As I Wandered Lonely As A Cloud.

As I Wandered Lonely As A Cloud.

Wednesday 12th February 2020

Great Ayton

Alone

Another lone ride for me, The Ginger One  having the misfortune to be attending a mandatory training day at work, eight hours of Powerpoint torture, the sort of tedium which makes counting raindrops on a window appealing (I know because I’ve done it).  The wind is still a bit too brisk to be fun but not enough to prevent me venturing to Guisborough Woods again, this time riding in from Great Ayton. Using the extra miles for training? No, so I could call at the butchers and stock up on delicious concoctions of animal flesh and pastry on the way home. In an attempt to offset the forthcoming pies and pasties, I rode up to Captain Cook’s Monument, the long way round via Kildale, which is a canny amount of climbing for a failed process operator, someone for whom standing up was merely a precursor to coffee and biscuits. 

It was nippy at the Monument, with patches of ice and snow here and there; a couple of photographs later, I was plummeting down the fire road to Gribdale, passing one-time Terra Trailblazer, The Cruncher who was strolling up. Or was he? Despite photographic evidence, he denies walking that route on this day, so we are either into serious doppelganger territory or someone is starting up a Cruncher tribute act. Both are very worrying. 

From the gate at Gribdale, another climb took me onto Newton Moor and across Percy Cross Rigg, from where I descended to Sleddale before climbing again (I know, I’m a machine) across Codhill Heights to reach Guisborough Forest. After a bit of a breather, I threw myself at some of Gizzy’s finest tracks, with all the style and grace of a walrus falling down an iceberg into the sea. Dance like nobody’s watching, sing like nobody’s listening, ride like you have no control of your limbs; my motto for life, although there probably ought to be something about clearing your internet search history too. Who needs to know how much time I spend looking at mountain bike sites? Here’s a true story; many years ago, when the internet first came became a thing - imagine even being old enough to write that sentence - the company, whichever incarnation it was at the time, gave us unlimited internet access, 24 blokes, long boring shifts, the whole online world at our fingertips. The results were entirely predictable, in our naivety we had no idea the usage would be, or even could be, monitored; after a few months the I.T. department sent a report to our manager. “ 23 people spending their shifts looking at hardcore pornography, 1 person looking at mountain bike sites.” What a pervert, mountain bike sites. 

Eventually hunger and tiredness overcame the urge to be muddier and wetter than the average person and I made my way over Roseberry Common back to Great Ayton and the welcoming portal of the butchers, where some of my hard-earned pension found its way into the till in return for meat-based comestibles, some of which didn’t even make it home, finding themselves the ideal accompaniment to the flask of coffee waiting in the car.

Free From The Tyranny Of The Garmin.

Free from the tyranny of the GPS

Monday 10th February 

Pinchinthorpe

The Youth

Now here’s a first, forgot the GPS, free from the tyranny of mph and Strava segments, it is surprisingly liberating to amble about the forest like a sloth with knee pads. Happy New Year to The Youth, who finally turns out for a ride, forty one days into 2020, muttering something about a dislocated shoulder. Any excuse to stay on the settee, kids nowadays. Today was the aftermath of Storm Ciara which battered the country over the weekend, although, as usual, it failed to live up to the media scaremongering. Just imagine the Daily Express if we lived in a country that had proper storms, pensioners would be having coronaries just glancing at the front page. Fifty miles per hour gusts of wind have been forecast for the first half of this week, so where better to go riding than a nice,sheltered forest? Some people may disagree with this, convinced trees are being flung about like skittles in a strike, seeking victims to land on like a WWE wrestler pinning an opponent to the canvas. Cows and petrol tankers circling in the sky, carried up by the twister, sounds like an idea for a Hollywood script. I look at it this way, a million trees, two cyclists, similar to the odds of me riding the Red Bull Rampage or one of The Ginger One’s bets coming good. Out on the moors, where the wind is at its strongest, there is much more chance of being blown off track or even off the bike, been there, done that. Let’s face it, the chance of agonising death or critical injury is all part of the fun. Or is that just me? 

