I fall down now

Well the big day came today and I survived. The first of what I hope is several "loops" of the lake near where I live. The whole thing is about 41 miles with lots of hills of varying difficulty. Turns out only two of us were planning on doing the whole loop (wimps) but the other guy was obviously in a lot better shape than me. The good news (?) was he was recovering from knee surgery and needed to "take it easy". Excellent.


I'm quite happy to report that there were no major difficulties along the way. We made very good time (setting a personal best at 4 hours). The biggest problem came at the end when I had a small equipment problem. It seems this little monster, known as the front derailleur, was slightly out of alignment. It seems a small thing right? Well the function of a front derailleur is to move the chain on the front gears. because of the misalignment I couldn't get into my 5 lowest gears. Which are extremely valuable when climbing hills. And the steepest hills are on the last leg of the loop. I managed to negotiate the hills without too much difficulty but by the end my legs had had it. I wasn't quite sure I was going to make it up the last incline to the parking lot. But I did. All because the derailleur couldn't move another quarter inch. It's an easy fix that I wish I'd caught earlier. Sigh.

Today marked the debut of our visiting clergy from Wales. Fr. Noel Carter and his wife Wendy joined us for the first of four Sundays while our regular rectors, Fr. Eric and Mother Susan, are in Wales, then England then France. A long distance pulpit swap. Fr. Noel's sermon was quite good and they seem very nice. So we're working hard to make them feel at home. We hope Eric and Susan (and the girls) are having fun. But not too much fun.

One week to Senior High Conference. Am I ready?

I'll assume that's a rhetorical question.

Must sleep now.

Peace