The Home of Tom & Morven

Ever since my mountainbiking buddy and training partner (Nick) buggered off overseas on an extensive around the world journey, I have been left to fend for myself in the big bad world of dirt, sweat, and blood. (Having said that I normally only get the sweat and blood when riding with Nick as I need him to pump me up.)

Unfortunately, just as Nick left I had to bail out from doing a race I was actually going to do (seriously!) because my Pearl Azumi “Juice” MTB shoes had worn out in a matter of 6 months. Again. This time though, I wasn’t going to be happy with them replacing them with a new pair as this was already the second pair that wore out within 6 months. The only problem was the sole tearing off from the shoe around where the pedals are, I think because I have a tendancy to pull up with my feet just as much as I push down (or at least I try to, to be more efficient and stronger in the long term). The Pearl Azumi rep came back with a brand new pair of the new top of the line Pearl Azumi shoes, worth almost double what I had paid in the first place.

I was very excited, until I got to the store and found that my foot didn’t fit in the shoe because the way that they measured sizings had changed from 2007 to 2008. (You would have thought that they would know about their sizing changes from 2007 to 2008 and could have matched me to an equivalent size). It was a size 44, so I asked for a size 45. But then they sent a size 46, which was astronomically too big! The reason they sent a larger size was because the shop had traced the sole of my shoe and faxed it through to Pearl Azumi, to ensure I didn’t get stuffed around. The store was very helpful in this respect. And the store did to the right thing, but the problem was now that although the sole length was exactly the same as the previous shoes that fit, the volume around the toes was now stupidly too big. Apparently Pearl Azumi make them big around the toes now because Australians have big toes or something. The size 46 was the perfect length, just ridiculously baggy around the toes. May however be appropriate for bigfoot.

I tried on alternative brands and models of shoes in the store, but nothing seemed to quite fit very well. So, I asked Pearl Azumi for my money back and they were very happy to. I certainly can’t complain about Pearl Azumi except that they have just one model of shoes that didn’t hold together.

By the time I got my money back you could understand that I was extremely unmotivated about finding some replacement mountain bike shoes, so I just resorted to riding my road bike with road bike shoes (which fit very nicely, thanks for asking) and it took me a couple weeks to start looking at a new pair. So by now it had been a total of about 5 weeks without being able to ride the MTB. Eventually, I went out and tried on Sidi shoes as I’ve heard they’re extremely comfortable and durable, and fell in love with the Sidi Dragon 2 SRS Carbon, top of the line shoe. It is amazing how easy it is to adjust the shoe, you can even adjust the width of the heel! However they were very expensive, so I ended up finding them for sale on an online store in the UK, which of course meant I would have to wait another 10 days until I got them.

So the total downtime of me and mountain biking was about 6 weeks, and for about 3 of them I did absolutely no riding at all. But I’m back on the bike now, with my brand new Sidi Dragon 2 Carbon shoes and brand new Shimano XTR pedals, and have in one ride noticed my feet are much more comfortable, and also feeling much more confident with pedals that behave exactly how I want (i.e. don’t clip out when I don’t want them to, are easy to clip in to and easy enough to clip out when I’m desperately in need). I do still have some fine tweaking to do of adjusting the cleats as my left foot and knee were sore by the end of yesterday’s ride, and did notice that my left foot was working on a bit of a funny angle. Unfortuantely I had two flat tyres in yesterday’s ride so I didn’t really get to test them out as much as intended, but I’m good to go for next weekend! I expect the Sidi shoes to get some very good ratings. The XTR pedals certainly have. The only reasons the shoes might not get good ratings is value for money, as they are rather expensive. I wouldn’t normally spend so much money on one component but in this case given the troubles I’ve had with finding shoes that last AND fit my feet, I think it’s worth it.

Apart from the short MTB ride yesterday, I went for a half decent road ride with Ben on Saturday, and started my morning training sessions on my trainer this morning, which I hope to do 30 minutes every morning.

Although it’s nearly half a year later that I’m writing a summary about the holiday that Morven and I had together in London, Paris, and Scotland, I have the excuse that there was a lot of distractions when we got back due to being newly engaged. I am very lucky to have blogged from my PDA along the way as I have already forgotten mostly everything except for the proposal! All I need to do is collate all my blog posts and add photos, which I have now done, and also write the story of the proposal.

Here is the list of the blog posts during the journey:

• So the holiday begins
• Arrival in Singapore
• Departing Singapore
• New Singapore Changi Terminal 3
• United with Morven, and off to Paris
• First day in Paris
• Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triumphe, and Versailles (updated with photos)
• Valentines Day in Paris
• Peterhead and Aberdeen, in Scotland (updated with photos)
• Glasgow, and nearly home (updated with photos)
• Publically announcing our engagement

Then finally, the full story of our engagement (private blog entry).

Mike Rann has decided to desalinate water for Adelaide rather than what I believe is the more environmentally choice of recycling wastewater (i.e. effluent).  ABC News reports that a deal has been struck to build a pilot plant at Pt Stanvac.

ABC News - Pt Stavac desal plant

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