It’s a great triumph when you are first to take an FTT zone here in Midlothian, especially one located withing easy cycling range of Penicuik. The zone in question is called LindsayRose and appeared at 19:33 yesterday evening in the sleepy village of Rosewell and I was mightily surprised to see it still there, and still untaken, when I checked for new zones while eating breakfast this morning. Always pleasing to get one before the local rival turfers from the wild west. And it was one of my own zone suggestions which makes the FTT take all the better.
I’ve been off turfing these past few days with a bad head cold, or more accurately, serious man flu!. Not much fun turfing when your eyes are constantly streaming and vile liquid snot is dripping from your aching itchy nose. However, felt much better today, so cycled up to Rosewell for that FTT zone. And what I did discover today was a great way to clear clogged sinuses. Simply ride your bike in cool weather and blow your node, or rather nose. What comes out can only be described looking akin to Evo-Stik adhesive! Quite satisfying actually but makes sure no-one is nearby.
Thought up another idea for some turf medals today. I’m always hoping that there will be a few additional zones added to the railway path between Rosewell and Bonnyrigg, ideally ending up with 10 zones within about 2.00km, about the perfect distance for some good Eager Ferret times. However, why stop at the Eager Ferret, that’s 10 zones in under 10 minutes. Why not continue?
My thoughts were to have additional eager medals for each minute under 10 minutes, all the way down to 5 minutes, which seems to be a reasonable stopping point, though the fastest Eager Ferret is from turfer JimmyAIK94 with a time of 4:15 (which almost seems impossible over 2.82 km), so perhaps 4-minutes might be worthy target as well. So, how about this:
- 10 zones under 9 minutes, Eager Rabbit
- 10 zones under 8 minutes, Eager Hare
- 10 zones under 7 minutes, Eager Rat
- 10 zones under 6 minutes, Eager Greyhound
- 10 zones under 5 minutes, Eager Cheetah
- 10 zones under 4 minutes, Eager Tortoise
Well, you never know, it might happen on day. Fingers crossed.
Well, the beast has finally arrived. One rather splendid Trek Farley 9.6 is now in my hands and ready to ride. Handlebar grips have been replaced and the pointless (to me anyway) dropper seat post has also been removed and swapped for a standard seat post. One other important task was to add puncture sealant to the inner tubes. This was achieved by using a special syringe to inject the sealant through the valve stem, once the core had been removed.
As I never trust anyone to do tasks properly, especially with my bikes, I gave the Farley the once over and was amazed to find the top two handlebar clamp bolts had not been tightened and the bottle cage bolts were also loose. So, come on Trek Bicycle Edinburgh, up your game a little. Okay, bottle cage bolts are hardly going to result in anything serious occurring but handlebar clamp bolts are a different matter. Not impressed!
I’ve also ordered the final item of video equipment I was after, the Canon Legria HF G70 camcorder which should be here tomorrow along with the essential spare battery and media cards. So, watch out for fat biking turf videos from Aberlady Bay and along the East Lothian coast to North Berwick, as well as trips into the Lammermuir Hills for zones on Priestlaw Hill, Meikle Says Law and Lammerlaw. Back soon.
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