Ooooops

 Yours truly left a packet of sweetcorn on Stan's bonnet along with

 two lettuce in a bag, and promptly forgot so they were there all day.

 Which has led to a strange effect on Stan's already strange paintwork , a kind of photoetching effect.

 The weather forecast was light showers, seen here, so the obvious thing to do was to go for a quick bike ride.

 It was wet but very wonderful, lots of ranbows

 which had to be looked at

and rain, sooooo much rain.

He loves it really

 So after quite a break from any serious cycling I seem to have found my mojo again for all things 2 wheeled. The day we returned from the Gower I took a spin up Stanner Rocks which is quite a climb and

 means a lot of effort from a fat bloke

 with a wide variety of terrain ranging from dirt tracks, mental downhill sections, river crossing

 and some road but the views

 are amazing. Naturally yours truly abuses the steed of choice (there are 7 in the stable, yes I know I've only one bottom)and will often ride it through all sorts of sticky doings and water with rarely a thought for the M word.

 Maintenance.

 I am the Oddball to cycling, those who know Oddball from Kelly's heros, a classic war film. Oddball has a Sherman tank, he only rides them, doesn't know how they work.

 My sentiments exactly, why bother when Moriarty fixes the tank.

 So my Moriarty is a nice man who has a hissy fit when he sees some of the pictures

 I post of the abuse the bike takes. He is a true engineer, me, a vandal or an animal, those are his descriptions of my treatment of the steeds he lovingly restores to health. After this ride even I knew that something with my custom MTB was seriously wrong. The horrid kerchunkachunkachunkachunka was not the heavy metal in the earphones but a signal that something must be done.

 So I tucked up the poorly MTB in his sick bed and limited his visitors to one at a time and waited.

 Overnight he took a turn for the worst and I held a candle lit vigil with the other 6 steeds pressed round.

 Next day after a trip to the nice man who fixes things and after several tut tuts and even more sighs and shakes of head he took the striken bike to his workshop and I waited. Patiently. Two hours later all was fixed and I was allowed to test his handiwork. Here is the beast in the gates ready for the off.

 In no time yours truly was topside on the restored bike, that's the bonsai mountain in the background.

 Pausing only to take a summit pic

 and a close up of the bike repairmans village

 I did a very rapid descent ready to charge through the river as usual only to find it gorn. I mean there it was, gorn. Pretty sure bike repairman did this to stop me wrecking the bike again but hey ho press on.

 That lump behind is the hill I've just gone up and down. Bike felt slick and silky smooth.

 Which meant yours truly got a personal best over the course and spent nearly 20 mins maxed out BPM wise

 getting a King of the Hill rating from Strava for the descent and a 2nd place for the climb and a 3rd for another section. Hitting over 45mph on a bike is pretty thrilling especially on gravel with steep drops and trees either side.

Just goes to show a bit of maintenance and lubrication does make for a faster ride. But that's not my job. Back at the ranch the race marshall gave the MTB a onceover, I thought she was a bit of an ass to be honest.

Take a break

Time for our annual break in the Gower thanks to a lot of good friends we were able to have a fantastic holiday and almost forgot about the little problem of finding out we were working with thieves. A whole 9 days of bikes, beaches, good food and great company. MBAOSPW had a fantastic birthday and a unique present . The name of her beloved Reuben has been painted onto the side of a new Shannon class lifeboat and she gets to go and see it before its launched and stay at the RNLI training college and see the training facilities. The plus side is that I get to go too.