Ride Entry – 26th April 2009

Bike: Chameleon
Distance: 48 miles

Lovely day for a ride but a proper hard offroad slog for me. Up to Rivington, over Winter Hill past the mast, down to Belmont, over to Simon’s path and up onto Darwen moor, couldn’t be arsed riding to the tower so headed back down to Roddlesworth and back to Rivington via White Coppice and Anglezarke.

A fine ride but it left me completely shagged. My front brake squealed the entire ride which really wound me up and the back wheel is starting to sound a bit loose which is fine for the most part but makes a hell of a racket over the rocky stuff. Oh, and my forks appear to have broke, they bottom ourt real easy now. Damping or something, might try changing the oil. Met Matt on his broken 29er, not seen him for a while. Seems chirpy enough. Loads of riders out, good to see but it’s nice I still know where to find the quiet places.

Edit: And I passed 1000 miles for the year. Very low mileage but they’ve been good miles.

Weekend of Speed

On Thursday I went to the Velodrome with the 3 Flat Caps guys. Here’s me coming second in the 1 lap sprint. (Beaten only by a lad old enough to be my son I might add. )

(Picture courtesy of Rick Sykes)

On Saturday I drove a Ferrari 360, see below.

And on Sunday I got nabbed by a mobile camera van on the East Lancs. Not sure how fast he saw me going but lets say I was in court appearance territory when I saw him. Oops. Hope they don’t register that far away. I passed him at 60 but I was doing a lot more than that earlier on. Totally gutted for being so stupid, I very rarely speed more than 10mph over the limit and never in built up areas but I’m confident he would have caught me doing a reasonable amount over the limit. Bugger. I just hope it’s not more than a normal 60 quid fine and 3 points. Two weeks of torment coming up.

Vroom Vroom

My mum bought me a supercar experience for christmas and I cashed it in this weekend. I really wanted an Aston Martin drive but they don’t have them at Wigan so I went for the Ferrari 360. 400bhp sounds OK and it is a Ferrari.

Straight away I had my eyes opened. I love computer racing games and anticipated the real thing being substantially different but just the 4 laps in the back of a mini cooper S taught me a thing or two about line and braking. (And for a little car with 4 big blokes in it, that thing could move).

So I eventually get in the Ferrari. Few more eye openers. It’s cramped. And not the quality I’d expect. Our Audi is way better put together. First problem is that my foot was too wide. The brake and accelerator are too close together and I pushed them both at the same time so I had to take my shoe off and drive in my sock, a common problem apparently. Sounds lovely though.

Off we go.

Did one lap following the instructors guidelines and then opened it up. WOOT! That things sticks to the road like glue and once it got on the back straight and gets into it’s stride it absolutely flies, proper compressed into the seat acceleration. Loved it. What a great laugh. Only got 6 or 7 laps of a short circuit but so much fun. I thought I was going fast but had to back off to let the single seaters go past on a couple of corners, I want to try them next.

Ride Entry – 12th April 2009

Bike: Chameleon
Distance: 25 miles

First off, what a fucking ace day! I’ve needed a day like this for a long time. Got up early and took the dog out in the morning sunshine. Tidied up the back garden, my wife made me a big mug of tea and a lovely bacon and egg buttie. Then she went out so I messed around on the xbox for a while, did some photography and sorted out my tool boxes. Then it was dinner time. my son had gone out so just me to look after. I got some on the vine tomatoes, some strips of cheese, a bag of crisps and a bottle of beer and sat in the sun for a couple of hours reading…. which tired me out enormously so I went and had a nap. Got up, my wife had made us tea so I scoffed that down while we all (one of her friends who I like and one of my son’s friends came round for tea) and watched Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory followed by some fudge cake and a big mug of tea.

Then I went out for a ride. Which was freaking ace, I was on fire! No really, there were little puffs of smoke coming out of my hubs I was putting that much power down for so long. It just kept coming and coming. Forget the energy crisis, just connect me up to the national grid and I’ll run your kettle. VRRROOOOMMM!!!

