14°C, sun, cloudless.
Rode Racelite: MapMyRide! Distance: 35.95mi, time: 02:12, speed: 16.4mi/h.
http://mapmyride.com/workout/262780484
A day of firsts, first ride in shorts, first without a helmet, first butterfly in the garden, first bumble-bees. All that work on that bike has succeeded. Before setting off, I took the bottom-bracket out and carefully re-fit. The ride was silky smooth.
BTW: if I count the rides, this year to now, it’s over 1,200 miles.
No signs of any frogs. yet.
16°C, sun +rain showers. Sunday Ride tracked with MapMyRide! Distance: 27.40mi, time: 01:47 speed: 15.2mi/h. http://mapmyride.com/workout/259040208 Good, if rather short ride. Heavy marking work-load, you see. The Racelite feels mighty fine, bar the bb noise. lodger has a pet.
My lodger has a new pet. It looks healthy enough, but that vivarium seems a bit small to me.
Did I ever tell you how much I hate marking? But then everybody grumbles about their job.
Henri Fantin-Latour
7°C, overcast. Awaiting proper rain?
New lodger is better than the last. In many ways an ideal lodger- quiet, doesn’t make a mess in the kitchen and pays up on time. But, what is if doing that uses 10 gigabytes a day? It’s a problem when the monthly cap is only 30GB. He says it’s a Netflix account. A bit of web research suggests that even high def films run at 3.5Gb an hour. That’s an enormous amount of saved viewing time. That leaves another, rather worrying possibility- file sharing. Not all the files shared are illegal of course, but the possibility remains.
visit a painting today. It’s been a while and the gallery have moved it.
4°C, clearing. Light wind.
How many comets have you seen today? I have only seen one.
As if to repeat yesterday, I walked up to the Gazebo immediately at sunset to hunt with binoculars again.
It took, maybe twenty minutes before I found it, or the light fading revealed the comet at that time. Maybe both.
Remember that I was on a viewpoint above the city, but the comet was small. Very small. In fact, I could not see it without binoculars. Still, the thrill was strong. It has been about 12 years since last I saw a comet. That time it was Hale-Bopp, a much bigger, brighter phenomenon.
Some articles is the media have suggested that 2013 could be the year of comets. I’m looking.
-2° ~ +4°C, strong NE.
It was 12 years since Hale-Bopp and Halley’s was hidden by cloud.
This image was selected as a picture of the week on the Malay Wikipedia for the 36th week, 2009. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Rushed home to get out to a good viewpoint tonight. Comet Pann-starr is grazing the sun today and should show a decent tail for the next few days. Awkwardly, it is very low on the horizon just after sunset. That means there is short time between pale twilight sky and and the object setting.
I knew where to look, I had binoculars, but there was still a problem.
A narrow bank of cloud lay over Cannock Chase. I knew where it was, and there were a few gaps in the cloud but not where I wanted one.
3C, grey, easterly.
We have a new lodger. I have put in new door locks.
Winter is coming back for a reprise to annoy us. Wood is cut and scuttle filled.
Today- much mending. I planed two interior doors: this is the path to a unique pleasure from opening and closing doors. What else? Fitted a lockable catch in the study door- with was not the most competent job I have done. There is more, but I won’t bore you further.
3.5°C, SE strong. Dry.
… How annoying DIY can be?
Yesterday, I spent 4 hours installing replacement cable for the phone extension. The signal has so much interference that voices are difficult to follow. Now the new cable is in, the phone is no better. Next try– change the BT terminal socket; last possible cause, this socket is obviously quite old and turning yellow.
The next; to fit a curtain rail. Normally an easy enough job, unless the drill hits the edge of a brick. But at least you know immediately that there’s a problem and you can re-drill.
Cavity walls are quite a different prospect. There are a range of fixings to solve them. It turns out that many of them don’t work easily. See the photo above.. Both plugs failed so that they could not be un-screwed nor slid out. Each one collapsed inside the wall in a different way. I had to pull which which sprung a big scab of plaster. What a mess, it looks like a read bodge job now.
For the second time, I am waiting for poly-filler to dry. If this were my house, I would fit a thin plank and fit the rail to that. Oh well…
8°C, sunny, still, CA:30
Tracked ride with MapMyRide! Distance: 29.80mi, time: 01:54:51, pace: 3:51min/mi, speed: 15.57mi/h. http://mapmyride.com/view_route?r=544671779495346177
Passed a strange sight- two buzzards feeding on a dead swan near Elford. It was like a Breugal painting, one of those with a haunting, ominous medieval moral.
The ride was good, as has this whole day been altogether.
5°C, heavy non-stop rain.
Repair: my phone line is often very poor, the crackle & hiss is so loud that I can’t hear what people are saying and it often cuts off my ADSL internet connection. Okay, but it costs £99 to get a British Telecom engineer out and they may decide that it’s an internal fault and not do any repair.
So, now on a very wet Sunday afternoon, I could replace the internet wiring run from the BT box. It’s an intermittent fault, and what do you know- it’s clear right now.
1°C, clear & still
Back to work tomorrow, energy is returning along with my voice. Out goes the despair of getting another damned cold straight after the previous one.
Half an hour on the turbo plus some weights and stretches, that did nicely. Shame the mild winter has given way to such hard frost and ice.
Racing bike repairs are under-way: new headset= in, new pedals= on.
The wheel rebuild awaits, I have to post that one off though.
My Commuting bike could do with a new saddle, only because I don’t like this one. It’s not the right shape. I spend enough hours on it to easily justify the cost- about £45.
Micycle 