D'oh... a deer... a female deer.

Today happened to be a days holiday and as the snow forecast by those chaps at the met office never materialised it was a shame to leave the bike in the garage so arranged to meet up with Frank (the elder) down in sunny Saffron. Before leaving I checked the outside temperature with my latest eBay purchase (infrared thermometer with laser pointer because... well... Dave has one), and it was a rather brisk 0.6C in the back garden. Ouch!!!!

A quick change into thicker socks (and an additional thermal layer in the tank bag just in case the two jumpers and bike jacket weren't enough) and I was off. Once on the M11 and "making progress" it was getting a bit chilly but as it was only a 20 min trip from there I held on and defrosted my hands courtesy of a cuppa from Missus Frank ;-)

Once Frank had his mittens on, had wiped his nose, and promised to do his homework when he got back, the boys were allowed out to play, Frank in the lead, and me playing catchup.

The roads were pretty twisty, and covered in mud, grit, stones, misc crap (thank you Mr Tractor) so there was no knee down action (and if there was it would be followed by shoulder and head down action I reckon) but I had fun accelerating up the straight bits and plenty of gear changing action (although it seems the Fz6 will do anything from 10-70mph staying in 2nd, which is nice). The 10 miles up to Balsham saw us ready for a pub lunch and a sit in front of the fire to defrost again, so we did courtesy of Mike in "The Bell".

Coming back we dropped onto the A11 where the bike again doesn't appear to need all its gears before coming back through the villages again heading for home.

Not 1 mile from my front door, a Muntjac Deer decided to run across the road right in front of me and I had visions of the chicken episode all over again, but on a much larger, and more painful scale. Luckily I slowed enough to let it sneak in front of my front tire and across the road and Frank was far enough back to not run into the back of me. Fresh underpants were donned at home, and a cuppa made things all right in the world once more.

Roll on spring when the weather warms up a bit and we can get out for more bimbles in the countryside.