Bikes take you places

From here

.......



To here
......



via here

......





Last week was a good week bike wise, total of 258 miles, mix of road and offroad, all in a vain attempt to get some help for my legs in time for this weekends big dog 6 hr race. Now I know enough about myself that just finishing the whole 6 hours will be a challenge, you cant train for a month and expect to be a winner, but thats all relative, my aim for the day was to actually start and finish a race, that'd be enough for this year and quite an achievement in itself, fingers crossed.

But, by far and away the best thing about the last few months of riding has been the chance to get to new places under my own steam, exploring new trails has been a reasonable replacement for riding familiar trails with friends, reasonable but not sustainable, riding on your own is fine sometimes but no susbstitute for the real thing, with real people, hence my desire to be in Brighton this weekend coming.

however.....

There is a possibility that I wont even get there at the start line, work has become a battle zone due to all sorts of reasons and possibly the worst thing that could happen has happened, the crisis is deepening even as I type, fingers double crossed for a break in the tension that will allow me to get down to Brighton and play out.

Rides this year - 116

Miles this year - 2081

An uphill battle

Seemed to have spent a lot of time struggling uphill of late, either on foot, by bike or with a glass in my hand.

Having struggled with the walking I have started dropping the glucosamine again and already I can feel the benefit, placebo or not it works for me.

After the Scotland weekend and a few decent wet rides I needed a rest, so just some there and backs to work and a much needed day off before a bigish ride to Delamere and back to meet some friends, whilst we were there we had a spin out amongst the trees.

It was officially double ace.

Then spent the afternoon at the exodus festival in the city centre, despite my cynicism it turned out to be a great afternoon, some fabulous music was played despite a small crowd, no alcohol and daylight, a mix of rap, congolese, senegalese, reggae and bangra beats all fused together.

Today was a pleasant hour in the sunlight along mostly dry trails.

Interesting things are happening around me these days, I've been given the luxury of a reason to be creative, I have the idea but not the skills, but by the end of Weds I will have an idea of the skills I need and hopefully 3 pieces of work worthy of going into the magazine. This is actually a trial run for the long term animal project, the same skills will be required.

And I have been offered a part in an exhibition about Lindow Pete, completely out of the blue, sometimes good things happen

edit - looks as though I'm too late to get involved with show, oh well, it was nice to be asked

:-)

...