Shorter Twycross

Hot and sunny weather this morning. I planted the maintenance stand in the garden and hoisted the X onto it. Removed both wheels and gave it a half-decent clean. Much easier than the Boardman – the curvy carbon frame doesn’t create so many inaccessible nooks and crannies and of course it wasn’t as dirty. I forgot to get the car shampoo I usually use out of the garage so I used Persil washing liquid on a sponge. Worked nicely! And I finished off with a Tesco heavy duty surface wipe.

With that done, once again I wrestled the front tyre off and replaced the inner. This time I inspected the tyre more carefully, and I found a tiny little thorn sticking through it. I would guess it was probably responsible for the previous puncture, as well as the last one. Happy that mystery’s solved, and I have no reason to fear the puncture fairy.

Sadly, the X’s bike computer stopped working once I’d replaced the front wheel. Thought I might have it the wrong way on, but nope – the magnet was passing very close to the sensor / transmitter. Tried a new CR2032 in the sensor, no joy. I just took off the computer, the mount and the transmitter, and binned them. Will use a GPS watch for now. I prefer the simple wired ones anyway, and this was a cheap Chinese wireless one. The one thing I liked about it was that you could set the wheel circumference in mm, so it was very accurate.

Anyway – very happy the X is all sorted out (or it will be when I’ve lubed it) but I took the Spesh out this afternoon. Would have loved to have done 40, but I was on call. So I did a shorter Twycross, taking in Bilstone Road and Barton Lane, a long stretch that I don’t do often enough – mainly because it’s in essence a short cut. It was cloudy by the time I set off, and a bit blowy.

As I came within a few miles of home and back into my comfort zone, I extended the ride a bit by going home via Burgoland again. I then took a left into Coleorton, having done 26 miles – with the idea of doing 6 or 7 towards Belton then coming back, which would leave me having done 39 or 40 when I arrived home.

Unfortunately it started to rain very lightly after less than a mile so I just turned around and came back. To my surprise there was a queue of cars coming down the hill into the village – it’s a pretty quiet place, so this was odd. I overtook them and arrived at a Range Rover and an estate car with their hazards flashing. For a moment I thought there must have been an accident, but nope – by the hedge on the right side of the road, three or four people were doing their best to take custody of an emu. I smiled pleasantly and continued past the vehicular obstruction. I don’t think I’ve ever seen one before!

It stopped raining and I’d only caught a few drops but I decided to call it a day anyway. Bad timing really, should have gone out earlier when it was sunny. 29.52 by the time I was back, which takes me to 312 this month.

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