We made our way on fire roads through creaking trees, climbing and descending, cherry-picking trails as we went, choosing the least muddy until we reached the top of The Unsuitables. The Youth has never had the pleasure of The Forgotten Path, so we took ourselves down, at one point, a steep slope leads to a wooden bridge over a gully. I rode down the slippery slope, stopping at the bridge to clear fallen branches courtesy of Storm Ciara, it became apparent the wood, wet and muddy, was slicker than a well lubed eel slithering through a bucket of slime. Discretion being the better part of sexagenarianism and all that, I walked across and got the GoPro set up, ready for The Youth to play his part in an upcoming viral video. 

He didn’t disappoint, a double dose of falls, the latter a spectacular Superman as his bike slid sideways into the abyss. Some less treacherous riding took us to the far end of the forest, approaching the concrete road, where we had a ride down some of the ‘one man and his dog’ trails, meeting one man and his dog part of the way down, the trail builder himself. I’m sure he will not mind me telling the world (well, the two or three people who read this rubbish) that he is seventy eight years old, still building, overjoyed that people enjoy riding his trails and he had Max the saluki, who features in so many trail names, with him. We chatted for a while, rode a few of his trails but soon our fun had to end because The Youth still indulges in an arcane practice known as work. 

Work? I can recall it in fleeting fragments, obscure memories like in a dream which disappear on waking. Seriously though, after almost eighteen months of retirement, I keep dreaming that employment still has me in its grasp and I’m rushing about trying to get there for the start of the shift. Maybe it is Imposter Syndrome and I can’t consider myself a proper pensioner until there is wardrobe full of beige clothes in the bedroom and a Hyundai i10 in the garage. A Hyundai i10 specially modified to be only capable of two thirds of the speed limit of whatever road it is driving along, where any gears in advance of third are an optional extra and is usually followed by a procession of motorists sending mental death rays to the front.

Spring is coming...

The Novice Goes Off-Piste And Other Stories.

Hot-lapping Hamsterley

Wednesday 5th February 2020
Hamsterley
The Breadlad.

A pleasant blast around the Hamsterley Hot Lap, a change from the mud and ordure ordeal North Yorkshire is becoming. We met a first time caller at the start of Poltie’s Last Blast who had been unfortunate enough to follow the red route arrows to reach this point. It would be no understatement to say he was not impressed; at the end of Nitrous, with the five trails done, he was in a more positive frame of mind. Has whoever is in charge of the signage at Hamsterley ever rode their route? No doubt it was a committee, as in, what is the definition of a camel? A horse designed by a committee. Some deviants may achieve a thrill from interminable fire road climbs but normal riders would rather just get to the good stuff with the minimum empty miles. Somebody wants to give their heads a shake.

Earliest Finish Ever

Thursday 6th February 2020
Danby
The Breadlad

Owing to time constraints imposed upon The Breadlad, we had a ride at something approaching the pace of XC racers, obviously pretty poor XC racers, (think thoroughbred stallions compared to seaside donkeys, you don’t need to guess too hard which ones we might be). Rather more hasty than our usual amble about the North Yorkshire countryside, which normally involves a great many N.S.P’s, (natural stopping points), including but not limited to; the bottom of hills, the top of hills, gates, muddy patches, bogs, stiles, fences, ravines, streams, crevasses, caves (or any hole in the ground), dead animals, other cyclists, walkers, photo opportunities, sections of trail which look a bit dodgy, calls of nature (liquid and solid), mid-ride route planning, mechanical adjustments, frozen ponds (the first law of finding something frozen - try and break the ice), fallen trees, parked cars with steamed up windows, (rocking or not rocking). No wonder our rides take so long, luckily the invention of dropper posts has knocked a chunk of time off. And every stop will involve a little light-hearted banter of the sort that used to make the workplace bearable before somebody put fifty pence in the snowflake and set them away in a flurry of moral indignation. 

The weather is again more than pleasant for so early in the year, which used to fill The Pensioner with such foreboding so ingrained was his habit of looking gift horses squarely in the mouth. We pedaled up to Ainthorpe and across Ainthorpe Rigg, taking the technical singletrack (two dabs, one fall) which drops down to New Way, a steep bit of tarmac to be ascended to the start of one of the moor’s finest, the Trough House track, which cuts across the head of Fryupdale with awesome views across the valley. The trail drops, then climbs, never too steeply, the shaded corners veneered with ice today, reminding us it is still winter despite riding coatless, although The Breadlad never needs much excuse to become partially clothed. Apparently he gets too hot, well, that’s his story and he’s sticking to it. Let’s see how he performs in Spain, he’ll probably just turn up for the rides wearing nothing but a spray of his christmas Lynx Africa and a slathering of factor 30. 

