Ride Entry 7th February 2010

Bike: Pimpino
Distance: 45 miles

That’s better! Now I’m starting to feel like riding my bike again which is good. This was a great ride, really enjoyed it. And felt reasonably fit too. I stuck loads of offroad in too even if it was a bit flat. Pretty much rode road over to Manchester and then picked up the TPT to Warrington, Sankey Valley trail from there and then local paths back to our house, probably more offroad than on.

As I was riding along up the Sankey Valley trail rummaging around in my pocket for the last few jelly babies, I realised how much I’d enjoyed the ride and more importantly, just how chilled out and relaxed I was feeling. I reckon crayons was right on another post, maybe this weirdness I’ve been feeling over the last week has been down to my body having to do a reset on itself to cope with all the relaxedness it’s going through. Driving up to Newcastle every week and stopping in hotels  may be a pretty shit way to earn a living but it’s certainly 8 million times better than working like a crazy lunatic constantly with very few breaks. I’m sleeping a whole lot better now too, I’ve got in at least 2 days in the last week when I’ve not been so totally screwed by early afternoon that i’ve had to take a nap to try and catch up.

Ride Entry – 6th February 2010

Bike: pimpino
Distance: 29 miles

Great ride. I was fecked at the end of it too. Proper fast riding for a fixie ride plus I’m still not rid of this virus thingy or whatever it is, lung cancer… blish. Went out and rode quickly, charged through a big group of lads smoking pot in the woods in Hulton, a few shouted shit after me, yeah, fucking hey. Over to Haigh Hall, blast through there and then offroad all the way home, nice and fun.

My lungs were killing me and I felt really tired out on the ride but hopefully I’ll be getting a lot more in now from here on in. I’m going to try and take my bike up to Newcastle with me next week, see how that goes.

I got home and was totally fucked. Had a shower, then a nap and then sat on the couch for twenty minutes doing nothing just waiting for my breath to come back. BP is 125 over 86 which for a 42 year old bloke is actually very good. I’m drinking more beer now, just to make sure I’ve killed it all.

In other news.

Driving up to Newcastle all the time is very rapidly becoming very shit indeed. Plus it’s (as I’ve stated before), bonkers in public sector.  Here’s a scenario for you to digress.

“Oh look, this proposal from one of our suppliers is complete and total bollocks, they’re taking the piss and spending all our money”

Now in private sector there would be a very rapid arse kicking during which the price would halve and the solution would double in value. In public sector every one just shrugs their shoulders and says ‘oh well, that’s the way it is round here’

That’s *your* tax money by the way. Crazy.

Oh, and since I’m driving a lot of hire cars at the moment, I may well start a car review page, just for fun.

Swim Entry – 4th February 2010

Swim
Distance: 1 mile

I felt like shit but really, wasting away in my hotel room sounds like a nightmare. So I went for a swim. Started off really badly, splashing around all over the place, choked on loads of water a couple of times. There was me, a girl and two blokes in the fast lane. The girl was stinky quick fast although she alternated between crawl and breaststroke so I caught her on each alternate length. She was easily as fast as me at crawl and no doubt had a better technique. I got to a mile and still felt fine so decided to go for two miles. About a lap later I felt all funny.

Got out, got changed, walked up to my room on the secnd floor and almost passed out on the bed, I was totally shagged for about 15 minutes. Something wrong, a vrius I expect. I googled dizziness and it is related to high blood pressure or infections pretty much. I checked my pressure when I got home and it’s 127 over 89 which might sound high to normnal people but for me is low.

My ears do feel very weird, I reckon it’s an infection. I’m drinking beer now to kill it. Sorted. My waist is thickening. I need to get back to whipcord thin time like at the end of summer last year. More cycling please.

Wooah!! O…..K…

What
The
Fuck
Was
That!!!?

Blimey. I just lost a whole load of my day. I’ll tell you the bits I can remember.

