The path runs both uphill and downhill as it meanders along the coast. At one point I had just finished busting my balls up a long hill to find a lovely long downhill stretch on the other side on a swooping bend - beauty! The track was unsealed but there was no gravel or anything around so I gunned it downed! The problem was the blind T-junction at the end where my path meets another hehe. I was flying down and saw the junction round the bend only at the last minute, and then saw grit and gravel and shit on the track - not good. I slammed on the anchors, went skidding along the grit, and straight through a wooden fence hahaha! It's a bit hard to describe (should've taken a photo), but the fence consisted of three horizontal rows of wooden planks between fence posts. The lowest row of wood was old and rotted, and my front wheel totally obliterated it and sent splinters everywhere (I was going pretty fast ;) The middle row wasn't much better and the bar-ends on my handle bars took care of that. The upper row was unfortunately somewhat newer than the rest, and my face didn't have the same effect as the rest of my bike did hahaha! I took it on the chin (literally), so as always the bike ends up coming out of it better than me! Not long thereafter I reached Kirkcaldy, Fife's largest town by population with 50,000, and caught the train home after 60kms worth of good fun and good injuries. Bloody hell I do love a good ride! :)

That blood all over the pavement, that's mine, A+ goodness right there and a lot more in the gutter out of shot. Here's the story: Lisa and I were out wandering around town en route to the fish shop to get some of the good stuff for dinner. On the way she stopped at a cash machine. Nearby were two Big Issue sellers (The Big Issue is an entertainment and current affairs magazine sold in many countries for dirt-cheap to the homeless who in turn sell it on for a small profit which they can then waste at the pub). Two Big Issue sellers were arguing over whose patch this was. One guy in particular was highly pissed off about the other guy being there as he felt this was his turf to sell The Big Issue. So they were going at it rather heatedly for a while and I was rather enjoying the show. The irate guy noticed me watching them and so proceeded to give have a go at me as well hahaha! I backed off, told him to get lost, he told me to fuck off back to New Zealand (I have a Silver Fern logo on my jacket), and Lisa and I wandered round the corner into the monthly French markets and just left him to his ranting and raving. We were in the markets for about to ten minutes, and bought a couple waffles and so forth. When we emerged out the other end, Mr Big Issue is standing there bloody waiting for me! He charges over, gives me a couple of shoves, I told him to back off and calm down, but instead he left-hooked me right in the nose (I managed to hold on to my waffle though! ;) My nose starts gushing (which made it somewhat difficult to enjoy the rest of my waffle), and he hurriedly disappeared back through to the markets in the direction of where this all started. Lisa apparently thought about hurling her waffle covered in toffee sauce at him, but at £3.50 she decided she'd just rather eat it hahaha! Being a Saturday afternoon, town is chock full of people, and they all rushed over and offered me about 500 tissues hehe. A security guard from an adjacent store came over and took me out back so I could clean my face up (I was looking pretty good) while Lisa phoned the police (and finished her waffle). An ambulance turned up as well just to give me a quick once-over. The cops took forever to turn up but I eventually found out why. While waiting for them on the side of Princes Street a guy walked over to me and told me the cops had Mr Big Issue in custody. This guy had apparently seen the whole thing happen and then followed Big Issue while giving the police a running commentary on his cell phone. Big Issue was arrested about kilometre down the road. The cops did eventually get to me, confirmed they'd made an arrest, took me to hospital so someone else could give me a second once-over, and took my statement.

Needless to say my nose is broken, and I now look like Owen Wilson hehe. Well not quite, I did straighten it as much as I could (pleasant experience), but it is still slightly bent at the end where I couldn't do much about it. I have an appointment on Thursday to have it properly seen to once the swelling has gone down (standard procedure apparently), and depending on how it looks I may decide to have it re-broken and reset, but we'll see. I may just go out again next weekend and find a right-handed person to wind up. I tell ya, these Brits are an angry, angry people, and that's the biggest issue!