Reflections and Looking Ahead

Yesterday would have been Margaret's seventy fifth birthday which made me reflect on the happenings twelve months ago.  Funnily enough my thoughts about Margaret's seventy fourth birthday are all positive and to understand this you need to read my previous blog about that day .  See http://caringformargaret.blogspot.com/2010_09_01_archive.html

As you can see it was a happy time for us all.

Helen phoned me in the evening and we had a good chat about last year and both agreed that we had had a good time with Margaret.  It was the last time that we were able to take Margaret out on a normal excursion.

Over the last couple of weeks I have been just pottering around home and tidying up the garden.  I have also made a couple of MOW runs which, as always, were good fun and I actually was also able to provide some assistance to two of my clients.  People imagine that MOW clients are little old ladies living in genteel poverty being looked after by Community Services.  This is true in many cases but there are exceptions.

L lives by himself in a large modern home in the hinterland with a view across the range to the coast.  This is a beautiful spot and the house and fittings are in the million dollar range.  Unfortunately L has almost lost his sight due to Macular Degeneration.  He lives alone and family and Community Services check up on him.  Last week when I dropped of his meal he asked me if he could borrow my eyes.  Somebody had been fiddling with his super Hi Fi system and he couldn't work out how to listen to the radio.  It took a little while to sort it out but I left him happily listening to the ABC.

By chance my next client, also needed help.  She lives down an isolated valley road and up a steep narrow and twisty driveway.  It is too narrow to back down so you have to back into a little area to turn around and drive out.  When I arrived my elderly lady client did not  appear to be in so, as instructed, I left the meal in her refrigerator.  As I left I heard a noise from the back of the house and went to check.  The house had been build in a cutting on the hillside and backed onto a vertical cliff face just behind it.  I heard a banging from the narrow passageway between the house and cliff and called out.  My client came to meet me and after rescuing the meal from the fridge, it was still piping hot, went to see what was going on behind the house.

This time of year is bush fire season and the house was built on a heavily wooded hillside. When she and her late husband build the house he installed some large water tanks on the cliff above the house and in the event of a fire water could be run over the roof of the house and specially designed gutters would minimise the likelihood of it burning down.  Now the house has not been properly prepared for bush fires and the gutters were filled with dead leaves.  My clients son had phoned her to check that she could switch on the water in the event of a fire.  She is old, frail and needs assistance around the house.  She couldn't move the lever to switch the water on so it was Super Brian to the rescue. Well actually after some effort I was a able to shift the lever to let the water run onto the roof.  With the aid of some WD40 from her garage I was able to make it free enough for her to operate.  The day was a high bush fire risk day and as I drove off I worried about her living alone with her cat in a large house without adequate bush fire precautions.  All I could to was to put in a report and Social Services will have somebody clean the roof and around the house.

Last Thursday I went on my longest bicycle ride in over thirteen years and covered over seventy five kilometres.  The route is available at:

http://www.bikemap.net/route/1275030#lat=-26.48532&lng=153.09586&zoom=11&type=0

You can trace to route from the map by moving your cursor over the profile display which shows the position on the route as a little bicycle.  I took the ride as a normal day ride.   I stopped of at Yandina for a coffee and a cake.  I rode across to Coolum for an early lunch and rode back up the coast via Noosa to Tewantin.  It was  very windy on the ride down to Yandina and across to Coolum but I had a tale wind up the coast.  I was attacked by swooping magpies between North Arm and Yandina but if you just look ahead they attack from behind and just bask the helmet.  They can be dangerous and on the same day a little boy had his eye attacked and may lose the sight in that eye.

The ride was great and probably as hard as any on my tour next month.

Gettin Fit

The title says it all.  The last few weeks have mainly been concerned with restoring my cycling fitness.  It is just over four weeks until I go on my Bicycle SA tour and I have been increasing my ride distances with the aim in covering about 70Km in under five hours including refreshment stops.  This is what an average day on tour would be like.

To this end I devised a loop around Tewantin which I rode last week.   Starting from my house I rode up the main road to Cooroy then headed north to Pomona at 20Km where I stopped for coffee and a cake.  Next I headed east towards Boreen Point before heading south back to Tewantin.  The ride had a couple of big hills and is never really flat.  When I got home I had covered 55Km, my longest ride since my accident in 2000.  I was reasonably fresh at the finish so decided to extend the ride a little and repeat it again this week which I did yesterday.

I took the Gydnier Drive instead of the main road and joined the Cooroy at the top.  This added a couple of Km and also removed the dangerous section of road as it climbed the hill around Mount Timbeerwah.  This has a passing lane but the slow lane has no shoulder for a cyclist.  As the slow vehicles are mainly trucks who don't give any clearance for cyclists it is a hairy couple of Km.  I followed the same route as before except that I cycled into Boreen Point and sat by the lake while feeding my face with bananas before riding home,

The route is shown below:

The map has been produced using http://www.geocontext.org/publ/2010/04/profiler/en/ 

This also produced a ride profile:

 

 As you can see the ride starts with a steady climb from about 10m to 140m over the first 4Km as it rises over the first step up in to the hinterland and is never really flat for the whole ride.  Yesterday was also very windy.  I stopped in Pomona at about 25km ( the big dip in the profile) and had a coffee stop before a tough little climb followed by a terrific downhill back down the range to Boreen Point at about 44Km and my bananas.  From there it was a bumpy ride into the wind back home and just over 65Km by my bike computer which tallys  well with the profile distance.

I took it easy on the ride but still made it home in under five hours so I am on target.  I hope to to the same ride each week until my holiday in about four weeks.  This coupled with my club and shopping rides should mean that I will be able to cope with my holiday.

Apart from this I have been busy at MOW and my computer club.  I appear to have regained my faculties and have had no little dizzy spells so life has returned to near normal.

Louis visited the Vets today and is doing well.  He will be fit enough to go into kennels when I am away.

I have booked my airfares to Adelaide and am assembling my camping gear as I really believe that I will make it!