We were soon at the road and heading downhill toward our next section of trail, a muddy double-track which always has a puddle the size of a small tarn at it’s entrance. No different today but we skirted around it. The trail is downhill and as fast as your cajones will allow but watch out for the dog bounding out from some buildings near the bottom, barking a lot and chasing bikes down the trail. It seems friendly but I never hang around to find out for certain. From here, it was tarmac all the way back to Danby, reaching the car park we were amazed to find it was only a little after noon; the main attraction of mountain biking is it wastes a whole day, effectively keeping women, shops and any sort of family responsibility out of sight, out of mind and here we were with a whole afternoon going free. Let’s hope this doesn’t happen too often, I might be expected to mow the lawn myself or something.

The Novice Goes Off-Piste

Friday 7th February 2020
Square Corner
The Novice.

The Novice ventures into the great outdoors, not the outdoors of red tarmac and toucan crossings, toucan crossings, it transpires, are nothing to do with those birds and their massive multi-coloured beaks but a light controlled crossing which cyclists can ride across, as opposed to zebras, puffins and pelicans where they must dismount and walk. Who knows any of this? Only Professor Google and me - and I’ve only known for about 30 seconds. We begin a gentle introduction to the bucolic delights of off-road cycling for another torpid process operator keen to escape the confines of the control room - many have tried, few have succeeded, most realise they prefer pastimes of a less arduous nature, mainly centred on watching other people kick things or throw things. The Novice, however, seems eager to embrace the wilderness, ready to channel his inner Ray Mears and forge a path across the moors, chewing on raw grouse, washed down with his own urine and sawing off injured limbs as necessary. Or maybe not. 

First he had to endure the infamous Square Corner microclimate, windy, cloud covered and bitterly cold while literally a hundred metres away the world basked in sunshine. Bikes were quickly sorted and we were soon heading back down the road into warmth and brightness, we passed Chequers, not the official country residence of the current idiot voted in by a minority of the electorate but the other one, the former droving inn of North Yorkshire. Continuing, we rode up High Lane, passing the sheltered gorse alcoves which are the summer home of Budgie Smuggler Man and his deckchair - too nippy today. Entering the woods above Cod Beck reservoir, we headed downwards on a fire road, an enjoyable excursion which metamorphosed into mire as we rode lower; we powered through the mud like two-wheeled eels, slithering our way to firmer ground. 

The path on the shaded side of the reservoir was still white with hoar frost on the way to the dam, the blue water looking almost mediterranean as we crossed the end of the reservoir, heading for the road. Up to now the ride had been pretty much downhill, The Novice was about to get an acquaintance with the disadvantages of gravity as we headed uphill toward the antennae on top of Beacon Hill. He zipped ahead on the first slope, hoping to lessen the agony by sprinting to the top, soon learning three things, firstly, top is not necessarily the next flat bit you can see ahead, secondly, the actual summit of this hill is a mile and half away and thirdly, it’s a good idea to pace yourself, admire the view, smell the smells, look at the animals. Okay maybe not the smells. It wasn’t too long before the summit came into view and minutes later we were descending the paved bridleway across Scarth Wood Moor, almost a mile of glorious downhill riding, I could hear The Novice whooping and hollering behind me, like a young bullock seeing fields for the first time. 

All good things coming to end and all that, we headed back along the road to Sheepwash into a stiff headwind, continuing beside the reservoir on tarmac prior to turning off and recrossing the dam. Between the dam and High Lane is a steep bank, short but brutal, like some of the lasses in Stockton High Street on a Saturday night. If The Novice were to fail anywhere it would be here but he girded his loins and blasted upward, skipping over slippery rock and weaving around slow-moving walkers, he was panting like a walrus on the verge of orgasm but not one foot was placed on the floor, he even eschewed a breather at the top of the steepest section, preferring to keep going until the crest of the trail and his own apotheosis. We retraced our outward route back to Square Corner, the boy done good, although my suggestion of an extra loop into Silton Woods was firmly and profanely rejected. The spirit of The Pensioner lives on.

That's Another One Off The List Until August.

That’s Another Trail Off The List Until August

Monday 3rd February 2020.

Square Corner

The Ginger One.

