The good and the bad

I have a confession to make .  Whilst these entries appear chronologically I don't always write them chronologically.  In a lot of instances I start an entry and post it some days/weeks after the event.  I do this for many reasons but the main one is to annoy the few readers that I have.  However today this is being written in real time as it were.  I am in fact sitting on the balcony in the sun wearing nothing but an old pair of reg grundies, my laptop is on my lap and a fresh beer by my side.  Annika is asleep on the day bed, tuckered out after a long ride down the river Isar.  There isn't a cloud in the sky and spring has rushed into the year.  It seems that last week everything was stark a leafless and now there is green everywhere and birdsong is the order of the day.

Some wild boar piglets that we saw later in the day

The bad.  For a little while the fixie has not been feeling right.  There has been some play in the drive train and because all my tools are still on their way to München I have not been able to investigate any further.  I finally bit the bullet and bought some spanners so I could pull the back wheel off and check the bottom bracket.  Sure enough there was some play, no bearing rumbling just a bit of movement. 10 minutes work to fix if I had the tools.  I didn't so I went to visit the bike shop across the road.  Despite having the best bike workshop I have ever seen they didn't repair bikes that they hadn't sold.  The next one gave me the same spiel.  By this stage I am getting really pissed off.  I take it to a bike mechanic and tell him that the cup on the bottom bracket needs tightening.  He has a look and tells me he doesn't think it is the cup, takes the bike and tells me I can collect it in 3 days at 1pm.  At the nominated time I go to collect the bike and he tells me, low and behold, he has tightened the cup on the bottom bracket and also mentions that the self extracting caps that I have on my cranks are not good.  I don't really understand what he is talking about but soon discover he has cross threaded the caps on both sides of the cranks rendering them useless.  For f**k sake.  I can tolerate incompetence in someone with no experience but when a bike mechanic cross threads not just one cap, but both of them, you have to wonder.


The good.  As I previously mentioned spring is here and today we decided to go on a cycling adventure.  Christoph and Tanya have kindly left us a load of books, including many cycling tour guides.  We opted for the tour down the Isar.  München is simply brilliant when the sun is shining, there is no other way to describe it.  The down side is that all the Müncheners agree and as soon as the sun is out so are they.  Our ride involved negotiating our way through thousands of pedestrians and cyclists.  Whilst one can say that the Germans are good drivers the same can not be said of their prowess on the simple bicycle.  If you own a road bike and want to stretch your legs for a bit then wait for the coldest, wettest, most miserable day before venturing out.

I am pleased to say that I upset at least two people during our cycle adventure.  The first was an elderly, well dressed lady cycling through the Englisch Garten.  She had some sort of problem with her shoe/trouser/cerebral cortex which meant that she did the balancing act of devoting 50% of her attention to riding her bike without hitting any of the thousand other pedestrians and cyclists and 50% of her attention to fixing the problem with her shoe/trouser/cerebral cortex.  I assessed the randomness of her route and decided to pass on the right leaving me the option of going bush if things got out of hand.  At the same moment Annika rings her bell causing the old duck to focus on the more important matter at hand, which was riding her bicycle.  She dutifully moves to the right only to get a little fright as the black fixie rushes past.  I copped a mouthfull for that one.

The next one wasn't quite so exciting but was so typically German that it made me laugh.  We were much further down the track and the crowds had thinned out.  The town planners had rather thoughtfully provided both a cycle path and pedestrian path.  I liked the light and thought it would make a good photo so stopped to take a picture.  I thought the better photo would be from further back from the way we had come so decided to turn around and ride back.  There were some cyclists coming in both directions so I decided to turn and ride down the pedestrian path which only had an elderly couple on it.  I copped a mouthful from the bloke for riding on his path.  His wife told him to pull his neck in.  I just laughed to myself.

Perth has the beach München has the Isar.  As soon as the sun is out half the population makes their way to the Isar to sun bathe, BBQ and socialise.  A few even brave the water, which can best be described as spanner cold, meaning that it really tightens your nuts.  That is a metaphor that only half the population can relate to.