Engel

There's nothing like a good dose of sunshine and Rammstein to get your blood boiling. I picked up Sehnsucht for a mere seven quid today. Yeah. And I've now got the necessary headphones. The neighbours will never know!


The Neon Genesis Evangelion version of Engel/YouTube. Note: Asuka (red haired girl) is three-quarters Deutsch. She is fighting an Angel in this clip, and the song is therefore appropriate.

The VC Walcot ride was OK, if a little tardy. The good thing about it was that it was well organised, sociable, and we went south east - a bit of a first for me. And we even got a "Hi boys" from a coupla girls as we headed out of town. Now that's definitely a first.

But when we climbed Kingsdown more than three minutes slower than I did it last week (in the dark and rain too) and had an average of approximately 23 km/h after two hours and were still dropping people, I realised that I may need a slightly faster bunch. I was chatting to one guy when we were going easy and we compared heart rates: his was 125 and mine was 80.

The only chance to open up the throttle was at the end when everyone started attacking on the last hill into Bath up Midford Rd. It split to bits, and I dropped back and made sure everyone was OK, then had a go in the big ring. I estimated 420W for four minutes and it felt very good - that's about my best estimated power on the Trap Op, and it's bloody winter. Then there's a really nice descent into Bath down the Wells road. I'll get a pic of the view on of these days. Next week, I'll probably try the Chippenham cemetery ride, or Mat Brett's small group.

BBC Wildlife docos are excellent. I watched one called Trek and it was not about the bike. It was about Wildebeest migrating across Africa and getting eaten by crocs, lions, hyenas, cheetahs, and leopards. The crocs seemed to have the best hit/miss ratio. But the lions were amazingly cool - when a hyena tried to steal their food, one of the males exerted his authoritaah. Net result: a negative Hyena.

I learned an interesting fact, too. A baby wildebeest calf learns to walk in FOUR MINUTES. Because then it has to run away from a hyena. This is why you should keep fit over winter.