Ride Entry – 28th and 30th December

Bike: Chameleon
Distances: 35 and 12 miles respectively

Well, I think that’s it. A pretty crap year for riding. Distance, it’s my best for 2 years (and truth be told, I only did more than this in 2005 because I got paid to ride from Inverness to london), so actually the biggest mileage year I have on record. Fun miles though, probably one of the worst. Not very many offroad rides at all and certainly not many mountain bike miles. A quick look suggests I did pretty much everything on cross bikes or road bikes.

So, 2009 will be different. PLan is many mountain bike rides. Maybe road rides in the week to keep the fitness up but mountain bikes at weekend even if it’s local. I have plans to ride in wales and the lakes (different routes each time) 5 times each at least, plus I’m definitely going for the triple century in 2009. Road I think, offroad like my double would be a bit hard to accomplish. 300 miles on a road bike though, will be as dull as fuck. Just think, do a hundred and know you’ve got to do it twice again….. eek. I reckon about 20 hours riding to be honest (and even that is pretty fast), which is a long time in the saddle. Plus it has to be as flat as possible….

We’ll see. Anyway, emphasis on more fun, so that’s an optional.

Ride Entry – 21st December 2008

Bike: CHameleon
Distance: 38 miles

Long, hard, cold, wet and muddy and absolutely freaking brilliant! loved every minute. Got home feeling completely screwed and had a nap straight after my shower. Still aching now (and worryingly, so is my left knee). But it was great! Chameleons rock hugely, so much fun. Saw quite a few bikers. Got home caked in mud, rinsed myself down just in lycra shorts in the back garden, that water was cold! Caught the next door neighbour watching me as I rinsed myself off, cheeky mare.

Probably one of the last rides I’ll do this year but we’ll see.

Touch me up

It wasn’t so long ago…that Apple was a dirty word for me. It still is in some respects but I’m not going to bitch about their operating systems to day. What I want to talk about is their hand held devices.

I had a creative MP3 player for a while. It was big and bulky and heavy but it worked rather well. Their PC software blew goats though but with a bit of reasearch and plenty of assistance from geeks, I was happy.

Then it started to play up, I got showed an ipod and and lusted after one. I got an ipod classic video. Great device, still got it too and perfectly happy with it. But then the marketing men got to me and they told me I needed an itouch. Some crazy working hours later and with a pay packet close to the national gross of some small African countries and one was in my hand.

Wow! Just holding it is nice. Beautifully made. Really, like it was made by Germans or something. So slim and sleek, well put together. Turn it on and it wasnt to talk back to mother but once I’d done that…. amazing. The front end is fantastic. Proper touch screen drifting and clicking, works great. The wealth of free and pay for applications online is astounding and it fits into itunes effortlessly. The screen quality is incredible, way better than my classic.

Love it, in case you hadn’t realised. Get one.

Just got my email working now, superb.  And browsing the internet, wow, the zoom and navigation is great, you can easily ‘do’ the internet on it. The screen keyboard works well and it just drifts between sites as you select wonderfully.

If you’re going to get a product made by apple then their small devices are the only way to go and this one is the thing you need to get.

Cockney-ville

Right, I’ve never made any claims to like London. It’s an oversized shit hole in my opinion. Don’t take it personally though your pearly kings and queens, I’m not mad keen on any city but London, being the biggest in the uk, also seems to attract the majority of the grade A cock ends. I’ve spent a lot of time in various parts of London but this time it was a mere three days. The list is endless but i’m going to rant away anyway.

The hotel. I’m aware there are many nice hotels down the smoke but the travelodge near Liverpool street station (and I’m, happy to concede that Travelodges should be nothing but minimalist head resting places), was  one of the worst hotels I’ve ever been to, and I’ve stayed in many, many hotels around the world. Lets see, right next to a dodgy block of flats with the gayest double glazing ever which failed to block out the hero shouts of the gangs that gathered outside till 5 in the morning leaving me with 2 minutes sleepy time before the lorries arrived to empty the bins, every fucking day. The taps moved around on their mount and indeed, would wait till oooh, I had just gone to sleep before opening themselves up again. The bed was softer than a skip full of duck pluckings and gave me a bad back. The staff were rude at best and intolerant at worst. (Can I charge a drink to my room? Can I fuck.)  Actually, there’s a thousand more things but I have more to say about London per-se so on we move.

