I went for my jab on Monday. That was a slick affair. In and out. A few people online have had a bad reaction to it. Not as bad as, say, choking out your last breaths on a respirator, but not pleasant. I had an extreme reaction to the malaria jab in the army and that was awful, but this time I was fine. Wendy had a sore arm and a mild plague weakness the next day, which went with painkillers, so nothing to write home about. Lisa was dog tired. I didn’t even get a sore arm. The next day I had a headache all day and felt sick, but I get that quite frequently anyway. So either I didn’t get any reaction or the reaction was no worse than a headache day. I’ll take that.
I was working on Tuesday and I got a run to Bristol. That was a nice day out. I was riding in to work in the morning without any gloves moaning “I may lose digits to frostbite”, in the afternoon I was Darn Sarf, baking in 23C moaning “no human can survive in this heat!”
On Wednesday it was still quite warm, lockdown is lifting, and I was off, so I took my new bike for a spin up to Workington (top of the Lakes on the coast).
It does everything it says on the tin. Comfy, 46 mpg at a steady 90 (allegedly) with lots of big overtakes. 160 miles to the tank. It has an old fashioned needle fuel gauge which was in the red and I was panicking thinking I was running on fumes in the middle of the sticks. When I looked up my tank capacity when I got home I still had another 3.3 litres, (which is a fifth of a tank) or 30+ miles, left. So at the speed limit you can say it is good for 50mpg and over 200 miles to a tank. My old bike (which is a 600cc compared to the new one’s 1000cc) was 28mpg when I got it and screaming for fuel at 100 miles. I bought a power commander and that put the mpg up into the 30s, but it still wasn’t good. The one thing I did notice is the front end isn’t as confident or planted as you’d normally expect on a Honda. I’ve ordered a new set of upgraded head bearings from the States and bought some thicker fork oil. There’s a local garage that will fit it for me cheaply. Other than that the CBF1000 forum said you can drop the forks a smidge and put spacers in to make them stiffer. I’ll try all of that then maybe fit a steering damper if that all fails. Not big jobs, but if you’ve got a very powerful bike, that’s also a chunky monkey, you have to feel like the front end is planted.
Yesterday, Thursday, this was a happy sight, after 5 months.
A proper shame for Luke, but he’s still hopeful of a less terrible outcome. Now I can get my bike out without having to go into next door’s spaces and dodge cars. Wendy, who’s been wriggling into a tight gap when the neighbours park across from us, was going to park her Mini across both spots, diagonally, just for fun.
Also yesterday I finally got my pushbike back from the shop. It took him long enough, (to be fair my bike has a stupid cable design that made the job really, really tricky) but he has done a good job of it. My bars are wrapped and the cables have tensioners in them now.
I got that back, fitted the damage limitation flat pedals and got it all adjusted. Then I went for a short, easy, run, as set by Trainer Road. My first since that impromptu marathon. My foot has held up, so this is the way forward.
Today I got back on to the Trainer Road doing the bike. My first go for a couple of weeks. An hour, easy. It was still hard work though. Now I build again. So I felt good about that.
Then the guy came about the bike. I wasn’t looking forward to it. He asked me to hold it for him a few weeks ago, and he’s seemed like a decent guy at each step, but I’ve been seriously messed about before now. But that went great. He turned up, looked at the bike, I told him to take it for a spin, he came back, paid for it, job’s a good ‘un. If only every sale was like that. Full asking price, no haggling, no messing about. Just turn up, confirm the bike’s as advertised, pay, go. Perfect.
So now, when the banks open, we can pay the loan off and be debt free. For the first time in forever. We’ve had money coming in, and for a while we were saving with the share save thing, but we always seem to have some loan on the go. This will be novel.
The agency stuck to only giving me 2 shifts this week. That’s unusual. I have to have a final day off next week for my hospital appointment, but they’ve given me shifts on the 4 days I’m available. Which will be at pay parity and off emergency tax. So that should be a good week. They are obviously not trying to punish me by not giving me work, as I got a text today saying you are working until 20.00, there is another run after that, until 23.55, do you want that as well? I had a look. I’m already working 10 hours, they were asking me if I wanted to work 14. No. That could too easily have one thing go wrong, run over 15 hours, then I’d be stuck out for the night. Plus, and I can’t stress this enough, I totally don’t want to work 14 hour shifts.
I’ve started on the garden as well. I’ve dug over that compacted mud next to the shed so I can sew a wildflower mix. I’ve ordered some tomato seeds and some echinacea/ coneflowers. I like gardening at this time of the year. When life is coming back to the garden after the miserableness of winter. Getting everything started and planted. Then it’s all weeding, and slug killing, and more weeding, and pruning, and aphid killing and yet more weeding, and I lose interest.
Forgot to say, in the good news front, the doctors have finally got back to their proper system, Wendy got her appointment and had a telephone consult with a doctor who was really interested in her. He said the pills typically reach full effect in 6 to 8 weeks, (she’s on week 6) so he’s arranged a follow up call in 2 weeks. Fingers crossed they will kick in and Wendy will be fighting fit again within a fortnight. But if not, the doctor has already arranged the next appointment, so that’s a lot of stress off of Wendy.
That’s about it. It’s just been a good day, and as I come to look at it, a good week, so I thought I’d record a positive blog while the mood lasts. I’m sure normal service will be resumed for next time.
A little bit of Twitter.
I don’t know how accessible these running jokes are for non runners but they are very good so I’m putting them up. Ultra marathon’s are anything longer than a marathon.
Later,
Buck.