16th October 2015 Joined the Dangerous Sports Club.

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Friday 16th 48F, 9C, breezy, heavy overcast.  Walked around the [rural] block. Not much wildlife but lots of cats out hunting or exploring. WW3 seemed to have broken out in some woods. Have you ever noticed the similarity of a shooting party to a badly choreographed stacking of two short planks?

I haven't mention the elderly driver from the other day. He overtook me on a hump backed railway bridge in a narrow lane.[Yes, Denmark does still have some trains but very few stations outside the cities. Elysium, and all that sort of thing]

Anyway, thanks to my elevated position on the trike I could easily see an oncoming car coming up the other side. So I started frantically flapping my offside wing like some ungainly wounded bird. Still the over-taker pressed on regardless! Fortunately the other car saw my arm waving and stopped short of the brow. Just as the drooling moron overtook me on completely the wrong side of the road right on the blind hump! Aarghh!

Just think of the potential mayhem! Having to answer probing questions on the Danish TV news: About how the cars  collided on the blind brow and one went over the parapet and hit a train of petrol tankers. Which then rolled on for half a mile and destroyed the entire village of a 1000 people! And all in my garbled pidgin Dansk. And you know I'd make an awful witness at the public inquiry in front of all those cameras and thrusting microphones! And did I want to tell my life's story! And did I want to pose for a center-fold for Playgirl on my trike?

Senility? Registered blind? Drunk out of his tiny 1.25 brain cells? Pharmaceutical drug overdose? Suicide pact with his similarly aged wife? Psychopathic serial killer hoping to enter an exit road to the motorway? [Don't laugh! This happens almost weekly in Denmark!] I'm talking about the overtaking driver here in case you just lost the plot. Well, he swerved around the other car without so much as a pause or even a touch of brake lights. Then drove straight on, still sitting there like a crash test dummy, jammed behind the wheel.

I have officially joined the Dangerous Sports Club. Not for cycling, as you might well have thought. Nope. As an ordinary pedestrian walking beside rural roads my life is constantly threatened. Some car drivers make absolutely no attempt to steer away from me. With nothing coming the opposite way they still continue on the same line regardless of my presence.

As backup to my daring hobby as a death defying pedestrianist I have added potentially dangerous hand gestures: In one busy village a car was coming the other way at well over 50mph. So I gave him the traditional circling finger around the ear to suggest his lunacy had been duly noted. He was just passing a school divided into two sites by the road on which he was traveling at nearly twice the speed limit for a built up area. The same speed limit which continues for miles in the direction he was traveling.

One might [quite naturally] assume the perp was a heart surgeon in a desperate rush to perform an emergency procedure such was his haste. Further assuming that this particular heart surgeon drove a scruffy old VW estate. But no, having driven at least another mile, before finding anywhere [at all] to turn around, he had retraced his rally route. All in order to speak to me, as a matter of some urgency, as I rode along the parallel cycle path. Having shared my observations on his lethal driving habits, particularly while passing two schools, he muttered something incomprehensible and drove off. I was just grateful that I was no longer being accosted by this kerb crawler. As I do have my reputation to think of. I'd hate to be thought of as the "town trike!" Even if I am the only one in the village.

So, children, never assume that a speeding fool is ever in a hurry to be somewhere else. He has all the time in the world. [Allegedly] Even time to return by the same route to question an amateur critic of his own lunatic driving behaviour. [As if any confirmation was needed.] Then to drive off in completely the opposite direction to his earlier Danish land speed record attempt. I'm ignoring the dual direction requirements for a valid record attempt just for the sake of argument here.

Mmm! Simple McLardy's litter for simple folk. [It says so on the packaging! Read and learn. Burp!]

There are no turnings [at all] for several miles on his chosen exit at the next roundabout. So one can only assume that his speeding was his own example of wishing [forlornly] to be a member of a Dangerous Sports Club. Except, of course, that he was in no personal danger whatsoever [except perhaps of a paltry fine.] Though the small children at the school were automatically raised to full membership by default of his own behaviour.