In contrast to La Mujerita and her sister who need four or five twenty minute phone calls to organise to meet up at the shops round the corner - to have a chat, here is a transcript of me and The Ginger One arranging a day's mountain biking.

"Pedaling tomorrow?"

"Yes. Any ideas?"

"Hawnby cafe from Square Corner?"

"Okay, see you there." Four brief texts and the next day, perfectly coordinated, we are offloading bikes in the bitter wind of the Square Corner microclimate. An old standard route,  planned merely so The Ginger One could indulge in the Hawnby Cafe daily special, which has been the daily special for several years. Rare breed pork and apple burger with homemade chips, an epicurean delicacy to someone from Darlington. We haven't visited Hawnby for quite a while, nothing to do with the food and everything to do with the only way out of the village being up and steeply up at that. Today we also had wind to consider, gusting up to forty odd miles per hour; working on the old, tailwind high, headwind low theory, we began by riding up the Mad Mile, wondering if the next laborious turn of the cranks will be the one which induces sudden death from exploding heart syndrome, post mortem report, “probably caused by excessive anal respiration”. Four hundred and twenty five feet of ascent in the first mile, our lungs were well and truly opened up by the time the cairn at the top swam into vision. 

The pedal along the Drove Road, flatter and wind-assisted went briskly, we even squeezed in a quick extra loop down to Boltby Forest, climbing back up on fire road to rejoin the Drove Road. Mud and slop are the prevailing conditions away from the main tracks, making the path through the fields to the quaintly named Noddle End a different proposition from the summer cruise on sun-baked earth. The steep descent to Peak Scar woods is still steep, chunks of limestone scattered about the path like droppings from a mythical stone-eating beast, moist and slippery, trying to take control of the front wheel and plunge us down the hillside in a blur of arms, legs and emergency ambulances. One of the benefits of riding this route in an anticlockwise direction is we don’t have to ride up Murton Bank with a belly full of daily special, instead we were able to hurtle down into Hawnby as fast as our almost middle-aged bodies would allow. In a few short years, my elderly scrotum will be skimming the water when I sit down to drop the kids off at the pool. Is this what they mean by big balls? And how much faster will it make me go downhill? 

It turns out there is no longer a daily special at Hawnby Cafe, however, the pork and apple burger is still on the menu, so The Ginger One was not denied his gastronomic gratification. Replete, we hoisted ourselves back onto our bikes and began to climb out of Hawnby, not that easy when the least steep option is a two hundred foot climb, and that only takes you to the upper road in Hawnby, leaving us with about six or seven miles back to Square Corner. Predominantly road miles, into a headwind but we had the off-road delight of the Dale Head singletrack to finish the ride, so it was heads down until we could leave the road. 

Our last treat of the day turned out to be like a beautifully packaged parcel, eagerly unwrapped, only to find within, the contents of a well used cat litter tray. The small stretches of firm singletrack were outweighed by the lengthy sections of ankle-deep mud and pedal-catching ruts, the joy added to by the buffeting wind pushing us off course on the narrow trail and the rocks hidden in the overgrown heather. We reached the ruin of Dale Head Farm, decrepit and dilapidated, the farm is not looking too clever either, (boom boom) thankful we only had a short pedal back to the cars. One of those routes that turned out a lot harder than it needed to be and the Dale Head singletrack will be shelved until the next drought.

January 2020 Round Up and Video

January 2020 Round Up and Video.

Video here.

16 rides. 207 miles ridden. 20,199 feet ascended. 12,692 calories expended.  

For all those fans of mediocre riding in stunning scenery the Terra Trailblazers videos are back in production, after a three month hiatus. A practically pedal-free break, while I went off to be an international man of mystery, as in it's a mystery how a scruff like him can afford to be here. A new intro too, only featuring people who turned out for a ride in 2019, so if you haven’t made the cut you probably had something much more important to do than having fun on bikes. 

The remaining four rides from January are blogged below.

Looping The Loop Around Sheepwash

Monday 27th January 2020

Sheepwash

The Breadlad, The Ginger One.

