Monday 28 November 2011

Lovely Autumn

If this is global warming, bring it on. I’m being flippant, of course, but after years of being bombarded with statistics but little evidence, we’ve finally had the warmest autumn ever. End of November and we still haven’t had a frost here in London; the skies have been blue and sunny and the temperature still manages to get into the mid-teens (centigrade) every day. Perfect biking weather or it would have been for me if I hadn’t already sent the Triumph off to deepest Wales for the engine modifications I mentioned in the last post. The garage has also suggested a sixth-gear modification, which evidently is quite easy on the Thunderbird, “just slip a sixth gear cog in, change the selector fork and it’s done” said Sandy, so I’m going for it. He’s also going to re-paint my mudguards; I was going to buy some shortened fibreglass ones and get them painted, but they probably wouldn’t have matched the tank......you can see where this is going, can’t you? Might as well get the front forks stripped and re-polished as they were looking a bit weathered, and I suppose I may as well get the seat recovered with some extra padding......




So I’ve found myself enjoying the warmest autumn ever without a bike. Over in Richmond Park, the deer are pretty confused by it all. Their mating season is usually September to mid-October, but the warm weather has encouraged them to keep going; the stags have pretty much shagged themselves to a standstill, they’re to be seen during the daytime lying around with their antlers resting on the ground, looking absolutely knackered. You can walk up close to them without their normal reaction of jumping up and running away; they just sort of look you in the eye, sigh and put their heads back down to sleep. Amazing! Plus we’ve also still got leaves on the trees, so we’re treated to some fine autumn colours instead of the usual bare-branched views of November. Can’t wait to see what Spring will be like, especially as the bike should be done by end of January – which is probably when Spring will start.

5 comments:

  1. Having such beautiful days, and not being able to ride sounds terrible. Glad, that you seem to enjoy the extended season nevertheless.

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  2. Great pictures. The colors are so vivid. Most of our trees have finally lost their leaves after hanging on longer than normal.

    Not so much global warming as climate change. I think they made a mistake calling it global warming at the outset.

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  3. SonjaM - I'm lucky that I managed to ride through most of this year, anyway, the anticipation of getting the bike back with MORE POWER keeps me going.

    Trobairitz - I agree with you, when they called it global warming and we then had 2 terrible winters in a row they had change the name to climate change! I'm not sure I go along with it anyway; after doing an environmental course I realised there's so many different statistics no-one can say what's really happening. As long as Southern England ends up with a Meditteranean climate, I don't care what they call it!

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  4. God! I wish I was a stag..........becoming 'shagged to a standstill' would be beyond my financial limits these days!

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  5. Are you doing Spring soon.....please?

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