8th March 2019 Politeness costs nothing but pays compound interest.

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Friday 8th 40-46F, dark grey and breezy. Severe gales forecast for the whole country. Sunshine or overcast depending on one's loyalty to which weather service. The "sunny" service offers higher wind speeds. This is absolutely crackers! The optimistic [commercial] service constantly offers sunshine which never happens.

It used to be so easy to use the DMI "official" weather service. Their charts were absolutely brilliant at sharing complex information at a glance. Then they decided to go with empty, colourless symbols and columns of figures against a white background. Has the DMI leadership come from the ranks of accountants? Now reading the weather requires serious brain power and considerable patience. Lives and services can often depend on the weather. Garbage in. Garbage out?

As an exile from Gravely Blighted I constantly wonder at the rudeness of many Danes towards supermarket staff. The Danes even have their own word for politeness. Høflig. [Pron: houflee means polite] Høflighed means politeness. The Danes have several hierarchical ways of  of saying thank you depending on the level of service or kindness provided. However, there is often a deliberate callousness to the Danes completely ignoring polite greetings at the checkout.

All too often the shopper fails to thank the staff for their service at the checkouts. The shopper snatches their receipt or goods and go off scowling with their heads deliberately bowed to avoid eye contact. Now the Danish news confirms it with story of a girl who gave up working in a supermarket due to the ignorance and rudeness of shoppers towards the staff. As a polite englænder who was "brought up properly" I always make a point of responding to the staff and thanking them for their service. Try taking away all the checkout staff and see how well your day [or week] goes!

A short but pleasant and respectful interchange with those who invisibly staff our vital service sector can make or break one's day. The vast majority of the elderly may never interact with another human being EXCEPT at the supermarket checkout. Politeness costs nothing and is the lubricant for a caring society where all have equal status. [Except for the "entitled," alien predator class represented by the parasitic 1%, of course.]

I see the sociopathic Fuehrer of the evil, Facebook advertising empire has had to pretend to listen to those who pulled their advertising through his private, megaphone service. "Privacy" is the new buzzword. That is until the next headlines about his deliberate cheating, with real people's private lives, just to add another billion to his temporary fortune. An ecosystem which is so leveraged against survival it is only a matter of time. Nature abhors a monopoly as much as it does a vacuum.

My walk was curtailed when I could no longer make any forward progress into the wind. I turned around and was blown back home while leaning backwards onto the wind. The rest of the day followed the same pattern of violent gusts but with lots of sunshine.

Saturday 9th 40-45F, dark grey, breezy and wet. Not quite such strong gales as yesterday on my walk. It dried up but any sunshine was fleeting.
 
The news is that the big car makers are facing a perfect storm. Nobody wants a diesel. Tariffs are hurting and China no longer needs more of the same. People are sick of toxic fumes, unhealthy gases and soot particles, built in obsolescence, unreliability and expensive repairs, noise and traffic jams. It used to be streets full of horse shit, then it was coal dust and black smoke blanketing the "civilised" world.

Now the world has finally turned its back on oil based fuels, advertising bullshit, lies and car commercials. Particularly those filmed at 3 o' clock on a Sunday morning in rural Romania on closed roads. Anything to avoid showing traffic jams and driving sociopaths. Everybody wants a self-driving Tesla. Or they'll scream and scream and scream! Until we are all sick to the back teeth of hearing about Tesla Boy's antics and lack of affordable, EV production.

Sunday 10th 37F, clear and bright start with light winds. It won't last! Well, it did for the moment. An anticlockwise walk along the road, up to the woods and back down by the field edges. Steady sunshine once the early cloud cleared.

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6th March 2019 Will the torment never end?

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Wednesday 6th 38-41F, dark grey with a light breeze. Still undecided which forecast to trust. Eeny, meany miney mo? Sunshine and showers or dry and cloudy? Who knows?

A walk to the lanes in a thin, cold wind. My efforts were slightly hampered by the twin moraines of prickly twigs slashed from the roadside hedgerows. I amused myself by kicking stray branches and the odd tree trunk into touch [i.e. the verge.] Basically anything which might hinder cyclists was removed from their path.

Will I get a ride today before I become too weak from hunger to manage the hills? I had been digging under the wire, for ages. But badly miscalculated how much space a touring trike actually needs to go through a tunnel.