Who would have thought it? Sheepwash again, that’ll be the fourth time this month. Cod Beck Reservoir, more dog walkers than a bring your own food Korean barbecue. But they were all brimming with bonhomie, apart from one couple for whom the thought of sharing North Yorkshire with three cyclists was all too much, giving voice to their displeasure with some good old British chuntering. As this was also the same couple who thought it acceptable to drive the whole way from Osmotherly to Sheepwash at under twenty mph, with slow motion disregard for following traffic, reasoning with them was never going to happen, so they were summarily ignored. 

Secret trails and hidden tracks were the order of today, another case of, if you know, you know. The riding was good, the weather kind, the best January since the planet began shuffling off this mortal coil, might as well enjoy it before Governess Greta’s dystopian future kicks in. Regular readers will have a rough idea of the route, a few new options were explored although one particular drop has been shelved until we grow a set of bollocks between us and have the protection of full body armour and a private helicopter, I’m sure one of our more fearless*/incautious*/braindead* (*delete as appropriate) friends will turn up and ride it as though it is slight slope, not a gateway to a hospital bed. A little more playing about and we were finished, cars packed and on our way to the Rusty Bike.

Tuesday 28th January 2020
Lordstones
The Breadlad, The Ginger One.

The next day, the same crew met up at Lordstones, The Ginger One having curbed the previous evening’s alcoholic excess in order to have a bike ride. Could he be dipping a toe into the puddle of prudent middle age? Although his life-long love of nineteen fifties sports lead most people believe he was actually born middle-aged. Unusually for this time in the morning, the car park is almost filled, mainly with the sort of oversized German 4x4’s beloved of impoverished farmers and materfamilias on the school run; shortly afterwards the owners appeared, some sort of running club, all Ron Hills and full volume received pronunciation. Why is it only pikies and the braying middle-classes who like to make sure everyone in earshot can be party to their conversation? 

Another fine and dry day although the wind definitely had teeth, as the saying goes. The track up Carlton Bank, which led to the long gone gliding club, gets no easier, particularly for those of us who took tyre-buying advice from a downhiller and we prolonged the agony by continuing to the summit of Carlton Bank. Time for a breather surely? Considering ourselves early adopters, or even local instigators, of the Scottish access model, we rode the Cleveland Way to Scugdale, lengthy, paved, mostly downhill and far too good to waste on walkers. Riding from Heathwaite to the legendary Cowshit Farm, (see TTB12) we spotted a white stoat, in ermine as they are called in winter, before being skinned to make a lord’s robe look pretty, running along the side of the stream, although it could have been a white ferret which had escaped from somewhere, it looked a bit on the large side for a stoat. Cowshit Farm is a misnomer nowadays, a little seasonal mud but the slurry seems to be long gone, as is the bridge further down the track, swept away by a winter torrent. We managed to get bodies and bikes safely across without resorting to the sort of team building bollocks beloved of Powerpoint Pricks and their management courses. 

The drag up Scugdale came next, a tarmac climb followed by a slippery carry until the gate at Stoney Wickes, in a spirit of, not exactly adventure, more masochistic curiosity, we thought we would see if Raisdale Mill Lane has improved over the years since we last rode it. The simple answer is no, it has probably deteriorated even more, sloppy slithering on slender singletrack, at some points high above a gully, leading to a narrow glacier of rocks and mud. 

We emerged, thankfully, at the cottages and treated ourselves to a couple of tarmac miles, heading up to Beak Hills and its choir of barking dogs, heard but never seen, apart from the Jack Russell which usually escorts us from the premises with maximum belligerence. No sign of the little fellow today. Our route continued upward toward The Fronts, from where some less well-used tracks led us back toward Lordstones and some essential calorie replacement.

Going Local - on the MTB

Thursday 30th January 2020
Local
The Novice

The Novice left the cocoon of the control room once again to surrender his delicate posterior to a slender saddle and pedal around some of Teesside’s finest cycle tracks, despite (allegedly) having buttocks like one of Flamingoland’s baboons after the last ride. 

We followed the sweeping curve of the majestic A19, turning off to pass the gothic beauty of the Nitram plant, a monument to those craftsmen of asbestos sheeting and rode alongside the mudbanks of the tidal River Tees, cycle paths all the way to the Tees Barrage Whitewater course. The path continues through Stockton on the White Lightning course, where the locals socialise on riverside benches, engaging in witty banter while appreciating the fine bouquet and sublime flavour of the cheapest alcohol their wine merchant, Messer’s Lidl & Co. can provide. Beyond the imposing cathedral of the Mecca bingo, we enter the quaintly named Boathouse Lane, which has neither houses nor boats, our route continues, quite legitimately, through a hole in a gate and down an alley between industrial units, to pick up a broken and vegetated path a little too close to the river for comfort. The section where we pass under the Surtees Bridge, the water a creepy shade of black, is reminiscent of the sinister government public information films of the sixties and seventies, which filled in the gaps between adverts and terrified impressionable children into never leaving the house. 

