New bike

Finished building up my new bike on Saturday morning and went out for a spin with Peter and Waggers to test it and see if anything needed tweaking. We decided to go up to Howth and all the way up the hill. Then to turn around and head down to Greg's house for coffee. It was all going well until we turned to head up the hill. I had to stop and fix the gears, I couldn't shift into the large cog on the front. After 5 minutes or so, I figured out it was because the cranks were slipping apart. Got them fixed and then headed off. Had to push it a bit to try and catch Peter who had gone on ahead.

Then disaster struck. I ended up on my head with the bike skidding down the road. Waggers was right behind me and he came off too after running over my back wheel. I was pretty shook up and it took another couple of minutes before I could go on. Made it to the top of the hill with no more problems. On the way down I took it easy for the first section and then decided to push it a bit for the last part. It felt good to be able to cut loose, hopefully I can do it properly next time without falling off!

We headed over to Greg's for coffee and stayed to watch the Ireland rugby match before going back to Antioch. I brought Peter back to his house and helped him to fix up his kitchen. Some more people came over and we watched videos for a bit before I headed out to the van to go to sleep. And to top off the day, I had been clamped! I had one wheel on the double yellow lines because I couldn't go back any further. Gits!!!

It turned out that if I had driven into the spot, instead of reversing in, I would have been fine even though the van would have been in the exact same position!