Trying to be a little more upbeat today, nothing has changed, life is still conspiring to be difficult. I had a fairly good weekend to date, went to Westward Ho! beach in North Devon yesterday. The drive down was a lovely, the sky was blue and the sun was shining, but by heck when we got out the car and stood in the light breeze it was damm cold.
We went to Devon for a for a prior engagement, normally we go to the Ho! (as it is affectionately called in this house) at this time of the year as it normally the last Kite flying meeting on the beach before the summer restriction come into force. But as I am now left the sport and sold most of my equipment I was there just to say hello and good bye to some friend and take a few pictures of the days event. Will try and post a couple of pictures later.
Unfortunately the days events were not that great, there just was not enough wind. But the flyers were thankful for what they got as the forecast had been around 2mph. The beach itself was very rippled and large areas of soft sand, so you either found yourself stuck in the soft sand or you were knocking your fillings out over the rippled surface.
It am sorry to be leaving the sport but I just can’t justify having all the equipment and not using it, there just not the facilities around where I live to fly, to many weekends have been ruined by lack of wind, to strong wind or in the wrong direction.
By the time I got back home last night I did not have the energy to put my mountain bike back together again. As mentioned in my last post I was looking at the rear hub for the source of the clicking noise. Well things had not progressed well during the week, everything from the daughter only picking up one ball bearing instead of 18, to having a bag of bearings of two different sizes, down to not having the right inner tubes for the road tyres (more on that later). I had collected the wheels and tubes from the local bike shop before leaving for Devon on Saturday morning with the intention of fitting everything back on the bike Saturday night.
So 7am this morning I found myself sat in the garden (in a sunny spot) putting the wheels and chain back on my bike ready for a Sunday ride. As next weekend I am doing the sponsored bike ride (see the link at the bottom of the page) I had fitted some road tyres to the bike (hence the new tubes and my bike now looking very odd) and decided we would do a road ride.
We had intended to leave nice and early but I ended up watching the end of the Formula 1 race from China, seem as though I missed a lot of the action which happened in the first few laps. Don’t know what it is but I find something is missing from the racing now a days.
So when we eventually left home we headed for the New Forest. We had opted for a route starting and finishing just down the road from Burley village (free parking), no great distance as wifey can’t mange anything too long. All in all it was a nice ride, we choose the same weekend as Wiggle’s had one of their road rides running. Fortunately they were going in the opposite direction to us, saw everything from the old Raliegh bike to the super sleek high spec carbons racers and everything in between.
We stopped at Homesley tea room for a sandwich and refreshments (the wife was complaining) and very nice it was too. The wife did not fall off the bike this week which is quite unusual although she was nearly in collision with a donkey!
Tomorrow nights is the dreaded weigh in night, not sure what I will be like as I have been up and down like a yo-yo these past few weeks, all I know is there will be a weight!!
two wheeling the buggy with no hands
