Tearing about

Woodlands, 86 km. I help a friend with a park connector ride in the north, this time with no rental bicycles. But some bikes need care, no thanks to cheap, poorly-designed cyclocomputer attachments. At the end of the group ride, I recce the rendezvous point in the south for next week's charity ride. Then, as the day is young, I cycle down memory lane, to where I'd spent my early childhood.

Everything looks new. I ask an old man how old the apartments are. They are decades old. I cycle around; the apartment block where I used to live seems to have disappeared but there are vestigial traces of what used to be. I tell the old man I grew up here and he perks up. I wave goodbye to him, he nods. I also pass the block of someone I used to see year in year out, but no more. By this time, I'm tired and my speed has dropped by 10 km/h.

Back home, I shower and prepare to vegetate, then find out that a visit to a cancer patient - her misfortune is one of the nine bad things that happen in my life this year - has been arranged. And off I go, this time by public transport.