The tunnel started under the trike shed. I was sneaking the waste soil out in the saddle bag on officially sanctioned, shopping trips. Letting the spoil trickle out through a flap in the bottom of the bag, onto the farmer's muck spreading on the roads, had made my efforts all but invisible.

Then The Head Guard noticed the rear tyres were already flattened by the weight of the soil as I was being body searched at the security gate. So finally, my ruse was discovered. I was sentenced to dragging a second, ABUS Mini U-lock along on future shopping rides. Which will make any hope of soil carrying completely impossible.

Now I have two Abus locks aboard my back tyres look flat all of the time. So I will have to watch out for pinch punctures. This is despite pushing the pressures up to well over 200psi on the Twin Peaks, track pump. All the plans of mice and mere tricyclists..

It turned very wet in the afternoon. Which meant going shopping in the car. Grr! Foiled again!

Thursday 7th 45F, dark grey and breezy. Rain and gales promised. It stayed dry for my hour and half walk along the marsh. Then up through the steep fire breaks and back along the soggy track. Everything was very wet from yesterday's rain. The beck was flowing very briskly too. While the marsh lake was inhabited by only two Coots. One shy, which literally dashed off across the water and one seemingly indifferent to my presence. Not one duck in sight after the many hundreds last year.

Later, I disturbed two large geese which were grazing on the field. Which was their cue to do three complete circles around me while complaining noisily at the interruption of their breakfast. Surely one lot of farmer's crops is much the  same as any other, or so I would have thought.  A vehicle had lost control on one of the blind bends in the village and damaged the ancient, concrete barrier. Fortunately it held and steered the vehicle back onto the road.

Click on any image for an enlargement.

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4th March 2019 Feeding stations on the Tour-de-Transylvania?

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Monday 4th 46F, mild and dark grey. Brightening with rain, sunshine and violent, or stormy gusts, promised over the next two days. AKA: Secondhand Freya from Gravely Blighted.

I risked a walk after a heavy shower and even managed a few hundred yards. Then darker clouds headed my way and I turned tail. Just in time too, as the rain began to batter my blotting paper jacket. 

The latest cycling news is that blood doping is all the rage in The Peloton. Blood bank feeding stations, anybody? What's next? A swarm of cycling vampires picking off lone spectators on quiet, woodland stretches?

I wish they'd pick off those fat barstewards wobbling their few yards uphill with the climb leaders on those tortuous, 120mile, multi-mountain stages! Take out the weeds first, so to speak. Giving each of the racing cyclists a lethal taser might be too cumbersome. They might start using them on each other! It would be too much to hope for a bloodbath finally putting an end to the extremist limits of obscene narcissism.

What about setting a new rule? If you can't jog or cycle all the way up the mountain, to your chosen viewpoint, then you simply aren't fit to watch the real vampires athletes. Driving up there to park a car or camper van on the mountainside should be banned immediately as unsporting!

Only foot, or pedal traffic, beyond the foot of the mountain for spectators. That should sort out the worst of the deranged scum. Enjoying their annual release from Europe's largest lunatic asylums for the morbidly obese flashers and perverts!

I wonder how many of them voluntarily return to their ordained accommodation at the end of their brief escape from their habitual straitjackets? Instead of their brief claim to infamy. Trundling, breathlessly and obscenely uphill in mass-produced, XXXXL rip-offs of Borat poser's costumes. As if such hideous garments could possibly hide the flab from their lifelong incarceration for their own [and our] safety.

Tuesday 5th 49F, dark grey and showers. The wind is dying down quickly after a supposedly stormy night. Though I didn't hear anything myself. Sunshine was in very short supply on my walk. An hour and a quarter walking anti-clockwise up to the woods and back the other way. It was far more windy than earlier and much worse where I was exposed to the open "prairie" without any shelter at all.

At least it stayed dry. The first, though brief, sunshine came after 10.30am. Continued to tease with occasional flashes of brightness. Until short, but fierce, hail and rain showers finally put an end to seeing any sunshine at all. After that it remained determinedly grey and cloudy. All pleas to be allowed out for a foraging ride were, alas, summarily rebutted.

The world's fastest hypercar car is now an electric vehicle produced by an Italian car designing company. Does this mean no more 50 litre, V24s with 20 turbos and a dozen blowers? Probably not. Those in the market for such vehicles probably have half a dozen of each and pay a pittance for child care.

Click on any image for an enlargement.

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