I’ve signed up for Scotty’s Ride, the 54km route 🙂
I’m doing it on my own but that’s okay. I’m sure I’ll find someone to talk to along the way and I’m sure my family will be hanging about at the finish line when I finish (I know you’re reading Dad, so that’s a big hint). When I was in Year 12, I used to ride most of the route every single day after school so I have the advantage of actually knowing where I’m going. It should be quite pleasant riding past all the orchards as the trees will be full of budding fruit so if my memory serves me well, it’ll smell really nice.
Maybe next year I’ll tackle the 120km ride. Maybe. I suppose it all depends on how long this current obsession lasts.
I had a misadventure with a kitchen knife last night. I was quickly cutting up some lettuce for dinner when I subconsciously decided I didn’t need the tip of my finger and tried to chop it off. All I could think of saying to my housemate was I’m going to need a band-aid as the blood started to flow which, thinking about it now, was probably a little inadequate considering how much it bleed. To be gross, I even managed to cut through my nail. I’m apparently a big believer in if you’re going to do something, do it right even if it really hurts. And made it really hard to put my new bike tyres on. (See what I did there? Huh, huh?)
As my housemate put it, Lisa has new shoes. According to my brother’s much more experienced eye, I didn’t really need new tyres but we swapped them over anyway and now I have spares. He gave me an excellent lesson in how to do it even though he had to do most of it because of my stupid finger. It was a case of I did the easy bits, like get the old tyre off and he did the hard bits of getting the new one on. He even showed me how to use a lever to get the tyre back on, which is something I couldn’t figure out on my own. He made it look so easy but I suppose that’s what happens when you’ve changed as many tyres as he has (he’d already changed four tyres that day and they were much tighter than mine). I need to practice it. It’s going to be the only way I can build up enough hand strength and develop a technique that works for me. When my finger heals, I’m going to start practising on my old bike. That way when I get frustrated, I can put the wheel down and walk away without having to worry about having a bike I can’t ride.
So now Lisa is sporting a pair of Continental Ultra Gatorskin tyres. By all accounts, I should have these tyres for quite a long time and they’re a reasonable training and great commuting tyre. I already like them better than the other Continentals I had. They felt more grippy then the old ones and handled this morning’s wet weather quite well. They seemed to kick up less water onto my back which is nice and I didn’t have saturated feet even though I ended up riding in the rain. The old tyres kicked up an amazing amount of water and the front tyre always dumped it onto my right foot. The Gatorskins are meant to be very puncture resistant which is something I need. I’m curious to see what they’re like on a dry road but I might have to wait to find that out!