Communications Breakdown

We appear to have made several steps towards global touring domination this weekend with a flurry of deliveries appearing!   Arriving home thursday already buzzing in anticipation for the long Easter weekend, to find a pile of deliveries had (finally) arrived!  First off my O2 iPhone 3G that I plan to trial Sat Nav apps on and which will provide very handy weather, map and internet access.  Navigon looks to be the Sat Nav app of choice, with pre-stored Europe maps available and good reviews.  It would be nice to trial it before dishing out £42, but I'm still working on that..

Second was a pair of Cobra MT975 PMR radios with a max range of 12km, along with Pama KM100 helmet mic/headphones.  Disregarding the manuals we finally figured which buttons do what and proceeded to fulfil childhood dreams of walky-talky practice down to the garden!  With a little more composure and figuring out how to run the cables we headed out on sunday to trial them on a bimble to the south.  Once we sorted out the best PTT button location and that buffs tend to make you sound like your being suffocated in a cardboard box, they worked great.  We've not done any distance testing, but the ability to communicate is going to be invaluable.  (Will do a proper review once we've used for a bit).

Last but not least was a mysterious envelope all the way from California USA?!   Some surprise custom photoshopped bumper stickers for this years planned Cornwall Tour to whack on the panniers!   Why the USA?  No idea, ordered them online for decent price, so considering they already toured half the planet to get here, quite reasonable!  Maybe one day they will return home!