Out tomorrow

Today, my new bike helmet arrived. My oldest one has gotten *very* grungy, my middle one is falling apart and I'm trying to reglue it, and my newest one is uncomfortable for long-term use. For reasons I don't understand, it hurts my left ear.

So I bought a new one, from China, of course. Paid for 10 days ago, arrived today. Amazing. I tried it on; it was a bit too loose fore-and-aft, so I've glued some foam to where my forehead goes (I've used that idea before, it works well), and now it's nice and snug. I'll initiate it tomorrow.

Two new throttles arrived; I got those from Alibaba (bought for spares, and because they were really cheap), the big Chinese equivalent to Ebay (only *much* bigger). I'm starting to get things from there, because I think they're going to be even bigger in future. And there's stuff on Alibaba that isn't on Ebay.

The contract for Daisy arrived; it's as I expected, except that the SLA compensation is much improved. If there's 24 hours outage in any three months, I get a one month refund. Of course, I'd be *very* surprised (and disappointed) if that ever happened; connections are much better than that. But it's nice that they take it seriously.

On the other hand, I've had an offer of 100 mbit service for £550, £150 less than Daisy offered. Which means that prices are still falling. And I've come up with a plan to shave another £300/month off another service that I've been getting. I need to do a bit of programming, and a bit of testing to see if it works. Getting costs down is important in the current economic climate. Or indeed even when times are good!

I've located the boots that I've been buying - Hi-Tec Men's Eurotrek, on Amazon. I find them comfortable, and sufficiently long-lasting, and they're only £34. But I can't order until we get back from Eurodisney, otherwise they'll arrive while we're away.

I'm planning a trip to Elsworth tomorrow, near Cambridge. There's a ring of about 40 caches to do there. When I'm going well, I can do 10 per hour, so if I set off at 10:30, I'll be done by 3pm, time for lunch!

I think I'm getting about 30 caches per battery-pack. So I'll take two packs, and a 4AH spare. Plus a bottle of water, my on-the-road repair kit, a hard drive (for putting in caches), a bike lock (in case I need to leave it for a while) and a head torch (which I won't need until 7pm, but at this time of the year, I get into the habit of taking it along "just in case"). 

This will be my last geocaching outing before the trip to Eurodisney with daughter.1 and grandson.1, although I'd hope to do a few caches while I'm there. Last time, we stayed in a hotel that we really didn't like at St Pancras before catching the Euro train in the morning; this time, I've persuaded ladysolly that we'll sleep at home, drive to Ebbsfleet and pick up the train there. We'll leave quite early, and if traffic is light, we'll stop at a motorway service for breakfast. If it's heavy, and we don't have time to stop, we'll breakfast on the train. Either way, it means we don't have to go into London. I'm really looking forward to this Eurodisney trip!