Monthly Archives: November 2011

Shadows in the Rain

I don’t know why I bother with weather forecasts.  Think of the stress I would avoid if I simply woke up in the morning, looked out the window, stuck my head of the door, and carried on accordingly.  Last night the BBC weather forecast for today threw a spanner in my mental cycling planning works by predicting rain all day, with the possibility of thunder as the cherry on top.  After a horrified text to George last night, I went to bed fully expecting to wake up this morning to torrential rain, and to having to cancel our planned ride.

Fast forward to this morning.  Open the curtains to…grey with bits of blue, no wind and…more importantly…no rain!  The weather forecast was still predicting rain but since it hadn’t yet arrived and, as time passed, showed no sign of doing so, I got ready to ride.  George has a tendency to go out whatever the weather anyway, so I layered up, filled the bottle, and was ready with plenty of time to spare.  Just as well as she was proper early.  Apparently they’d cancelled the school church service, and voila, there was George on my doorstep.  By the time we’d both faffed appropriately we probably left at around the scheduled 9:45am anyway!

I’d been press-ganged into planning our route – 40 miles with a few hills – so that’s what I did.  As the forecast was totally rubbish, as I believe I may have mentioned already, we decided to do the route anti-clockwise, and hopefully not get caught out on the top of the Mendips, where nasty weather can be proper ‘orrible, when/if it hit.  George is in recuperation mode, having recently had surgery on her knee, so I guess you could call her knee-dicapped instead of handicapped *grin*.  This has the advantage of slowing her down going up hills, so we chatted our way up Cheddar Gorge, which helped compensate for the fact that I’m never warmed up enough by then – it’s too close to home!  It wasn’t too much like hard work to be fair, and the same went for all the hills on the route, proving that I haven’t lost it just yet.  So – the ups were fine and the downs were fun.  The descent of Burrington Combe was an absolute blast, even though I did approach it with a degree of caution as it was wet underfoot.  Or underwheel.  Undertyre? 😉  Anyway, nothing wrong with being a little careful, what with me preferring to be on the bike, not off it!

The rain held off until we after we left Weston and started the climb up Bleadon Hill from Uphill and by that time we were properly on the way home and unlikely to be too disheartened by it.  It’s only water right?  I flew down the hill after the Webbington without braking, which was unusual for me, so it took me a little while to realise I was minus George, and after a u-turn I discovered her by the side of the road fixing a rear puncture.  She had said she’d been meaning to switch from slicks to winter tyres…and now she was really wishing she had!  She made changing it look easy though, and since we were still gassing, it seemed to take no time at all until we were back on our way and, shortly after that, back at my house.

Cycling time: 2:44:13 hrs
Distance: 41.11 miles.
Avs: 15.0 mph
ODO: 10816 miles

A slightly longer ride than usual, which made a nice change, and it was great to have company, and to catch up 🙂

So, in other news, my website has been tweaked and changed a bit, which you may have noticed.  Should you feel the urge you can now “like” my posts, and share them on Facebook, or even share them on Twitter.  Ooh, I’m so social media savvy ;).

PS – not that savvy – having button issues, so they may come and go for a while!

Drop the boy

For the first time in a very long time, life and circumstances combined in such a way that MiniMe and I were able to go for a ride today.  For some reason his school thinks half term is three days longer than everyone else does, meaning that he’s at home until Thursday, unlike his sister.  The shopping and errands in Weston were surprisingly easily completed, and we were home with plenty of time to get out for an hour or so before lunch.

Today is the first day of November, and it would not be unreasonable to expect it to be cold, wet, and horrible out there, right?  But no.  The unseasonal continues.  It was mild, gloriously sunny, with very little wind.  Again!  Shorts, mitts, sleeveless top…the only concessions to the slightly less than summery temperatures were my arms and his gilet.  Result!

I won’t go pretending it was the world’s most exciting ride – in that we just did the Nyland loop, anti-clockwise at his request.  However it was a lovely one.  He’s been cycling to and from school every day for a couple of months, which isn’t far, but does seem to have improved his bike handling skills, and he was a little less wobbly than before.  I let him wheelsuck as much as possible but it’s not the easiest thing in the world for either of us.  He gets distracted and falls off the back, and I get distracted and speed up!  I made him sprint a couple of times, which was kinda fun.  Well, fun for me anyway 😉  He still hates hills of any sort, but he was definitely a bit faster on the flat, bringing his average speed for our ride to 14.4mph, with which he’s very pleased.  It’s going to be hard to find time for us to get rides in between now and the Spring, so it’s great that this one was a good one 🙂

Cycling time: 0:52:23 hrs
Distance: 12.62 miles.
Avs: 14.4 mph
ODO: 10775 miles

In the meantime, since I can’t be on the bike as much as I’d like, I’m continuing to book events for next year to look forward to.  Up to 4 plus the big one now.  Mad March Hare (already sold out!), Tour of Pembrokeshire, Wheel Heroes (again) and the Dartmoor Classic (also selling out fast).  I’m hoping to do a sportive roughly every two weeks up until the Maratona, so I’ve pencilled in 4 or 5 other weekends I can do and shall be in search of sportives to match those dates as next year’s calendar gets more events added to it.  As for after that, who knows?