Day Eleven+: Rest Day Two

Rest day Monday! We slept in and cycled to the laundromat to wash our clothes and cycling outfits in a machine for the first time since we started. We hand wash the cycling outfits every night, and the few other clothes we brought as needed, too. Thankfully, my Japanese linen pants and Indian short Kurta dry quickly.

Then it was maintenance time. We cycled to a carwash to clean the dirt off the bikes using a power washer, and also used it to clean the drivetrain. In the picture above, Liz is using the bike-chain-cleaning sponge to get the sticky oily stuff off. We used some two-in-one cleaning and lubing fluid for this that the man selling us the Schwalbe tires gave us. Worked well!

The powerwasher made cleaning easy, but thanks to our friend James, we now know that this was not such a great idea – if you aim the water jet wrongly at the bike, you can push water into and protecting grease out of bearings 😦 We did not specifically aim the jet at the bearings, but we were also not too careful. We’ll listen carefully to our bikes in the coming weeks to see if we need to go to a shop to get things re-greased.

Then it was time for a Pizza lunch and then yoga! It was good to use the upper body muscles a bit and do all the stretchy poses.

Not very hungry after yoga, we went straight to the Royal Shakespeare Company to see King Lear. Our tickets were 60 pounds each. Anne and Reece paid $1 and $1.50 to see the Taming of the Shrew at the time – I think even inflation adjusted that was quite a bit cheaper.

I thought the play was very good, even though I had some trouble understanding the Shakespeare English and keeping track of  which of the Dukes, Albany or Cornwall, is with which of the daughters, Regan or Goneril. When I voiced my worries about understanding the English to the nice man at the laundromat, he told me not to worry and that most English people also do not understand what is being said.