Early doors Saturday saw yours truly doing his bit for Sport Relief 2014 by joining a bunch of like minded idiots who "volunteered" for a 5 hour spin class in public. This gave the public the chance to see what spinning entailed and to throw money at sweaty people.
The chap on the left is the spin instructor, he is called Steve, and the other chap on the right is a not Steve and he organised it all. Before we even turned a pedal we had raised £1300, but the time we had finished it was close to £2500.
Some of us took it really seriously, me, dressed in my lion outfit nearly died of heat exhaustion and by the time I peeled the skin off me at lunchtime the dye had leaked out and I was a strange orange hue, like an accident in a spray tan booth.
Chance for lunch with the microholders was forgone in favour of playing mechanno on a grand scale. Before the roof could be put on the front of each dog run had to be assembled and secured to the concrete. So instead of spending a relaxing afternoon eating pizzas with friends yours truly was trying to force frozen fingers to grip acres of ice cold metal and fasten bolts who had the tendency to fall into whichever muddy puddle was closest. Tempers frayed slightly when at the end of a 9 metre run of metal and additional 10 cm suddenly appeared giving an unwanted overhang. Options were considered, mixing an additional 10cm of concrete, angle grinding 10 cm off the cage, ignoring it, setting fire to the whole project, throwing all my toys out of the pram only stopped when my beautiful and oh so patient wife noted that one end was fastened differently to the other overhanging end. This revelation meant that the entire set of cages had to be disassembled and reassembled before Steve came over in the morning to put the roof sheeting on. As it was getting dark this meant a stupid o'clock start.
By 8am things were looking much better, fitted and were working. No time for any niceties like breakfast, Steve arrived and by mid morning the first half was done and in a quick tea break I took some technical shots of work in progress
which show how much is left to be done before any K9's take up post.
Roof and bracing, purlings waiting for sheeting on one side.
Lunchtime and the final piece about to be fitted over the runs. The planks were used to walk on.
Action shot of Steve defying gravity.
Finally starting to see how big this project is
and how close to finished it is. (read how far from being finished.)
As evening beckoned work was abandoned, hanging of doors less interesting than having a cuppa with someone famous who was gracious enough to tolerate yet another selfie. Having bothered a world famous celebrity it was time to carry out another mission, collect a pet portrait
of the action Berner, Dolyhir Tropic Thunder, aka Spotty the action Berner
immortalized in water colour by the very talented Clare Villers.
Having had such an action packed weekend there was just enough time to take the clan out for a late night run. Its all go. Work tomorrow. Time for a pause for breath!
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