Little owls

How much comfort do you derive from knowing that others elsewhere look at the same moon as yourself? Me, immense.

Yesterday I rode, it was foul, wet, windy and cold. To add insult to injury, as a direct result of various members of Auckland's more inconsiderate citizens and their ongoing participation in the World Glass Smashing champs, I suffered my third puncture in two rides. Luckily this time, as I didn't have Mikeal, he who is a rubber of his own duck, or The Crocodile to complete the pumping task, it was a very slow leak. Thirty minutes from home I pumped the tyre back up to pressure and made it all the way home.

On Sunday I had two separate punctures, separated by about 90 minutes. One, the first one, was glass, the other was a mystery. Being weak in the upper body I minced about and got the two other males in our party of four to do the hard work and inflate the tyre for me.

Also yesterday I witnessed a true Triathlete moment. A couple of years ago I watched in cringing horror a triathlete on a time trial bike, complete with rocket launcher bottle cages, hump his bike up Grafton Road in full aero position. Given that Grafton Road at that particular point was approximately 9% gradient and the creature in question was travelling uphill and at a pace that a 5 year old girl could run faster than, it was just ugly.

Yesterday's moment was as cringe worthy and definitely more foolish, not to mention inconsiderate. Mt Wellington Highway is rough, narrow, with two lanes in each direction, no shoulder and a lot of traffic. The fool in question was riding a time trail bike, in aero position, in the late afternoon traffic along this road holding up the traffic. It truly was head smackingly stupid and the individual is worthy of being considered for a ban from producing off-spring. There are a number of other roads in the area to get from Point A to Point B, why ride there? In the aero position. Words fail me.

On the upside of things, this morning as I rode up Carter Road in the pre-dawn I was serenaded by a Morepork.