The Royal Lancaster Infirmary last month opened its new Diabetes Hub to aid in even better care and research. Setting off on Thursday 18th May Allan will be riding from the Diabetes Hub to the Eiffel Tower, again on his own with just a bike, a tent, and panniers loaded with various pieces of equipment, medical supplies, and food. Along the way, there will be both a blog and live tracking on this site.
A point of interest for the ride is also the bike which Allan will be using. Made by himself, hand cut, shaped and welded by the lad himself. He is actually finding it somewhat amusing as he classes it as “the most advanced bike in the world” which raises many eyebrows as people wonder what it is he is going on about as it’s just a steel framed bike, lugged, resembling something to some degree as something from the sixties or seventies. Upon closer inspection things tend to differ though, the quiet monstrous hydraulic brakes which are routed internally, the electronic gearing, all of which are state of the art but hardly making it that advanced. An even closer look and the gearing system is some very strange hybrid, half mountain bike and half road bike, while very unusual still not that “advanced”. But then there is all the other strange electrical going’s on’s. The bike is sporting all manner of strange sensory equipment, various wireless systems, it is talking to a phone, the cloud. What is going on with it?!
The bike, or Lancet as he refers to it in reference to finger pricking devices used by diabetics (and a running joke in the diabetic world as they are made from steel and last forever never getting swapped) uses it’s sensors to read Allan’s insulin pump and takes his insulin levels and amount of food he’s taken. It is also taking his blood glucose readings every four minutes and attempts to predict the direction of his blood glucose and reducing or increasing his insulin levels based on those directions. Reading sensors on the bike for his power output and heart rate it’s also able to make predictions based on the amount of food he has taken as to if he’ll need more based on the earlier readings for insulin in his blood stream and the direction of his blood glucose. All this information is sent to a small Garmin screen so he can view his current blood glucose level and see what the onboard systems are doing to him, alongside normal navigation and riding information. Along with his self-made concoction of a bike this also self-made ridable artificial pancreas based system makes for a very unusual and unique bicycle.
Allan expresses a huge thank you to everyone for the response and donations thus far. He also thanks his local GP’s over the years who have aided Allan with this condition. And for the fantastic team looking after him at the Royal Lancaster Infirmary he is immensely grateful for getting him where he is now, and for the check-up, he has to have before he’s allowed to set off. Ok, maybe not so much that last point!
If you wish to make a donation they can be made online at http://bit.ly/2rfEucC