Bonnie and Clyde

This pic is from a farm in south-eastern Australia where my much envied in laws live.

Their stock is occasionally troubled by foxes. (Yes, there are foxes in Australia - they were imported for hunting by early European settlers. Hardly surprisingly they bred up and ran riot. Both settlers and foxes that is).

The dog is a Maremma, which is a working dog with an interesting trait. They bond to whatever they're bought up with, often sheep in their native Italy, and are left outside to live with that adopted family. Usually quite gentle, they are big and brave, and will fight anything that threatens their "siblings". Most predators know better than to try.

In a reverse adoption - this dog, Bonnie, was adopted by a duck. As far as I know the duck has no name - but I would suggest Clyde is appropriate.

Sadly most of Clyde's flock had fallen victim to foxes - however she was smart enough to latch on to Bonnie - now sleeping beside the big dog at night. Occasionally she tests the relationship by plucking out bits of Maremma fur for her nest - so, not completely smart it seems.

Winter

The past 2 months' Saturday morning mountain bike rides have been very autumnal. Clear skies, crispy cold to start and then warming as the hours pass.

This morning was the first proper winter ride - grey, relentlessly cold and loads of mud. Bursts of mud-traversing-horsepower pushed through summer softened bikes led to a large number of "mechanicals" including a major one after a fall (by luck rather than skill - this was not me).

For the cognoscenti a wrenched handlebar crushed the top of the fork steerer - this meant that the spacers had to be moved above the stem so that it was gripping lower down on what was left of round steerer tube. Getting the spacers off past the squished tube involved comedy application of nature's hammer - being a large lump of wood.

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The derailleur hidden in the mud above is the last bit of XT equipment on my bike. It knows that there is an XTR replacement sitting waiting for it to fail - because of this it keeps on working - happily shuffling the chain side to side under the most dire of circumstances.

The boots, by the way, are Specialized Defrosters. Warm and dry - I recommend them.

OGC - OMG

Last year the Office of Governemnt Commerce launched their new £14,000 logo. Happily no-one thought of what happened to the logo when it was turned 90 degrees clockwise as might easily happen when printed on a pen or a mousemat. Most excellent.

Order from chaos.

SpecialBike is a company that sells restored bikes. They seem to dredge up discarded bikes from dumps, canals, carboot sales and completely rebuild them into plain, elegant and rather lovely new ones.

If you want a rubbish bike to ride to the pub once or twice and then leave outside to rust then get a £100 bike from Halfords or the like. Priced somewhere between this and a more expensive proper bikeshop bike you may find a Special Bike.

Here are some.

Saburo Sakai

Saburo Sakai was an extraordinary man.

Research into his life is left as an exercise for the reader. If you can get hold of his biography "Samurai!" you may find it moving. While the underlying activity of young men fighting to terrifying deaths in aeroplanes is awful, his bravery and talent make for a fine story.

Very funny if true ...

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=665847

Bella Donna

This Ducati Pantah is one of my motorbikes from the 1980s. A far faster bike than I was a rider, quite pretty, a fantastic noise. By now it will either be rusting somewhere in a dump, or someone will have rescued it and it will sit glittering and pristine in a nice dry garage. The latter we hope.

For the terminally sad - here is what a Pantah sounds like. A purposeful growl I think.