2021: week 6

Like Tom, I've been trying to touch my toes. Doing so has revealed a litany of issues, so I've been doing some Yoga with Adriene in the mornings. It's free, she's not too hippy, and sometimes her dog comes and sits on her and we all have a laugh about it.

Sometime in November I was pulling away from a junction on my bike, when I looked down to discover the frame had snapped. One of the lugs on the 1970s FW Evans frame had rusted through, irreparably, leaving me to perform an emergency glide-to-a-halt on Homerton Road.

Thankfully I'm blessed with an array of other bikes to choose from, but it's useful having a looks-knackered-but-is-actually-nice city bike, and I missed it.

This weekend I finally managed to finish building up a late 80s Dawes Galaxy, in a royal blue. (Along with overhauling a new-to-him Islabike for S.)

I really loved the Sturmey Archer 3 speed hub gear on the Evans. 3 speeds is all you need for living in most parts of London, but it's not very practical for Edinburgh’s vertical cobbles. So the Galaxy has a MEGARANGE rear casette and very wide double at the front. I think we're going to get on just fine.

My father-in-law is planning to turn the Evans frame into windchimes.

We need to replace a couple of the single glazed windows in our new place with double glazing. The man, a glazier, who came round to look said he didn't believe in double glazing and that it was all a lie.

Which reminds me of the damp specialist who didn't believe in damp. Something about how the English invented it, and nowhere else in the world has damp and it was all just condensation. I don't really understand, but I think about it a lot.

There's a special machine that shakes oranges off trees into a big hopper, and they use it in Valencia. I miss Valencia.