34 - 30 Less than a month

It has all got very exciting this week. I received my Ride100 number  - 10900 - and my start time of 08.00 - I am off in the last 'wave', some 40 minutes after my training partners, the cycling equivalent of getting up after lunch. The most awkward issue of the Ride is how I get to the start at the Olympic Park. Closed roads, no parking, no trains, 10 mile ride...maybe have to bite the bullet and my lip and get a cab to somewhere nearby - if they take bikes.
But, that is a month away. Before that there is another ride with the guys tomorrow - a 7am start in Richmond Park and, next week, is the a sportive - my first - an 81-mile circuit south of Newbury. 

On this boiling day, I am indoors waiting for a delivery of a piece of shiny new kit. It is the same old same old - 'delivery sometime between 9 and 5', despite the human race managing to land someone on the moon. They had a specific time for touchdown at mission control, Houston - not 'sometime p.m.' Back in Victorian London there were up to twelve mail deliveries a day. I could order a new velocipede in the morning from the Penny Farthing and General Transportive Devices Suppliers and be out on the road cycling on it through horse poo by lunch.

Velocipede with racing twirly bit