10th August 2015 Speeding in the news.

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Monday 10th 61-76F, -24C, feeling unpleasantly humid, a light breeze building, a few sunny periods between rather heavy cloud. Today's promised rain has been delayed until this afternoon.

Mmmm! Spud-U-chuck!

I walked my usual loop up to the woods but had to bypass much of the woods to avoid the blocked and overgrown tracks. A single deer stared and then bolted at the far end of a field. So my reputation obviously precedes me! Small white butterflies were being disturbed in the long grass as I brushed through on the descent back to the road.

Many of the cheerful chicory flowers, on the wonderfully overgrown verges, were decorated by lots of hover flies in their stripy jumpers. The litter seemed unnecessary and incongruous in this setting but any fool can spend a fortune on a humble potato if the disposable packaging looks right. The harvested fields suddenly allow new routes with different viewpoints. Though it is rather hard work fighting my way through the stiff, foot-high stalks of the oil seed rape. Which always reminds me of the desolation of battle scenes from WW1. I must be feeling better to want to go for my morning walks again. Though I am still deaf in my left ear. Pardon? A rest day.

Tuesday 11th 57F, 14C, breezy, overcast and raining with risk of cloudbursts and thunder. 90% humidity!

The Danish, online news websites are carrying stories about several drivers travelling at over 140kph past police speed cameras. That's over 90mph! One of them was driving past a school in a built up area! Many Danes consider it unsafe to let their children cycle to school. I can't imagine why. Could it be that they [themselves] are amongst the vast majority who routinely ignore all speed limits? i.e. Those who are being caught in their thousands by the newly enlarged fleet of police camera vans.

To drive at the speed limit, in Denmark, is to be continuously tail-gated and endlessly overtaken. For years I was convinced that my speedometer was reading incorrectly despite changing my cars every few years. Denmark has speed indicator boards on posts at the entrance to many towns and villages. The flashing warning lights are triggered by speeding traffic and many of them literally never stop flashing with every passing vehicle. Many of these indicator board routinely show 70kph in 50kph nationwide speed limits for built-up areas.

Those who drive at the legal speed limit are in a vanishingly small minority of all drivers. Speeding is obviously understood, by the vast majority of drivers, to be a basic human right. Overtaking in a built up area is completely impossible if the overtaking vehicle is to remain within the speed limit. Yet overtaking, in built up areas, is commonplace. Often the vehicle being overtaken is traveling at, or even over, the legal speed limit! The same speeding drivers do not recognize the increased dangers of schools, shopping streets, hospitals or supermarket entrances. No type of vehicle [and its driver] is immune to speeding. Buses, lorries, cars, marked local authority vehicles, ambulances, dustbin lorries, police cars, motorcycles, scooters, vans with their business names plastered all over them .. all routinely speed, almost literally, everywhere.

Just a short ride. Made another appointment for my deaf ear and still feeling unwell. 7 miles.

Wednesday 12th 61-7?, 16-?C, breezy, lots of sunshine. My 7 year old computer hard drive crashed so I had to go to town for a new computer! The palaver of registering every service from scratch is ridiculous! I still can't get Winders to register my normal email address. Saw a Red kite on my walk. Another when driving to town. Rest day from the trike. I stripped the rear axle and Trykit 2WD. Then cleaned and re-greased it it all.

Thursday 13th 47F, 8C, dead calm, clear and sunny. Forecast light winds all day. It looks promising!  I had better prove I can still ride a trike!

Still struggling with my new computer. Only because it still insists on passwords for everything. Picasa 3.9 + 10 has triplicated literally everything and is working hard on a quintriplicate of literally everything every time I open it! Aaarghhh! Perhaps it doesn't like Wind-up 10? For anybody [remotely] interested [?] the computer came with 8.1 and offered a free fix of 10 very early on in the set up. It must have taken about 2 hours, in total, before it had finally finished playing. Luckily Netflix was still working so I soaked up a bit more of Smaug. Though it is very hard going compared with LOTR. Martin Freeman continues to amuse. Just as he does to young Sherlock's sociopathic lunacy.

Even more luckily, multiple language options are the OS norm these days. My old computer had to have English Vista specially installed before purchase. Though it still insisted on using Danish for almost everything I did. Simply because it registered my presence in the land of Arla [the global dairy monopoly] and pig shit carpet bombing.

Google was by far the worse culprit. A Danish language, jackbooted fascist by any other name! Once it had registered an email address it refused to give it up as its primary target for even more carpet bombing commercialism. This was long after I changed ISPs and the email had become utterly and immediately useless, dead, deceased, extinct, etc. But that's jackboot monopolies for you! "For the greater google!" Or just more "Alphabet Soup" as they are now known.

Talking of which, I have had to increase the font size to my preferred appearance. Old farts can't read nano-text but the world still insists on shoving it down our throats with blunt and splintered, fat end of a navvy's pick handle! It's probably the only reason that Sherlock Holmes ever needed a magnifying glass! The worry is that everybody else will still see the small print. Which greatly affects the appearance of my blogs. I shall have to check them on the library computers. Still can't get the new 'pooter to accept my existing email address. So can't access the world's interest in my online, commercial proclivities. That's an awful lot of "stills." I suppose it goes with the weather and being up at 5.30 am! I'm still waiting to sneak downstairs to fetch my ritual bowl of organic, hand-mixed muesli. The Head Gardener sleeps as fitfully as Smaug! [Just don't ever tell her I said so!]

Warm, sunny and breezy for my ride. Only 15 miles.

Friday 14th 68-76F, 20-24C, sunny, but very windy. Still no access to my emails.  Apparently, my deaf ear might mend itself over time if it was irritated by the waterboarding treatment. At the moment it only receives high frequencies like a very tinny radio. I was given a pressure test but given the all-clear. I thought my head was big enough already but they seem to know what they're doing. Only a short ride: Headwind going: 12-15mph. Cruising at 20+ coming back. A quick sprint, to get out of the way of a car which [sensibly] would not overtake on a blind S-bend, took me over 30mph! There is pig shit spreading going on upwind without the usual sickly perfume! Eeek! 7 miles. Only 6000km for the year so far. How embarrassing! Later, the sickly perfume had been safely added. So that's alright then.

McLardy's is allegedly shrinking under its own weight. Burp! With branches closing for the first time in recorded child slavery abuse employee exploitation, whatever. Burp! It is reported that the boss of McLardy's earns 644 times as much as that of the front line workers. I have passed more of their litter on my rides and walks recently than one would reasonably expect so far from the [supposed] civilization of such takeaways. Burp! No cases of starvation have been reported so far. Burp! Perhaps the ex-employees could volunteer their efforts towards cleaning up my countryside? Based on a small sample of local data, just picking up their own packaging crap [crap packaging?] should make a serious dent and help to reduce wildlife loses. A thunderstorm arrived at about 5pm. It tipped down briefly. Which was  a slight surprise since most of it must have fallen on Northern England yesterday.

Click on any image for an enlargement.

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