yay I hope it had less trauma for you than it did for me!

So okay, there was nothing major, no death, injury or illness to me or mine but nevertheless, as regular readers will know, i've had quite a few smaller but still impactful happenings through the first month of 2023 that i could've done without. Anf the sequence ran right to the end of the month!

Lets catch up, its not all 'bad' news after all. Monday was always going to be a writing day, even if the weather was more suited to outdoor pursuits and so i cracked on with Trixie and indeed completed what i had intended to be the last part of the new tale (Patreon readers can see it now). The problem is, that whilst i have reached an end point it feels, well, a bit abrupt so i'm undecided whether to stick to plan A or go for plan B and write what could easily stretch to several thousand more words, its @ 20k at the moment.

A quick synopsis of the story, after the previous tale, Trix remains and seems to enjoy the experience. She and her sister decide to go to Germany for a Goth festival which of course has knock on effects but the plan is to do the festival then spend time in Berlin afterwards. As you might expect, there are 'adventures' along the way, the festival is now over, time to go home? The thing is, there are some 'consequences' for the pair as a result of some of the 'adventures', I never intended to detail the Berlin part of the trip but now i'm not so sure.

Here's how it currently ends;

The streets were silent as we headed back to our beds, well it was something past the witching hour so that was to be expected. We walked, stumbled along in silence, well apart from the clacking of my sisters heels, each of us lost to our own thoughts.
“its been good eh Trix.”
“yeah, you enjoyed it?”
“a lot more than I thought I would.”

“Jorge and Tina should be nearly home by now,” I mused as we waited for the lift.
“well we’ll be off to Berlin in,” my sister squinted to see the rime on her phone, “eight hours, yikes, we’d better set an alarm.”

What do you think? end it there, keep going or make it another seperate tale?

Tuesday then, the last day of January and i got myself ready to go for a shortish ride to end the month. The weather was bright and i duly set off towards North Somerset, i'd barely done a mile tho' before an attempted gear change threw the chain into the spokes and i came to an almost immediate halt! To cut the story a bit shorter, i ended up aborting the ride and walking back to base, a broken spoke wasn't so bad but non working gears was. I knew that i could sort the wheel, indeed after fetching some spokes, the wheel is now better than it was before, the gear shifter was another matter however and after some playing around i could still only make it work intermittently.

I checked out the options and discussed them with Aunty Bev, (its her bike i'm borrowing while i wait for a tyre to arrive for Foxy) the most economical in time and cost (as i can do the work) and effective solution is to replace the the gear shift units. The new units are due to arrive today, maybe the tyre too so hopefully i'll have one of the bikes back on the road tomorrow, fingers crossed.

Its not all doom and gloom though. I spent time last night sorting out my trip to Germany, for the Spreewald Radmarathon in April. I'll be away for a week due to flight availability, so out Monday, 3 days in the German capital then down to the Spreewald for the weekend before returning to Berlin Monday for the return flight. So flights and accomodation are booked, the entry is done and, partly for logistics and partly economics, i've got a hire bike arranged for the week. Flying with Foxy or my best bike isn't difficult in itself but getting to/from the airport etc can be a pain, the cost has risen and both bikes would need money spending to be event ready. Hiring means i save a lot of hassle, get a top notch machine to use and for less money!

I'm really looking forward to the trip, hopefully nothing will get in the way of going.

There isn't any new Gaby today, there will be another bit of book 25 on Sunday.

Thats it for today,
Auf Wiedersehn,
Madeline Anafrid