A spot of summer

"Summer" walk in the woods

I was doing so well. 4 rides in 4 days. Then I wasn’t doing so well. No rides in the following six. Some would call it tapering, those -with a working knowledge of my lazy gene – would call it absolutely right : rain stops play.

With work shuttling me all over the shop, when others could ride last week I could not. And when I could, I couldn’t be arsed. It’d was all for change this morning with a repeat of two weeks ago combing much needed miles in the legs and fab-a-dab-a-dosy singletrack in “the Yat”.

Except it rained And never stopped. The issue was tho when it started. 8am and I was poking about in the workshop looking for excuses. Rain hammered on the roof, so I answered with a text declaring a lack of impermeability and motivation. Text’d returned sometime later spoke of good times had by all which didn’t cheer me up at all.

Before which, my penance was to include the entire clan in a soggy dog walk through our local woods. A wood that Jess and I regularly have much fun swishing between trees on two wheels. For a mad moment I considered adding bike-age to our already considerable payload of kids, dog, wellies and sulking but a brief outbreak of sanity stayed my hand.

Instead we wandered the bike trails marvelling at the volume of unrelenting wet from upstairs and the slickness of anything unearthed from the puddle strewn ground. On a scale of “loving the experience”, the dog rated a hard 10, me a guilty 8, carol about a 6 due mainly to a lack of water repellent headgear and the offspring a number somewhere near Kelvin’s absolute zero.

"Summer" walk in the woods "Summer" walk in the woods

"Summer" walk in the woods "Summer" walk in the woods

"Summer" walk in the woods

Not riding did open up a window into which I transferred thirty odd photos from a time so ancient, not only was my hair brown but it was also mostly on my head. My lazy edit before publishing to a squillion bored wibbly viewers was mostly driven by a level of self awareness that is grounded in the sure knowledge that having people laugh at you is nearly as good as them laughing with you.

More of that soon, but if you really can’t wait to point and giggle, try my photostream.

Don’t expect much of a response from Mr. absence-of-anything-approaching-dignity here. I’ll be hauling woger wog up some steep hills in a desperate attempt to avoid the Lantern Rouge at the oh-God-It’s-So-Close Dartmoor 100.

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