“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking.”

 

Another month has passed and it would seem Spring is here with its wild weather – hot weeks, cold weeks, wet weeks and everything in-between weeks.

 

I decided mid-month to bring my surgery forward – I had wanted to complete a couple of 200k rides but the pain was increasing and on a lot lower mileage rides and I had the epiphany that I really didn’t need to suffer through the training and indeed the riding. This combined with the knowledge that I would be required to have almost three months off the bike which would place pressure on my summer tours and the Belgian international tour – it suddenly become a no-brainer. In addition, I had a bunch of volunteers who can take my place for the flahute rides – thanks team! 🙂

 

So I dropped off the mega miles – no desire or point to train if I had nothing to train for and just started riding for fun, which was a nice counterpoint to the pain I go through with longer rides. A particular highlight was riding the Wharfedale midweek, perfect weather and condition and having the track to myself. I even managed to clear the track in both directions, which I was chuffed about. I was purposefully taking it easy and just having fun, super duper day.

 

I had to get my ass into gear to get the Park ready before I couldn’t walk, with lots of chainsawing, mowing and spraying around the place. For the first time in a few years, I have managed to spray all the tracks before summer, it will mean a bit of spot-spraying in December, but we should be able to start in front of spring growth, which in turn will mean we will start extending the trail network in 2019! It’s all starting to look good. Actual trail building occurred as well and I will get to the rest of the wee tweaks and repairs before the end of the year. We have been doing a bit of head scratching on Squeeze on In and should be able to resurrect it before February.

 

Candy and I also did some gardening, vegetable planting and landscaping around the house itself, which was quite rewarding.
Ccino is acting like a puppy again which is really good and is having super fun getting a ride in the trailer behind the quad bike whilst Maccy gets her workout running behind. This allows Ccino to save a bit of energy to beat up Maccy later in the day. Maccy has been introduced to full on swimming, which she enjoys but is very uncertain with it. Ccino just jumps in and swims around like an expert otter.

 

Another busy month of Flahute adventures, I managed to get my mileage goal for all of them except the Labyrinth, as I was feeling under the weather. Candy did great doing a number of tasters and great to see a mix of new and old riding companions. The weather mainly played ball, although it is something of a Flahute curse that we seem to have better weather than we should.

 

We are both counting down to the Belgium – the excitement is building, Candy is working hard on her London Marathon training and planning adventures in Belgium whilst I ride around the cobbles. Good times.

 

And now the irrelevant pictures >> https://photos.app.goo.gl/7ZKBaPU5h7WA3QQv5

 

Hey Hey We Are Not The Monkees
[Intro]
Here we come
Here we come

[Verse 1]
Crawling out of the mud
From chaos primeval to the barnyard sun
Dragging our bad selves from one end of time
With nothing to declare but some half written rhymes
We’re happy and dire, confused and depressed
The songs that we sing are the songs of the blessed
With flowers to pick
And blood on our hands
Who or what I’ll help you understand

[Bridge 1]
Hey hey we’re the Monkees
What?
Hey hey
Hey hey hey
(What? What’s going on?)
Hey hey hey Hey hey hey
We’re not the Monkees
Hey hey we’re the Monkees
We’re not the monkeys
(We don’t even like the monkeys)
Have I ever liked the Monkees?
Hey hey we’re the Monkees
Monkees monkeys-monkeys
Monkees monkey-monkey
Monkees monkey-monkey-monkey-monkey-monkey…
Monkees

A whomp bam baloo bop ballop bam bomp?
A whomp bam baloo bop ballop bam bomp?

[Bridge 2]
We’re justified and we’re ancient
And we like to roam the land
We’re justified and we’re ancient
I hope you understand
We don’t want to upset the apple cart
And we don’t want to cause any harm
But if you don’t like what we’re going to do
You better not stop us cause we’re coming through

We’re justified and we’re ancient
And we like to roam the land
We’re justified and we’re ancient
I hope you understand
We don’t want to upset the apple cart
And we don’t want to cause any harm
But if you don’t like what we’re going to do
You better not stop us cause we’re coming through

We’re justified and we’re ancient
And we like to roam the land
We’re justified and we’re ancient
I hope you understand
We don’t want to upset the apple cart
And we don’t want to cause any harm
But if you don’t like what we’re going to do
You better not stop us cause we’re coming through

We don’t want to upset the apple cart
And we don’t want to cause any harm
But if you don’t like what we’re going to do
You better not stop us cause we’re coming through

We’re justified and we’re ancient
And we like to roam the land
We’re justified and we’re ancient
I hope you understand
We don’t want to upset the apple cart
And we don’t want to cause any harm
But if you don’t like what we’re going to do
You better not stop us cause we’re coming through

Hey Hey We Are Not The Monkees