Full Metal Wheelbarrow

 Rob's trike had a puncture on the way home from work tonight.

"So what?" I hear you cry.

It was in the back of the van at the time....

Probably a good thing the new van has a bulkhead between the cab and the back or I might have been considerably more startled than I was!

Rob set off to visit his parents this morning and I settled in to poddle about a bit while he was gone.

About eleven a.m. the phone rings - it’s Rob, who’s arrived at his cafe stop en route and as he pulled in his rear derailleur’s failed. Brilliant.

Ordinarily, I’d have just found out where he was, programmed the satnav and set off to fetch him. But this week, the van was, for reasons that don’t need exploring at this juncture, full of furniture we’re selling on Ebay. So Rob says, not to worry, he’ll call the people at ETA with whom we have a vehicle recovery policy. They’ve fetched him home before,, so it shouldn’t be a problem.

Except now, apparently, without bothering to tell us about it, they’ve altered the terms of the cycle recovery policy so that they’ll only transport him 25 miles. Since he’s currently 37 miles from his parents’ house and 50 miles from home, this is about as much use as a chocolate teapot.

So I had to unload the van, included single-handedly moving a sodding three-seater sofa into the garage and go and fetch him myself. Thanks a bloody bundle ETA.

Not, I hasten to add, that I mind fetching him, but why keep a dog and bark yourself?

I think we’ll be looking for a new recovery provider PDQ…..

Today I has mostly been driving.

One of our customers wanted an electric assist doobrie fitted to her trike and we have been organising this for her, culminating in today, when I picked her trike up from her house, drove it to York, where the bike shop is, waited for the fitting to be done and then drove it back to her house and then went home.

All of which took considerably longer than I'd expected, including the complete closure of one of the roads I was trying to come back on, so poor Rob had to stay an extra hour at work and get a lift home with a colleague and even then he was home before I was....

Did he sulk?

He did not.

Not only did he make tea, he also ordered an Indian takeaway so i wouldn't have to cook when I got back. Hero points earned :)

So on Friday I twoodled off at half past six in the morning to collect Rob in the Cornish town of Bude. I managed not to get lost or any similar silliness and at twelve he called me and I found somewhere safe to pull over and call him back and not long thereafter we were reunited in the car park near the RNLI shop in Bude. Hurray!

( Life's a beach :) )

Tonight Rob has reached Veryan, which is Not Quite As Far As Truro :)

Contrary to the weather forecasts we had last week, he says today has been foggy and then windy. Bah.

This week was Rob's second leg of his tour around the coast.

The plan was that we would drive down to Weymouth (where he finished last time), spend the afternoon there, staying at a B&B, then he would set off on his ride on Sunday. This then gave me the opportunity to drive over to visit my mother, who lives about an hour's drive from Weymouth, stay there overnight and drive home today (with a stop at bath on the way to see the Roman Baths) and we'd decide on a place for me to collect Rob next weekend.

The first part of this plan went admirably - if you're ever in need of a B&B in Weymouth (and can cope with stairs) I can heartily recommend The Pink House, which has to be one of the nicest B&Bs I've ever been pleased to stay in.

We spent a pleasant afternoon at the Sea Life Adventure Park (pictures will bombard you later :)), watching the otters getting fed and suchlike and had a very nice dinner at Moby Dick's.

Sunday also went to plan, and Rob called me in the early evening to tell me he'd done 86 hilly miles and reached his planned camp site at Starcross, a short distance from Dawlish.

This morning though, I was just about to pop my bag in the van and set off home when he called again. Some of you may remember the incident in the Netherlands when one of his steering handles detached itself from the main body of the machine and hi-jinks ensued. A short distance from the campsite, he hit a comparatively insignificant bump and the same thing happened to the other one….

So instead of a trundle off to see the Roman Baths, it was a scoot down to the seaside again to collect Rob and the stricken Kate and drive all three of us home. Bah, bother and drat.

Still, at least I was within call range when it happened and it didn't happen on one of the evil hills of the previous day.

Rob generally goes out for a long ride on Sundays and today he set off on his usual circuit, which generally gets him home at about half-past three.

At about one o'clock I got a phone call - twas he, asking to be picked up. Further conversation revealed that he had been coming round a bend on a downhill, the left brake had ceased to work and there had been a loud bang, which he took to be a tyre blowing out. He was proven wrong about this shortly thereafter when the left side of the fairing hit the floor. When he came to a stop, he found, somewhat to his surprise and consternation, that the left wheel was nowhere to be seen….

Not only was there no sign of the wheel, there was no mobile signal either, so the poor lad dragged the stricken trike onto the grass verge, collected up his valuables, changed into the non-cycling shoes he carries for his cafe stop and proceeded to trek about three miles to the cafe at the Manifold Visitor Centre where the nice lady let him call me to come and rescue him.

So off I trundled in the van, and managed to find him at about ten past two, despite the satnav deciding the best route involved a 13% downhill on a singletrack road…. Having collected Rob, now refuelled by tea and sausage sarnies, we then set off to retrieve Kate the trike and hunt for the missing wheel. Kate we found easily enough and got her stowed in the back. The wheel was far less obvious than you'd expect a wheel to be though. In fact we'd pretty much given up and were going back to the van to move her when I spotted something near the fence, and Kate and her wheel were reunited once more. Except not, because the wheel bolt was nowhere in evidence and she'll need a new one of those before the wheel can go back on properly. But at least it's not a case of buying a new wheel, which would have been a tad more expensive.

On the plus side, Rob wasn't hurt and the trike seems basically intact. I just have to put up with him singing "Two wheels on my wagon.." for the foreseeable future….

Repairs to Rob's trike turned out to be less complex and time-consuming than he'd feared - epoxy, applied on Boxing Day afternoon did most of the job and just needed to be left to dry and then sanded down and the lid refitted. I'm glad he didn't need to use the filler after all, as not only is it a fiddly and time-consuming job, the wretched stuff reeks horribly.

Tomorrow is looking like ridiculous weather again, so he's planning on taking it out for a spin on Sunday.

Rob managed to flip his trike today....He wasn't hurt apart from a bit of achiness afterward, but the "lid" of the fairing is cracked and he lost a mirror and the camera mount (fortunately the camera itself was OK).

It happened when he went to turn on his lights and caught the velcro sleeve closure of his waterproof jacket on the steering bar. Fortunately he went left onto soft mud rather than right into the path of the oncoming car. I was pleased to hear that the car's occupants stopped and checked that he was OK, too - there are some decent people around, which is nice.

I took him back out in the van later to look for the mirror, but no luck.

I knew riding in the rain had its hazards, but this wasn't one I'd anticipated.

Yesterday the lovely people from Indigo Furniture brought us a new "coffee table" which is actually to put the telly on :-

( Pictures of furniture )

Today Rob went out for a ride. On the way back he heard a noise as if the back tyre had punctured and when he stopped to investigate, found his camera case wrapped round the back wheel and the camera that lives in it (a small Canon) nowhere to be found. Since the gears had been acting up for several miles prior to this he had no real idea where the camera had departed the vehicle, so there wasn't much point in going to look for it, alas. Still, at least it wasn't his phone, which was not only much newer, but several times more expensive.