Geoff Jones

Inveterate dabbler in business, travel, gadgets & life

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Mini tour to Laos

 

With the wretched CoVid restrictions slowly getting lifted especially with my 3 jabs and almost certainly a mild bout of it we thought it was time for touring, one of my original ideas for moving to Thailand 2 years ago.

My truck was booked into Ford Phetchaburi to get the smashed rear light and damaged front bumper fixed so we loaded the bikes complete with camping kit etc and started the ride to Laos from the garage.

Leaving Ford to start the ride to Laos

It was a relaxing afternoon after 1.5km we found a Sushi place followed a few km later by a stop at Merci Papa for a gorgeous fruit salad

In all we rode 43km in an elapsed time of 4.5 hours so less than 10kmh 🙂 so definitely not Audax speeds but very pleasurable. Graham & Frances take note 🙂

Tomorrow it’s just over 100km to meet the group near Don Mueang the camping starts Thursday!

Digital Thermometer Instructions

Finding it difficult to take my body temperature tests twice a day, for the14 days I’m in quarantine, with the digital thermometer supplied by the ASQ Legacy Hotel in Bangkok. I thought I would work out some instructions. None were supplied and I have led such a sheltered life. I have never needed to take my body temperature in the past 74 years 🙂 So with a glass of warm water & Google, I started playing.

Digital Body Thermometer at
Thermometer supplied by The Legacy Hotel at Bangkok

  1. Press the button once the display should show a temperature & battery level.
  2. Press the button again the display should now go blank.
  3. Insert the thermometer under the tongue at the back of the mouth.
  4. Press the button for 60 seconds (actually, 7 seconds is enough in my tests with warm water).
  5. Release the button and remove it from the mouth.
  6. You should now have a temperature, Hopefully not above 37.5 degrees!  The maximum tolerated by the Thai government.

Interestingly whilst in the UK to get the twin jabs I never once had my temperature taken whereas before I went here in Thailand every shop measures your temperature!

Getting knifed in the garden.

The resident gardener decided we needed to plant a row of The King 9 miracle grass, otherwise known as Vetiver Grass along our new fence to help prevent soil erosion this is  where we have built the ground up higher than our neighbour. My task was to remove the mile a minute vine from the fence. I chose to use a sickle 🙁

The inevitable happened and I knifed myself with the sickle. While leaning over the fence cutting &  pulling the vine from the chainlink fence the curved blade went in near a knuckle and appeared on the other side between my index & ring fingers 🙁

We rushed to the local hospital who popped in 4 stitches at the entry point and one incredibly painful stitch where it came out. All for 810baht (£18)

The wounds are now healing well and when I returned I managed to finish the hacking, with a more conventional straight blade and all the grass was planted 🙂

A years cycling in Thailand

Sabai Sabai I started this post on the 4th of January 🙂

2020 was a fantastic cycling year for me, blowing away all my previous mileage records :-). Thank goodness I moved to Thailand, in January, away from all the CoVid lockdowns in Europe.

Veloviewer chart of Geoff Jones cycling 2013 to 2021
9 years of cycling in Veloviewer

According to Strava I rode 18,220Km that’s well over eleven thousand miles at an average speed of 21kph (13mph) with 82,456 metres of climbing (27,000ft). Pretty good for a 72 year old who also designed and had a house built at the same time.

As you can see this year is not looking so good for cycling.  Three months in and only 2,300km ridden, a good 4,500 km behind last year as I said sabai sabai