Tuesday 16th August: Redefining "brick shithouse."

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Tuesday 16th 50F, 10C, overcast at first but already cleared to sunshine from a milky sky. I have an appointment and should collect the car if it is finished.

It had cleared to cloudless blue sky by the time I left for my walk. Having now reached 63F it felt like a heatwave in the hot sunshine as I strode towards the woods between strip of drying hay ready for baling.  Then I stepped into the shadow of a tree and the temperature felt as if it had plummeted by 20 degrees. All this free solar energy and we still don't use the minutest percentage of what is falling on every square yard untapped. I saw three buzzards today. The last of which had suffered an injury to its wing with a gap and oddly protruding feathers. This seemed not to have hampered its flying and gliding abilities.

The climate is setting new global warmth records every month now. We are already at the +1.5C level which the lying, politic-ooze, barstewards set for themselves at the umpteenth 6 star dinner and dance. 2016 has already broken every previous record. Countries around the world are already suffering from intolerable heatwaves, endless droughts and massive flooding. The answer? More of the same!

And these same chumps sneer at cyclists as second class citizens and want to build more motorways? To ease congestion? That's what they said back in the 1950s as many national and local government officers grew fat on road building as the cities grew thin on history. This is 2016 and the numbers of cars still  rises exponentially around the globe. The rural buses are empty while they sit in queues of commuting biobots with deliberately corrupted software.

It is absolutely hilarious to see that same sneering look from a morbidly obese driver struggling to rise from their flattened car seat at the supermarket. As I load my trike with healthy food they are on their way in to buy a few more cylinders of CO2 laden with lethal doses of sugar. To wash down the endless stream of toxic cakes and sweets they constantly stuff into that badly designed hole just beneath their noses. Why couldn't evolution catch up and make their slavering gobs several times larger to save time and effort? Doesn't their DNA know they keep having to lift a vast ham up to drooling chin level? Life is so unfair without having to live with this physiological handicap. Another hod of house bricks sweets falls onto the supermarket belt. They have a takeaway to reach before lunchtime and they're still peckish!

I suppose it saves on antidepressants. I could do with some myself after watching them all waddle around the supermarkets. A great many teenagers can no longer pass one thigh past the other. My generation looked like Belsen victims compared with this one! In my youth a "brick shithouse" was a big bloke covered in muscles. He was the walking-talking equivalent of those small privies built at the end of countless yards during the British industrial revolution. Now it matches the appearance of many self-harming, slow suicides.

While the politic-ooze argue about how much to save oil billionaires on their offshore taxes the real people have grown ever more depressed. Their depression is demonstrated in unwanted flab and self-induced physical handicap. It is  now so dangerous and damned unpleasant to walk or cycle beside the traffic that many never learn the delights of fresh air in their lungs. Kids no longer ride or walk to school. So any potential sports physique and natural health benefits are lost almost from birth. Diabetes and heart problems are pre-programmed into the entire world's population. Parents overfeed their children with as clear a sign of abuse as any court should need but waddle Scot free.

Many of today's teenagers have to move their feet in small arcs just to waddle forward. The humble shopping trolley has become a vital walking frame for many obesity victims long before they become pensioners. If they ever last that long with the health burdens they carry with them to an early  grave. They slouch over the handle of their shopping trolley, usually full to the brim, but containing nothing remotely  nutritious. Don't they have endless nightmares about being chased and being unable to run away? Having to lift and carry a huge rucksack and twin panniers full of house bricks everywhere I went would terrify me. Day or night! Meanwhile I often can't lay my hands on decent organic fruit and vegetables. Life's just so unfair!

The repaired car hadn't been re-tested yet so I did the shopping on the trike. Only 7 miles.

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15h August 2016 Doing the duck walk.

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Monday 15th 60F, 15C, breezy with sunny periods between overcast[s]. Early start delivering the car to the garage/workshop for MOT repairs. Took the trike on the tow hook rack and rode back home into the wind. Then changed into my walking gear and tootled off across the fields to the woods. Four Whooper swans flew over silently with a large heron going the opposite way. Returned via the marsh track to massed hilarity from the ducks. The picture shows only about half of them. My arm waving to get them to bunch up a bit for a group portrait fell on deaf ears. 