Leaving the river behind we made our way around the outskirts of Preston Park, through the, today, unusually glass-free, tunnel under the A66 to the affluent suburb of Hartburn, crossing the road at the bowling club, one of The Novice’s favourite drinking haunts. His lack of interest in old man’s marbles is outweighed by the cheap drink on offer, he had to be reminded he is an athlete now, as he automatically headed for the front door, club card in hand. Plus it was only eleven thirty in the morning. The cyclepath runs north from the opulence of Hartburn, through various incarnations of Stockton until the leafy suburbs give way to the scars of cable fires and discarded mattresses of Hardwick, an estate once having the honour of the cheapest heroin in Britain - and the cheapest prostitutes. A shining example of Margaret Thatcher’s market forces dogma. 

Our track turns to mud and puddles when we enter the urban rurality between Stockton and Thorpe Thewles, giving our chunky tyres some work to do at last. As a special treat, we rode down the steep slope where a viaduct stood many years ago. The Novice expressed some concerns of an incontinent nature regarding the verticality of the track but he cruised down it like a proper Terra Trailblazer, haltingly, brakes squealing, on the verge of going over the handlebars. He reached the bottom unscathed and hopefully, with a better understanding of the attractions of mountain biking. 

A short pedal and we were in the station cafe again, getting fuelled up for the last blast back to Billingham, which unfortunately does include the bank up to The Golden Gates, where spinning classes and the real world diverge but he made it without recourse to pedestrianism. We carried on through Wolviston Court estate, many years ago, the exclusive area of Billingham, (as if there could be such a thing) where people not quite wealthy enough for Wolviston would aspire to live. Now they even have scumbag process operators there, talk about going downhill. A pedestrianised lane cuts through the golf course and we passed men in pastel jumpers and checked trousers taking out their frustrations on little white balls, an obvious aversion to adrenaline and enjoyment preventing them from taking up mountain biking instead. And then it was all over, twenty miles near enough, a nice leg-stretcher for The Novice prior to next week when we venture into the real outdoors for mud, sweat and gears; the slippery slopes and the moaning dog walkers. I bet he can’t wait.

Not Going Gently Into That Good Night

Friday 31st January 2020
Lordstones
La Mujerita

Me and La Mujerita only managed a shorty this morning, a quick blast round from Lordstones because we are at a funeral this afternoon. Given the circumstances, sudden death of a friend, only a couple of years senior, it is inevitable that one's own mortality is brought to mind; which for me always reminds me of a tattoo worn by a character in a Michael Slade novel I read years ago. A depiction of the Grim Reaper, scythe in one hand, hourglass in the other, the words “It’s later than you think.” written beneath, it’s always stuck in my mind. When I worked, although former colleagues have a different opinion and say I was merely employed, the best thing about the job was the time off, something like 220 days off in a year, which is as brilliant as it sounds, especially for those of us with time consuming hobbies. It was hard to understand why people couldn’t appreciate this, instead they would give up their free time to work overtime, fighting and bickering for the extra hours like starving refugees clamouring for free food, as though they weren’t already being paid well in excess of the national average wage. All those days wasted, all that time that could have been enjoyed instead of being trapped in a chemical factory for twelve hours, all for a bigger house or a newer car. I guess we all have different priorities and I know mine was always to live a life not a mere existence in their world of greed and materialism, I always relished my socio-economic inferiority while climbing cliffs or riding bikes, rich beyond most people’s dreams. Life is more than a pay cheque, I gladly took a £30K pay cut to be where I am today - retired. Remember the feeling on the first day of the six week holidays when you were a kid? That is what every day of retirement is like, it’s just a shame it comes at the wrong end of your life. Anyway, I may have digressed a little, there was a bike ride involved at some point, mud, puddles, horses and a play on a little jump area before a nice lunch in Lordstones. Home, shower and off to pay our respects to a lady who definitely put living before existing.