LATEST NEWS....

Yesterday I had my appointment with the Consultant regarding my recent eye surgery.
He told me that the results look pretty good. Apparently he is a little concerned by some pressure in the eye but he feels that this will reduce over the next few weeks.
I asked him if I am am able to start riding my bikes again and he said YES, so long as I start off  slowly and don't try and ride 'flat out' too soon.
So the plan is that I will go out for my first ride on Monday 28th February - just a short ride of about 20 miles. The next day - 1st March - I will do a longer ride with JD  but obviously at a steady pace.
This will be the first time that JD and I will have ridden together for about 5 months and I am certainly looking forward to it.

The past few weeks have been quite difficult. From riding about 180 miles a week I went to ZERO.
I found that using up energy whilst not being allowed any real exercise was a problem - getting to sleep at night was not easy with so much surplus energy.
Maintaining my weight level was an additional problem as I did not want to start to inflate like a fat balloon! I had to adjust my diet accordingly. At least now I should start to get back to some level of normality.

As far as cycling goes, the past few weeks I have been reduced to moping around cycle racks looking to see if there were any interesting bikes.
It would seem to be the case that as far as Bournemouth is concerned any decent or really interesting bikes are not left in cycle racks. Given the level of bike theft in the area I am not really surprised. However I did see a quite smart looking bright yellow fixie sporting yellow pedals to match.

YELLOW FIXIE -note yellow pedals

RALEIGH-complete with wooden box

 I also saw an old Raleigh bike with the gear levers on the down tube and traditional curved bars complete with a box on the rack..!
Gosh....! I must be turning very sad getting excited by this..!!!

One thing that has happened over the past couple of weeks that is more important but not good, is regarding the 'Rock to the UK' ride that is planned for September.

It would appear that Dave Vaughan who is down to be be our support driver and logistics man has not had confirmation from work that he can take the time off required to complete the event.
There are factors involved that are making it look more and more unlikely that he will be granted this time and this in turn is posing a real threat to the whole project. It could well mean trying to find another driver - someone who can give up three weeks of their time in September to take on this support role.
You can imagine how this has now thrown the whole thing up in the air.
A lot of time as well as money has been invested in this ride and it will be a great disappointment to not only the team but also the charities we are hoping to raise funds for if it fails to happen.
I will obviously keep you posted.