otherwise known as the Wednesday posting!

Well the last couple of days have been uneventful for the most part, Dad has begun his tenth decade and I've been for a ride. Okay, there's been a bit more going on.

So on Monday, instead of spending it with Pater I was here in Brizzle doing bike maintenance. In case you hadn't noticed, my bike(s) have a pretty hard life, not the daily grind of commuting but instead quite big mileages every ride, typically @ 75 miles a time. This of course comes at a cost to the bike, tyres, chain, brake blocks and sometimes, like last week, capital parts giving up. Monday then was sorting some of these things before the winter gets fully set in.

First up was the new front mech which was delivered Sunday afternoon (!) but then I swapped out the chain and rear sprockets too, they'd done @ 8000 miles when half that would be good. Next up was re-fitting the mudguards, I prefer not to have the stripe of shame, it also saves the bike from the elements a bit so its a win, win having them on. A new brake cable, a bit of spoke adjustment et voila, hopefully the last major maintenance session until the spring was complete.

Yesterday, Tuesday, was of course a ride day, a dry, overcast forecast is a bonus after the recent 'weather' so I found the bike heading down through the lanes towards Cheddar. Under lockdown the roads are fairly quiet and I found myself a bench with a view at the bottom of the gorge to eat my sandwiches. The sun was by now doing its best to warm things up a bit, I think it reached 10c at some point lol, I set off in fairly short order for the return leg.

Nothing too adventuresome, a fairly direct route avoiding the north Somerset towns before slicing through Brizzle back to the start point. Yep, I'm sticking to the letter of the law, rides can be as long or short as you like and even multiple times a day but they have to start and finish at the same place - not that anyone is checking. 120km, 900m, I'm now under 300km from my year target and not much more from completing 10k miles since January 1st, I would surely have gone insane if riding had been denied and I don't want to even think where that may have led me.

Back to the real world, there's a new Gaby chapter posted, Celebration, After the uncertainties of recent weeks Gaby can concentrate on her racing again, well with some small distractions perhaps!

As regards posting, I will start posting the missing book 3 in a fortnight, Wednesday will be Book 3 and Sunday Book 22.

Wiedersehn,
Madeline Anafrid