May 9th

May 9, 2023

Bade

The temperature is very comfortable - maybe 22°C - but it'll be back up in the thirties before very long and too hot to ride. A dark blue merino wool top gets dug out of a storage box before I head out the door, as this weather is OK for such a garment. It's usually too humid here for me wear it and the last time must be over a year ago, and that was while over in the UK.

It's gone ten as I ride towards Bade and a novel is in my saddlebag, and my camera and tripod have come along for the ride, too. With me having a class to teach later, my distance today is not too great, and the couple of beers with Ralph last night have given me a very slight hangover.

The busy 114 last for five minutes or so, then I get to a junction and make a left and soon veer right down a narrow lane that takes me into quiet countryside. The tricycle that I snapped a while ago has been wheeled off the side of the road and now stands next to a paddy. It looks nice silhouetted against the bright green rice, so it makes my first snap.

The old rusty trike has been moved slightly

As I'm standing there, it occurs to me to take one of myself riding past, so my bike gets leant against a concrete post and I set up my tripod and turn the camera's control to timer. As I do, there's a noise - my bike has fallen over and the contents of my barbag have been tossed on the ground. What's most annoying is my camera bag has slid down into an irrigation channel that's flowing with water and is now wet. Thankfully the water looks relatively clean and the inside of the bag is still dry.

I persevere and take a few shots of myself cycling by, with the hefty trike in the foreground, but the photos don't look right - there's too much background noise.

My new bottle from IKEA and a used carbon cage (left) that I got from a charity shop last week

The flat lane takes me past smallholdings and paddies. A couple of fields have sunflowers growing in them and there are more rows of long polytunnels and soon there's a river flowing on my right, behind a low, concrete wall.

The river is quite swollen, what with the rain that's fallen recently, and I pause at a three-foot wier where one or two birds are standing like carved statues, presumably waiting for fish to drop down. The water is cascading at a decent rate and it seems like a good photo opportunity.

Usually these birds fly off whenever I halt, but one stays put and I play around with the f-stop and take some snaps with it at 11 so as to have a longer exposure, making the water look milky, but the couple of photos taken with a faster shutter speed look better as they nicely capture the globules of water.

The back lane brings me to a junction with the main road to Bade, where I usually go right, but today I veer left and ride on for a minute or two, then turn right. This is a lane that's much quieter, but one I've only cycled along once before and this morning I had to check Google Maps to refresh my memory about the winding route.

It's actually pretty straightforward and is the way I should always ride, as there's little traffic. The lane initially serves a few small industrial units, then some remote residential units before winding past fields before reaching the market area of Bade.

The traditional market is busy and various wayward scooters mean I ride cautiously for a couple of blocks to get to the side street harbouring Louisa Coffee. There's only me here at the moment and it feels so warm inside that it makes me wonder if they have heating on. A bagel soon hits the spot and reading the novel takes up 20-odd minutes before I decide to pop to a nearby charity shop.

Last week I bought a slightly used carbon fibre bottle cage for just US$2 from a charity shop close to home. It got fitted to my bike just this morning. This shop in Bade is much smaller and it's nearly all clothing. There's nothing that appeals. It's time to head home.

My arms warmers are off as I pedal back the way I came. There's not much that I missed on the way to Bade, but the back of a builder's small truck catches my eye, with a row of hardly used trowels wedged behind the cab.

Later I play around taking a self-timed photo, but it doesn't look great and I settle of photographing a large plastic teddy that's been repurposed as a scarecrow between rice fields. Maybe it's effective; maybe not. Who knows.

Once I've cycled back past the farmland and polytunnels and hit the 114, I opt to take a left soon after and ride along some narrow back lanes to get home.

If the weather stays decent, then maybe Ralph and I will go for a spin later this week.

Today's ride: 24 km (15 miles)
Total: 2,846 km (1,767 miles)

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