Long time no blog

We know we haven't been extremely active on this blog recently, but we have legitimate reasons, we promise. Hmm, let's see.

Well, first of all, we both have gotten our new, pretty professional bikes now. Thus, we've been training hard on them, as you can see below.

 

Training hard...

...or hardly training?

We have been training so hard in fact, that Carmen (yours truly) has managed to get a hand injury, quite common amongst cyclists, known informally as handlebar palsy. While not very serious, this injury is an extreme pain in the backside as the recommended treatment is rest. So Ben has banned me from riding Baby. I think he was jealous I was spending more time with Baby than him and he's taking revenge in my bad luck. Another annoying feature of this injury is loss of control over the affected hand. In short, you know that feeling of numbness when you sleep on your hand and then when you wake up it feels clumsy and uncoordinated? Well that's how my RIGHT hand feels all the time. It is quite irritating as it makes everything unnecessarily complicated, stuff like tying shoelaces or buttering toast are quite a challenge. And I love toast so you can understand my pain! Plus my hand looks a bit like a claw so it could easily belong to a wild animal:

Now don't think that just because I've been banned from Baby Ben has allowed me to rest. I should be so lucky! No, instead he has killed me on the exercise bikes at the gym. So training hasn't been neglected, which is good really as we have less than 3 weeks to go until D day (departure day).

Apart from training and getting injuries, at the beginning of the month we have been away from home, for 5 days. We went to Rock Werchter, a music festival in Belgium. The festival was really good, excellent line-up and the bonus was meeting some good friends from Romania (some planned some accidentaly!), who I haven't seen in a long time!

A very diverse table, three countries are represented here.

Belgium is a lovely country, extremely cycle friendly! I swear in the city close to the festival, Leuven, there were many many more bikes compared with cars. Awesome! We didn't get to do much sightseeing unfortunately, but we did have a bit of a stroll through Leuven (the home of Stella Artois) and very brief one through Brussels. We did indulge in waffles and frites though, so we did experience some of the nice Belgian food.

Stella!

Yummy!

Also, while we were at the festival, we practiced our camping skills. We managed to catch some sleep despite the loud drunky festival goers who thought it was a good idea to shout all night long. Well if you ask me, it wasn't! But thank God for ear plugs. They have ensured me a decent night sleep.

Our little home and a Carmen in the background.

 A couple of days after returning from Belgium, once I was recovered, I left home again. This time only locally, I went to Cambridge for a summer school for social enterprise and charity managers (which I helped organise, brag brag brag). I slept and ate in one of the old Cambridge colleges, which looked pretty much like Hogwarts. It was an absolutely goregeous building and I wouldn't have minded staying a few extra nights there. I was even crowned while I was there:

Meet princess Carmen of Romania.

Since then, I have experienced also my first English christening, which was very interesting and had its similarities with a Romanian one. We also attended two very well prepared and tasty barbeques, congratulations to the chefs.

And that's about how we kept ourselves busy since we last talked, the main events anyway. From now on, we will be much more active, both on the blog and on the bike. Ben has gotten me a Baby allowance for today, I will take advantage of it!