Bodmacity

I have been getting paranoid. Recently my knees have been painful and every time I climb the stairs my right knee starts to click. In fact last week it started to go “click-click”! Quite alarming really.

I asked Nick at work, who is a keen cyclist, about the knee issue. He recommended adjusting the position of my cleats. I was doubtful because I have been riding with my SPD click-in pedals for over a year and I hoped that my knees would tell me pretty damn quickly if they were getting twisted due to being locked in at an unnatural angle. It’s a dodgy business because if you get it wrong you can wreck your knees so I went home and unbolted the cleats.

I did a little Internet research to find the optimal cleat position and best way of finding said position. It turned out that the cleats were not directly over the ball of the foot. So I moved them forward and I also adjusted the angle so that the shoes point out a little more.

The next morning I was back on the bike and feeling some twinges. I unclipped my right foot for a little while and rode unclipped before clipping back in. After a few miles everything settled and seemed fine. I’m thinking that mt knees are just adjusting to the longer commute I am doing. 14 miles as opposed to 6 miles.

I may invest in some double-sided pedals and try cycling non-SPD for a week.

Jake is still ‘without radish’. To celebrate, last week we took him to Bluewater to buy a buzz lightyear, however he came out with a ‘Big Red’ radio controlled fire engine which sprays water. He is very pleased with it :-).

It was an action-packed weekend. On Saturday we met up with Andy at the Wetlands Centre in Barnes. I wasn’t expecting much but was pleasantly surprised. There was lots for Jake to see and do. We walked around the lakes and ponds spotting different wild-fowl as we went. Later on Jake became a ‘bug explorer’ and tried his hand at pond dipping. The man running the session asked all the children to put their hands up if they wanted to go bug fishing. Jake put up his hand and left it up for the entire time. Bless him!

On Sunday we took a trip to Polesden Lacy to have a picnic with Sally, Roy, Ads and Jo. It was a nice day. We played giant tennis and dodgeball and then went for walk around the grounds of the house. Jake discovered the open-air orchestra pit and had a great time climbing up and down it.

Last night we had one hell of a storm. There was thunder and lightning all over the place. I went up into the loft room and could see the sky lit up while the heavens opened and the thunder rolled on. Very exciting.

I went on the plinth website and the poor woman was shivering under an umbrella. Her prop, a CD player had given up the ghost under the deluge but she gamely carried on. There is a woman on there at the moment, throwing ‘peace cranes’ into the crowd as an homage to the legions of lost pigeons that used to flock around Trafalgar Square.

Okay, my laptop has almost rebooted so it is back to work. Let’s hope that now the fecking thing doesn’t keep locking up. Good bye.

The big news this week, at least in the Wollny household, is that Jake has gone three nights without his beloved radish. Amy was away during this time and it was a spur of the moment thing on my part. He has been very good about it all really.

The impetus was that his old radish had a hole in it and was beginning to go manky inside. I told Jake that it could give him a sore throat and he then wanted to put it in the bin on the proviso that we would go and get a new one from the shop. I didn’t actually say that we would get a new one but I did say that he would get a big treat. Said treat arrived yesterday when Amy came home with a truck transformer that Jake had been hankering after :-).

Today was officially the first day of Jake sleeping in his new room in his new bed. The bed arrived this morning. The guys brought it into the room and then assembled it ‘on-site’. How’s that for service. Jake, of course, was very excited and was soon trying it out and giving it marks for comfort. I was a little worried that Jake would not be able to sleep tonight because a) no blackout blind and b) lots of toys to distract him, but as I write this he is downstairs in his new room fast asleep. I said it before and I’ll say it again “Pet lamb!!” :-).

Okay, so I’ve fallen out of favour with the weather gods. I made it as far as Clapham Junction then ahead of me was the blackest cloud I have ever seen. Then I heard a crack of thunder and saw forks of lightning ahead of me.

Luckily the wind was with me and the cloud was moving away. Alas it was not moving fast enough because as I cycled down Vassal Road the heavens opened. Think torrential downpour, add large hailstones and you’re almost there. I could hardly see where I was going and the hailstones were pinging into my eyes.

Soon the road literally turned into a river. I found myself almost up to my pedals in water. I gamely struggled on and made it home in just over an hour completely soaked. My waterproof socks failed miserably in such conditions and just filled with the water that ran down my legs 🙁

Well the room has been cleared. One wall is white, one is pale green and one glorious yellow. On Saturday we took a trip to B&Q and bought amongst other things, some shelves for the alcoves in our room, some canvas prints, a green roller blind, a hanging toy tidy and some storage boxes.

The prints look great in Jake’s room and complement the yellow wall. All his toys are now in three boxes. He still has the one downstairs, which is slowly getting filled up with his toys from his room, which he insists on bringing down ;-).

So what’s left to do? Fit the blind, assemble the new bed(arrives on Thursday) and buy a nice big colourful rug. Colin has hinted at replacing the knackered window so fingers-crossed there.

Yesterday I was back on the bike and decided to commute to Richmond again. It was good apart from the wind and the threat of rain. The knees are much better know and don’t click as much.

Coming home I tried my new route avoiding the worst of the Wandsworth gyratory system, but again I got a little lost when I dog-legged back onto Amoury Way. In the end I decided to get off the bike and walk in order to get my bearings.

This morning again it looked very threatening but I was lucky. My cycle computer is almost at the 1000 mile mark, 998.8 miles to be precise. A milestone! Maybe I will treat myself to a cold one to celebrate.

We had a lovely few days in Guernsey for Colin’s 60th birthday. The weather was great and we spent a couple of days at the beach. Jake loved charging around the beach collecting water in his crab bucket and throwing stones in the water.

Tom, Ads, Colin and John manfully braved the (to me) icy water. I was paddling around in the shallows when Adam tried to heave me in. I ran off but knew that it would happen sooner or later, so I took a deep breath and charged in. Upon entering the sea I felt my nether regions suddenly shrink to miniscule proportions. Good job I’ve done my bit on the procreation front ;-).

For Jake the holiday was marked by almost the constant use of the radish, something we need to sort out upon our return. He would wake at 6.30am because there wasn’t a curtain on the window behind his bed. When this happened I would get up and watch ‘Happy Feet’ or as Jake puts it “The one with the egg”.

On the beach he met a little friend called Genevieve, an older woman at 4 years old :-).

So why am I missing the boy? Well, Ames and I came home yesterday to crack on with decorating his new room. Jake has stayed with the rest of the party for the rest of the week.

It was a lovely morning so I decided first of all to commute to Clapham Junction, but when I arrived I thought “what the heck, let’s go to Richmond”. Which is exactly what I did. I avoided the temptation to carry on when I arrived at Richmond, having learnt my lesson from last time . The route was fairly straightforward, pretty much one road all the way. On the way there I saw a lady roady forget to unclip in slow traffic. She was okay, more embarrassed than anything(I know the feeling).

I made sure that I paced myself, keeping my average speed between 17 and 18mph. At Richmond the cycle racks were woefully inadequate. They were situated in the car park behind the station. There were signs up stating that this was a bike theft hotspot. It didn’t instil confidence that the bike would be there when I got back. In any case all the racks were full so I ended up locking my trusty steed to a vacant rack in the high street opposite a newsagent. I though this would be fairly safe.

The journey, which was 14 miles, took me just under an hour which I think was pretty good. The legs were okay apart from achey knees, which is something that I have been getting recently.

After work the return journey took an hour and a half. Mainly because I got lost. The route which I thought was pretty much straight patently wasn’t! I would definitely cycle to Richmond again especially because it saved me £4.50. Note to self : carry an A-Z or cycle guides.