I've been a bit quiet on here because the last week or so has been mighty busy, even by my standards. And not just busy, but new and unfamiliar kinds of busy.
Mrs LDR's border collie cross kelpie Biscuit gave birth to 8 puppies (biscottinis? crumbs?) last Tuesday night. I grew up dairying and was an accomplished bovine midwife before I started high school, but when the critters are this small and numerous it's a very different situation. Happily there was very little required of me, as Biscuit sailed through the delivery and hasn't put a foot wrong since. The chirping jellybeans have about doubled in size in their first week, and young Miss Winter is well and truly smitten.
After one of the hubs on my trailer went on a solo adventure a few months ago, ruining the axle, I bought a second hand axle with hubs and wheels. It turned out to be only just long enough to fit my own wheels (one of which has a frustrating slow leak), and substantially too short to fit the newly acquired wheels, which don't leak. Now that I have a need to use the trailer at least once a week I didn't want to get the air compressor out every time, so salvaged a 20cm longer axle off an old Jim's Mowing trailer.
(Workplace health and safety at an all time high there, I did at least make a point of not getting anywhere underneath it)
4 inches each side should have been bang on, but as the new wheels and tyres are about double the width of the old ones, it meant they stuck out well past the guards. After swearing a little, I popped off to Bunnings and bought a roll of new wheel guard extension
All the bending and lifting to do the axle swap had my back a bit annoyed with me, so my hoped for 100km the next day became 72km, but with lovely weather and views.
The return of cooler foggy mornings kept me off the bike on a couple of days.
With the kids on school holidays, after a morning hit on the Cooroy training loop I took us up to Tin Can Bay for lunchtime fish and chips,
then to Searey's Creek near Rainbow Beach,
and finally burning off the byproduct of the continued clearing work around the old chook shed at home.