So now I’ve actually committed to the IBR, what’s next? Well, Kiwi and I spent some time post-Mansfield doing some planning and prep together. Firstly, our objectives for the IBR (in order):

1. Come home safely
2. Enjoy ourselves
3. Finish
4. Improve on Kiwi’s finisher standing from 2017
5. Go to places that are interesting
6. NO GRAVEL ROADS. EVER.
   *Unless specifically listed in the bonus and no more than 2 miles long in total

Secondly, we’ve allocated roles and responsibilities. In short, Kiwi is responsible for all things ‘bike’ – the maintenance, the riding etc. I am responsible for all things puzzle solving and navigation. I’m also in charge of all things ‘off the bike’ – accommodation, nutrition, hydration etc. And we have clearly defined roles at bonuses – Kiwi does photos and I do the log book.

What else?

Well, Ox has very kindly planned another rally for us in a couple of weeks – it will be multi-day and as close as we’ll get to an IBR practice run. We’ve also been working on our routing routine – what we’ll do when we get the bonus book on June 16. Up until now, I’ve largely left the GPS coding to Kiwi as he’s the one in charge of the GPSs. I’ve then relied on him emailing me the files I need to upload to Google Maps and go from there. But it turns out that we will get Excel files with the info we need for GPS coding – and with Kiwi’s knowledge and expertise in Basecamp, and mine in Excel, we have found a far more efficient way of getting the info we need into a helpful visual format.

We’ll keep playing with that over the next few weeks and with any luck we’ll be able to route seamlessly by the time IBR comes around and Jeff comes up with a new and monstrous puzzle for us to solve.

Finally, we haven’t been able to find a bike to test out the new pillion seat from MJM, but I’ve taken some photos to show you how much more amazing it is going to be (Corbin on left, MJM on right):

You can see the MJM seat has a bit more height to it and is also actually shaped for a human butt. It’s also slightly longer so we may have to do a bit of playing around to get it in under the top box but I’m sure we’ll solve it.

What the photos don’t show are how much softer it is and how grateful I am that I’m not going to be sitting on this again:

In 6 weeks we’ll be touching down in Minneapolis, ready to reacquaint ourselves with the right hand side of the road and mosey on down to South Carolina…. Eep!