Walking again

It has been two weeks since I fractured my hip and I can finally kind of walk without crutches. I've been doing self-physio (by the time I can see my doctor, I'll be dead or cured) by riding flat Zwift courses on my trainer. It also works as therapy, because if I can't workout I get irritable. My power and miles are down, but it's better than nothing and it really helps mentally.

I tried going to the BBC website and watching shows on their iPlayer at https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer while I'm working out but it only works if you're in the UK. I have similar problems with GCN+ and their territory restrictions. So I got a subscription to NordVPN which, among other things, lets me pretend to be in a part of the world where I am not. It lets me watch BBC content which is restricted to the UK and races that are not available in the US. I'm so naughty.

On the plus side, I was going to drop my GCN+ subscription but now I can watch all their race coverage, I'm going to continue it. So it seems GCN comes out ahead from all this.

Hoping to go for an easy bike ride with Amber next weekend.

I bought one of those ultrasonic cleaning machines and tried cleaning a chain ring. It is rubbish. After 18 minutes of ultrasonics in a warm 5% simple green solution I still could not tell which half had been immersed. It would have been quicker to clean it manually. It's going back.

Can you tell which half has been cleaned (it's the top half)

While I had it apart I hand cleaned the cassette and the two bigger chainrings. I can't get the smallest one off without pulling the bottom bracket and the tool to do that is unreachable until I can walk better. I also replaced the chain because I had broken the last one too short. Stupid mistake, and expensive. But my bike is a lot cleaner now.

I also wired up the taillight on my Brompton because when I installed the rack the light sits further back and the old wire was too short. It has been a busy day. It's amazing what you can do when you don't need to use crutches. Need to clean the Brompton tomorrow.