Imprisonment - Day 15

Imprisonment - Day fifteen
Sunday 5th April 2020
Cycling Statistics
Cars - 7
Motorbikes - 0
Bikes - 8
Dog walkers - 4
Walkers - 0
Runners - 2
Horses - 1
Horse walkers - 0
Molehills - 0
Trailer loads of wood - 1

I had a tough cycle ride this morning as my rear gear cable snapped after about three miles. I managed to struggle on and finish my route but on a very steep hill that I call 'Killer Hill' I had to get off and walk up as the bike would not move forward even with all my weight standing on the peddals. Its amazing the difference a few gears make.
I've done it. The greenhouse/wood store is stuffed to the gunwales. It's taken 16 trailer loads of wood to fill the store with me and my little friendly Makita chainsaw working relentlessly together for the last seven days.
Still it's done and after raking flat the huge pile of sawdust I can now move on to do other things. It was a nice change to repair Rachel's puncture. Rachel lives across the lane and I help her keep her bike on the road. This time I've filled the inner tube with Goop a liquid which hopefully will seal any punctures. With a bit of luck this'll be the last puncture repair I will have to do. I then turned my attention to my bikes and fixed the broken gear cable. Luckily I keep a good stock of spares so that I can keep the bikes on the road at all times. I could not find the puncture in the front tyre of my winter bike. It may have been a bit of dirt under the valve as I'd blown the tyres up as normal on the first of the month. This was when the leak occurred and the dirt may have been dislodged during my investigations. So I put it all back together and will check the pressure again tomorrow. I then cleaned both bikes especially my winter bike which gets filthy over the winter months as the lanes get so muddy. Ive found that the best way to clean my bikes is using the washing bottle on my air compressor and blowing a mixture of air and heating oil. This combination shifts the oily dirt and has the advantage of lubricating at the same time. My water jet washer would blast the oil out of the bearings leaving them open to attack by rust. With these jobs done I moved to the tractor mower and changed the oil topped up the level on the transaxle and greased the bearings in readiness to mow the lawns tomorrow.
So how have I found the second week in captivity? Actually no problem it's been fine. I've obviously been kept busy cutting up wood. A bit of a thankless task until I stood back and admired all the logs neatly stowed away. I've not missed going out at all as long as I can cycle early in the mornings I'll be fine. Its been a slog cutting the wood and I could have broken off and done something else but I just wanted to get this chore out of the way. The best thing about the last two weeks is that we have only had ten minutes of rain ☔.
Ros has been fine too. Instead of swimming she has walked a couple of miles a day and seems to enjoy it and is quite happy pottering about the house doing this and that.
So all in all we're surviving well.