Sabato 1st maggio

Today I shall mostly be talking about animals. Today, venerdi as I start writing this, it is another scorcher. It has been about 25C for the past two days, making up for Tuesday which had a tropical rain and thunder storm with the loudest thunder I have ever heard, the previous record being London in the summer of '96. That time I recorded some of the lightning on my phone to record into a song - this has yet to happen! It was a stinking hot summer in London that year, hotter than I had ever witnessed before and as I walked home from the train to Isleworth with the torrential rain running over the top of my shoes at times, I ended up getting straight in the shower when I got home,in suit and shoes!
So - animals. It has got hotter and suddenly the insects are out in force. We can close the shutters down, well not shutters, but sort of insect screens. This is essential, it never really got cold enough over winter to kill off all the bugs. All the way through winter I kept seeing flies, wasps, bees, all sorts of fun things, that normally a good winter in the UK would decimate.
OK, its been a few days now, and the weather has gone pants again. It's rained the last few days, although today has been nice. It will rain again for the next week, and I just heard that there are some more airport closures in Spain, so maybe the clouds are blowing the wrong way?
The good training weeks have continued, and I have been cycling in, approximately 3 times a week, except for this week with all the rain. Anyway, one time I was just approaching the house, and did my usual stretch, cycling along, arms spread wide, when I felt the biggest big fly into my left hand. It's has now made me a little scared of cycling with my hands spread, and I must try to keep my mouth shut.
On good news, I am cycling to work, and have hit a new record speed - 45.9 mph, in a 50 km/h zone. Heh heh. Actually there are other places I could go quicker, but that is the only place that has good tarmac on the downhills.
Last weekend I went cycling with a friend from work, an aussie, Cambridge Blue, he took it easy on me, but it was nice to cycle from his end of town (he lives almost diametrically opposite to us on the other side of Siena) and thankfully that side it is much much flatter. On my ride to work it takes 3 minutes until I have already hit 30 mph downhill and then have hit an uphill where I am in the lowest cog, and out of the saddle and almost ready to quit. Anyway, we had a good 2 hour spin in the sun, 30 miles, undulating hills, complete with a stop at a cafè bar.
On that evening, whilst driving back from the sea, we ran into something just down our road. It was a porcupine (istrice)!!! I was so excited I screeched the car to a halt, and jumped out and went running after it. It pricked it's spines up and ran away into the long grass. When I got back to the car Dawn told me that they shoot their spines out of their back when they are attacked. These are long, and barbed and are a nightmare to remove. Thankfully I didn't get shot. The time was about 9:30 pm.
Anyway, last night I was driving a little further down the road, at about 11:30 pm and two porcupines walked in front of me in the road, I had to swerve to avoid them! They were much bigger, maybe the one the week before had been a youngster. Anyway, I put the car into reverse and went chasing them off. I saw them running away, well it wasn't running, it was bounding, or hopping. Great fun. They scrambled up a bank and were off. It was too wet for me to look for spines.
They were actually very close to where, last week, straight after breaking my porcupine duck, we then nearly ran over a wild boar (cinghiale)! Double whammy. Wow. The cinghiale was black, like satan's guardian. Apparently you can hit them with the car and the car comes off far worse. The cinghiale idly climbed up a steep bank and was off.
Mind you, they taste good.
On the same road, whilst riding home, I saw a deer dart in front of me, and then also recently, a deer came out whilst I was driving home and just stood and stared, until I beeped my horn and it ran off.
And again, near there, whilst riding home, I saw a bat (pipistrelli), that was just at eye level, flying along at the same pace I was cycling, and I could see his little face smiling at me.
That's all the excitement I can take for one day. Ciao ciao.