Picture the scene. Moonlight cascading down upon a sheltered glade in the Mendip Hills, wind swirls around the chimney of the quaint cottage nestling in the dell. An owl hoots, and the gentle sound of the other birds is disturbed by the call of the lesser-spotted commutius cylistius, and his early morning call.
"F**k, ahh", as he fails to clip in with the winter cycling boots that have not been worn for nearly 9 months.
Well, winter has arrived hasn't it? There I was this morning on my first proper cold morning commute of the season. Skull cap (freshly washed after rescuing Military Nurse from his spoke-breaking hypothermia), fleecy buff (sounds rude but is in fact a highly practical garment, enabling a balaclava effect), warm jersey AND windstopper softshell, long tights with built-in (not transfers, real patches) of reflective material, the warm winter socks that Bunny gave me for my birthday last year (helpfully embroidered, not by Bunny, with an R and an L, to avoid confusion), and the winter boots.
I vaguely remember thinking that the cleats on them were knackered and worn out last March, but it was the Spring so I thought I'll sort those out next Winter, as you do. Well, as I do and that bit of obfuscation led to a slight delay as I rooted out the mud of last Winter and trimmed the offending cleat. Just had to remember not to unclip my left foot and I was fine.
It was a beautiful ride in. Strangely quiet and with a nice tailwind I fair flew into the metropolis. It was quite a spectacular moon as well, especially when away from the streetlights. As a nod towards the off season I went in on the A370 and came home the same way. Despite the moon, and my bright lights, it can be hard to see potholes and thorns on the back roads, and the main road is also relatively clear. The A370 is marginally quieter than the A38 too, and it gives good options for nipping off down reasonable B roads and cycle paths.
I was quite tired today as well, so into the wind coming home I just wanted to get it over with. I had one of those long meetings to attend at work this morning. One of those meetings where there are about 20 or so people (including me) all sat around the table, largely listening to the presenter, and occasionally the presenter would ask someone a random question. And as the presenter also happened to be the Managing Partner, and the rest of the audience were pretty influential, I dosed up on coffee before hand and during to ensure maximum alertness on my part.
This led to a caffeine crash about 4.30PM, and I was a bit slow on the way home into the wind, despite the lack of significant gradients.
I have also finally capitulated and given in to the ageing process. Its my eyes. About two years ago I started to struggle to read books and other close work, like keyboards on a PC for instance, although that is not an excuse for some of the drivel I have posted on the blogosphere.
My initial reaction was one of denial. Carry on and ignore the fact it's happening. Then I started to follow the advice of a wimpy optician, who pandered to my denial. Pull your glasses for distance down to the end of your nose. That was the advice, to change their focal length when you are reading. The next gem was to lessen my contact lens prescription to compensate. The result was I then couldn't see in the distance, and couldn't read either. So if I have ignored you in public in the last year, it has nothing to do with you, it's that I can't recognise your features.
Eventually I got fed up with all of that and gave in. This week I got full power back on the contact lenses (so now, for instance, I can read number plates again!), (and if I seem to ignore you it means that I am being my introverted self), and took delivery of a very fetching pair of varifocal glasses. Mrs Mendip Rouleur says I look like a dork but I don't care, I can now read books without contorting my face up into weird expressions, and see better distance than I have been able to for a long time.
And finally Esther, check out MN's great blog, I do hope his um, "seat" recovers, we were all sat in injury corner at the ACG do last Saturday, and I'm next at this rate:
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