4.03.2024 Less is more. How to downsize?

 ~o~

  Monday 4th 41F/5C. Up at 5.30. I was woken by flashing lights of the dustbin lorry. I had forgotten to put a recycling bin out. Too late now. It had been a restless night. My back is aching again. An interesting observation during the latest, dome saga. Is that everything feels twice as heavy as it once did!

 When it gets light I had better get back to tidying the disaster area. Where the big dome has been standing for three years. I'll have to shuffle the cars so I can get the trailer out. Which will probably mean rotating or even moving the dome segments. Then I'll have to drive to a recycling yard twice as far away. 

 I must be far more ruthless in sorting and dumping stuff which I will never use. The hoarder in me still wants to hang onto everything. "Which might come in handy." The high cost of materials and a lifetime of collecting stuff for future projects, still has a firm grip on me. I could never afford commercial equipment. So was forced to make everything I wanted. Spread that over several hobbies and it soon gets out of hand. Witness the sheds stuffed to the gills. 

 Over a dozen boxes of disused cycling equipment might not fetch much. Even thought the combined value made it priceless at the time. Most of it was bought new over the years. Replaced when something "better" came out. 

 How to get rid of it all? Without it going completely to waste? Or scrap? Two dozen saddles anybody? The high cost of postage makes individual sales uneconomical. Not to mention the effort of packing and posting individual items. 

 The Danish small ads websites are fixed price or lower offers. There is no Danish eBay to force the auction price upwards. How to reach a veteran-greedy cycling audience with over 30 years of used and barely used cycling equipment? The British market might be huge but is hidden behind an impenetrable and costly barricade called Broxit. VAT + international postage charges on secondhand bike stuff? Yeah, right!   

 Anybody want a 1954 Higgins Ultralite trike with Trykit 2WD? Or a Longstaff trike conversion? High pressures on small aero rims. Going cheap. Or free to the right person. Must be collected! No interest in Denmark on the small ads website. Both items have been slowly deteriorating in the shed. They'd need a repaint but could be as good as new again in the right enthusiast's hands. Campag Ergo 10sp. levers on the Higgins. A free choice of saddles. 😉

 I tried to get rid of my clock collection after my wife died. There was nobody interested outside of the UK or USA. The one item I sent completely free of charge to a collector refused to pay the postage! These things sold for £150+ on eBay[UK]. This sort of behaviour doesn't fill me with confidence. If I fell over tomorrow the whole lot would go into a container as unsorted garbage. Market value on eBay[UK]? Who knows? It is utterly pointless to speculate.

 7.15 Heavy overcast but almost light enough for a walk. I'll wear my high-vis, recycled jacket. Give the commuters a clear target. 

 8.00 Returned from my walk to the lanes. It was overcast. With a cold, but light, easterly breeze. Too cold for my hands. Luckily the jacket has long sleeves. The zipped pockets aren't very comfortable. I was too warm towards the end and had to unzip the jacket. Lots of birds singing. I have reached my usual turning spot two days in a row. The local flooding risk has evaporated. So no need to loop along the drives any more. Though it is very pleasant to quickly get away from the traffic. 

 I have typed myself into a spiralling depression. The trailer will be hard to extract from behind the dome segments. Should I go for a ride on the-bike? A tootle in the Morris Minor? Always the same problem: Where to go?

 I have a photo somewhere of all the cycling stuff in boxes arranged on the ground. I did a Google Photos search for "junk." All it showed me were hundreds of pictures of my dinners! Is my diet really that bad? 😕

  12.15 47F/8C. Returned from a 29km/18 mile ride. The gusty wind was a nuisance throughout. Even as tailwind it felt head on! I kept checking which way the wind turbines were facing. It seemed not to make any difference. I was warm enough with a thin jumper over long, thermal underwear and a racing jersey. The thinner GripGrab gloves were fine today. A few degrees warmer makes all the difference. I didn't wear padded racing shorts today and suffered saddle soreness from about half way onwards.

 Yet another village was cut off by laying new, district heating pipes. No problem on the bike though. I could bypass the hold-up on the pavement. There was a headline in the news. That Denmark is still burning rare, tropical hardwoods from the Rain Forest in its district heating systems. That is a climate footprint which outbalances all that wind and solar.

 A pleasant young lady helped me at the more distant recycling yard.  I only wanted some stickers for my recycling containers. Nothing was too much trouble. What a pleasant change from the usual jobsworth grumpies! The sun pretended to come out as I neared home. Not for long. 

 In slightly less than one year I have covered 7088km/4404 miles on the e-bike.

 18.00 After filling the trailer by 17.00 I discovered the more distant recycling yard was open until 6pm. So I drove there and deposited the heaped trailer full I had collected. Lots of wood and plywood and few other things. I was the only customer when I left at 17.45.

 The space in front of the shed is becoming empty. Still a lot of sodden and muddy offcuts of wood. Is it worth the effort of making kindling out of it? How do I value my time? 61F/16C in the room. I have lit the stove.

 Dinner was cheese on toast. With halved, Sugar Drop, cherry tomatoes. I have some pips drying on a paper towel to see if they can become tomato plants when planted in soil. I squeezed a couple of overripe tomatoes as suggested online. Nothing ventured..

 

  ~o~