It’s not often these days when I have enough spare time to go for a long bike ride because of work and family commitments, but I did have a spare day on Monday.
I started off heading towards a small coastal town, but ended up heading the opposite way initially because the roads are nicer and quieter. It was mostly rolling country side and the wind was non existent, so I was cruising at a good 28 kmhr (17 mph) on the level straights.
It was a good way to clear my head, and it reminded me of all the rides I did all over the countryside when I was a kid.
According to strava it was the longest ride I’ve ever done at 55km (34miles), but more importantly I wasn’t overly tired and my knees still felt good.
This is one of the hardest concepts to implement. It’s pretty close to “stop caring what other people think” which, unless you are a sociopath you’re not going to be able to achieve. However, other’s expectations is a broad enough category where we can whittle away at this which is the point of this post. […]
It’s almost summer here in NZ, so I rode my trusty Giant TCR2 to my favourite cafe today, but took a few detours to make it a bit longer. I was going pretty well until I dropped the chain off the front sprocket when I tried changing both the front and rear sprockets at the same time.
When I got to where I was going, I had a look at the front derailleur and decided it was dropping down too low, allowing the chain to come off. there’s an adjustment screw for setting how far the derailer moves, so I adjusted that by half a turn and all was good again!
The cafe served up breakfast on a proper plate today, because they are getting pissed off with ‘over the top’ regulations with this present lockdown.
I rode a different way home from my usual route to get a few hills in. I used to really attack those hills five years ago, but nowadays I don’t feel I have anything to prove, so I look after my knee’s and simply take it easy and keep the cadence constant. (It’s been months since I’ve had to go to a physiotherapist and I like it that way)
Strava says I did a mere 27km (16 miles) with an average speed of just over 19km/hr (11.8 mls/hr). it’s a bit slower than 25km/hr (15.6 mls/hr), which is what I used to achieve, but I’m happy with this as any ride is better than none.
A week in Auckland, New Zealand is a long time these days, because you just don’t know it’s going to pan out. We have now been in a strict lockdown for the last 12 weeks with no certainty of when (if) it will end.
The general population did as they were told initially when the lockdown started, even if they didn’t agree with it, and meekly obeyed the Prime minister Jacinda Adern.
However, she has started to go off the tracks, and has been applying peer pressure to get everyone to get vaccinated. To this end, she has tried to get the vaccinated to ‘encourage’ the others to get the ‘jab’, as well as heavily implying unvaccinated people will have less rights after the lockdown.
Unfortunately for her, Youtube has a good memory even if some people don’t. It’s plain to see from the link below she has lied.
She kept implying that if Auckland got to 90% vaxxed, we could move on…..
But then she came up with the ‘traffic light system’ which moved the goal posts just when was about to get 90%
Since then, she has kept saying there will be an announcement ‘next week’ with everyone eagerly expecting good news. They have done this too many times now, and patience is wearing very thin.
Protests are now commonplace, even if the MSM don’t report them, and it’s not possible now for Jacinda to go somewhere without protesters turning up.
In my dealings with people this week, I’ve had several people talk angrily about our PM without any prompting. (these are people that never normally talk about politics.
In short, New Zealands love affair with their prime minister is over.
In the coming few weeks, it’s just going to get harder for the PM (Jacinda Adern). Their are more protests planned about lockdowns, but also about radical new leglislation that they were trying to rush thru parliament while everyone was concerned about covid.
As we get closer to Xmas, the pressure will ramp up exponentially, because having NZ’s largest city under lockdown over the xmas holidays just isn’t going to be something the average person will stand for.
The next month will be dramatic, just how much, I’m not sure.
Uncoffined 
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