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Well the lesson from my last ride was quickly forgotten, went for a ride out in the New Forest this morning and left my sun glasses behind again. Started from Lyndhurst and went on an 18.2 mile loop out as far as Beaulieu Heath (I could see Fawley oil refinery a couple of miles away) and then headed back to Lyndhurst. Started in drizzly rain which then turned to muggy grey overcast skies with occasional sunshine and boy was it hot and muggy when the sun came out. I was actually glad when it clouded back over. Having left my sun glasses behind I was fortunate not to need them to keep the insect population out of my eyes as I rode round.

While most of the ride was flat I was concerned that I really struggled on the little upward slopes, the only thing I can think of is that I never locked out the rear shock and that was because I never viewed any of the slopes as a hill or would cause me a problem.

I rode on my own this morning as the wife is sidelined on doctors orders. Having spent many weeks perfecting the art of falling of her bike and landing on her knee, it seem as thought the knee has now called time on this. She has to go for an X-ray and maybe an MRI Scan and wait for an appointment from Orthopaedic department to see what is wrong with the knee. My suggestion of fitting a couple of grease nipple either side of the knee did not go down to well…………

I had the Whyte into CycleFix, nothing was wrong with the bike apart from an annoying squeak, but I wanted a qualified once overs as the limited warranty I had on the bike runs out next week. Thankfully they found nothing wrong and sorted the annoying squeak as well.

Decided that I am going to change the way this blog looks, also going to add a new section, you will have to pop back and see what the section will be about as I am not saying. I don’t have any particular theme in mind for the site yet, I will spend some time looking for a new theme I like and testing it to see what it looks like so you may find the site is changing on a regular basis over the next few weeks.

I want to congratulate Clive at Massive MTBer on hitting the 5 stone weight loss marker, well done mate your an inspiration to all us large cyclist.

As for the title of this blog, I could not come up with a title, simple

I ended the last blog with comment regarding the weigh night and watch this space, well from the absence of a blog (until now) you can gather it was not good news, I gained again. I am getting sick of the see saw weight. Weeks when I know I have not had my best week I lose, weeks when I think I have done well I put on and I am still cycling three times a week for about 50+ miles, I am becoming very dishearten by it all at the moment.

Yesterday we (the wife and I) were up early for our ride as the daughter was on the rota to be called into work early if it got busy (local carnival) so we did not want to have to rush home to relief her of baby sitting duties. A bonus point was that at least it was cool when we started the ride at 6:45am. We did the route we rode earlier in the year at Horton Tower. Last time we rode parts of the route were a mud fest but after this hot spell most of the mud was baked hard. So hard in fact that one section we could not ride last time as it was full of sunken hoof prints was now like riding over cobbles except rather than having to ride over raised cobbled, you had to ride across sunken hoof prints. I’m pleased with myself that I managed to ride the full length of it (about half a mile up a steady gradient). Not happy with myself as I fluffed another hill which I got completely wrong and I know I should of cleared it without a problem. The wife had a visit from the puncture fairy, quite easy to find, there was a bloody great big thorn stuck in her tyre! As it was only a short ride we were were back home by 10:30am and best of all we missed most of the heat.

Today’s ride was the normal Sunday morning loop, there is a new section which I have only been riding about 4 weeks and for the first time today I managed to clear a part of it, in the past I have always had to walk two bits of it. But today I knew what I had to do in those two bit and got it right and sailed through. Still got some route planning to do as there is one area you have to walk as it is deep sand, apart from the fact it is not good for the bike, I would rather find alternative route I could ride.

The third (mid week) ride is normally over the local heath, I either do this early morning pre work or early evening after work, slowly expanding this ride in distance as I explore new areas to ride on the heath.

The local bike repair shop sorted out the gears on the bike, it was only a minor adjustment front and rear and all is running well again.

My computer problems continue, I had to reboot my PC (not a normal occurrence as it runs 24\7) and when it rebooted it failed to start properly. Not a 100% sure what caused the problem but by installing some default settings from the boot CD I had the PC backup and running and was left to sort out KVM box which refused to see the mouse, it has a habit of doing this when one of the two PC’s crash.

