Ride Entry – 29th January 2009

Bike: lemond
Distance: 85 miles

Forcast said windy and sunny, it sure was windy but didn’t see any sun….until I got home obviously. But a whole load of stuff happened between then and then, lets recap though.

My Lemond has been playing up a bit recently, so I polished it all up, greased and oiled the moving bits, tuned the tunable bits, really made sure it was in tip top shape. I took it out the other night and it seemed to work fine, mostly, bit of ghost shifting but I put that down to stretching cables and other similar driftung forces experienced on a bike.

Set off this morning, bit cold and wet but with a brisk tailwind I flew down to Liverpool. About half way there it started ghost shifting again, under load normally. It worked OK in big and third so I left it there. It got worse though so I started checking the drivechain out as it was spinning away and I saw a chink in it’s movement. The chain was bent. I stopped for some crisps (you’ll note this is the only time I ate during the whole ride), checked it out and sure enough, one side of the chain had broke, ten minutes later that bad link was out and finally my bike would work perfectly.

Nope. Still playing up. This frustrated me for quite some time and after about 55  miles, I’d had enough, turned right into the headwind and aimed for home, I’d had enough. Bang goes my century. I’m coming through Preston and it starts properly playing up. Any load at all on the pedals and it changes gear or dumps the chain. I stop at some lights and press on the pedal, the entire BB moves about 2 inches….errrm, that’s not right. Now I’m scared, there’s clearly something fundamentally wrong with my bike and I’m 25 miles away from home. i’m too worried to check so mince through Preston and start climbing, in very first gear, up into the hills that will take me to Wigan.

I finally stop for a look…..oh dear, there’s a humungous crack running right the way through my seat tube and down tube above the BB shell. I stop a few more times during the remainder of my 12mph average gay boy limp (up till Preston I had been averaging over 18mph) and the cracks are growing, sharpish.

The last time I check this chap comes over and starts chatting. Claimed to be a time trial record holder. ten miles at 23 minutes or so in Southport, he seemed to know what he was talking about, have to look him up. I roll very gently down into Wigan and then pander along the canal to home. Surprised I made it, the crack is almost all the way round now. Last ride ever on the Lemond.

R.I.P

Ride Entry – 27th January 2009

Bike: Lemond
Distance: 18 miles

Fixed up the Lemond front shifter by spraying a ton of WD40 up it. Reset the cable and went out for a ride. Just a quick blast really to see if it was working. It was although it rubs slightly on big and second which is a pity because that’s my flat gear. Need to sort that before my hopefully big ride on Thursday. I am so ready for a massive leg flimsying ride, proper century plus business. Anyway, set off, rode fast, it started raining, hard, which was good because I’d forgotten my water bottle. Mind you, sticking my tongue out didn’t really catch enough. Glasses were coated in water so I couldn’t see on the back lanes. Throat was so dry I could have kept I dunno, something very dry in it. Glad to get home really. Hope the weather is better on Thursday.

Cum Dancing

I bought the wife tickets to Celebrity Strictly come dancing for Christmas at the M.E.N. We went on Thursday.

16:30 I said, that’s when we leave. I’m a punctual chap and know exactly how long things will take if we leave at 16:30, but not if we leave at 16:45, like we did. I had to drive like a cock down the east lancs to get us there for 17:35. Itinerary ruined I marched us across Manchester to East Z East riverside which was quite frankly, frigging excellent. There was a loud mouthed, muscle bound Manc who no-one would argue with sat at the next table who kept phoning his mates and telling them how many squats he’d done but apart from that the service and food were astounding, recommended.

Then we went to the MEN. It’s good, bigger than I thought. Quite a good night actually. Rachel Stephens and the porn star of ballrom dancing, Kristina Rihanof made it all worth watching for sure.

Rachel is such a babe it’s almost untrue. (You can see one of her suspenders in this shot under her dress which is incredibly erotic)

And Kristina Rihanof is very sexy indeed, moves wonderfully.

Great!

Ride Entry – 22nd January 2008

Bike: Lemond
Distance: 32 miles

I started out with right good intentions. Take the day off, choose the best weather day I could find, get up bloody early, do massive bike ride.  Splendid.

Wednesday night, brother in law gets rushed into hospital, we do not get home till after 3 in the morning.
Thursday morning, very tired, it’s raining real hard, I decide to leave it an hour or so and oversleep till about 9.
Get up, prepare bike, go OUT!
It’s really windy and a bit rainy, it’s REALLY windy. All my energy is sapped within 5 miles into a headwind.
A big stone gets trapped between a rear brake block  and the rim, pulls all the rubber off, carves a gouge into the rim.
Front mech starts playing up, won’t click in either direction, keeps popping the chain down to the small ring.
On a big climb, it does just this and I land on the headset on my crotch
While I’m staggering about by the roadside with my hands between my legs, I look at the bike and the front tyre is flat.

That’s it, I’ve had enough. Fix flat, point the bike home and nail it. Here comes the only good bit of the ride. I get it on the flat still in an ultra high gear, wind picks me up and rockets me up to 35 mile an hour for about a mile, SWEEET!!! Overtaking car city, must have passed about 7 or 8.

Fight my way home and fix myself up a massive set of bacon and egg butties. Ho hum. Same time next week?

SUSE – errm, yes, actually NO

Got my new laptop so I partition it and I’m just about to get Ubuntu which works well for me, when I think maybe I should try a new one. Always avoided SUSE since the last time I tried it they messed around with vim to make it hard to use and made cutting and pasting with the mouse as hard as possible (should be: select – right click pastes, everyone knows that).

