Ok, the spring equinox might have been technically yesterday but as far as I’m concerned it’s not officially spring until my birthday*.
To celebrate, I persuaded the other half out on one of his quarterly bike rides, helped along by the spring sunshine and the need to work off his three-layer devil’s food cake.
We went on my favourite ride – round the reservoir and past the giant topiary bird in the middle of nowhere where I finally managed to stop to take a picture.
There were a fair few** other cyclists who had emerged for the fine weather, but for the most part the roads were deserted, including this rustic dual-carriageway
Despite the fact that he cycles now once every three months, and spends far less time on the internet reading about cycling than me, the other half quickly became the customary diminishing blue dot on the horizon, but because it was my birthday, he did wait for me at the top of the hills
To cap it all off, as we whizzed down the other side, we passed a whole field full of my favourite breed of cow (is it weird to have a favourite breed of cow?) and their calves
And how did I know it was really spring? Because I ingested my first insect of the season. Just the first of many for the year, I suspect.
(phew. That’s the last time I try and lay out pictures and words in a complicated way in wordpress. If you’re reading this in IE and it’s all over the place – get a proper browser)
* I went from being thirty-*cough* to just *cough*, if you’re interested
** two
March 21, 2009 at 5:42 pm |
Happy what’s left of the day! You are just four days before me – so add your first thirty *cough* to your second thirty *cough* and you might be somewhere near me!
March 21, 2009 at 6:00 pm |
Happy birthday from a forty-fthwwrrymmthing.
March 21, 2009 at 7:25 pm |
Happy birthday, it’s fine by me to have a favourite cow.
I use Windows Live Writer rather than WordPress to draft my posts
March 21, 2009 at 7:37 pm |
Justwilliams – thanks! I will have to wait until I’m less addled to do the arithmetic
Jane – sorry, couldn’t quite make out that last number?
UHDD – I do mine in notepad, but getting the pictures to go where I want them to is a bit challenging
March 21, 2009 at 7:42 pm |
Happy SpringDay from one who’s had his bus-pass for 10 months and 3 days.
March 21, 2009 at 7:47 pm |
This is almost as good as the price of beer for getting people’s vintages out of the woodwork
March 21, 2009 at 7:51 pm |
Congratulations and welcome to the dark side…!
March 21, 2009 at 9:23 pm |
…This is almost as good as the price of beer for getting people’s vintages out of the woodwork…
If I remember correctly…
1/6 a pint.
March 21, 2009 at 10:19 pm |
FB – does it get any better?
WW – blimey
March 21, 2009 at 11:27 pm |
Happy birthday from the far side of the sea…and the continent on the other side of that, now that I think about. I suppose your cough is better than my mother’s technique, who simply chose to remain 39 for so many years that she eventually had to subtract the year of her birth from the current year just to figure out how old she really was.
March 22, 2009 at 2:58 am |
Happy Birthday! I was trying to figure out how old you and the other half were but all those coughs confused me. And then i remembered that if I had an accurate number I would have to admit I was that and so much more. Don’t forget to praise the other half for getting out on the bike.
March 22, 2009 at 8:24 am |
Happy birthday! Enjoy the rest of the weekend!
March 22, 2009 at 9:39 am |
Thanks all. I have a friend of the same age who is now describing herself as ‘37 plus post and packaging’
March 22, 2009 at 2:09 pm |
Happy Birthday (belated?) from someone who is supposedly as old as dirt…according to the younger generation. However I am proud to say I have made is half a century with minimal mishap and perhaps a bit wiser to boot.
Nothing wrong with favourite cattle. We used to keep the “Oreo” cows (Belted Galloways) but found our fences to be sorely lacking for their spirited approach to life, spent more time herding them home from the reaches of the adjacent golf course than they spent on home pasture. So they were sent down the road to live on a better suited farm.
Aaron
March 22, 2009 at 3:21 pm |
happy birthday, your pictures have given me the urge to get off my behind and do something.
March 22, 2009 at 3:29 pm |
Aaron – I get the impression they’re pretty wild and left pretty much to their own devices on the hills, so I can see they wouldn’t take too kindly to fences
John – well good… have fun
March 22, 2009 at 4:18 pm |
Happy birthday.
I had a fly in the air intake the other day – most displeasurable… I don’t recall such things happening when I was a kid – perhaps I was below insect level then though.
Today while I was cleaning the thickest of the crud from my bike I discovered that one of my pedals is coming near the end of it’s useful life… 11 weeks to destroy a pedal, not a bad record.
March 22, 2009 at 4:33 pm |
blimey – what are you doing to them? The pedals on my bike have been going 20 years…
March 22, 2009 at 6:43 pm |
I suspect that it’s always been faulty – it’s just that today I looked much more closely than I have in the past (previously I’ve noticed play in the pedal but have been too busy out riding to look and forgotten by the time I get back).
Looks like the ball-race in which the pedal bearings should run has given up the ghost under the pressure of my fictitious 124.2km/h speed record. New pedals ordered, old ones will be taken back to the shop to demand guarantorial satisfaction (ie. a spare set of pedals) in due course.
March 22, 2009 at 10:44 pm |
“round the reservoir and past the giant topiary bird in the middle of nowhere …”
What more could you want on your birthday than sunshine and a giant, meaningless bird topiary?
March 23, 2009 at 12:45 am |
Ooh, welcome to the forties. Enjoyed my celebrations v. much but was cast down by friend of husband’s whom I met in the pub the other night. He went to the Ritz in Paris and bought a Porsche (sp?) for his forthieth last year. What did you get, he asked. A mug and a book, I said. I didn’t mind until he started to laugh. Stay up there safely in Scotland where everyone is frugal.
March 23, 2009 at 8:22 am |
Elizabeth – if Anne’s comment is anything to go by, a trip to Paris and a Porsche…
I forwent a proper present from the other half so I can spend too much money on a bicycle without feeling too guilty
March 28, 2009 at 10:21 pm |
Update on the pedal front: It seems that the “core” of the standard pedals is made of some sort of resin and the pressure of stone of idiot riding furiously was enough to kill one in 11 weeks. Hopefully the metal cored ones I fitted to replace them will last longer (although I now have a spare set of resin-core ones for when that happens).