies and laid down a route that used streets, footpath, cycle lanes, shared path etc., moved the GPX route to the Garmin and it worked perfectly!

I have also this weekend completed the task of updating the wiki to refer to all the new (routed) maps that are in GPSies. They can be downloaded from the wiki but just in case I will retrieve all of them and store them in Google Drive as well. I've included waypoints for a couple of places where lunch looks likely along the cycle routes. Some days I expect us to have lunch at our destination, it depends on the distance, the amount of climb and the dawdle-to-take-photos factor.

Saturday, 17 May 2014

Small optimisations

I've spent a little time this weekend optimising the last two days of riding. In particular I managed to take some back-tracking out of the route through Monte Leone. This has also reduced the distance and the amount of climbing by a small amount.

For the last day I have changed the route to connect up with the cycleway that runs from Novafeltria down to Rimini because it gives us a much easier run into town following the river. This has in fact made the route slightly longer but it should take about the same time.

I've also cross-posted the wiki to the Facebook pages of each of the hotels just in case they are interested and to remind them that we are coming!

Wednesday, 7 May 2014

Universal hotel Wi-Fi

A Facebook posting from Hotel Mario's reminded me... how good is it that every hotel we will stay at has free Wi-Fi?

☑ Fiumicino
☑ Firenze
☑ Montecarlo
☑ Greve in Chianti
☑ Arezzo
☑ Sansepolcro
☑ Novafeltria
☑ Longiano

... not to mention on the train and many other locations. This will cut down on data charges! 

Tuesday, 22 April 2014

Dress rehearsal

I travelled by plane to spend Easter with my parents. As well as being about seeing them it was also a dress rehearsal for the Italy trip.
  • My touring bike in the Evoc case travelled safely, and even including helmet, shoes and cycling clothing in the bag it was 22Kg.
  • The route was plane to Brisbane and then train to the Gold Coast, very similar to the luggage handling I'll have to do via FCO. Coming back there was track work and so we had to change to bus from South Brisbane to Roma Street... no problem.
  • The bike case wheels pretty well.
  • I rode three days in a row, and the first two days were pretty similar in profile and distance to the first two days from Viareggio to Greve in Chianti. I felt pretty good after each day's ride.
  • The camera coped well, especially in terms of battery life. I can easily get two days of moderate use out of a battery, so with two fully charged I'll be in good shape.
  • On thing I will have to take to Italy is the charger cable for my Pebble. Not needed for five days but certainly required for two weeks!
All in all a successful trial run. Now I just have to stay in some sort of condition over the winter.

At least I have a few events planned for May and June, the NSW Discovery weekend at Bateman's Bay and Melburn Roobaix and another trip to the Gold Coast in August.