10th November: We've had a few days of strong wind and rain over the last few day but today was looking OK so I took Awesom-O out for a spin. I decided to do the fishing pond then a couple of ups and downs of the track and the road to Holt Green and back. It was pretty windy but it was blowing more or less across the track so it wasn't too bad most of the time. I saw a big older chap with a couple of dogs I've waved to a few times and, because one of the dogs was so engrossed in something, I ended up stopping and chatting for a couple of minutes.
He was nice and the dogs were lovely. I think they were labs, one black and one a really dark metallic tan colour that I haven't seen before. The house in Holt Green had the lights on again so I still haven't been able to take another look in the building society boxes but there was a fantastic rainbow on the way back. It faded away really quickly which I didn't know they did so I guess you do learn something new every day! Anyhow, a fairly windy ride but another 25.4 miles.
17th November: We've had a lot of windy weather and some rain recently plus it's been mad busy at work so I've had a lot of can't be bothered evenings recently but I finally managed to get out for a ride today. Before I left, I fitted another 70 elastomer to the new Shockstop stem. I wasn't going to bother as another set of elastomers was £15 plus another £5 for delivery from Amazon. I'm having a trial month of Prime at the moment and noticed that this drops the price to a tenner for some reason, and obviously no delivery charge, so I bought a set. The weather was gorgeous, pure blue skies and around 10 °C without too much wind so generally a very enjoyable ride. The stem is finally spot-on as well, seamlessly absorbing most of the abuse my wrists normally take. I did three ups and downs of the usual so another 25.3 miles.
20th November: I'd booked today off work to dodge a team day out but it was cancelled but I didn't cancel the ride because I'm short of miles this month. It was colder than it has been, around 7 °C, so I wore the Climb and Conquer jacket over my merino under-layer for first time this winter and took Awesome-O out for a spin. It was windy, I had cold fingers and it was spitting a bit so I wasn't in the mood initially so I decided to explore some of the farm lanes around the fishing pond at Siding Lane while my legs warmed up.
It was actually quite fun, we used to go for walks with my parents along these tracks when I was a kid so it was nice to see what they were like. They basically ran around the edge of, and between, fields so a lot of wheel spinning and mud involved but fun nonetheless. Once my legs warmed up my fingers followed suit so I cheered up and did two ups and downs of the track before heading in. I was toasty warm, despite the weather, so an enjoyable ride overall and 23.3 miles.
Well, another poor month on the mileage front. We've had a lot of wet, windy weather recently followed by my pulling a muscle in my neck (which I hate!) so I didn't manage to get out again and so November goes by with a less than ideal 100.8 miles. On the plus side, my neck's better and I'm looking forward to December!
