Good Evening.
Good day today - Long ride (3 hours), gave blood, went to library. Still not got all the details I need so I can't get posting but I should be able to get that sorted tomorrow night.

Unfortunately, fate got in the way of me doing things over the weekend and I would like to explain why in one of my rare rants; by their nature, they are entirely my opinion and may or may not have a basis in reality...

Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council. I think they are short on cash. They have attempted to close perfectly good schools. They seem to let historic buildings fall into disrepair so that they can demolish them and sell off the land. I'm not sure how linked the hospitals are, probably not at all, but while I'm here I want to complain at the selling off of perfectly good hospitals and their land in favour of centralising all the services at a site riddled with congestion.

So I think we've established that our borough is a little short on cash. Indeed, I believe our firestations are being renovated using voluntary donations of cash. So you wouldn't be that suprised to hear that the roads in this area are in a poor state of repair. I can't say they're terrible - there is an effort at providing roads. But they are pot-holed and/or subsided wherever you go.

Some examples: Stourbridge ring road has a part of it that, one day, fell out. Council patched it up. Little while later, it falls out again. We're talking about a collapse in the road surface measuring around 1 metre square.

High Street in Wordsley. This is where I had my "incident". I drove down here at night, in the rain. I saw a black patch on the road. Now in this area, patches on the road are no odd thing - you should see the road to my parents house; it's like a patchwork quilt. The thought process as I approached this dark ptch were as follows:

Look at that black thing, I wonder what it is?

Looks very big, doesn't look like a pot hole, I think it's just a patch (NB -
this assumption was my mistake)

Ye Gods it IS a pot hole and it's bloody deep and I've just gone into
it, the wheel's gonna blow, better hold the steering wheel tightly.

Ow, Ow, Ow - I'm still running, steering wheel feels normal, no cars coming
at me in a dangerous way, no pedestrians to dodge, everything does seem okay
doesn't it? Yes it does, okay, I'm gonna try and make it home. Resume normal driving with added caution.
(NB - this was another mistake, I should have checked externally).

The wheel rim was slightly buckled but tyre seemed to be holding its own. So next day I do my only vital journey. Everything goes fine until guess what - coming back into Dudley Borough, I hit another pot hole. This one was on a country lane, street light was broken and hole was hidden by a bend and foliage. So hit the hole I did. Only a small one, but enough to knock the air out of my tyre. Tyre gradually deflated on way back, so my speed decreased as I made it home.

That concludes my rant regarding Dudley Council, I will now finish the story.

So today I attempted to attach my spare tyre. Needed to de-rust the restraining nut for the spare wheel. Then the wheel nuts wouldn't come off - I was pushing hard, but the tools were bending under the pressure so I daren't try harder. I later found a stronger set of tools and managed it.

New tyre is quite possibly the same age as the car. So exterior wall is weak. But it should get me to a tyre place. That will have to wait until Wednesday. What with research and riding, my day will be busy enough.