+4°C, muddy and damp. Clear sky though.
I’m occasionally venturing out with a knock to my physical confidence. One ride left me empty and exhausted for 2 days – that’s the Covid after effects. This walk was good and left me all warm and refreshed.
I rode cyclocross (Jake), with MapMyRide+! Distance: 23.57km, time: 01:22:41, pace: 3:30min/km, speed: 17.10km/h.
http://mapmyride.com/workout/1715620499
Still not fully recovered, but it’s time to ride after two weeks.
16°C, fine summer’s day.
Some breeze has kept the midges under control. However, though I feel the enthusiasm, as soon as any walking turns uphill, then my legs complain. Therefore, cafes, drives to interesting places and general slowness is on order.
Thinking, talking on the summits yesterday turned to those without a head for heights. I announce that I have a theory: it runs in parallel to motion sickness. That’s when our inner-ear balance organs disagree with what you see. The comparison is valid in my little theory, one I dreamt up while traveling along a ridge.
Normally, you walk along and the ground appears to move beneath your feet. Also normally, the apparent movement in your peripheral vision matches that under don’t. Walking on a ridge breaks that rule. The ground under your feet, moves at about 4mph. That in the periphery, does not, it’s 2,000 metres away so looks still. A disconnect that your mind may not handle.
That’s my theory. Does it sound okay?
Atmospherics: it’s a shame, in a way, to rest on a day like this; the weather is ideal for a few summits. The sun is now down, but it has triggered some interesting effects. There are clouds forming abut 300 up, they don’t extend much higher. So the peaks here all show their summits.
The plan; to hike tomorrow and do an overnight stop in a bothy. I want to make one munro summit tomorrow and another on Thursday before returning here. They are both quite remote and no phone signal apart from on the tops. I left a route card with the mountain rescue here at the SYHA in Torridon.
I still prefer to travel solo. What rubbish do people talk about when they’re in a party? Wouldn’t it get irritating? How about not saying anything?
19°C, light wind and sky. Night drawing in.
rode Arrow with MapMyRide+! Distance: 16.45mi, time: 01:05:40, pace: 3:59min/mi, speed: 15.03mi/h.
http://mapmyride.com/workout/750800701
Yes, energy is back. The fizz is anyway. Another week and my legs should feel stronger. For now, I shall ride short routes.
Doodle from a work file.
Besides, I am off to read my book. It’s Montserrat’s Cruel Sea. The language is fascinating; naval terminology and 1940’s speech.
17ºC, wind + rain
Recovery ride- with MapMyRide! Distance: 38.74mi, time: 02:35:56,
http://mapmyride.com/workout/413076053
Recovering from backache, something that may stem from the cold that plagued my last 2 weeks. Perhaps the lack of exercise or excessive time spent in the car caused that.
This picture tells me to get a better phone, one with an auto-focus camera. Close shots like this would not need all that pixlr treatment to hide the blur.
Posted from a phone.
12°C, showers and grey.
No miles, still held up with this cold, but at least the plateau stage has gone. At this rate I could be back on the saddle by Wednesday.
The only exercise has been with the dog.
lodger: has upset my neighbour by parking over part of his dropped kerb. That makes it difficult to get his cars in or out. It sounds like the guy next door blew it by loosing his temper and threatened to damage the lodger’s car. I need to look this up because I suspect that it’s illegal to block access, but I am no expert. Perhaps it’s a civil matter, whatever that means.
The root of all this is there are simply too many cars.
Posted on my phone.
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.
8°C, few showers, sun, no cycling.
Recovery: a week of undefined illness has sapped most of my energy. Now it’s lifting I can’t feel the cold, and yes I know the air has dipped below 5C. So, I spent the day recovering.
I became quite geeky later in the afternoon.
Geekiness is fuelled by a feeling. It’s a feeling with deep roots, all the way back to childhood.
With a cold like mine, any activities today had to beundemanding, so I spent time looking round Google Earth. In a few places, there are circular mountain ranges that are just too perfect a circle. With a little research, it turns out that many are impact craters. Some are as young as 3.5 million years, which doesn’t sound that old, relatively, geologically. The earth is peppered with them, though some are only detected by their gravity anomalies One contributer has uploaded a .kml file that shows loads more. I was, by now, hooked.
And, this is where it gets geeky, I decided to see how they look in the flight simulator FSX. Some are quite clear, often a near circular lake, or an obvious crater. One, in far eastern Siberia, is not actually an impact crater but an eroded intrusive pipe (Kondyor Massif). Now it’s one of Russia’s biggest platinum mines.
Micycle 