Apparently this little spider is related to the poisonous European Tarantula and so its bite was greatly feared, although it is harmless to people. According to legend, the only way to save someone bitten by a European Tarantula was to dance the tarantella!
I didn't run today but rode my bicycle 6.6 miles to take my car to an auto clinic for a service, and then to fetch it again. The only hill I couldn't climb while still on the bike was our driveway's terribly steep mountain! Riding is easier than running because of the downhills where you can coast.
I have somewhat lost my nerve with cycling though. I found it incredibly stressful riding on the road, with just a narrow strip for cyclists, and when a school bus, while passing me, suddenly emitted a loud noise while changing gears, I nearly teetered right off into the gravelly roadside.
Going back to fetch the car this afternoon I rode mainly along the pavement (which is called the sidewalk here, while the pavement is the road) but it is somewhat curtailing as it is full of little dips and holes and uneven patches in general, so my bum was pretty tender by the time I actually got to my destination. I thought I was going at a riproaring speed, but an elderly couple riding bravely and seemingly unfazed by traffic rushing by, went by me in the opposite direction and then about 10 minutes later came up behind me and sauntered past, completing a 20 mile loop, most probably.
The thing with speed is that when you are older you know what can happen if you fall off. In graphic detail.
When I was 35 my dress got caught up in the back wheel spokes while I was hurtling down Cross Street to fetch something from a friend, in the fading light of a beautiful summer's day, resulting in me flying through the aforementioned fading light and crashing to the ground on my left arm, snapping the radius. Extricating myself from the mangled bike which had landed on top of me somehow, and holding my rapidly swelling broken wing close to my body, I banged on the nearest door with the knuckles of my good arm, until an alarmed man answered and phoned Tim who raced down to fetch me. At home he sat me down, took off my watch, had to carefully cut off my ring and bracelets, and instructed Stephen to give me honey while he phoned the doctor who told us to meet him at the hospital. (Emma and Jess had been promised ice-cream, and Emma said, in a very disgruntled voice, "So does this mean we're not getting ice-cream anymore?")
So there is still a metal plate holding the two pieces together, with big bolts that you can feel through the skin, and my arm is a bit crooked, but works very well, apart from the fact that I can't do a handstand on the beach anymore, a feat I only accomplished a few years prior to the fall, so it was a very short-lived accomplishment.
Anyway, this fact prevents me from flying down hills as I was wont to do when I was much younger, which is quite sad. I hang on the brakes now, and hope against hope that I will remain on the bike the entire way down the hill.
My dad never really retired, and once when he had been called in for a consultation on a refridgeration job at his old company in Paarden Eiland, he was offered a ride on a big motorbike one of the young engineers had recently bought. My dad, who must have been in his mid-seventies at the time, was thrilled, as he had ridden a motorbike in his youth, and so he hopped on and off he went. It was fine until he got on to the freeway, and then, he told me, he lost his nerve, and couldn't even go faster than 70km an hour, and returned to the factory very cautiously, where he handed back the bike with a heavy heart. He couldn't stop imagining himself falling off, and the damage it would cause his body, and his life.
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