Hoping to have a weeks holiday in the next 4 weeks, not sure exactly what week yet as I have a project at work that needs to go live before I can have my holiday, just know I am looking forward to a week off.

Can anybody help? I have a pain which I can’t figure out what it is or how to shift it, just wondering if there are any wise sages out there that maybe able suggest what it is (yes I have heard of doctors!! It is in the back of my right heel, it feels like I have hit my heel and bruised it. It feels worse first thing in the morning, it makes wearing shoe (well any closed in heel footwear) when walking or driving uncomfortable although riding a bike does not seem to affect it. I can wear open heeled footwear (Croc’s, Flip flops) without to much of a problem. I have tried taking Ibuprofen but that does not seem to have much of an affect on it. any thoughts anybody?

And finally, plonker of the week goes to a local Wilts and Dorset Bus driver, here is the situation. I am driving along a main single carriage way road which has a row of parked car on my side of the road but the white line down the middle of the road is set well to the (my) right to compensate for the parked cars and thus the lane on that side of the road is a bit narrow for anything other than a car. So I want to turn right on to a shop forecourt, so I stop opposite the shop indicating to turn right, there are three buses coming toward me. I decide not to pull sharply across in front of the bus as I don’t have a lot of room on the forecourt to brake. As I wait a coach pulls up behind my car and being that bit wider than a car he is on the white line ready to go around the line of parked cars. The bus driver coming towards me can clearly see that he can’t get past the coach without mounting the narrow pavement so he pulls up along side me and then waits for the coach behind me to move but where is he going to go, he can’t go forward as I am there, he can’t go back as there is traffic behind him and I can’t move now as there a bus along side me. Fortunately the driver of the following bus (different company) saw what was happening and allowed me to pull forward and onto another shops forecourt which then allowed the coach to move over and allow the bus to pass, but honestly, that Wilts and Dorset bus driver must have been blind not to see what was happening in front of him, had he let me cross onto the forecourt the coach would of been able to move and everybody would of been happy.

As forecasted, it rained relentlessly on Saturday. My intention of staying in bed all day went out the window because I was required to be the family taxi driver. Had to drive the wife into town early and then sit there watching the rain fall as we had arrived early and there was no where for her to wait.

OK so I will have a lie in on Sunday, did not go to bed till nearly 1:00am, that should make me sleep and it did, until 7:20am when I woke up, completely wide awake, I got up at 8:00am. At least today it was nice, sunny and warm.

On Friday night, in the vain hope that I might just ride this weekend I decided to fix the puncture I found on Tuesday morning. That was easy enough, as I was about to put the wheel back on the bike I noticed, well felt, that the front wheel was not spinning smoothly, a quick loosening of the axle indicated orange grease…………that orange rusty coloured grease. I picked up some grease on Saturday but due to one thing and another I did not do the hub bearings until Sunday morning. Unfortunately once I had cleaned, greased and reassembled the hub it did not feel much better than when I took it apart, will have to keep an eye on that. The only riding I did was a couple of short runs up and down the pavement just to make sure things felt alright on the bike. I think had I done a short ride to day I may not have been to bad, my cold seem to be going but then I thought that around Thursday but it still here.

I have now got a pair of tyres for the sponsored ride at the end of April, got a second hand pair of Continental Sport Contact. these have hardly been worn so should serve me well for the one ride.

I decided to make the most of my enforced lay off and the good weather this morning to do a little gardening. There were a couple of large bushes that were slowly encroaching on to the drive so it was about time for a short back and sides for them. Spent an hours cutting them down to size and a further hour clearing up the mess. We could not go anywhere as I was waiting for the above mentioned tyres to be dropped off so at least I put the time to good use.

We had been promising the son that we would take him to Throop Mill to feed the ducks for a few weeks, so having an hour to spare once the tyres had been dropped off this afternoon we thought it was a good time to feed the ducks. Now for the past couple of months I have cycled past this mill on my Sunday morning ride there has been loads of ducks there. We got there late afternoon and it looked more like a duck feeding massacre had taken place. There were more pieces of bread floating on the water and laying of the bank side than there were ducks, even the seagulls were not interested. I can’t remember the last time we threw the bread in the bin on the way back to the car. We past a dad with his young son on the way to feed the ducks, I did not have the heart to tell him the ducks were not interested.