Dogs and fleas, offroad and mud

To Seletar West Farmway, 38 km. Lie down with dogs, get up with fleas. Unless dogs have no fleas. It is work, to remove fleas from dogs, so that one can get up without itch. Today, I itch, not from fleas, but mud. I read somewhere about acidic mud. I itch so much, it is as if I have been bitten. I don't want the mud to bite aluminium, so I wash my bicycle. Which is work. The hoses I find are guarded by dogs or padlocks. I remember N's advice to use a water bottle, which works fine as I park next to a sink. Why do I do all this work to go offroad, when there is little hope of finding "legal" trails? Perhaps because if I look hard enough, I will find what I find today: the sight of vegetable patch and butterflies. The sound of gurgling water and silence. The thrill of technical cycling on sticks and stones, on single track, and on a hill with a 5-storey drop inches away. And, of course, cycling on sludge so thick, my 1.95-inch tyres look like 3-inch. I'm in this vicinity today for auld lang syne.