Days like this!

Years ago when I was a teenager in Laurieton, near Port Macquarie on the Mid-North coast of New South Wales, the local radio station (only 2mc in those days) used to play this song quite regularly. I've long since forgotten both the title and the artist, but there was a much repeated line in it along the lines of "My mama told me, there'll be days like this". I like to get that line going in my head when things aren't going the way I feel as though they should.

I got up at 4am this morning, planning another pre-dawn ride, and soon cancelling it due to bushfire smoke (again!). About 30 minutes later it started to rain, quite a substantial storm, which just about killed off the smoke and would have been very pleasant to ride through (I love rain), had it only arrived 30 minutes earlier! I'm not getting as many miles in this week as I normally would, and it's agitating me. Hopefully those light bulbs I ordered will arrive soon so I can rekindle the night rides to Austinville or Hinze Dam.

It's on the way to work that the real drama starts. Cruising through Surfers Paradise, onto Main Beach, a nice roll on the deep blue South Pacific, still a few clouds around, Psssshhhhhh!!!!!!!!! Yep, a flat tyre on the way to work. I fix it hurriedly, I was already running late, and cleverly forget to extract the glass from the tyre. The spare tube doesn't last long, but by then I'm only a couple of hundred metres from work, so I limp in (just in time), and decide to fix it properly at lunch time.

So lunchtime comes, I go out and fix it. Well, I am having a bad day! On putting the rear wheel back on, I get a spoke stuck in the drivetrain. I'm not sure how I did it, but I managed it somehow. I pull it apart (thanks to Rowan in Hobart last January for showing me how), put it back, and extract the spoke. Now, I'm finally ready. Planning to atone for this tomorrow morning at 4am, no dice. They've set a staff training meeting for 7am tomorrow morning. Still, I might get a little deviation up to The Spit on the way to work. Not much, but it's something.

Then the ride home, seems OK, even though I've only got about 25 PSI in the back tyre. I pull off a brilliant save to avoid some drunk/stoned/just plain stupid moron who cuts me off and risks his own life to do so -- why does the Gold Coast attract people like this? Honestly, with the natural scenery around here, this place could be a paradise!

Well, it's all over now, I'm all set for tomorrow, with patched tube properly pumped up and a spare in place. For now I'll keep repeating the song: "there'll be days like this".

Speaking of music, last night on Triple J I heard that one of my favourite bands, Something for Kate, are releasing a B-Sides CD. I'm never quite sure about those things, there can be some real hidden gems on them, but there can also be quite a few tracks "not good enough" for the real CD's. The one they played on last night was firmly in the latter category as far as I'm concerned. Maybe it will grow on me, or maybe the other tracks on that CD are better. Either way, I thought it a disappointing effort from the band that gave us "Three Dimesions", "Monsters", "Happy Endings" etc etc.

One CD I will be buying is the latest one from the Melbourne band, Art of Fighting. It's been featured on Triple J this week, these guys are good. Could be another Gersey.