Get up at 5:00, set off at 5:30 up to Newcastle, I’ve been given a Passat which compared to the crazy pile of bollocks they gave me last week (a peugeot), is an amazing car. Right so I drive up North, pass the gates of our office at 9:30, bang on schedule. Drive to the nearest Metro stsation, no parking, drive to the next metro station with parking, wait 30 minutes on a feezing cold platform with a crazy jordie bloek staring at me, get the train back to our office and finally find myself walking to the office with the very lovely girl who works for my boss.

That’s where it all start5s to go a bit funny. Burning with cold I suspect my body never really recovered and enters some sort of hibernation state, I get an eye peircing headache and start to feelhungry, oops, left my butties in the car. No money neither so I;ve effectively eaten nothing all day. Do plenty of work. About 16:30 I start to feel real funlny, decide it’s time to retire to my hotel so reverse my path. Walk a mile to the train station, get on train, ride to car park ed train station, go to stainsburies for some food. Aah, this sainsburies doesn;t do paste or anything like that so I buy a bottle of wine, some crisps, some grapes and a big chcolately croissant.

Now I start to lose it a bit,. I remember checking in, although I don’t remember drivinjg here. I remember getting intio my room and unpacking all my stuff and I’ve  been quite good because my shirts are hanging up, as is my suit and I’m dressed but that’s probably about it. My laptop and phone are on charge so I did that bit, I’ve clearly had a sleep because the bed is all ruffled and it looks like I was going to go and have a swim as my trunks and goggle are out.

Now the nasty bit, There’s signs of a poo in the toilet (I’m assuming it’s mine) although I’ve clearly tried to flush at some point, there’s a newd box of ibuprofen on the table with 3 tablets gone and it looks like I;ve had a shower. I woke up slumped in a chair with my laptop playing, ironically, ‘The hangover’. The bottle of wine is nearly empty, the graoes are gone, the croissant is gone, the bag of crisps is half empty. Oh, and there’s an half empty6 bottle of irun bru in the bathrrom.

My  headache has gone but I feel completekly shagged and I’m, sweating like a pig.

what the hell is going on?

New Computer – Acer Aspire 1

After a HUGE amount of shopping around, I finally chose a notebook for myself. The decision was accelerated by the amount of time I’m spending in hotel rooms at the moment with not much to do so I pumped up my options, did some final checks and went for this. An AcerAspire One from Acer Direct .

This one is a refurbished unit Grade A2 (which means it’s effectively brand new with some damage to the box – The box is a bit tatty, nothing more – the laptop itself looks pristine.). It has a 16G SSD hard drive and 1Gig of RAM. I went for the small SSD drive because I realised I’d not need a huge amount of space for what I’m going to do with it (web/writing/email/photo editing/videos/music). Yes, music, photo’s and videos take up a lot of space but they’re very transient. Load them up, do stuff with them, remove them (with music being the possible exception).  Videos I’ll just watch once or twice and then delete, photos will be there only prior to sticking on the internet or back to my home PC terrabyte drive so space isn’t a big issue. Plus I have three USB drives. One 16G that I’ll use for videos (I typically accumulate videos on my home desktop and then move them onto this USB for watching), an 8G one that I use for general file transfer and a 4G encrypted stick that I use for very special things. I also have a 16G ipod which I wish could share it’s files when it’s connected but sadly not.

The other issue with the disk was that while SSD is much faster than a spinning platter and far more fault tolerant, it’s not nearly as quick as I wanted it to be. The online comunity suggests the way forwards is to replace the original SSD with a compact flash card and adaptor. Which I may do for a laugh.

Anyway. I can live with the space issue, (and there are many options available for internal expansion) . Battery life was a bit disappointing, 2.5 hours with the wireless enabled. I’m hoping this improves over time, it might need to go through a few discharge/recharge cycles before it reaches optimum performance.

