That'll Teach Me to Make Predictions!

Famous last words? Well, I should have kept my mouth shut in my last post, because it was a pedestrian that I clocked. Completely in black, about 3-4 car lengths past a pedestrian crossing, he shot across through the traffic to his van (yes, I’m aware that he’s a van driver). He didn’t even look - not even when I started calling out. Admittedly I didn’t start yelling til I saw the car headlights light up the side of his face a nanosecond before he stepped into my path... He wore the bike and me (at 24kmh, mind) and for his trouble scored a small egg on the rear side of his head and my front tyre gave him a racing stripe on his left shin. Other than that he was fine, and very apologetic.
As for me, well, some sore ribs, a few scrapes bruises and a headache from where my glasses impacted between my face and the back of his head (not to mention an increasing black eye from the swollen bridge of my nose and lower forehead. My hip pocket will be smarting a bit too as I’ll need to replace my handlebars (as you can see), which I’d been needing to do anyway, but now I can possibly get this done by my bike insurance...

As for the last few days, it was mostly work until the weekend.
Friday night saw us sitting in watching Jamie’s’ Fowl Dinners, in which Jamie Oliver showed exactly how and where supermarket eggs come from, what happens to the battery hens, and also where the supermarket chickens come from and how they are ‘farmed’. It wasn’t pretty, and while I’ve done free range eggs for years, I’ll be a little more picky on which chicken meat I’ll buy from now on. On a side note, this little show gave us good reason for a giggle on Sunday afternoon when we went to Sainsburys for the weekly shopping. To see the shelves of free range chickens empty with the “bog standard chickens” (as Jamie called them) - some complete with telltale marks on their legs* - nearly all still on the shelves brought a smile to the dial. Seems Jamie’s little show may have had a rather instant effect.

Saturday saw another long-ish ride, this time taking a different route with the idea of avoiding the very steep Stagg Hill before the M25 junction near Potters Bar. Unfortunately, whilst the Ridgeway road was nowhere near as steep in it’s travels to the same M25 junction, I didn’t realise that the other road leading there was in fact steeper and longer than Stagg Hill. My plan for the day’s ride was to just have a casual ride - and I even threw on one of my xmas presents from Charity that you can see pictured.
Getting back to my adventures along Ridgeway rd, I thought I’d avoid the earlier hill and make my way back to the A111 (which is the road that I normally take to Stagg Hill). Here I discovered that there was a rather deep gully between Ridgeway rd and the A111, which had (as you may have guessed) another steep ride to get back up it so that I could finally ride along the A111 and downhill all the way home. If I wasn’t out for a casual ride, then I’d be happy to do this one again just for the training and the hill climbing challenges!

* For the less squeamish of you, who are wondering what the ‘telltale marks’ are on the mass produced chickens legs, it’s rather simple. The chickens themselves are grown in 35-39days from chick to full grown chicken. They are mass fed for up to 20+hrs a day, so as you can imagine, while they’re gaining an incredibly fast amount of weight, the rest of their bodies can’t keep up - especially with nowhere near the amount of rest they need - therefore, many struggle to support their weight after a while. Now being housed with 17 other chickens in a square metre, and with the amount of incredible overfeeding going on, they produce... well, you can guess. Anyway, long story short, the marks on the legs are simply from the continuous sitting in their own waste - urine burns basically... not nice.