31st January 2020 Utter blog confusion!

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Friday 31st Jan, 44-46F, heavy overcast and windy from the west. Walked to the lanes and was glad for my hood as the wind roared in the roadside hedges.

After morning coffee I rode an errand on the trike. Only 6 miles but it was hilly. I was hanging off the side like a sidecar passenger to stay on in the more exposed places. It rained in the afternoon.

January, in Denmark, was the warmest since  records began in 1873.

My apologies if you saw a post here showing one of my construction projects and the wrong date. Google keeps changing to another blog every time I hit New Post. I can only presume it is somebody on their staff being bloody minded. I can't imagine what Google could possibly gain from changing from one blog to another, repeatedly and deliberately, back and forth. Perhaps Google AI is having a laugh? 

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28.01.2020 Superstition for dummies.

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Tuesday 28th 41-42F, very dark overcast with rain. Supposed to dry up to another grey day. Breezy but only light rain on my walk. I disturbed a large, grey heron which was foraging on a roadside field. A grey, miserable day with rain at intervals.

Wednesday 29th 38-42F, cloudy, but the promise of sunny periods. Or no sunny periods at all. Eeny meany miney, mo?

It rained as I turned off into the lanes. Then it stopped. So I plodded on further uphill to capture the gloom. Sunny periods later in the morning! Though with plenty of cloud. 😎

Thursday 30th 44F, dark overcast with fine rain. Walkies! It was that particularly wet, fine rain. I could hear it falling on my hood  and see it crossing the fields like mist on the westerly wind. 

Our lives are based entirely on superstition. It contains us, restrains us and maintains us in crawling, stop-go, forward motion. We assume so much based on so little evidence. We leave the house in the morning confident we shall return without fail. We believe that we will always find enough food, enough warmth, enough money, enough "things" to survive happily into old age. While totally ignoring all the evidence that our pitiful diet and total lack of exercise will kill us sooner than we believe. That going heavily into debt is a sensible way of living.

The evidence is against us that we can drink and drive and use the mobile phone behind the wheel while drugged. Ice on the road has no more meaning than illegal speed. It doesn't register beyond the opaque walls of superstition. We believe we will not meet our end, let alone a patrolling, police car.

The evidence, of the unbelievably vast number of fines, deaths and injuries, suggests that most drivers speed illegally at least most of the time. Our belief is that speed cameras do not exist. Nor do they register your speed. And if they did it would be grossly "unfair." So unfair, that drivers will frequently attack the staff in the radar van or official personnel beside the road. Some drives actually believe that cyclists and crossing patrol persons are sent from hell just to torment them alone.

We believe that the right car, the right model, the right colour, with the right wheels and the right accessories will make us invincible on the road, at work and in society in general. Audi/BMW spend hundreds of millions perfecting the suspension and handling of their cars. So that drooling morons can overshoot most corners. The rest are cutting every corner because they are simply too lazy to drive all the way around despite the double white lines.

Each generation becomes more lazy than the last and still believes it is a good thing to do less. We complain when the TV remote control does not perform when once we would have to rise from our chairs to turn an ugly knob. We complain while wait for lift when the evidence shows that climbing the stairs would prolong your miserably impatient life by a full decade.

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27.01.2020 Going backwards downhill. Grr!

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Monday 27th 41F, another grey day with rain. It rained on me as I walked briskly to the lanes. Fortunately I was waterproof and returned unscathed.

The need for an errand demanded a gate pass for the trike in the afternoon. I'd only travelled half a mile when I saw a fully streamlined tadpole trike. Going well, they were too, but on the opposite side of the road. Though I'd never have been able to follow them. I haven't seen a stream-liner in years. Dark blue with a flashing orange light on top if anyone is reading this

I turned off down the country lanes immediately afterwards to avoid the main road traffic. Just ahead was a keen cyclist in a bright jacket on a racing bike. He was absolutely dawdling along and hardly bothering to pedal most of the time. 

Yet on every minor descent he effortlessly freewheeled away from me. While I was turning myself inside out desperately trying to catch them! I've had little old ladies [and big ones!] just cruise away from me downhill. As they freewheeled on sit up and beg bikes, with fat and often flat tyres.

The trike must have some seriously well hidden drag somewhere. The wheels seem to turn freely, the tyres are 23 front and 25 x 700C rear, hard at 90+psi and the brakes certainly aren't dragging. Still they ride away from me as I hide my nose behind the handlebar extension to reduce my wind resistance. 

Does not compute! Never has. Never will! Only 8 miles but it was good to get out again. Not that I had any real wind to fight the wind. My legs didn't feel too bad at all, despite my slowness downhill, while pedaling like a mad thing!

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