Blah and Bikes

Hellooooo again ... where does the week go??

First things first - to be totally honest:  my eating is still not back where it should be.  But I'm getting up each morning and fighting the good fight, and little by little I think there's a bit of improvement.  I haven't given up, and exercise is back on the bill after my week off, which is something.  And frankly, I've eaten all the crap in the house now, so there ain't nothing left to snack on.

However, tomorrow's weekly "weigh in" might as well not even bother happening, because I am quite a long way up from where I should be at the moment.  Around 5lbs or so as at this morning, so let's just leave it at that, and say I'm working on it.

On the upside, I obviously worked my tail off at circuits yesterday morning, as by last night my muscles had gone past protesting aches and into threatening cramps ..... youch!!!  Seems a bit better today, but I'm willing to bet I'll be feeling pretty stiff by tomorrow.

So apart from that slightly depressing news, I've been doing a bit of practical stuff.  After having lunch at the cafe / bar / restaurant above my local bike shop last week (Mud Dock), I was poking around their website the other day and noticed that they were advertising a women's bike maintenance workshop to be held next month.  Now, don't get me wrong, I probably know more than your average female about a bike ... but then your average female tends to know approximately nada.  I can sort most minor problems up to and including fixing my own punctures / changing a tyre, but beyond that I get stuck.  My front chain wheel has nasty grindy noises when it's in the granny ring at the back, and until Jon showed me where to twiddle with a screwdriver, I didn't know what to do about it.  I still don't really want to go messing around with the finer workings of my bike, as I suspect I'll make a mess of it.  And I badly need to change my brake pads, but don't know what I need to get and how to do it.

So, I think the workshop is definitely a good move.  For a start, it'll give me more confidence to go out on longer rides on my own, as at the moment I have the fear of what happens when it all goes wrong.  It has done before, and I was just lucky enough that I was near enough to the end of my route to free-wheel the bike / walk it back to the car.  Secondly, I get a bit sad that I don't know what regular maintenance my bike should really be having after rides, and I don't want it to get old before its time for lack of care. 

And the other thing is I'm about to go and meet some guys about a local surf club in a bit!  Bristol has one, and I want to learn to surf.  I've been trying to psyche myself up to go along to their regular Thursday evening drinks and say hi for a couple of weeks now, but got all chickeny about it.  So tonight I'm going.

If you don't hear from me again, I've met a fate worse than death and been killed by physchotic surfers.  But hopefully not!