SUSE comes out top in all the linux reviews so I download the DVD and install it. It all looks very nice and professional, installs with minimal effort, all very good.

Starts up for the first time, the Grub loader screen appears, SUSE is default, we’ll change that later but for the time being, off you go. My laptop dies. Oh, try again, dies again. Panic a bit and select windows next time, that’s fine. Had to do work then so waited till like now before I got chance to look at it again.

Try again, this time select SUSE safe option, that boots up OK. Login, again, all looks quite slick but then the real rot makes itself apparent. They’ve tried to make it cute. It’s like a fucking MAC. They have these little icons that hop up and down next to the mouse cursor, yeah, fun for two seconds. I’m sure you can turn them off but doing that would mean having to use something far more sinister and mind controlling… the menu system. Nothing is where you expect it to be, nothing is easy to find. There’s messages and alerts popping up all over the place, wireless goes up and down, up and down.

In terror I flick through the menus trying to find a terminal window, THERE! loads of terminal icons. I open it up (it’s like going into a starbucks, JUST GIVE ME A FUCKING COFFEE!!!), I choose one of the 17 options and hope it opens something I can use. YAY! I take a quick look at the logs, wireless is pissing about so I turn it off. Things calm down a bit but finding how to do ’stuff’ is just horrible. I appreciate it’s just KDE and that it’s all configurable but I, (and I’m sure many others), do not want to have to do it.

I try to configure Grub to set windows as the default. Seems simple enough, YAST, change settings. Although YAST will no longer start. I check the logs again, no errors, just nothing. I mess about for an hour or so, make no progress with wireless (i’m a seasoned wireless-on-linux user and have been through the ball ache many times before so accept it’s not entirely SUSE’s fault)

Back to Ubuntu tomorrow. If I were a normal windows user, this would have stopped my Linux experiement in it’s tracks right there and then.

And they still don’t set up select-paste-with-right-mouse by default, what’s that about?

Ride Entry 17th January 2009

Bike: Humuhumunukunukuapua’a
Distance:25 miles

Very excellent ride marred only by a world full of bell ends. Started out just fine, bit windy, but nothing major. Night ride too. Rode like a god to Rivington, this turned out to be partly because of a strong tailwind. Got to Georges road, stopped for a couple of photos and some whisky. Rode quite nicely along the tops and then came back down the AICR. The rain, and the wind decided to start up at this point……quite a lot. Suddenly I was battling into very strong winds backed up by an almost hail-like rain. I was soaked in seconds and very cold. Repeat for 10 miles. Oh, and lots of people leaving the football game driving like frigging knob heads.

Good though, the Humu descends offroad great!

Ride Entry – 18th January 2009

Bike: Chameleon
Distance:46 miles

Excellent ride and my longest this year so far. Over to Wingates, saw 4 lads past going fairly quickly so tagged along behind them but didn’t have the gears to pass. (For a quartet, they were actually jolly fast, but I’d never tell them that). Up to Rivington, over Winter HIll, down winter hill descent, over to Simon’s path, round Roddlesworth, back to white coppice via Withnell woods. Hands and feet were ice cold by this point, stopped to warm them up. Back over to Rivington, bumped into Simon for a few minutes, rode home.

As I got right close to my house, a woman shot past me, already with her left indicator and brakes on and started the turn into her drive. I locked up the back and stopped in time and she turned left RIGHT in front of me. I stood there staring at her as she got her stuff ready and then made a phone call, I suspect to her husband…. “I’ve just cut up a knob on his bike and he’s now stood at the end of the drive, can you come out and intimidate him till he rides off please? Thanks, love you honey.”

Bellend, still, she lives about 300m away from our house so revenge should be easy to come by.

Chameleon’s rock going down the winter hill descent, FUCKING ROCK! It’s like a man went to santa cruz and said, “I want you to make a bike that is a grade perfect for doing the winter hill descent. You can then sell this design to everyone, thanks.” And they did, and it is.

Was right knackered and very cold when I got home, and my new sealskin gloves have already got a hole in one. Which is a bit of a pisser.

Local Routes – As requested

http://www.samuri.co.uk/gps/

Ride Entry – 11th January 2009

Bike:Humuhumunukunukapua’a
Distance: 20 miles

Just a quick, mostly road blast around on my new purchase, a Kona Humuhumunukunukapua’a. It’s very nice. A bit heavy for a singlespeed but not terribly so. All I did was stick some pedals on it, fix the back brake, raise the seat and oil the chain and out I went. Circa 1996. It rides pretty well, and fast considering the big fat tyres and weight. Slighly under geared for road use mind but probably over geared for proper offroad climbs, we’ll see.
I came back via Borsdane woods which I thought would end in tears. The tyres are not mud tyres by any stretch of the imagination, my light battery was starting to go weak, my glasses were caked in mud and I fully anticipated the borsdane gang to be sheltering under the railway bridge at the end. Happily it all went well with no incidents and just a smiley face from me.

Not sure whether to commute on it (if ever do start commuting again), or stick some proper tyres on it and take it offroad.

Proper pictures to follow but here’s one for the time being.

Ride Entry – 9th January 2009

Bike: Chameleon
Distance: 18 miles

Quick night ride blast after work. My new light bracket is loose, the light rattles around on top of it like it’s alive. 20 quid! The first one broke the first time I tried it, got a replacement free of charge, that one doesn’t work properly. 20 quid!!!

Bloody cold, even with two pairs of socks on and winter boots my toes were numb after riding along the side of the canal.