Pretty dark too but once I got to Rivington I saw no need to use my light so climbed in almost pitch black. Brilliant! Got to the top, charged along Georges Lane, scared a weird chap walking by himself at night, passed some lads drinking beer in their cars. Then it was descending time. Light ON! So bright on full beam these new LEDs. WOOOT! Did my 200 yards and then some, absolutely flat out, my head was almost splitting in two my smile was so big. Over too fast but that was SO much fun!

Back on the road and it’s time to turn the power back on. I kept it going at like between 70 and 100% for about 7 miles! Absolutely amazing, I have no idea where it was coming from. Then came the only bad part of the evening, caned it round through a set of lights, approach a side road, fat woman in a Vectra charges down the side road, takes a quick look at me, right in the eyes, and pulls out. FUCK!!!! These brakes are good though but even so, I barely had time to correct my direction before the side of the car was looming large in my universe.

As is usual, things slow down in situations like this. I experience everything at 150%. The dirty side of the car, the slightly wider look in her bovine eyes that indicates shock, the tearing sound the knobbles on my tyres make as they desperately try to maintain contact with the tarmac, the dip and bang of my forks as they bottom out, the tip and lift of the back end of the bike as everything moves onto the front wheel. BACK TO FULL SPEED AND WOOOSHHH! The car *just* passes in front of my bars. I jam my foot out to kick the back end but the violent manouver I’m still carrying out has me off balance and I miss. I swear loudly, then I swear again… and again. I add some more swearing on the end just to make the point and a little bit of propping up swearing as an afterthought.

To be fair, it’s not entirely her fault. I mean normally the fastest thing in her life is her right arm when someone puts a chocolate cake covered in lard near it. And she did see me at which point her razor sharp mind would have assessed the circumstances:- Chameleon, singlespeeded, looks like 34:16 from this angle, rider over 40. She could have seen the blood vessels in my eyes BECAUSE SHE WAS FUCKING CLOSE ENOUGH!, and determined I had already ridden 20 miles up some very hilly hills and therefore she was probably quite right in ascertaining that I would probably not be going that fast at all. Except I was, I was doing 25 miles an hour you stupid fucker.

Then I put more power down. The tarmac is melting under my tyres. You’ll notice tomorrow that the sun rises 20 minutes early, that’s because I’ve sped the earth up by accelerating down Long Lane.

Get home, son staying the night at his friends, house warm. Shower, put bike away. Now I need some lubrication and cooling fluid for these still rapidly spinning turbines in my legs.

ROCKIN!!!!

Ride Entry – 10th April 2009

Bike: Humuhumunukunukuapau’a
Distance:95 miles

Great ride out with Simon along the trans pennine trail. Weather was excellent and even the light shower near the end was appreciated. Simon showed me a much better route back from Southport than I’ve been used to, makes it more pleasant coming home from there now. The Humu is amazingly comfortable considering it’s age and weight, needs a new seat and shorter stem though for rides of this length.

Ride Entry – 7th April 2009

Bike: Chameleon
Distance: 28 miles

Really quick after work blast up to Rivy and back. Lovely weather, nice and fun.

Ride Entry – 5th April 2009

Bike: Chameleon
Distance: 30 miles

Decided to get an early morning ride in because it’s a busy day and I’ve got an all-nighter on at work (which actually turned out to be a relatively pleasant 22:30 – 5:30 event). Lovely weather, bright ans sunny, not too cold. Chameleon brakes was squealing a bit. One of the pads was wornm virtually right down so I swapped them round (advantage of mini-mono’s) which helped a bit. As I was riding along one road section I was looking down at the brake when suddenly this car appeared in my peripheral, coming towards me on my side of the road about 18 inches to one side. Good shout and and hand signals but sadly he carried on.

Apart from that, great ride.