Spring Update

Ah, Spring.

Last night Vicki and I went kayaking. It was great. Vicki used Baycreek’s new Hurricane Aquasports Tracer which looks like a really nice West Greenland style kayak, very similar lines to my Skerray or the Avocet she was using last year, but made of “Trylon” plastic using a new vacuum forming method. Surprisingly sharp bow for being plastic. So is my Skerray RMX, but Valley are famous for how good their rotomoulded kayaks are. We saw lots of geese, some guarding tiny fluffy goslings. Also saw swans, most of them in aggressive postures, swallows, red winged blackbirds, a flicker (which was a surprise) and a kingfisher (which was also a surprise). The river was fast, but not so high as to make the weir too challenging. The reeds are starting to come in, but they’re still low enough that we could see what was down the other branch when the creek diverged. We went pretty far, and my elbows aren’t that sore today.

As another highlight of spring, today was the first real mountain stage of the Giro D’Italia. It’s been great how the sprint stages have managed to avoid being “the Alessandro Petacchi show” that they were last year, but it’s good to be up to the part that matters, where the GC riders make or break. Basso did great today, and I was surprised to see Cunego lost ground to Simoni. I’m still mad that OLN TV isn’t covering it daily like they did last year. And the “live streaming” software only works on Windows and probably wouldn’t work through the company proxy server anyway, plus what’s the point without Phil Ligget and Paul Sherwin? It’s hard to get a real feel for what’s going on when all you’ve got is the web updates, but CyclingNews.com is doing a pretty good job.

And the third highlight is the Kodak Perigrine Falcons. I haven’t been following them as obsessively as I used to when I could compare notes with Maddy, but it’s good to see that they’ve hatched another 5 this year. Pigeons beware!