12 Nov 2017

12th November 2017 Them clouds, eh?

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Sunday 12th 37F, 3C, pinkish clouds with a bit of blue and dead calm. There was ice on the car yesterday evening but no frost on the grass today. Supposedly dry but more cloudy than yesterday. I looked out of the window in the afternoon to see the most amazing, anvil shaped clouds following each other. They were soft focus as if fiercely brushed by the wind.

Another, huge, arched cloud looked as if it were produced by smoke. With dark trails of convoluted cloud twisted grotesquely down below. Even the trace of a comic superhero going supersonic in a splatter of condensate. Don't expect a scientific description of clouds from me. I was deliberately dummed down by the BBC, for several decades, before escaping their dark, satanic mind control.

India and China are competing for filthiest air on the planet. With India winning easily by density but losing out badly on mask availability on the grounds of deliberate, long term poverty for those who work very long hours in the open <cough> air.

What sort of collective, global insanity is it which allows farmers to illegally burn their harvested fields?  Or for ordinary people to consider sitting nose-to-tail in traffic, for hours on end, every single day, is a useful pastime in an increasingly limited lifespan?

Gravely Blighted was the same in my youth. I could cycle, or tricycle, the distance between Bath and Bristol faster than the traffic from center to center. I would see the same vehicles every single day at both ends of the journey. As I wound my way past the often deliberately obstructing traffic.

Raving lunatics would risk their own and other's lives, by desperately overtaking each other to claim one car length in the daily gridlock. Woohooo! Spot the loonies! The offspring of these same nutters are doing exactly the same today! Shame they closed all the big asylums. It's all "care in the community" these days and they are all allowed to drive. It's a basic human right. Which is just wrong on so many level but does at least keep the A&E factories busy and nobody likes unemployment.

A cool walk in modest sunshine. The mink gulls were being noisy but not enjoying their usual tornado, debris field antics. A convoy of 4WDs were looking for something to shoot. As the melancholy village church bell called pointlessly to a non-existent congregation.

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11 Nov 2017

10th November 2017 R.A.W. and hansom cab droppings!

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Friday 10th 44F, 7C,  very heavy overcast, light winds. A wet and stormy day for many in Denmark. We seem to be luckier, this time, with only 30 mph gusts but all day rain. I managed 3/4 mile under a ragged, mixed up sky before I heard the patter of rain on my jacket. It soon stopped but I was heading home by then.

I'm definitely going to register RAW [Rural Asphalt Walking] as a Dangerous Sport. Walking on mud-plastered roads, while dodging NDEs [Near Death Experiences] by ZDs [Zombie Drivers] totally eclipses any Everest climb in winter. Or even hopping, with one pink sock and one red sock, across Antarctica, to capture their latest GBR "proficiency badge" and a brief moment of fame.

I'm amazed nobody has picked up on the thrills and spills of a quiet, rural morning walk for an exciting computer game for immature psychopaths. Perhaps it could be included in the next Olympics if the selection jury can be presented with enough <cough> artificial sweeteners? Keep death off the roads. Go Waymo! 😉

I had to collect some fuel blocks for the stove so went shopping in the car. There were several cloudbursts. Leaving the roads very wet and heavily puddled. Even streams running across from one verge to the other in a couple of places.

Saturday 11th 38-42F,  3-6C, the wet day which was promised looks much less threatening now. A mixture of pink clouds and blue sky and even a threat of sunshine.

I was just thinking yesterday how many car makers are heading for the dinosaur's graveyard. Just like steam locomotives and horse drawn carriages before them. Meanwhile the Chinese are going to become the new transport hope for the masses. Just as Japan was in the 1960s with affordable cars, high performance motorcycles and a whole range of exciting and affordable, new technology.

Many of my parent's generation still remembered the Japanese war atrocities and nobody could pronounce the strange new names in the shops and showrooms. Yet still the Japanese sold lots of product and dragged itself up by its own bootstraps. Many European business are still wondering whether they should introduce manufacturing methods already practiced by the Japanese over half a century ago.

Every time it seems the dinosaurs are caught napping. As a new raft of technology sweeps away the proud names of yesteryear. The writing is on the wall for the filthy, oil-fired, car makers. As China spends billions on electric vehicle research. Add in robotics and AI and the guys who presently pay themselves big, fat bonuses can soon retire to an early, booze-sodden grave. To leave vast fossils of empty factories on the ever-changing, consumer landscape.

Anybody want to buy some hansom cab, horse droppings, for their roses? Going cheap, in our closing down sale! No reasonable offer refused!

Somebody had really messed up this morning's cloud arrangements! Probably put out to tender and the low bidder had used worn out, pre-teens, discarded by the offshore-owned, monopolistic, Danish supermarket chains.

Phozzy, the itinerant pheasant, was hanging around outside the gate again. Probably hoping for a free pass from The Head Gardener to avoid certain death at the hands of the local shooting parties. The Head Gardener is a soft touch for such wildlife, sob stories.

