Fat Bloke on a Bike

I'm out for a short ride the other day.  My mind was wandering again - this time as I contemplated my age, the way my body is slowly falling to bits and my weight.  Specifically the effect that my weight, the packet of crisps, the bar of chocolate and the bottle of diet coke might be having on my blood sugar today.   Life is very fickle.  Good fun most of the time but it IS something precious that surely needs to be looked after.  I don't want to bugger myself up for the future by wearing black or doing all the wrong things today.  I would like to be on this planet for as long as possible.  But I've been on the wrong foot and walking with my knickers on the wrong way around for way too long. I don't think wildlife has the same kinda thoughts does it?  It's mostly about waking up, having a poo and a pee, finding food, shouting, fighting, mating and then going back to sleep innit?  Ah, to be a teenager again...   I spy what looks like a fr...

What is it with me and route planning?  I may moan about the Garmin crap nav - a lot - but methinks I'm at least as much to blame.   I accidentally did 40 miles yesterday.  A planned 32 miler ended up being 40 cos my addled brain somehow managed to add the outbound leg of one loop to an inbound leg of another which meant an extended cross country ride to join them together.   Two thirds of the ride was into a headwind.  I love the wind.  About halfway out after pressing on into a nor-easterly I stopped for a rest and broke into my emergency packet of crisps and a couple of pieces of shortbread with a bottle of coke taken intravenously.  I have a lah-de-dah gunner Graham moment and let my mind drift with the shite hawks amongst the manure piles whilst sat on a bench at the Sand Hutton War Memorial [Jeez! Bork!  What are they feeding to cows nowadays?]. Ah yes, the first 10 or 12 miles were quite uneventful really.  Not a lot of snakes out toda...

I'm awake early and so shuffle downstairs as fast as my twisted jim-jams will allow.  Kettle on.  I microwave a couple of eggs and settle down with a bit of bacon and bits in front of the TV for the early news and an early breakfast. The TV is dire.  Non-news everywhere.  BBC Breakfast unfunny 'in jokes' and repetitious COVID reporting covering all aspects abounds.  The presenters are dipping into a thousand flavours of ice cream, you know, baby puke, shit and sugar; and, coal and tar flavours for the Selby viewers, etc, etc, serving it up to my eyes on a manky wafer thin TV screen.  Crap.  I flip up and down the channels which are intermingled with crap news crap pre recorded chat shows crap 1980's dramas and crap Telesales channels.  Oh dear.    Result!  I land on the best channel of all first thing on a morning.  Channel 9.  BBC4.   I thank it profusely for giving me a blank screen with no sound.  Perfect. ...

I need to get the miles in to prepare for all the long distance cycle rides and camping holidays which might materialise this year so I've been out again for a ride on my bike.   I've started to use the Garmin crap nav again to record the journeys and am pleasantly surprised to note that the 4 rides out over the last 8 days have totalled 150 miles.  I'm also pleased to see that my speed on each ride has slowly but surely improved from an average of 11 to 12.5 mph.  Not bad that for a fat 58 year old bloke with the mass of a small planet.  I'm now regularly cruising along on my Koga 5 bar gate with its high rolling resistance tractor tyres at about 15mph.  Good!     So today I decide to have another ride out in the direction of the pit town of Selby simply cos that will mean I get a tail wind on the return journey.  Also, so that I can call in at South Duffield, in the hope of finding my builder cousins so that I can ask them back to my place once ...

I should have been a Samurai warrior.  No, not because I have incredible skills with a blade.  Swish!  Slash!  Swoop!  No!  It's because I seem to have no fear of blades nor sharp pointy things.  Except for razors...  I am a fecking idiot.  You'll know that if you've been reading this blog.  Not only was there the silly accident where I tried to glass myself with a pint glass the other week but today again with an attempt to chop my finger end off.  Tell me.  Who buy's a mandolin, a device for shredding bits to bits, and then hides it unprotected in a kitchen drawer?  Yeah.  Many times I have had narrow escapes messing about with my 10 inch bladed kitchen knife buried in a kitchen sink full of deep soapy suds as I jammed my hand in to fish out the potato peeler.  Or to not see it menacingly sticking up out of the drainer whilst I fumble about amongst the washed cutlery trying to fish out the can opener from the b...