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Now retired but busy still living..

Tuesday 3 May 2011

CATCHING UP.....

WALKING ON DARTMOOR - MERRIVALE
With all the hype surrounding the Royal Wedding, there was no way that I was going to remain too close to a television.(I still remember what the wedding of Charles and Diana was like).
So last week I headed off to Devon. I did a spot of walking along some sections of the Two Moors Way and other parts of Dartmoor- visited a few people  and had a family celebration meal at a local restaurant. This was to celebrate Anne's Mother's eighty fifth birthday.

I have now been home a couple of days and thought that I should catch up a bit with the blog and other things.....mind you the hype is still going on.  Something about the wedding seems to be on the television every time that I dare to turn it on. I will be off to France two weeks today, so if I can avoid looking at a TV until then hopefully most of it should have died down a bit by the time I get back...!    I mean lets face it- how many ways (or times)  can a television commentator describe the hat that Victoria Beckham or some other so-called celebrity is wearing......I just find it all a bit mind numbing........
A LITTLE BIT OF WHEEL FETTLING 
One of the little tasks that I had to do on my return from the beauties of Devon was a little wheel truing. After I returned from the Backpackers weekend meet a few weeks back I noticed that my rear wheel on the Revolution Tourer seemed to have a very slight kink in it. Now as I say, it was only slight and a lot of people probably wouldn't have bothered too much with it but perfection is my middle name and with the trip to France in just a couple of weeks I thought that I would get it spot on.

The wheels on this bike are Mavic A719 rims laced to Shimano Deore XT hubs. I have had these wheels for one year now (I upgraded all the components on the bike in April 2010) and since Mark at Bicycle World built them at that time I have not taken them back to be checked out, even though I have done over a thousand miles on them.

One other thing that I had noticed was a little bit of play on the cassette. With the wheel off I  removed the cassette and checked everything out- but all seemed OK. I replaced it and tightened up the lockring again and it now seems as solid as a rock. I can only assume that the lockring was not torqued down quite tight enough.
PLANNING FOR FRANCE
Yesterday I met up with Mike & Chris McEnnerney and Peter Calcutt. We met up at Mike & Chris's house to discuss plans for the up-coming trip to France.

The idea was that we would set out a route and general plan for the trip and make decisions on places that we wanted to visit.
Well we did a lot of talking....lots of talking.....most of it was talk about previous trips.....long distance walks.....camping.....backpacking and a little about our French trip.
After six hours we had  made a decision...!
We had decided where we would be camping on our first night.....well kind of!
In actual fact it should take us a lot less time to cycle to our first night stop than it took us to arrive at the decision.
We will obviously be doing a lot of talking when we are in France...........


11 comments:

Goodman Manyanya Phiri said...

Just glad that Trevor you (closer to the North Pole while I am a South Pole) can still be kindred spirit in relation to weddings and more weddings!

If I did not know anything about either the bride or the groom, I'd fairly asked myself, why bother to have a teacher in a TV screen?

pilgrim said...

Hope you'll be blogging when you're in France - will be nice to get updates!

Same here as far as the wedding goes - they really know how to kill the excitement!

Regards from a windy Cape Town!

Steve A said...

And here I figured you were absent due to taking photos at the big event! Odd to have play in the cassette.

Your spoke wrench looks like one I've owned for over 30 years. Hopefully, yours will last as long.

MrDaveyGie said...

Yeap glad the royal wedding is over and the world can now return to normal :-)

limom said...

France!
I can only dream.

Anonymous said...

Dartmoore is a nice place, I like your photo.
I wish you good trip to France!

Jim said...

I like the looks of that cassette tool. I have just the splined tool and must use another wrench to tighten the lock ring down with. Now if that tool only had a built in torque wrench!

Worthing Wanderer said...

I love Merrivale! You made the right choice - it was too nice to be stuck in watching the rich and famous get wed. Life's too short!

Carlos Ribeiro said...

You can not imagine the coverage that the Brazilian media has made about the Royal Wedding. The broadcast was live. Many brazilians did not understand the reason for the great interest of the Brazilian media.

I was curious to know your opinion.

I especially wish the couple best of luck in the marriage of Charles and Diana.

cj goad ~ photography said...

Bit off topic Trevor but I thought you might get a kick out of this. Just Google- Felt Shelby Cruiser.Great looking bike for a fun ride although I would upgrade the crankset.

Marilena Borriero said...

Ciao Trevor,dovevi venire con me ad Amsterdam,biciclette a volontà...Ciao ciao Mari

Six weeks off.

 The visit to see the Consultant went quite well really ...   My ' numbers' have started to creep up again so I am going to be given...