Riding through the pain

  I wasn't sure if I was going to manage a ride out today, you see for some strange reason I have been getting the most excruciating phantom pain. Usually I can deal with it. Yeah it makes me tetchy,grumpy, short tempered and snappy at times, however it always seems to pass in a few hours and I'm back to my usual self. Well not today, or should that be yesterday as I'm writing my blog at 01:25 in the morning as yes I still have dam phantom pain. The bloody thing just won't go away.

Anyhoo seeing as I was in pain I thought to myself this morning "I may as well go out on my bike and be in pain,rather than sit in all day grasping my stump, doing nowt and still be in pain"

So gathered all my gear, got the new bike out and headed for local trails. It was a bit colder than I thought this morning, "good job I brought that extra top" I thought. And so I headed down towards Beamish. As I approached the farm I got my eyes on a sign and thought I'd take a picture. It made me think of my friend Bruce who lives up in North Berwick and has been having problems of late with people bothering him at stupid o'clock when he has to be up early in the morning for his job. So this ones for you Bruce hope your feeling a lot less stressed mate and folk are giving you a bit of privacy.

 

Opposite Beamish Hall I popped my extra Jersey on, as like I say it was a touch chilly. Dam weather blokie I'm sure he said it was going to be warm in the morning.

Aww crap there goes another wave of pain, a quick pic of my bike and I was off again.

Just a quick pic and time for a banana before heading off

I love the colour of my rims

Good job it was quiet as anyone seeing me would think I had Tourette's  syndrome. I was swearing and twitching along to the electric shocks, waves of pain, crushed foot and pins and needles. I'm sure someone has a VooDoo effigy of me and takes great pleasure in sticking pins in it...Ahhh this sucks there goes another one stuck in...

And so to a little bit of GoPro footage, to be honest I wasn't in the mood, so not really all that impressed with the stuff I got.




Never mind, at least I got out, in fact I didn't realise the time, Ern reckons I was out around 9 hours lol.

At the bottom of the trail where I came out opposite a beautiful meadow I decided to crack open a bar of chocolate (one Ern had unsuccessfully tried hiding). It was delicious Mmmmm I love chocolate.

Mmmmm Bubbles

Looking out over a gorgeous meadow

Pedalling up hill out the saddle is hard work

Phantom pain still there, deep breaths Glenn

All in all I had a canny day. I met a very nice chap called Matthew on my ride towards home, it was nice to share a bit of craic with him as we rode along together. I love being out as you meet so many people, most of whom are real friendly.



As I came out at the end of Tanfield railway I bumped into an old friend, Davey who I hadn't seen for ages, it was nice to hear how he was getting on and chat about things past and present. After leaving Davey I headed for the C2C and this took me to Stanley and home.

Once at home I noticed one of my cables on my bike had been rubbing so my dad and i got to work on reorganising my cables and brake lines. My new NS has internal cable routing. We sorted the gear cable, easy enough, mind you the gears where a sod to get setup and we will have a go at the brakes another day. I will have to disconnect the hose and this means having to bleed the brakes.

Whilst we were on with my bike some of the local kids came to our gate, to be honest they are never away as my dad is like the local Mr Fix It for them, pumping up tyres,adjusting gears, fixing chains etc. We sorted one little laddies bike then as my dad got on with my bike I sorted the loose front end of another young lads bike. Just a case of slackening the stem and tightening the headset bolt, then re tightening everything up.

Then it was a lovely shower and something to eat and try and deal with this phantom pain which still hasn't buggered off.

Ok bed time me thinks it's now 02:34 on Sunday morning, going to try and think happy thoughts and try and get some much needed sleep...