I've been out many times on my road bike and racked up 1000 km on it. I love riding on the roads and the speed that you can achieve gives me a big rush. I think that my real love is still in mountain biking, but when out on my own I do enjoy a road ride to help improve my fitness levels.
Anyhow, first I've moved house so that I'm within cycling distance to work. Well Beedon anyhow and I'm 16.5 miles from the office now. A roughly long one-hour cycle to work but at least doable on a nice summers day.
Packing my kitchen in Bristol, can you find the Debora in the photo?
A very empty living room!Another bonus is the less money that I'll give to Tescos for their lovely petrol, and also the extra time that I'll get back from not being in the car for three hours a day for three days a week.
My new smaller living/dining room.The disadvantage is that I'll have to be in the office five days a week and with a 25 minute drive to work now it almost works out to be the same time gained and lost! Also with the tax that I'll pay for renting out my Bristol house I'll only just about be ahead financially as well! Hmm, maybe this move isn't as good as I thought it would be...
My dubious movers outside the Bristol property. Well at least they were cheap to hire and didn't break anything. I have lost a mop in the move though.
Debbie and I outside my new rented place. Smaller than before and in the middle of nowhere!It has been very stressful moving house, and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone else unless they really wanted to move. Estate agents really are the devils spawn. They take quite a lot of money and do very little. I had a nasty run in with Lesters Estate Agents around Wallingford and a rental deal fell though with them because they wanted to charge me so much money for doing very little and I wouldn't agree to their charges.
However having said that Ocean estate agents in Bristol were very good to me and their advice has been spot on and I can recommend them for the Bristol area.
Wiki and Mike out with me on a road ride on a summer's day.Road cycling isn't without its perils though. Once when out on my bike with Wiki and Mike, white van man tried to overtake me on a country lane bend! As he was parallel to me and about to overtake Mike as well another car appeared around the bend. At this point both cars slammed on their brakes. The red metro coming towards us went into a four wheel skid and I thought that the van was going to slam into me to avoid hitting the red metro head on.
Fortunately both cars managed to stop in front of each other and we cycled on. Needless to say the two cars had stiff words to say to each other as we carried on. I thought I was a gonner and about to be run over while cycling. Not a bad way to go, but I wasn't quite ready to die.
My move hasn't all been good. I had a run in with Esporta my gym when I tried to quit them. It was my fault for not reading all the small print as they noted to me when I tried to leave that there is a three month notice period on my contract. This is totally ridiculous, how can anyone know what they're going to be doing in three months time.
Fortunately for me I have a sympathetic doctor and she gave me a doctor's note for the eczema on my hands and with this I negotiated the three month notice to one. I'll certainly never be joining them again and wouldn't recommend them to anyone else.
Cycling with Susan on her shiny new mountain bike.
