“What’s that, a Roman?” you ask; or even if you didn’t. I came across this term when, one wet afternoon, reading through the (online) back issues of HUFF (Heads Up Feet First), the magazine put out by OzHPV. Apparently a UK recumbent rider of some note, Andrew Sidwell, calls himself one of the Romans, or “Recumbent old men actively negating senility”. See, it fits 😷👏.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading the HUFF pages and crossing occasionally to their Facebook pages too. It seems there are some active recumbent rider groups on mainland Australia with Victorian groups serious about chasing world HPV records. Trisled to the front. Which reminded me, Trisled (a Melbourne company) organised a game of ice hockey to show just how strong their plastic roto-moulded velomobiles are. I may have posted this before – but hey, it’s a lot of fun.
Owners of carbon fibre machines would cringe, thinking of the bills to fix up their duco after such a match.
I haven’t been anywhere new recently and, this week, haven’t been out for a ride at all! At the beginning of the week the weather forecast didn’t look good. Lots of wind and rain heading our way. So I decided to upend the shed and do something I have thought about for a while now – replan the working areas.
First I took down some high shelving and cleared a space. Stuff was taken into the house, put under the house and into the caravan to clear out enough room. Then I rebuilt the shelving to provide an improved working / storage area.
Now there are no high shelves needing a step ladder to access. It all feels much safer.
Still work to be done on what goes where but I should be in a better position to handle bicycle maintenance and woodwork without everything getting mixed up.
Cycling. I did take a couple of rides into the Norfolk Plains last week. Surprisingly almost made the 100k target too.
While we had a taste of Spring, it’s still cool a lot of the time. These views of the Tiers are quite normal.
This tree is visible when climbing “Rip” along Wilmore’s Lane. Often the sun is behind it -so no picture. Or it’s too grey- so no picture. This day was good though – and I had a camera with zoom to compose it.
Not far from the specimen tree is this construction; probably a Ring-Tailed Possum nest. They are a small possum and there was a road-kill one just up the road from this site. It’s not a bird nest, in my opinion, so, putting two and two together, I have decided it’s a possum nest. Oh to have a drone to fly up and look in with!
Apparently we just lived through the driest July on record. That doesn’t mean there isn’t a lot of water sitting around on top of paddocks and there isn’t a lot of drainage water in ditches.
There are lots of frogs out and about too. Here is a short video which includes frog noise.
I made up this short video as practise with new software. With the Catalina OS I have a new version of iMovie – which works. My old version karked it some years back! Now to learn how to use this one.
As well as the lambs there are also paddocks full of teenage calves / steers. They all watch as I cycle passed and I always wonder “what are they thinking?”.
That’s it for recent riding.
I am booked to take a ride in a new area next weekend, Gunns Plains in the north of the state. The North-West group are organising the ride and I have been that warned there is a heap of climbing involved. Fingers crossed the weather will play ball. Note to self : remember to charge the battery.
Before then I will fit the dual chainring that Phil prepared for me. It needs spacers which Phil sent off a month ago. A second set sent 2 weeks ago arrived today. Covid restrictions impacting the delivery?
Tony's Tasmanian Cycling Blog 