Category: Life

I’ve had a bit of fun in the Lakes the last two weeks. Friday last week, when I was looking forward to an early dart so I could do some hard training on Saturday, I got to my furthest point from base and broke down.

I’d gone under the trailer I was to take and started the ‘tug test’ (where you try to drive forward, twice, to make sure you are properly connected.) There was an electrical type smell and a red light flashed up on the dash saying the clutch was knackered.

Ace.

I’m trying to think what exciting things have happened in my sabbatical.

Well, last week I had a bump at Iceland. That was an utter downer.

Some berk parked his van just where I needed to put my cab for the reverse. I had to swing the trailer around one building and between it and another. Because it was a roof top delivery they also had 2 feet tall barriers to protect the buildings. Rather than ask the van driver to move (which, in retrospect is what I should have done) I screwed the trailer in really tight. Unfortunately I lost side of the barrier on the blind side and caught it with the mudguard of the unit. Balls.

Hot. Damn hot. Hotter than a snake’s ass in a wagon rut.

To be honest I think the BBC’s weather reporting is getting a bit too informal.

It has been beastly. Mainly due to the garage pissing me about so I’ve been riding to work every day in this damnable heat. Not that I wouldn’t have anyway. Committed triathlete and all. *coughs*

We’ve done the Outlaw. No-one wants to hear about that any more. That would be very boring.

However, I will say in passing that it was so bad on the day I was thinking that was my last triathlon. Until I got that statistic that once I finished the swim I managed to overtake over 200 men. (That was how the statistics were presented, ‘men’s race’. I’m not trying to fudge the figures or discount the women, shitloads of them kicked my sorry arse.) That is incredible. If I took swim lessons I could be a contender. I’m up for it again now.

Here’s some snaps and we’ll move on, saying no more about it.

Well that was fun. In no way, shape or form.

As last time I stayed in a hotel and only got a few hours sleep due to the bar and the loud drunks at throwing out time, this time I had a plan. Nip to Nottingham, register and drop my bike and kit off, come home, sleep in the day then drive back fresh as a daisy for the start.

Due to the bloody heatwave the A50 was rammed with all the families going to Alton Towers, so that screwed me up. I skipped the ‘mandatory’ race briefing, (yadda yadda, don’t get killed, yadda yadda,) and tried to come home the long way around, up the M1 to Leeds then across the M62. As it was a new route for me I was having issues with lanes in Nottingham. I was in the outside lane of two when someone in front of me stopped to turn right. I checked my mirror, saw a gap and darted to the inside lane. I hadn’t checked my blind spot. BANG! Someone was undertaking me. Oops.