18 miles, not out. Thank goodness I was tri-cycling, eh? Just think what might have happened if I'd been walking! I might never have returned alive to tell the tale. Mown down by a local zombie without anybody ever knowing the awful truth that they are living amongst us!

Saturday 17th 48F, 9C, very light winds. Rain promised for later so I had better get moving. There is the heaviest overcast imaginable this side of "The Road" but slightly more fun. Viggo Mortenson is a Dane so that's probably where they got the idea from. Just think.. if it hadn't been so overcast in Scandinavia there might never have been the Danes and the Viking invasions. They would all have been too busy sunbathing by their summer houses instead. While the men enjoyed their extended maternity leave.

I'd better take my shiny, new Aldi LED torch on my walk. I can flash it at oncoming drivers who refuse to recognise my existence in their myopic little [mobile sensory deprivation tank] world. My memory may not be 100% these days but I swear I have no recollection of having forfeited my right to immortality in exchange for blogging fame and a tricycle. I don't even know the Devil. Let alone having made any secret pacts with him!

Perhaps VW-Audi is the real devil? <cough-cough-cough> I just had a thought: Shouldn't all those millions of drivers with VW's dodgy software be prosecuted for breaking the law on "Chip tuning" their diesels?  Just askin'. ;ø)

Psst! Wanna buy a filthy diesel? Only one lady owner and she only drove it to her coven meetings on Black Fridays when there was a full moon. She never smoked in the car. At least, not unless she was caught in direct sunlight.

I was half way through the woods when I saw a number of small birds foraging in badly stacked undergrowth from the tree thinning work. I spotted several Goldcrests, a Robin and a Nuthatch together in the same small area. Shame the forestry harvester hadn't cleared my usual route to the other exit. I suppose they might get around to it next.

Suddenly there was the sound of erratic gunfire! A band of pheasant terrorists had obviously ambushed a group of innocent huntsmen in a fierce but highly asymmetric skirmish! It was bang on 10 'clock so it must have been pre-planned. The sound of gunfire seemed to be coming from behind me in the same forest. With cowardice being the better part of valour I beat a hasty retreat back the way I had come. I reasoned that the lack of upmarket SUV's on the track might be a sign of a safe route out of this unofficial war zone. I am still unsure whether I would actually qualify for refugee status now that Margaret Thatcher is no longer tyrannizing the UK. 

I never met the huntsmen on my long walk back. Though I might well have advised them to avoid these dangerous woods earlier or later than 10. That might have put the evil pheasants completely off their stroke and the huntsmen might even have missed being caught up in the firefight altogether. I shall have to monitor the local paper to see if there were any casualties amongst those poor huntsmen. I don't know what the country is coming to when you can't go for a quiet walk with your friends and dogs in the woods without some sort of bloodbath!

I am breaking in a new walking hat. It is an ex-US-army-fatigues-inspired, peaked thingy in olive drab. "Fatigue" being the operative word where I am concerned. As I have absolutely no ambitions to actually serve in an armed conflict. I couldn't even put down a pet fish if its life depended on it. The Head Gardener is trying to wean me off my Eastern European, national baseball cap. The one with the rather too toxic script in these very difficult times. The problem seems to be the depth over the crown [of the new cap] is far too shallow for me. So that I have to tighten the strap unduly just to keep it on. I am not sure whether this is due to poor design. Or perhaps the manufacturers simply knew the cranial capacity of their original clients better than I do?

Well, I had better get on my trike before the CIA homes in on my location and sends another drone. We made a large pond in the crater from last time. Which was nice because it saved me an awful lot of digging. There were no civilian casualties but we never saw our poor old tabby again. Shame we lost the only decent parking space.

Rode to Assens after coffee and rolls for a change of scenery. Bit of a tailwind going and the reverse coming back. Started to drizzle just as I reached home. Nothing much else to report. But that's Assens on a Saturday for you. 19 miles.

Click on any image for an enlargement.

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