Clarity

There's been a fair bit of sunshine over the last few days and my room's been filling with spinning rainbow fragments from the crystals. Someone's been making good use of it:

It came to my attention just recently that I've got some annual leave that needs taking by the new financial year, so I'm now on holiday! I have an exciting weekend booked which will include seeing Jessica's new flat, Laura & Chris' new baby Cameron, my nephew, and to spend some quality time with the Mater, activities to apparently include a trip up the spire of Salisbury Cathedral! The batteries for my camera are currently on charge - I think there's going to be a need of it this weekend.

Spring signs spotted this week: baby coots, the beginnings of blossom on the trees, lovely hawthorn scent, nest-building activities and of course, many many more daffodils.

Life has been busy just lately purely with the normal workaday world. Whether cycling or not, I'm up at 6am and into work nice and early, either to get some breakfast and a good parking space, or to get a hot shower, park the bike and gear safely and make myself respectable in time for 9am. I work away like a busy bee until it's time to go home, and then get home either by about 5.30pm or 6.30pm depending on mode of travel. It's a long but enjoyable day.

Working hard and cycling hard is not giving me much scope for getting into mischief. The dark evenings don't encourage me (as ever) to do a lot with the evenings - I am looking forward to the lighter, warmer evenings. The weather this month has been very unpredictable. We've had snow, rain, hard frost, brilliant sunshine and afternoon warmth enough to enable sitting outside for hours at a time.

I've had all sorts of shenanigans on the bike; a disconnected brake cable which resulted in my having to ride to work with the brake shoes open and the cable looped over the mudguard to keep it out of the way (!), a gash in my rear tyre that was oozing Slime from the tube which miraculously held it's pressure all the way home, the bulb in my front light blowing and the subsequent journey home in the pouring rain lit only by my Petzl Head Torch and lastly but not least the heavens opening just as I begin my journey home releasing a relentless and torrential downpour which I refused to be beaten by (I had my Seal Skinz on!).

I have developed a habit of cleaning, fettling and lubing my steed in a Saturday morning session that is starting to resemble alarmingly the suburbanite's habit of washing the car each weekend. I often get scolded by the blackbirds at the bottom of the garden for my intrusion and the local cats find my antics fascinating.

I'm looking forward to the warmer evenings when loitering by the river or supper in a country pub can become part of my journey home!

I have been commuting to and from work on average twice per week since January, and am learning to cope with the different weather issues. There's a lot of mud around at the moment, and a lot of rain. As I don't have rainproof bottoms at the moment I've been trying to avoid days when heavy rain is forecast. A forummer from ACF helpfully suggested to me that I might want to buy a Crud Catcher and mount it underneath my rear rack as I'm getting covered in mud every day. Thank goodness there's a hose available at work for me to clean the bike off every morning or I'd constantly have dried mud all over my brakes and chain by the time it's hometime.



I've also been wearing a lot of mud - before I fitted the Crud Catcher I was kicking up so much mud that it was not only going all up my back, but would also make it to the top of my helmet and in my hair, and on several occasions has coated my forearms too. I was making a moving circle of mud.



Amusing to look back on, but a pain at the time as I also had to wash the bike and all the clothes that I had been wearing when I got home too. I have a large piece of polythene for the kitchen floor to park the freshly washed bike on, but by the time I've got home, washed the bike and panniers, unpacked and put the wash on, I'm knackered!

We've not had any flooding as such yet, but the River Way has burst it's banks this year. It was quite a sight to see the towpath under several feet of cold and fairly fast-flowing water:



The ducks didn't seem to mind it however, and the horses and cows grazing in the adjoining fields did not seem concerned.



The fields on one side of the river were flooded however, and Canada Geese were paddling happily around on their new lake.

The upshot of all this water being around is that I've treated myself to some waterproof socks, Seal Skinz Ultrathin. I can cope with a lot of things, but wet feet just about finish me off. Isn't it odd that one's entire body can be soaked and freezing cold and you can keep on going doggedly, but the first cold infiltration of water through a trainer and into a sock can have you considering a taxi or heading for the nearest pub to wait the weather out?