Early Riser

Long time since I had anything to write, I’ve done nothing to the car & it’s not left the garage because of the incessant rain & wind. Then there ere some health “issues”, have you seen the TV ad campaign that says “one in four people will suffer mental health problems this year”? This year I was the one in four. Come to think of it, most years it’s me.

BUT ……..

The sun shines, the job is looking more stable & so am I. Time to get the Fury out.

I took it to work last Friday as a shake down run & all was well except for a water leak, looking at the SKCC forum, Crunchie had posted up the possibility of a run this morning (Saturday) I responded & suggested a route cobbled together from a previous outing, this got the Crunchie nod of approval & 07:15 was the agreed time.

The start point at Newlands Corner was nice & local to me, so I didn’t have to get up too early, I set the alarm & went to sleep. As is often the case I woke up early & switched the alarm off, got myself sorted & left – thinking it was surprisingly dark. As I drove to Newlands I noticed the Satnav showed the time of arrival as 06:10. “Odd” I thought “why is the Satnav still on summer time?”. Only after I arrived did I look at my phone & realise that yes – I actually was an hour early.

So I watched the sun come up & listened to the dawn chorus, once or twice the sound of a non-tin-top exhaust raised my hopes that Crunchie would be early, but they all turned out to be tin-tops with loud exhausts. In the end - & right on time – the sound of a burble combined with the whine of straight cut gears heralded his arrival.

After a brief chat & a comparison of GoPro sizes (it’s a bloke thing) we set off. The sun was up, the traffic was light, the roads were mostly dry. Before the off, Crunchie asked “we’re not going to Chichester are we?” Well, he’d seen the route & we weren’t actually going to Chichester – just quite close, so I said no & thought no more of it. After we passed Goodwood, the scenery got wetter, with rivers running across roads which had chunks missing – presumed washed away, at one point there was a fast flowing, 3ft wide river in the gutter each side of the road. Odd thing about the Fury, the rising rear valence seems to lift spray off the road, while the kick at the back of the boot caps it at about ……… the height of Crunchie’s face in the screen-less westfield behind – sorry mate.

Then there were roads closed & the associated Satnav issues, hearing “TURN AROUND - WHERE POSSIBLE” every 10 seconds gets irritating really quite quickly. In the end we got back on the route & found the café – which was closed, so breakfast consisted of a coffee & a sausage, bacon & mushroom bap in the petrol station next door.

BUT, the sun was still shining, it was now approaching “almost warmish” & when the roads had been good, they had been spectacular, this time last year we did the “HollyBlatt” to raise money for my daughters trip to Kenya & on that day it was -2 & foggy, so todays conditions were much better than that.

When I got home Mrs Blatter asked “did you get where you were going very early?” it seems the time on the alarm clock had been re-set by an hour, probably when I was setting the alarm.

TWIT!