There also a lot of kids from the animal shelter walking the dogs on the path so I ended up doing a little bit of everything, deciding where to go as and when it popped into my head. A pretty enjoyable start to September and 25.3 miles.
September 15th: Finally! We've had a bit of rain recently and I embarked on a gardening adventure that, so far, has resulted in 19 black bags and 4 full car loads of vegetation going to the tip and 3 awesome fires so I've been neglecting my cycling a bit over the last couple of weeks. Anyhow, it was quite a nice day today, fairly warm and not to breezy, so I set off for a ride wondering what state my legs would be in. Because of all the recent rain, Awesom-O got his first trip of the autumn as I set off to do the usual. I did two full ups and downs of the farm path and then the back road to Holt Green where I decided to explore the strange old house there a bit.
I've looked into the main outhouse before and there are loads of metal boxes with names of obsolete building societies on them so I decided to take a pic and look in one of the boxes. It turns out the boxes are full of building society paperwork and book. I found one book that was a sign-in book for directors and it started in 1936 and the last entries were in 1971, all in beautiful fountain pen handwriting! Anyhow, my legs felt pretty OK and it was much needed 26.7 miles.
September 24th: Another Finally! I've been tidying the garden a lot recently and we've had a fair bit of wind recently but Awesom-O got his second trip out of the autumn today. It was warm and sunny but with quite a fresh wind, weather I've ridden before and it's rather conducive to a nice ride so, with the Castelli Alpha over the Stolen Goat, it was quite a fun ride. I had two cool wildlife encounters as well. I was heading along on my first 'up' When I noticed a buzzard flying long beside me about 15 feet away flying 10 feet over the ground level which made it level with me because the path is elevated, very cool! Also, as I was heading in on my last 'down' I looked up and there was a large kestrel sitting on top of a telephone pole. I was looking up at him, craning my neck somewhat, as I cycled past and it looked down, straight at me, also very cool. Anyhow, a rather pleasant 26.0 miles.
September 30th: It was sunny but very windy today but it's not rained for a while so I took the Strael out for a spin. I'm really short of mileage this month but I at least wanted to reach the 100 mile mark. To that end, I did two ups and downs of the track and a lap of the time trialler's loop. As I said, it was windy so it was a combination of cycling leaning 10° over against the wind and then cycling along at top speed in a vacuum so a mixed bag overall. I did experience one slightly weird thing on this ride that I almost forgot to mention. For most of the ride I could hear the 'Tsh, tsh, tsh' of what I thought was the rotor rubbing slightly on the front brake. The disc looked true and I could see daylight on either side of it so I didn't really give it much thought. It was only after I'd got back to the village, locked my bike up outside the Co-op, done a bit of shopping and was unlocking the bike afterwards when I noticed an 18" long dried stick wedged between the seat stays and the rear wheel... Doh! I feel like I've been neglecting my riding this month but I've had a lot of distractions to contend with. I've completely cleared the jungle end of my garden (acquiring a chainsaw along the way - great fun!) and painted my house (I did the back and out buildings and a house painter did the front and side) so a pretty productive month really in other ways. Anyhow, a monthly total of 101.3 miles and I'm still 74.4 miles in credit for the year.
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