They must have had spies out because they were already laughing raucously when I was still a good 100 yards from reaching their pond. Once I had arrived they all moved out into the middle and just sat their giggling to themselves. Worse was to come when I gave up trying to stare them out and decided to potter on. The entire marsh erupted into a cacophony of uproarious laughter! It was if a whole school had been taught to simultaneously blow a blade of grass between their thumbs for a Guinness record attempt. I'm taking my SPL meter and ear defenders next time. That's show them I'm not putting up with any more of their nonsense!

On a lighter note: [Mood, not the carnage it causes!] With 1/3 of the world's adult population on antidepressants and other drugs, it is no wonder they can't concentrate on their driving! The side effects, not to mention the alternative reality these drugs cause drivers, ought to be the subject of very serious enquiry. Half the world's driver's seems to go around in a complete daze. With roadworks and parked emergency vehicles regularly on the receiving end of inattentive drivers. Even trees are not safe!

I am literally taking my life in my own hands by leaving home on foot or cycle. I have lost count of the number of near misses while out walking. As drivers swerve away at the very last moment as if my [deliberately chosen] "dayglo" clothing was completely invisible. They often have a long straight to catch sight of my solitary presence walking along right beside the verge. If they can't concentrate hard enough to see me from that distance what hope in hell is there for cyclists, pedestrians and other road users?

Probably one third of drivers use their mobile phones as if they were surgically attached, prosthetic limbs. Even the hands-free sets are proven to radically alter the driver's attention while in conversation. Now add in the GPS, radio, music center, papers, SMS and maps to be read during the journey. Nagging partner, kids, work worries, hangovers, failing relationships and wandering minds all detract from the serious business of driving. Driver-less vehicles make more and more sense as the drug-addled populace can only continue to pretend they have the necessary skills. The driver has an air bag to protect them from their own lunacy and folly. What do other road users have? Only 3 miles today.

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14th August 2016 Silicone gargle, Sir? Suits you, Sir!

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Sunday 14th 61F, 16C, bright start but quickly clouded over to heavy overcast. Breezy with showers forecast. A brisk walk down to the village and back. A driver, who almost filled the front two seats, nearly knocked me down on a sharp corner in his small car. He had plenty of time to see me from well over a hundred yards away but chose a racing line on auto pilot. Of course this put him on the wrong side of the double white lines on his exit after a last second, violent swerve to avoid me! Sunday bløødy drivers! He was probably day-dreaming about [more] food.

Mid afternoon ride to the shops to buy yesterday's missing items in the local supermarkets. "If you can't see it on the shelf then we don't have it." To which you respond: "But it's the first day of the special offer!" Followed by the inevitable, helpless shrug of a pre-teenage, forced labour, child slave probably earning more than many highly skilled, middle class Americans. [According to Trump's election rumours.]

A cross headwind needed the tri-bars to make some decent progress. Showers threatened but missed me and left the roads damp in short stretches. My lungs, or throat, are all bunged up again with silicone aquarium adhesive. <spit!>

I bought another X-rage rain jacket at the supermarket. The new offer was in translucent florescent yellow instead of the former translucent white. These jackets aren't the last word in breathability but they are totally windproof and quite waterproof for a while. The material is nicely "floppy" and packs down tightly enough to go in a racing jersey pocket if necessary. A handy "life jacket" for when there is an unexpected shower or it suddenly turns cold. Ideal to get you home safely after an evening training ride or TT.

Affordable at 130dkk [or £14.50GBP in old money] and a nice slim fit all over which avoids rattling cloth. Cut long at the back for those who cannot afford mudguards on their £10k S-Works. It also has a large zipped, rear pocket and a generous vent across the back, elasticated wrists and a lightweight zip. I thought the bright florescent colour might give me an extra margin of safety amongst the driving sociopaths. Or offer me up as a highly visible sacrifice to all the poor, sad, deluded and totally inadequate nutters. Who hide behind the wheels of their very own, shiny, bumper cars because they don't have a real life. I was overtaken in a village sporting "Children on the road" signs at the entrance. This nutter was doing over 60mph in a [nominal] 30mph speed limit and producing enough smoke for a 19th century, coal-fired coastal steamer, which had failed its MOT on emissions grounds. 13 miles.

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