I pretended I hadn't seen him and walked on into the wind past the swirling McSlob's debris and rolling beer cans. My eyes watering and my hands aching from the unexpected drop in temperature. Old pharts, like myself, suffer from considerable inertia and it can take a while to adapt to climate change.

Once again I was treated to the patter of tiny drops on my jacket but I am becoming quite adept at pulling 1-80s on the mud-caked roads. To plod homewards with only half a decent walk to my name.

I returned to find Phozzy had gone to an even higher authority. He was standing defiantly on the ridge of the trike shed in full dress uniform and complaining bitterly about his treatment as a refugee. To which I pointed out that he wouldn't exist if he hadn't been bred by the shooting crowd in the first place. He muttered something about Soylent Green and flew off to scrap with other, pompous, deluded males in the back fields.

I was allowed out for a Saturday ride in bright sunshine but a rather cool crosswind. One of the supermarkets was having a serious huff and ignoring the discounts they themselves had advertised in their own, special offers comic. This is illegal, as far as I know, but customer service has always been at the [very] bottom of the agenda in there. As in: Never dare to get in the way of the shelf filling staff. Who's work is infinitely more important than your right to be there. And, don't dare to ask where in their apparently random collection of detritus one might find some particular delicacy. If they didn't stock unique items, not found at the other offshore monopolies, I wouldn't bother with them at all except for amusement.

Queues, miles long down the aisles and ridiculously few and surly checkout staff is the norm. Now they have some major competition, right next door, they may have to buck up their ideas. Though I'm not holding my breath. Their always heavily littered car park is usually packed on Saturday's but now it was quite literally empty! Except for the scattered, fallen branches from the boundary trees. Which have been there so long they are beginning to fossilize into the concrete blocks. Oh, dear, never mind. 😊

There were a few predatory psychopaths driving around this morning looking for victims . Sadly they had to make do with me. As they brushed closely past on wide main roads, at more than twice the 30mph [50kph] speed limit with no oncoming traffic. Perhaps they aren't really predatory psychopaths after all? But merely very ordinary, retarded, inadequate, registered blind, senile, drug-addled old drunks, driving without a license, car tax, MOT or insurance? Whatever. There's plenty of them about. 14 miles.


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6 Nov 2017

6th November 2017 A proper ride?

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Monday 6th 34-45F, 1-6C, clear sky, white frost on the grass, calm and brightening to full sunshine. No walk, so I left about nine am. on the trike. Hint of a tailwind as I cruised comfortably at 14mph. The center of Odense is being dug up and it completely messed up all the cycle routes straight though the middle.

Shopped and then returned into a cold headwind to average about 10mph overall. The Vetta saddle wasn't too bad. Not too tired after a four hour ride with an hour for shopping and countless traffic lights. I made sure I ate my mature cheddar sandwich, two muesli choccy bars and a banana washed down with pure apple juice. 42 miles. I felt tired and headachy later so sipped water in case  I was dehydrated. It seemed to help.

Tuesday 7th 35-47F, 2-8C, white frost, clear skies and calm. It should be another pleasant day though remaining cool. The long range forecast is for a cold winter. It was quite chilly on my hands on my walk to the village. A gentle mist hung over the church pond but the sun was confusing the camera at the best angles. There were bullfinches in the hedge. A shopping ride for 7 miles. No ill effects from yesterday's ride.

Wednesday 8th 34-46F, 1-8C, white frost, calm but rather cloudy. Walked to the village and back. No ride today.

Thursday 9th 42F, 6C, heavy overcast, calm with wind and rain later. A 15 year old boy has been prosecuted for throwing chewing gum at motorway traffic. He was given a two weeks suspended prison sentence while his younger brother was beneath the age of criminal responsibility.

A terrorist, who threw a huge concrete block onto a German tourist's car, killing the mother and very seriously injuring the father, is still at large. Further stones have been thrown from bridges in the same area without identification of the perpetrators.

Danish bridges remain free of the potential dangers of security cameras. Cyclists or pedestrians should not take the law into their own hands by employing any cameras while crossing motorway bridges and should ideally turn them off. Otherwise they face the distinct risk of prosecution for disturbing the right to privacy of all terrorists.

Ironically, should a serious incident take place, the police will canvas camera owners who might <cough> "accidentally" have recorded a terrorist incident. Should the owner of these same images share them publicly they will still be prosecuted for a breach of all terrorist's basic human rights to absolute privacy while committing an act of terrorism.

A Danish council is being prosecuted for killing an 81-year-old when one of its signs blew down. I have had a couple of nasty moments when first, a temporary traffic light blew over right in front of my trike as I was riding along a main road. One second later and I would have been flattened! The crash suggested the top part weighed a ton. Last week, some deluded idiots who were setting up election placards and lost control and the placards blew down onto the road right in front of me.


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