samuri.co.uk

Bike: Vela
Distance: 19 miles

Bit of a short ride. very wet, very windy. Completely jam packed full of complete fucking bellends. I reverted back to my old ways I’m sad to say. It was finger city to say the least. One bloke got a fist against the side of his car and another got chased. Each and every case very well deserved. Need to rein things in a bit I think, don’t want to go back to the old days.  Anyway, wet and fast and windy and almost dead, that’s this morning’s ride.

Bike: Vela
Distance: 20 miles

Very quick blast round. Got really windy at the end. I did get tagged by this one fit looking guy. We moved along for a little bit with me in front and then when the road went up slightly I stood on the pedals and started giving it some, continue for 3/4 mile. Get to top of the hill and get stuck behind some cars, he’s still with me. Thanked me for the tow up the hill and shot off to one side.

Then I got home to find my new forks have been powder coated very nicely indeed. Didn’t realise they could do it so fast, and so cheap. Tried them on the new frame, they look way too big, not sure about them now. Aah well, nothing I can do now apart from try them on. I reckon I’m about 2 weeks away from achieving final build…..I think I may have made some terrible mistakes. Only time will tell, watch this space.

Edit: And the Vela leaps to the top of the mileage chart. Not sure if that’s a good thing or not. I’m certainly enjoying these short sub 50 mile blasts on it so I suppose it’s a good thing.

Bike: Vela
Distance:36 miles

Like a freaking train! And not one idiot if I remember rightly. Amazing. Passed all the Manchester to blackpool riders coming the other way. Well, not all of them but quite a few. Over to Tyldsley, backstreets to Bolton. Big climb out of Bolton all the way up to Walkers fold, like a freaking train. Drop down to the Belmont road and then into Belmont. Ride up the hill into Belmont, turn left at the black dog, straight up the hill and right up over to the top all in big and third, like a freaking train.

You know all that cut up tarmac next to the church on that sharp climb?

Me.

Big headwind on the tops so not so fast there but I still dropped down to Rivington nice and quick and then wound ‘er up to about 75mph all the way home. Need some bigger gears, these ones have run out.

Bike: Vela
Distance: 47 miles

Despite the amazingly high number of idiots on the road, this was a pretty good ride. Quite hilly, lots of speed, I was powering along like a train and it wasn’t too windy. Still need to sort out my gears mind and my GPS dies everything it gets a shake. Still under warranty though so it’s going back.

As I said though, plenty of cocks out there, totally bizarre some of the things they do. If I didn;t know better, the only reason I can think for them being such bad drivers, is that they’re deliberately doing it to cyclists. Experience tells me that the vast majority simply don’t care how bad their driving is and really don’t know how much their actions affect people. I do sometimes try and do the same things back to people if I catch them nowadays and when they beep their horns or shout, I try and explain to them that that’s exactly what they did to me but today I couldn’t give a shit. The one chap who I did make an effort to catch made me quite angry because he overtook me right up to a mini-roundabout, had to drive right over the middle of it and then had to brake sharply to avoid a. crashing into a traffic island or b. killing me.

He got a mouthful and he did look fairly sheepish about what he’d done.

Anyway, apart from cocks, a good ride, and as I’ve mentioned, I was well turbo charged and riding like a god.

Bike:Humuhumu
Distance: 28 miles

OK commute. Very wet on the way there which in no way removed the stench of cat piss that had soaked into my cycling shoes. One of them has decided to use my shoes for a piss pot during the night. Not sure which one it is but she dies if I do. Had to rinse the shoes when I got home for about 20 minutes but the smell coming from under my desk all day was horrible!

Covered in crap too. I realised that quick strip wash isn’t enough for when it’s muddy. My legs felt gritty all day.

Final visit to get this crown sorted. Everyone said the same thing to me, ‘the worst is over’.

‘The worst is over’ whilst technically true (only because the root canal treatment is so horrendous), implies that fitting the crown is not bad at all. This is not true.

First off, he’d left a temporary filling in so he drilled that out. Then he proceeded to prepare the root for the ‘post’. This involved quite a bit of drilling, try and jam the post in, bit more drilling. This hurt… a lot. No need for a local though, it’ll be fine. Finally he’d excavated enough tooth to satisfy him and was ready to glue it in. Trouble was, my gums had grown over the hole a bit.

Does the dentist now…

a) Gently tease the gums back with a wooden spatula.
b) Provide a local anaesthetic and gently cut the gum away carefully.
c) Hack away willy nilly at the gum without any pain relief whilst smiling happily as blood sprays across his face. After all, it’s not his gum is it?

Answers on a Lidocaine soaked swab.

Right, so the scene is set. A huge great lump of metal pleasantly referred to as ‘a post’ has been lodged in my gum using copious amounts of superglue. My mouth is swimming in blood and salvia which the orange dental nurse is currently kindly trying to remove by jamming the suction tube half way down my osephegus and the dentist is peering closely at what is either a large tictac or a small suppository.

Can’t get any worse can it?

Now apparently the impressions that the dentist took of my teeth last time I came will allow the dental lab to create a finely tuned crown that will slot perfectly into place, and obviously the dentist has already ensured the post will fit the tooth, hasn’t he? How naive am I?

