How NOT to have a family bike ride!

1. Wake up early and see that it's a beautiful day.
2. Suggest a bike ride in Salcey Forest.
3. Pack a few snacks and drinks and load the bikes up on the back of the car with the tricky-to-fit bike rack which takes three attempts to get right.
4. Realise that we've forgotten to put the dog cage in the back. Curses.
5. Remove bikes from rack and rack from car.
6. Insert cage, with dog.
7. Load up rack and the bikes up on the back of the car again with the tricky-to-fit bike rack which takes only two attempts to get right this time.
8. Drive to Salcey, via no fewer than three diversions, because every village between here and there is having their summer fete / fair / produce sale and all the roads are blocked.
9. Arrive...yay.
10. Unload bikes and realise that mine has a very large thorn embedded in the front tyre.
11. Remove thorn and listen to the hisssssssssssssssssss as the tyre deflates in a most alarming fashion.
12. Optimistically pump tyre up. Listen to the hisssssssssssssssss as it deflates in under a minute.
13. Curse, cuss, swear, and grumble then decide to go for a walk instead.
14. Extricate dog from car and curse as he does the happy dance, entwining himself around all our legs and the bikes so that we resemble some weird giant cats-cradle creation.
15. Charge H with walking dog around the car park while we reload the bikes.
16. Load bikes back on to the car in a disagreeable fashion.
17. Cue man walking by who tells us, in a friendly manner, that if we leave the bikes on the car then there's a very good chance that said bikes will be gone when we get back.
18. Um and ahhhh and decide to just drive home via a branch of Halfords and buy puncture repair kit.
19. Listen to dog protesting loudly all the way home that THIS WALK WAS TOO SHORT BY APPROXIMATELY 1 HOUR AND 55 MINUTES.


Have lunch, repair tyre then take a ride round the local lake instead.

Took two pictures. One of a man on a cool Italian moped. I messed that one up and it was a really cool moped so I'm exceptionally grumpy about that. And this one, of H hanging over the edge of a bridge, peering down at the fish. Please don't tell me it looks like he's throwing up because a) I KNOW it does and b) I don't care because I wanted to vent about today and this was the only image I had to do it with.

...and breathe.

Off to pour a nice large glass of wine.