Dark and Light: Rammstein and Sunshine

It's been a pretty good weekend so far. After managing to ride 18 miles to work on Friday and 25 miles home, I was up early on Saturday to get my training out of the way. I nearly stayed in bed but those two magicial words - "Haute Route" - had me throwing off the duvet and firing up the Gaggia.

A quick coffee, some toast and Nutella, and I was out on the Kaffenback for a planned 3 hour "hard endurance ride".

Three hours? Hard? Really? Yes, really. It's amazing what a little motivation can do. I kept the effort going, helped by having a few other cyclists to chase. Testament to my effort was seeing, waving at, and saying hello to, my neighbour coming the other way on his bike. Not so unusual except I completely failed to recognise him. I've only known him about twelve years although seeing him on a bike at 9am is somewhat exceptional. I could also blame the sun reflecting off the wet road, but that would be a lie.

There was one pair of guys on road bikes who I slowly reeled in and drifted past, wishing them "good morning". Half a mile further on, at the top of a slight hill, I glanced back to check for cars to find one of them sucking my wheel. Now, I've nothing against this - but please let me know. If I hadn't glanced back things could have got a little messy as I had to brake hard towards the bottom of the descent to avoid a parked truck. Not too hard - as I knew there might be someone behind me - but a disc-braked cross bike on 32mm tyres stops better than the average road bike.

He seem to disappear after that.

Back home it was full on recovery mode - chocolate milkshake, stretch, shower, recovery tights. Nap on the sofa. Picnic shopping.

OK, so picnic shopping isn't that normal for recovery but we were going to see Rammstein Saturday night and rather than pay for overpriced grease at the venue we thought we'd take a picnic instead. We got to the venue nice and early and sat in the car, munching away on a mix of homemade and shop bought goodies.

Soooooooooooo..... Rammstein.

Awesome. Fire, explosions, penis shaped foam-cannon, flaming wings, cauldron, whipping, fireworks, flares and fire. Did I mention fire? There was lots of fire.

The music was almost incidental to the show - it was like Blue Man group meets Mad Max meets Guy Fawkes night meets the testing section of a napalm factory. I tried to video bits but my camera struggled to cope with the changing light. This'll give you an idea though

Warning. First 5 rows may get burnt, blinded, covered in glitter and sprayed with foam from a penis cannon.

Marvellous. A perfect Saturday.