He begins drilling away apparently at random at the crown, occasionally having a quick shimmy on the post throwing shards of molten titanium into the melting pot of blood, bile, sweat and saliva gradually building up in my mouth while the assistant simultaneously texts her friends and sucks my throat tissues out.

Eventually he’s ready to glue the crown in place. The assistant, job done, leaves us to it so she can stick another half inch of eyeliner on and the dentist puts his crown fitting boots on. This thing needs to be pressed on hard and legs are stronger than arms.

When I wake up the crown is in and the dentist is standing there admiring his work. He presents me with a mirror to examine the masterpiece for myself. Gulping gently I gingerly hold the mirror up and look at what looks like the result of a proper fight with knives and bats and chains. It’s hard to tell how good it is because it’s covered in blood, brain tissue and burnt titanium but it’s certainly in the right place, looks like it might be the right colour and when I bite, it touches at the same time as all the other teeth.

‘Thanks’, I say, ‘is it supposed to be giving me searing agony constantly?’
‘we just scratched your gum a bit, that’ll go soon’, he tells me as he pushes me out of the door.

I try to pay but because my mouth has swelled up on one side and because the receptionist is not English, or indeed, has not been taught how to say anything in English, I leave only a few grams of flesh lighter.

Bike:Vela
Distance:30 miles

Early morning hilly blast. Felt a bit knackered actually, not sure why. It rained, a lot! Absolutely soaked when I got home. Felt good though and not a huge amount of idiots out on the roads which was nice. One bloke tried overtaking me on a roundabout and almost slid off in the wet. Cock, like you could go round faster than a bike in a fiat uno.

Anyway, like sex, I intend to do this a lot more in the near future. I suspect I’ll have a lot more success with one of these objectives than the other.

Bike:Vela
Distance:55 miles

There we go. My new get fast campaign starts. Not that I rode fast, but it was very hilly and quite hard, wind was always in my face, obviously. I rode over to Bacup which was quite a nice ride actually, shopuld have taken it further right into the hills but I went to watch the STW weekender XC race which was excellent, for an XC race. The whole format was good too, genuinally ‘who is best on a bike overall’ style which worked really well. Well done to the chap who won and the XC race looked HARD!

Met DONK and Lowey for the first time and met quite a few old friends who I;ve not seen for a while. Cool. Got very wet on the way home though, ho hum.

bike: Vela
Distance:30 miles

First ride for a while. My chest felt OK actually, faint tinge when breathing hard but not so bad. Plenty of swimming in Menorca has kept things ticking over and I actually felt pretty good. Very warm though. This bike goes fast, need to actually charge up my GPS batteries to find out just how fast though.

It’s probably my own fault. I don’t normally get excited about holidays but I really freaking needed this one. Work has been insane, we’ve had an awful lot going on at home and I just wanted a break where I could relax, drink beer, do nothing, read. You know.

And we did a fair bit of that. The holiday itself went mostly Ok but to be frank, I fucking hate going abroad with Brits. They’re tossers. Any package tour will have some of the very shitty ones and I understand that so we went self-catering which worked to a degree but you really can’t avoid the little bastards no matter how you do it. All marching around shouting at people in English, wearing football shirts and avoiding all that foreign food. The resort was fairly nice but still reeked of ex-pat and horrendously expensive. Even the local gin/wine was kicking at out brit prices and try and buy a bottle of water for under 2 euros!

Plenty of spaniards though which smoothed things out a bit but the amount of people who take babies abroad is gobsmacking. They cried on the plane, they cried on the coach, they cried in the restaurants and they cried in the apartments. Not to mention the beach, the pool, the bar and the fucking disco.  I wouldn’t have dreamed of taking a baby abroad to a hot country with me when mine was that age but they deserve a holiday god-damn it and no baby is going to stop them enjoying it.  And don’t get me started on brits with their older kids on holiday. ‘Oi! STop doing that!’ (kid carries on kicking shit out of the pool table), ‘Oh kids today, you can’t control them!’…. /walks off to get another beer.

Bullet.

Head.

Kid into army.

It was FUCKING hot though. 39 degrees a couple of days although it’s been explained to me that Britain was also exceedingly warm during the same period. We came back to heavy rain though, obviously.

The real fun started when we got back to the house though. The builders had been round, which was nice of them. We hadn’t actually asked them round. They just felt it was time to start on our conservatory that hasn’t yet recieved planning permission. In doing so they realised my bike shed was in the way. No problem, angle grinder will sort that out. Get rid of two expensive padlocks, move bike shed, throw bikes in the kitchen.  They’ll be fine there.

Also, the decorator, who had been tasked with painting all the woodwork while we and the dog were away, hasn’t. Thanks. Anything else? Ah yes, BT had cut us off, I’d looked at the online bill which said we were up to date so didn’t pay it. Ah no, you have to ignore whatever is written on the overview page and look at the payments page, TSSSK! Re-connection sir? That’s going to cost you. NO IT FUCKING WELL ISN’T. Sort it, by Monday.

I think that’s it.  My teenage son’s head appears to have been possessed by the devil at some point and he hates us both and I’m an overbearing egocentric know-it-all and my wife is a selfish witch who ignores him all the time and embrasses him constantly but apart from that everything is great.

I’m back in work Monday but right now I hope they’ve gone under and I can sit around in shorts and sandals.