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You know that feeling when something is going to happen, not now but soon and you can’t stop it from happening, well that is how I feel now. It is going to happen and I have no control over it, it is not going to be nice, it is not going to be easy. A few days ago I was thinking that it was safe to stick my heads above the parapets only to find that there was someone ready to take a pot shot at me, I am beginning to feel a little battle weary.

Sorry if I am being cryptic and not making a lot of sense as I can’t say what the problem is at the moment, all I can say is I have been there before, it was tough and I did not enjoy it, this time it going to be tougher.

My mind been else where last couple of days, I was intending to do some work on the bike this morning to help find the creak and ride later in the day but I just did not have the interest to even get the bike out the shed. Not sure if I am going for a ride tomorrow, at the moment I am pushing myself to do anything and I don’t want to be faced with problems, I think going for a ride and hearing that creak will not be good for me.

Their is nothing exciting to look forward to next week, work, dentist (for root canal work) and parents evening at the school where we can discuss our son being bullied and of course the problem, all exciting things to look forward to, oh the joy.

Well I not in the mood for any more talking and as you may of gathered I am not making great conservationist at the moment so I shall call it quits until the next time, when maybe, just maybe I might be in a slightly better mood.

I have done no riding this past week, woke the past couple of days and said sod it. In fact I had a lay in this morning to way past 10am, mind you it was nearly 2am before I went to bed. We were supposed to be going away this weekend (even took the Friday and Monday off to have a long weekend) but have had to cancel it as things have conspired to make it impossible to go away so I am thoroughly peeved with that.

I am currently sat on the sofa watching Pendulum at Glastonbury on BBC3 and typing on the Laptop, mind you I can’t use the PC as it is in the middle of backing up 235gb of data.

Came a cross this blog site earlier Coastrider 2011, the basics are Bobs has retired and is doing a coastal ride around the UK, 6000 miles in total. More info on the trip can be found here Follow Bob. Have already put a note in my diary for when he goes through Poole.

Only other news is the Bournemouth Cycle Track has opened. Went a long with my camera yesterday which failed to work due to memory card issues and the pictures I took with my phone look like a 3 year old had taken the picture. It was a dull damp day but it was interesting watching the bike goes round and that banking is steeper than you think.

Have you ever noticed that as soon as you try to get back on your feet, there is always somebody ready to push you back down. This week was supposed to be a turning point for us as their were two salaries going into our bank account, a first for many months and badly needed. It seems as though the bank and tax-man had other ideas. On the same day that the money went in we had a demanding letter from the bank and my tax code has changed which means I am paying more tax (no notification or warning). OK yes maybe it could be worse, we could of still been the position where only one salary was going into the bank but we put the effort into making things better for ourselves but some still wants to push us down.

For the past week or so I have been suffering with my right ear, I am prone to getting the small tube that runs between my nose and ear blocked, normally with snot when I have a bit of a head\nose cold. When it is blocked (like now) everything is muffled in my right ear along with a popping sound, particularly if I cough, sneeze or burp. Well today it got worse, I now have a dull ache in my ear and being a bank holiday weekend I can’t get to the doctors till Tuesday and it will have to be Tuesday evening as I have an important meeting to go to first thing Tuesday morning which I arranged and I can’t tell those attending not to turn up.

With the second of the four day bank holiday weekend upon us I was intending to ride the same as I did last week, 3 out of the 4 days. So wanting to avoid the media frenzy over the wedding yesterday I set off before 9am for the New Forest, judging by the amount of cyclist I past on the way (and counted while riding), I was not the only one avoiding the wedding. I had decided to ride from Burley out to Linwood and back in a round about way. It is a ride that I have done several times but I have never been happy with the end of the route so I have been looking for some alternative ending. Well yesterday final section was the best I found to date and I also cleared two of the hills for the first time and reasonably comfortably at that (for me). I was even happier when I got back to the car and realised I had done the 19.8 mile ride in 2hrs 14min, OK not fast by many peoples standards but fast by mine, I am a slow rider.

