If You Ride Then You’ve Got The Perfect Sport

Ξ March 30th, 2009 | → 0 Comments | ∇ About The Life Of Ray Bull, A Great Guy |

I love cycling, I really do, I just love it.

I found cycling relatively recently. I was getting unfit and I didn’t want to be unfit, and I was getting older. I knew I had to do something.

I tried swimming but it just never worked, I never took to it. I just found it really boring and it was a real effort to get up in the morning and go swimming. You just go up and down and down and up and up and down and a minute feels like an hour.

There’s that black line underneath you. You just go up  and down the black line. Its mezmerising. Its meaningless, its so boring. I cant believe how boring it really is.

So after trying swimming I knew that wouldn’t work. I knew I couldn’t spend 4 or 5 days a week putting some swimming into my day. Because if you’re going really to keep fit you’ve got to do it about 4 or 5 days a week or you’re really just wasting your time.

And so you’ve got to do about a half hour minumim. Less than that and its a bit of a waste of time.

So I was in a bit of a bind. I used to jog and found that as boring as swimming and so I was a little stuck. But then I started to think about cycling.

I didn’t have a bike although I used to ride to work many years ago. My old bike was up at the shed  but its so rusted that its unusable. I knew I had to get another bike. And a new bike isn’t cheap.

There’s a cycling club near me so I went and talked to them and found out that they were starting a new group of recreational riders and so I figured that the universe was telling me that it was time to buy a bike, that it was the perfect opportunity.

I found the pace of riding wasn’t exactly right for me, but enjoyed the rides. They did longer and shorter rides and I enjoyed it.

I’m not as young as I would like to be but even so I would have preferred that they rode a little faster, it was a bit too slow for me and so I began riding on my own to try and get a better workout.

So after a while riding on my own I found that it was nice to ride hard but a little lonely. I was getting a workout but on my own. So I made some enquiries and found out that there was a riding group that rode out of town a few days a week that used road bikes and rode hard. It went on sundays and I decided to go along.

But the bike that I had already bought was a half mountain bike and half road bike, called a hybrid, and so I had the wrong bike again. So again I had an issue with no bike that would do the job, but by then I knew I really liked riding to I bought a road bike and joined the Sunday group. They ride pretty fast and sometimes I keep up, occasionally I don’t keep up.

But what I wanted was a hard workout and that’s what I get on the Sunday ride. (more…)

 

The Weekend Is Just The Best Time, For Me.

Ξ March 24th, 2009 | → 0 Comments | ∇ About The Life Of Ray Bull, A Great Guy |

Yeah, I get to go away this weekend. I’m really looking forward to it.

I get to go away with a friend because my family all have some concert to go to and they can’t come so I get to go with a friend. Last time I took my family, but not this time.

We are going to take a tent and camp, as I would normally do with my familynormally. It’s a really good tent, about 10 foot square and canvas and really good quality so worth taking. Its heavy but I have a lighter tent that’s smaller but it’s forecast to rain and I want a good tent that will keep the rain out.

We leave Friday morning at about 6 am, early, grr. We’re meeting some other people at 9 and it will take about 3 hours to get to where we’re meeting. I don’t really like getting up early, good thing I don’t have to too often.

As much as I hate to get up early if you’re looking forward to something you just get up and go anyway, so it’s not so much of a problem.

Unfortunately my car is pretty old and I’ve got all my fingers and toes crossed hoping it makes it up there ok. It’s done 540,000 miles so it’ done a lot of work, but it goes fine.

Saturday is going to be a free day. Nothing planned at all, just a hang  about day to do what you want. I plan to take fishing gear along and do some fishing, in fact I bought a new fishing rod this morning. Sadly I broke my old fishing rod a while ago.

My old broken rod was one I made a long long time ago. I bought the fiberglass blank and all the runners and made it all myself and I’ve used it and used it. I was pretty impressed with myself that I managed to make my own fishing rod.

I have no idea how it broke. I was just walking through a patch of trees and then suddenly I looked at it and the tip was broken off. What happened? Who knows. But it was a pretty sad day as I had used that rod so much.

I found out today that it wasn’t worth a lot of money. That’s because I went to a fishing shop and bought a new one and it wasn’t expensive. But it still had sentimental value to me, after all I made that rod myself.

And I couldn’t believe. 25 bucks for a new fishing rod. They certainly aren’t expensive now to buy. But the new one isn’t the one I made. I’d rather my old one than a new one. (more…)