People. Here’s how you get around London, walk really fast and ignore everyone else. Get your ipod on, dress quite well in the city but do not make eye contact with anyone, be rude, be ignorant. Smoke, all the fucking time. I though the North was the worst for smokers but that must just be because we get crapper health care, there are so many smokers in London and they do it all the time, walking along the street which is something you hardly ever see up here.

Bikes. Fucking loads of them, fasands. People in full dress suits, jaw-droppingly beautiful girls riding fixies with no brakes, agressive cocks, law-breakers, enthusiasts, they’re all there, wonderful but terrible.   I really enjoyed sitting at the Bank junction watching bikes fly every which way, which I’d taken my camera but god, learn some manners and rules, and for christs sake, the amount of near misses I saw because people had no brakes. Just fit a front one, there’s nothing wrong with it. I’m a harder rider than you’ll ever be but i have brakes on my fixies because I want to carry on living. I can fixie brake and lock my wheel but it’s never going to stop you as well as a brake will, grow up and fit a brake.

Water. Sorry, I know it’s not your fault but your hard water is shite. Can’t wash in it, which is why you all smell.

The tube. Quite entertaining really, but it’s shit. Go to Paris and see how it should be done.

Only one nice thing happened to me when I was there and that was due to a good friend, made all the shit worthwhile.

Pearly Whites

So I’m panicking all night, barely sleep. I have a dentists appointment at 9:40. It’s just a checkup but they’re usually worse than the actual work. (Just to clarify, I have no issue with needles or drills, my problem with dentists goes much deeper. It’s *allowing* a relative stranger poke around in my mouth while I lie there acquiescent. Maybe I was bummed while I was under the gas or something as a child.)

Get there, ‘there’s a bit of a wait’, oh great. So now as well as sweating away for ages waiting for Dr Death (this is a new dentist, never met him before), I also have to worry about my car being ticketed.

Finally get in twenty minutes after the scheduled appointment and sit down in the chair of pain. The dentist seems nice enough, and like all Britain’s health carers, comes from a different country, Portugal in this case. he wants to chat first about why i’m there and what I see coming from the visit.

That’s nice, a bit better than the usual, ‘lie down, talk about your teeth like you’re not there, line himself for 200 quid’s worth of expensive and painful work and then sting me for 16 quid for ten minutes work on the way out’, that I’m used to. He actually seemed concerned and nodded understandingly when I explained I was terrified enough to sprint out of the door. He glanced at the sweat patches on my T-shirt…..’yes’, he said, lets have a look and see’. I assume the position, he dons his body armour. After a bit of scratching around in my mouth while I try and punch holes in his chair upholstery with my fingers, he removes his hands from my bottom… I mean mouth, looks at me closely and after ascertaining if I was in pain or not (I’m not, not even sensitive), he tells me he’ll see me in six months.

What kind of dentist appointment is that? I question him, angry that I’m not going to get financially and orally reamed. I point out that there are holes, I can feel them with my tongue. Do it again I say, and this time find some pain to put me through. He assures me there is no decay, that any irregularities are purely small steps in existing fillings. If they start hurting then pop in and we’ll sort them out he tells me but for the meantime, your teeth are good and strong, gums are healthy, lots of fillings from repeated visits to my childhood dentist, Mr Touchyanus, but overall, not bad at all.

I stagger down the stairs, not sure how to feel. This isn’t how I expected the visit to go at all. This must be how it feels for normal people when they go to the dentist. How bizarre. I make another appointment for June and leave.

There is a traffic warden bearing down on my car, I check my watch, it’s been in a 30 minute zone for 45 minutes. That’s more like it.

Ah feck!

Ummm, we got hacked. That didn;t actually cause any damage but then I tried to upgrade while doing 8 other things, messed it up, dropped the database thinking I had a backup and then found out…. everything gone.

Ah well, it needed a refresh. Watch this space, it might be even better than before, but I doubt it…….