The software was completely pants. The device came with Linpus Linux installed which I hated fromthe very start. Clearly desigend to allow idiots to use it it was far too restrictive for my geek fingers so I almost immediately downloaded an Ubuntu notebook remix image and dropped that on. Ten times better! It needed a bit of tweaking when it came to codecs for the video player but apart fromthat it worked fine. Sound, video, wireless, all the things that linux is typically slated for, all worked great!

It is brilliant! Battery life aside it’s very easy to carry around and while the keyboard is quite small for my engineer rapid fingers, I soon got used to keeping it tight. Well recommended.  140 quid from the link above. Get one.

Ride Entry – 31st January 2010

Bike: Pimpino
Distance: 26 miles

Great ride! A load of snow dumped down over night and I felt I should get out in it before it either melted or got packed down and turned to ice despite my knee giving me plenty of pain. So I popped a couple of ibuprofen down my gullet and off I went. Everything looked brilliant. I took way too many pictures. Only a few were worth keeping though.

Off up to Rivington, spotted quite a few riders about, one guy on a green singlespeed and another chap on a municycle!

This new Maxis tyre is great, very grippy and it’s not so wide that it rubs on the stays like the continental did. No punctures neither today, which was nice.

More pictures on my flickr page as usual.

Ride Entry – 29th January 2010

Bike: pimpino
Distance:25 miles

At last! A proper ride out on the bike, and well worth it too. It was great! Really enjoyed myself despite it being very windy and very cold. My hands on the way back were blocks of ice. Pimpino is now running perfectly for the time being. The new Maxis rear tyre is very fast and grippy too. Great ride, long may it continue.

edit: Oh how typical. I’ve woken up with my knee on fire. Great! No riding bikes today then.

Swim Entry – 26th January 2010

Distance: 1 mile

Another swim. I’ve put 1 mile but it was actually 2200 metres. I was going to aim for two miles but my neck started hurting because my swimming technique blows (sic). I do the front crawl and I’ve never been able to breathe on my right hand side so I have to breath on my left every 4th stroke. I should fix that really, actually learn how to swim properly rather than just splashing through the water like a wounded hippo. (I’m being a bit unfair to myself here, I’m usually the quickest in the pool and I’m usually the one swimming the furthest – Actually, just like everything I do, I’m typically near the front for distance and speed but because I’ve no idea how to do things properly this is usually just a result of brute force and stuborness rather than any skill – I should learn how to do at least one thing properly in my life before I die. Sounds like a target to set myself). I’ll ask the question at the idiot place, see what they think.

Pool was empty tonight after 8 and all the aerobics ladies had got out. Just me, a girl and a bloke and the girl moved to the slow pool after I’d caught her a couple of times (No need for her to have done that though, she was pretty quick and with only three of us in the lane it wasn’t an issue, especially since she, unlike a lot of swimmers, actually stopped at the end to let people past if she felt she was holding people up.) I can understand ladies not being very keen on having blokes queueing up behind them in the pool though, the chap behind does get a birds eye view of the person in front’s crotch and although I try to be very gentlemanly about it and look at the floor, when I know I’m close to someone I have to keep looking forwards to make sure I don’t crash into them.

Ride Entry – 25th January 2010

Swim
Distance: 1 mile

Yeah, yeah. A swim’s not a ride, but expect a lot more of them if things continue as they are. I’ve not ridden a bike for 9 days now, looks like my new job is going FANTASTICALLY. I expected at this point to be bored stiff at work but to have a hundred superb photos ready for processing, have a terribly sore arse from riding my bike far too much, have half a novel already in draft form and be especially relaxed and laid back. It went wrong somewhere. I’m actually typing this from an office in Newcastle, that I can get to my website is a miracle in itself, our security policy obviously hasn’t yet managed to come down on that one but give it time. 