Today I decided to ride with the local mountain bike club Dorset Rough Riders, it was only a easy ride but I did this for two reason, first I wanted to find some new local trails that I had missed and secondly to see how I got on riding in a group (mainly keeping up, see above). Unfortunately thing did not start to well, last night I fitted a set on new disc pads on the Cannondale rear brake and they were a mare to fit, don’t know why as I have fitted them before without a problem. Well this morning as I rode to the meeting point I could not get any speed up. When I arrived at the meeting point I found the back brake was dragging and no amount of adjusting the calliper resolved the issue (it was alright when I went I put the bike way), not only that but I noticed some liquid on the reservoir. The brake was working, a bit sharp but I decided to carry on with the ride. At the end of the day all I can say is, “it was not worth it”. I was having to use double the effort to keep up and just not enjoying the ride (despite going over new routes). I did a paltry 10 miles before leaving the group and heading for home, to be fair they were about to head back to the start point and I would only of had to ride all the way back again to get home (about 6 miles from where I left). So now I have to get the brake sorted out on the bike which is going to cost, so all in all I am not a happy bunny………..

The overriding news of the moment in this household is that the wife has got a new job, she got the phone call yesterday afternoon confirming that she had the job if she wanted it after going for the interview on Friday. The job came about because she sent her CV and details out via e-mail to companies on the off chance and it seems it landed in one particular inbox at just the right time, the boss liked what he read, then he checked out her web site (which we had set-up to help with her job hunting). He then phoned her and asked her to come along for an interview and the rest is history as they say. Certainly going to make life a bit easier round these parts that for sure.

Last night was weigh in night and I managed to get a small loss, all of half a pound, but a loss is a loss. I think the low loss of the past couple of weeks is down to eating to much bread. I normally only have bread at lunch times, normally only a couple of slices one or two times a week. But last few weeks it has been more like 5 or 6 times a week. So going to watch how much bread I eat this week and see how it goes.

After the weekends credit card scam attempt I phoned the company concerned and asked them about the comments I had been reading about the problems on bike forums. They were well aware of what had been written and while not admitting there was a problem they did say their systems were being checked by independent security consultants. Now I am not saying that there is a problem with this companies security but there is to much smoke for there not to be a fire, so if you have purchased items on-line from Chain Reaction Cycles, then keep an eye on your credit or debit card accounts or better still cancel them and get new cards issued.

Not a lot else planned for this week, was thinking about going for a ride tonight but lack of planning (read not putting the battery pack for the light on charge) and not feeling great killed that idea, so it look like only two rides at the weekend. Saturday’s ride will be an out early affair so that I am back in time to sort the bike out and then make myself comfortable for the 6 nations rugby climax on Saturday afternoon

And there was me thinking Sunday was a day of rest…………………..

I went to bed last night unsure if I was going to go for a ride today, forecast was rainy showers. When I got up this morning it was raining so I had breakfast. As the rest of the house started to rise at 9am I noticed sunshine, a quick check outside revealed no rain, sunshine but a bit cooler than yesterday.

Quickly changing into my cycle gear I was soon off down the road, decided to ride the Throop loop but in reverse today as this would give me the option to explore Parley Common and find a new route (which I did). The overnight rain had made the trails all slippery again after they had dried out from the sunshine and wind of the past week. I must have enjoyed myself as I soon found myself heading for home.

Suitably covered in mud (I had forgotten how dirty naked legs get when riding through mud), a bath was the first task when I got in. The wife kindly offered to run the bath for me so while the bath filled with water I took the opportunity to check my e-mails. I had an e-mail from my credit card company thanking me for changing my password, er I had not changed anything. A quick phone call revealed that somebody had tried to scam my credit card for £699 about 20 minutes after I left for my ride this morning, fortunately it was blocked. In short my card has now been blocked and I have to wait 7 to 10 days for a new one. Tomorrow I have to phone several parties to inform they should not try and charge anything to credit card until I get the new card and can give them the new card details. I then need to speak to the credit card company to find out how there added level of security that they insist I use was so easily breached and why I was not informed (other than an auto generated e-mail).

I will be posting more about this in the coming days including where I think they may have got hold of my credit details from, I need to ask some question first.

After sitting down to watch England struggle to a win over Scotland in the rugby this afternoon, I then had to continue working on sorting out why the wife could not login into her blog, started this Friday night and eventually resolved it about 20 minutes ago. Now I have a computer to rebuild (unrelated to the above) just another job on my to do list!!

It is very easy for us to sit back and say it happens but after mother nature wreaked her havoc in Japan on Friday it can be difficult for us to comprehend the damage done. Have a look at the link from the BBC News site, it show aerial pictures of before and now of areas of devastation, I think the first couple show the devastation the most, you can see the before where all the house are, then look at the after and there is nothing.