Spring

My first spring in Blandberra.....so far so good. Only one crippling sinus headache and minor sneezing attacks, lets hope November is this good.Yesterday I hooked up the tandem bike for the girl onto the back of my husbands bike (my bike is temporarily out of action) and we rode to the video shop for our Wednesday movie exchange. About 6km round trip, not too bad. The girl is getting the hang of pedalling forwards, although she stills prefers to pedal backwards as she can go fast with no effort. But, to her credit, she did contribute to our momentum several times and was a small amount of help on the hills. The bad part is that I found myself yelling "pedal!!" when she was slacking and eventually realised I sounded just like my ex when we put in one of our very few attempts to share a pastime. I was very into cycling at that point in my life so he went and bought a bike. Now when I say "into cycling" I mean I rode my bike often, used it to commute, I didn't do it recreationally very often. So I wasn't into going as fast as I could or beating anybody, I just cruised. I wasn't interested in arriving at my destination puffing and sweaty and glowing red. My philosophy on hills was that down hill coasting was reward/recovery from the hard slog up the hill. My ex's philosophy was that going down hills is an opportunity to build up more speed. Our inaugural bike ride consisted of him racing ahead then doubling back to yell at me to pedal faster. When he found me coasting down a hill he was furious and screamed "pedal!!" We didn't ride together much after that. I apologised to the girl and she is keen to go again; I will endeavour to improve my behaviour.
Riding along we encountered several clouds of white fluffy stuff floating about, as if some tree or plant had suddenly dumped all of its seeds at once. No doubt it was this stuff that later caused my headache. It is actually very pretty here at the moment, the trees are blooming and sprouting new leaves, many flowers are appearing in gardens and on nature strips, the weather has been fine and sunny but not too warm. Quite lovely really, I may even become brave enough to replant my veggie patch. I am starting to appreciate more about this city; I can understand why some people enjoy living here. As long as you don't want decent live music, restaurants that are good AND cheap or any sort of alternative theatre or cinema then this place is great. I'm still keen to get back to the big city and I promise I will never take being spoilt for choice for granted again.