You’ll notice I said the word ‘Newcastle’ too. I might have mentioned the word ‘Blackpool’ also. These are places my new company has been telling me to go, a lot.  And neither of them are very close to my house. In fact, at least one of them is a fucking long way away. Out of 12 working days with this company, I’ve spent 5 of them away from home with many more to come. What a great choice I made. The being bored bit was a laugh too, so were the suggestions that I’d be working from home half the time,   as well as being the last one in the office if I was still here at 3pm on Fridays. They work flexitime here and staff of my grade get to monitor their own and take it when they feel the need which is great because in 12 days I’ve already notched up two days flexitime because of the hours I’m working but I can see no obvious time I can take them.

So I’m stopping in a hotel on an industrial park in West Newcastle which only has a bar and a (free) gym to keep me amused at night so I’m going with the gym for the time being. I’ll try for another mile tonight, maybe bring my bike up next week and try scouting around (at night) to see what riding is worthwhile. I’m assuming riding over to the coast which is only a couple of miles away and then riding up and down that will be the best bet. We’ll see. I’m told there are some very rough areas over that way. It’ll be like being back at home.

Ride Entry – 17th January 2010

Bike: Pimpino
Distance: 26 miles

I did intend to go for a proper long ride but various incidents sapped my will to ride any further so I turned for home like a gayer.

Incident 1.
Impressively close to my house this one. I was riding along Wigan road towards Borsdane woods and needed to turn right into a side road. Checked over my shoulder, there’s a Zafira miles away coming towards me, no problem. Nothing coming the other way so I stick my right hand out for a second or two. Check over my shoulder again, the Zafira is closer but still loads of room so I move into the middle of the road, hand still out. I approach the junction and just as I’m about to make the turn I do a lifesaver[1] and as I’m turning my head the zafira clips my fingertips of my right hand. He’s FUCKING OVERTAKEN ME! I nearly shit myself it was so unexpected. I mean, it’s not really unexpected, it is sunday morning so all the god botherers are driving off to their mornings hypocrisy but FUCK! I shouted a string of obscenities after him but I doubt he even noticed. I was properly shaken for ten minutes afterwards. Daft old twat.

[1] Lifesaver – For those not in the know, you should be. It’s taught in motorcycle and cycle proficiency classes and it’s a look over your shoulder just before you turn just in case SOME STUPID HALF ASLEEP OLD CUNT WITH HIS HEAD IN THE CLOUDS decides to overtake you despite you signalling right because for some reason what you’re doing is of no importance to him. The fact that you’re highly likely to turn right in front of him and go straight under his car is clearly too difficult for him to anticipate.

Incident 2
This is actually a series of incidents. Has the snow and ice gone round your way? It has round ours mostly but Borsdane woods is 2 miles of sheet ice covering the entire path. I lost count of how many falls I had. I was getting very bored with coming off by the end. Plus I’ve apparentl forgotten how to speak Wigan as at least three blokes talked to me, presumably to impart their opinion of me trying to ride a bike along a river of bumpy ice and I couldn’t understand any of them. (That’s not really an incident, more of an observation)

Incident 3
This was really the decider. ANOTHER FUCKING PUNCTURE!!!! That’s 4 in three rides. Piss off. And these Halo rims are quite narrow so once the tyre starts to lose pressure the tyre squirms around like crazy. Need to find what’s doing it today.

In other news….

I’ve finally got a storage hook at the Velodrome, not that I’m going much at the moment but it means I can stop all that messing about with carting the bike backwards and forwards when I do go. It’s a right earner for the drome too. They’ve turned someone’s office into a storage room, lets say they can get 50 bikes in there, they charge £100 for each hook for a year (and they go lightning fast – the girl phoned while I was out on my bike to say there were only 25 left from the original 50 and when I phoned back about an hour later there was only 5 left).  So that’s 5 grand a year for a room that would normally be stood empty. And they don’t have to bother heating it any more.

I still haven’t sorted most of the site out neither. I must admit, I’m struggling to understand why the header image won’t display, I’d best have a look at that now.