18:48 
Hmmm. I wonder why the archive has broken down.
18:31
A very long weekend
It has been an interesting weekend so far, and it's still only Sunday with another day to go. It is the Easter weekend, I suppose, so I've had more than my normal weekend already. On Friday we went snorkelling down at Budleigh Salterton. Booze Monkey (I'll get that up on Google yet) bought an ambulance a week ago, and this was our first collective expedition. It also gave us a chance to test the Pyromid and the Kelly Kettle. Both of these new toys more than lived up to expectations, and we had beautifully crispy sausages on the beach, with real coffee good and hot. The weather was superb, although visibility was dreadful so we didn't find any spider crabs. It is a brilliant beach for that sort of thing, with plenty of small bits of driftwood. It was really great to be able to have fires and cook stuff and yet leave absolutely no trace (apart from a small reduction in the amount of driftwood). Most salubrious. While hunting for crabs I rounded a rock and came face to face with a sea bass that was about a foot long. The sea bass looked stoned, and we both did a double take. I squealed, he looked shocked, and we both fled in opposite directions. If I had been more on the ball I could have reached out and grabbed it, but I really wasn't expecting to find anything. We were in a very shallow area, sheltering from some pretty big waves, and I certainly wasn't expecting to see a fish that big.
I'm hoping that the weather for next weekend will be good and the sea will have had a chance to settle, because Frood has the day off and we could go again. The ambulance is superb for this sort of thing. More storage space than you can shake a stick at, plenty of room for getting changed, and quirky interior decor.
Yesterday I went for another one of what I am beginning to think of as 'journey rides'. These aren't just training rides - they have a specific destination in mind with a specific goal at the end. They are getting longer, which is deliberate and part of my training schedule, but that's not the primary motivation. Yesterday's ride took me from Taunton to Glastonbury to visit the Chalice Well and get some water from the Red Spring and the White Spring. I know there is something I am supposed to be doing with these two waters, but I'm not sure what. It might even just be going to get them because, as Frood says, it is still just water. OK, so it's water with a pretty high iron content, but it's still just good old H2O. Maybe a homeopath would say differently - well, I'm supposed to be making an appointment to see one next week, so I can always ask her. I even did some T'ai Chi in the Chalice Well gardens. I bought a couple of books, and came across a book that was about the magic of shapeshifting, which I very nearly bought but thought that spending around 15 quid on something that was bound to annoy me was probably a bad idea. It's quite amazing - very recently the embargo on me buying pagan texts has been lifted somewhat, so I'm going a bit mad on books and have bought quite a pile, although it's interesting to see that most of them are either reproductions of old texts (I bought a translation of an 18th century German alchemical text yesterday) or academic (I have also bought a copy of "Runes and Runic Inscriptions" by R.I.Page).
I learned a few things on my ride yesterday. One of them was that I can ride more than 66 miles in a day and if I had paced myself better I would have been able to ride a lot further. Suddenly doing a century ride doesn't seem that difficult. Another was that I have to be rather more circumspect in my relationship with the Booze Monkey. He said earlier in the week that he would like to come along, and I said I wouldn't mind. Come yesterday morning I was feeling a bit more dubious about it, but the logical progression my thought process went through seems odd even now. I decided that if he wanted to ride to Glastonbury, or go for a ride, and wanted to come along with me, then I had no right to stop him because he can go for a ride to Glastonbury at the same time as me if he so wishes. I specified before we left that he could come along, but I didn't want to feel responsible for him, so if he wandered off and I was about to leave and he wasn't there, I wouldn't wait for him. It didn't work. He got a puncture (again), we were delayed (again), I waited for him (even though I said I wouldn't), and eventually got pissed off with him. It annoyed me that he didn't have a map to navigate should I leave him, and I felt that once again I was out 'on point', which is where I feel I am a lot of the time - driving the activities. Would he have gone for a ride had I not been going? I don't know, but it really isn't any of my concern. I shouldn't be getting caught up in worrying or fretting about what he is getting up to, and I shouldn't be letting his behaviours get to me the way I do. It's my fault, not his. He has no reason to alter his behaviour just because I don't like it sometimes, and if I want space then I have to demand it, not give in to some feeling that I owe it to him to let him tag along. He's a grown man, and I'm a grown woman. I'm not Core any more, I have the right to take that space if I want it, and I'm no longer in a position where I can't handle that being alone any more. I actually enjoy that space.
But this only really applies to these journey rides, the ones for which I bought Fingal.
I think if we were just to go out on a ride for no other reason than to ride, it would be ok because there would be no other objective. Perhaps it's just when our goals don't coincide, and perhaps that means that if we happened to be riding together on something Work-related that involved us both, that would be fine as well. It feels like yesterday was a test in some ways - had I learned this, had I realised that it wouldn't work enough for me to say 'no' in the first place? It turns out that I hadn't, but I have now. I've still got a long way to go, though. The thought of saying 'no' still makes me nervous.
I have also just finished reading