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!

Our quiz prize winners

First off  we would just like to say a big thank you to everyone who took part in the quiz, and you will be pleased to know that no one scored 0. Unfortunately no one got full marks, but our three prize winners all came very close. Please give a round of applause for our three winners:-

1st - Diana

2nd - Mihai

3rd - Ciki

Well done to those three. We shall be sending each of the winners an email to let them know personally just incase they do not see here and we shall work out where you want your prizes sent to.

If anyone wants to check the answers to the quiz we shall now give them below:

Question	Correct Answer	Raspuns Corect
When was Dravet Syndrome first discovered?	1978	1978
During an epileptic seizure, an electrical discharge occurs in?	Brain	Creier
The causes of epilepsy are known in all cases?	False	Fals
The onset of Dravet Syndrome occurs?	In 1st year of life	In primul an de viata
What is the most common cause of Dravet Syndrome?	Gene Mutation	Mutatie genetica
Dravet Syndrome is curable?	False	Fals
You can transmit Dravet Syndrome through?	It is not transmissible	Sindromul Dravet nu este transmisibil
Most seizures last?	Minutes	Minute
In Dravet Syndrome Prolonged seizures (status epilepticus) are more common?	True	Adevarat
What should you do if you witness a crisis?	- Call emergency services if seizure lasts longer than 5 minutes - Clear area of any hazards or move them if unable to move hazard - Time the seizure	- Suni la 112 daca criza dureaza mai mult de 5 minute - Indepartezi toate obiectele care pot prezenta pericol pentru suferind (obiecte dure, ascutite etc) - Cronometrezi durata crizei
People with Dravet Syndrome can get seizures if?	All of these	Toate variantele de mai sus
How many people worldwide suffer from Dravet Syndrome?	1 in 30,000	1 in 30,000
Developmental problems are associated with Dravet Syndrome?	True	Adevarat
Seizures in Dravet Syndrome do not respond to standard anti-convulsive drugs?	True	Adevarat
Which of these famous people had epilepsy?	All of these	Toti acestia

50 miles of bliss

50 miles. My first ever 50 miles. Baby's first ever 50 miles.

As you must know by now, a week ago I got my Baby, a goregeous, petite, silver Dawes Horizon Plus.

Baby's first contact with the pavement.

So, on the following day, we decided to go test Baby out, on a 50 miles route. I must admit, I was excited to go out on my new bike, but also terrified as that would have been the longest cycle ride I've ever done. The longest one before was 38 miles and it required frozen cauliflower on my legs to keep the pain away.

However, I manned up, and went for it. And boy, I am glad I did. It was 50 miles of bliss. Baby is a pleasure to ride and much more easy to handle than my previous bike. It does not feel like cycling, it feels like the wheels are not touching the ground, that effortless it seems to be. While for me it was effortless, Ben, on his old mountain bike, was struggling to keep up with me. And that is saying something, because Ben is extremely fit!

Anyway, enough of me praising Baby. The route we took was extremely nice, pretty and very very cycling friendly. For most of the way we were on country lanes with very little traffic, and pretty views, but I'll let the pictures speak for that.

One last thing I want to add before I let you indulge the pictures is that, although I expected to be unable to walk or sit the next day, to my surprise I was perfectly fine. My legs and bottom were not sore at all, and the only thing I could think about was when to take Baby out again! So all in all, the 50 mile milestone proved to be a very pleasant experience (apart from the last 5 miles, when the wind was blowing against us, HARD)!

This weekend, we're trying to reach the 60 mile barrier, so wish us luck! And, as Ben's just on his way to pick up his new bike (a Dawes Galaxy), I have a feeling that I'll be the one struggling to keep up with him!

Hanningfield Reservoir

We had to climb with our bikes over that fence!

I made some new Beee-st friends.

The beautiful empty road ahead of us.

River Crouch near Canewdon

Resting by the river.

Back home. Tired but happy (at least one of us!)

Water, wind, rain and lollipops

Last weekend was our first official event in the UK. Unfortunately, it's not as impressive as it sounds. Our first event was in fact a school fete held in Rayleigh, Essex. We had agreed to run a stall at the fete to spread awareness about Dravet Syndrome, but also to try and raise some money for the cause. We came up with several different ideas for our stall to try and attract people to come over and have a go, but we eventually decided on using water pistols to shoot at plastic bottles. We also decided to have a back up and have a roll a 2p game as well.

We bought the water pistols from a local shop for a cheap price the day before and started to test them out on the morning before the fete. Annoyingly, they were not quite as good as we had hoped they would be, not managing to be powerful enough to knock over the bottles, even though the wind seemed to be very good at doing that! We then had a further set back when Carmen (who was testing it at the time) broke one of the water pistols by pumping it too vigorously. This was to be a bit of a problem considering we were going to be asking kids to do this and they were even more likely to break them. So we decided in the end to use sponges instead of water pistols to knock over the bottles.

Later on the same day we arrived at the fete with all our equipment and we headed over to start setting it up. We had three little tables all to ourselves so we were quite pleased that we had plenty of space to promote our cause! On one table we placed some hand knitted hats, bracelets and brooches made by Carmen's mum, on another we placed our roll a 2p game and on the third we had an example of some of the prizes that people could win (books, puzzles and lollipops!) We also placed a big board advertising what our stall was all about. Once we had set everything up we were ready to go.

Proud stall owners cowering under some trees

Unfortunately for us, last weekend was not a very good weekend to hold a fete due to some rather adverse weather conditions. There was quite a downpour of rain for the first hour of the fete, with quite heavy winds throughout the whole thing. This impacted a fair bit on the amount of people who stayed at the fete and wandered round taking part in the activities. It also caused us to have remove most of the stuff from the tables to stop it getting too wet or blown off (as you can see above). But we were lucky enough, even though we ended up being stuck under some trees to protect us from the rain, to make £10.18.

Carmen demonstrating how to miss all the bottles