Sun and showers, 4°C, NW breeze.
Cold house, the kitchen was 10°C when I got home tonight. It’s a few degrees higher now and the fire is roaring in the front room.
The cold has penetrated deeply today, it reached its fingers beneath skin, veins and muscles.
At fifty years old, I am yet to learn to like winter.
Drawing in my work diary, it’s only an inch across.
10°C, rain at last.
First rain of the month. The ground is very dry, dusty and hard. I have missed much of it with this persistent cold. Rain smells different when it falls on dry ground, after a while, a sweet smell rises.
I don’t know how this illness affects my annual milage; 6,000 as a target is marginal now. There still remains a few days before I can ride again.
12°C, showers and grey.
No miles, still held up with this cold, but at least the plateau stage has gone. At this rate I could be back on the saddle by Wednesday.
The only exercise has been with the dog.
lodger: has upset my neighbour by parking over part of his dropped kerb. That makes it difficult to get his cars in or out. It sounds like the guy next door blew it by loosing his temper and threatened to damage the lodger’s car. I need to look this up because I suspect that it’s illegal to block access, but I am no expert. Perhaps it’s a civil matter, whatever that means.
The root of all this is there are simply too many cars.
Posted on my phone.
18C,rain but warm.
No more rides for a few days. The new term has settled with a looming cold. Sore throat and grogg means the cold season is here. The kids at work are coughing and spluttering and perhaps given it to me.
Posted on my phone.
15C, big storm approaches.
The storm, a opportunity arose this morning with grey sky but no real rain, yet. So what happens, I woke with a pre-cold throat, dammit.
It’s been a long run since the last cold- was it Easter?
Written & Posted from a Smartphone.
7°C, sunshine.
The Doc says I probably have a second cold straight after the first. Unlucky, but not a serious worry. Presumably, there is no reason that you couldn’t be infected with two colds at once.
Snow is on its way, though it may not fall here. The Mirror paper predicts -15C and blizzards, though view predict that every time the temperature dips a little. Nobody believes them any more. Well, no-one worth mentioning does.
8°C, few showers, sun, no cycling.
Recovery: a week of undefined illness has sapped most of my energy. Now it’s lifting I can’t feel the cold, and yes I know the air has dipped below 5C. So, I spent the day recovering.
I became quite geeky later in the afternoon.
Geekiness is fuelled by a feeling. It’s a feeling with deep roots, all the way back to childhood.
With a cold like mine, any activities today had to beundemanding, so I spent time looking round Google Earth. In a few places, there are circular mountain ranges that are just too perfect a circle. With a little research, it turns out that many are impact craters. Some are as young as 3.5 million years, which doesn’t sound that old, relatively, geologically. The earth is peppered with them, though some are only detected by their gravity anomalies One contributer has uploaded a .kml file that shows loads more. I was, by now, hooked.
And, this is where it gets geeky, I decided to see how they look in the flight simulator FSX. Some are quite clear, often a near circular lake, or an obvious crater. One, in far eastern Siberia, is not actually an impact crater but an eroded intrusive pipe (Kondyor Massif). Now it’s one of Russia’s biggest platinum mines.
12°C westerly.
It’s touch & go whether I can ride in when I feel like this. Can your immune system fight a cold in the background or does it have to blow out with a full snotty headcold? Maybe an hour’s ride will decide the question.
Spirit of Turpentine 