samuri.co.uk

Well that was a laugh. Lets have a look anyway though,

• At least 5 rides in Wales [3]
  Oh dear, didn’t do very well there.

• At least 5 rides in the Lakes
  Even worse there

• Ride with other people at least once, maybe even twice [2].
  Yay! Did one….just.
• Double century
  Pft! didn’t even come close.
• Triple Century
  Yeah, right.
• Coast to coast
  Nope
• Ride the south downs way at least once way
  Didn’t even get close, although I did have a ride down south.
• Provide photo/video evidence of being snapped by a speed camera
  Nope, but I found a camera that I can easily get through at 40mph and while it didn;t trigger at that speed, i suspect it’s just a reflectivness issue, we should be able to sort that with some tinfoil.
• Mileage, well I’d like to ride at least 5000 miles but this isn’t a biggie this year.
  YAY! Did this one. Amazing really considering how many hours I’ve worked and how many weekends have been dedicated to work but there you go. (To be honest, I reckon I passed 5k about two or three weeks back because I’ve done lots of short rides and plenty of velodrome riding that i’ve not bothered to log here.)

Non riding targets. I’ll probably do even worse at these than those above but it’s like a new years resolution innit, you’re not really supposed to stick to them

• Get a job that I enjoy where I work less than 50 hours a week and I’m not on call.
  YAY! Did it, start the new job next year.
• Don’t get hacked
  Almost did it but then some Chinese autobot managed to guess my hotmail account password and send emails to everyone in my address book.
• Be a less miserable fucker.
  I doubt I have been.
• Actually learn how to take decent pictures most of the time
  I doubt I’ve done this one either.
• Have a holiday, a proper one where we all go away and enjoy ourselves
  Yeah, we had a good one.
• Sort my absolute shithole of a life out. Just be a man and do something about the state it’s in, instead of just blathering along hoping things will get better.

  Might just of achieved this last one by changing jobs but we’ll see.

All in all, quite a good year. You know, apart from working 60-100 hours a week, every week and my brother in law dying.

I gave up smoking though, and i am *right* chuffed about that too. Lets hope 2010 is even better for riding and not working so much.

Bike: Crosslight
Distance: 26 miles

And there we go. Last ride of the year which just pushed me nicely over 5000 miles for the year, I am well chuffed with that. Good ride for the last one. Still plenty of ice and snow around to make things interesting, bit of road, bit of mud, smashing! Shorts too.

Bike: Van Tuyl
Distance: 35 miles

Very hard and fast and a chap told us how far we’d gone so I know it was 35 miles.

I also know I’d be the worst racer ever. We were doing this scratch race. 30 laps in total, change every half lap, last ten laps are the race itself (and that’s about a mile and a half doing around 30mph). So we reach the end of the 20 laps and I’m the man at the front, what do I do? Do I change on the corner? I’ll lose my place then and end up at the back.Do I drift and force my way back in? While I’m no wimp, I’d still rather not upset people on a training session while forcing them out of the way. So my only choice is carry on flat out at the front.

Of course, this means everyone else gets in my slipstream and have a chat while I work like crazy. After 6 laps I’m screwed and bang up the corner. I get a few angry shouts from people and I’m so knackered that I can’t even keep up with the slow guys. I guess that taught me a lesson but I’m still unsure what the correct course of action would be had I been serious about the race. At the end I asked the lad who shouted at me what his problem was and he was pretty good and explained that I was slowing everyone down by staying at the front. (That’s still his problem as far as I’m concerned), but he did suggest that in that instance I should have banged up after a lap and then just dropped down into any gap I could find near the front.

Yet another contradiction between what the coaches tell you and what actually happens on the track (the coaches say you should stay on the racing line till everyone has passed you – which seems a bit odd)

Anyway, I’ve had more chats with the guys who race and they reckon I’d do quite well in the league racing. I got the impression they thought I’d be too fast for the slower group, which means I’ll no doubt be at the back of the faster group for the rest of my life. Same old story. Always the bridesmaid, never the bride.

Twenty more miles to 5000. Two days to do it in. All it needs is an hour or so on the bike. It’d be a crime not to do it. I might tell work to blow it out their ass tomorrow and get a quick ride in.

Bike: Crosslight
Distance: 25 miles

Quick but cold road ride. Very foggy. Lots of idiots on the road. I tried going offroad a few times but the snow is just awful, either iced over or sloppy.

Bike: Crosslight
Distance: 25 miles

Not a whole of fun to be honest. The snow ranged from ‘like ice’ to ‘crispy on top, slushy underneath’ and none of it was fun to ride in. The latter was the worst, every pedal stroke the front wheel would ride up on top of the snow, then break through and then veer sideways on the mush. Couldn’t get any speed up at all and in the end I just gave up, got on the road and finished the ride on the tarmac. Apart from our road, riding along that was just crazy. Two wheels and two feet on the ground…mmmmm.

Edit: I am never going to reach my target now unless the snow suddenly all clears in the next few hours. Today is family day so no riding today. 4 days left till the end of the year, Tuesday is the Velodrome so 30miles then. I should be able to eek 50 miles across the other three days hopefully, push the total up to 5000 for the year, I’ll be happy with that.

Happy Christmas everyone. Well I’ve have an excellent day. Way better than expected.

One of the bad things about being a dad is that as soon as the child pops out, you instantly become the least important entity in the family. Within seconds, you’re now below the cat and the goldfish in the pecking order. Broach this with your wife, and indeed, anyone who isn’t a father, and you’ll get called silly and dramatic but it’s 100% true.

It’s not apparent immediately, and for quite a while you carry on as you were but over the years you start to realise that perhaps the order of things is not quite as it should be. One of the times this shift in status is most obvious is at christmas. Children get something absolutely fantastic like a rocket that shoots up into the air under water power or a new bike and you get a pair of socks and maybe some slippers. You will lavish money you haven’t got on your wife in an attempt to remind her how you love her so much and really should actually be treated as an equal in the relationship but you’re kidding no-one. Your job now is to protect your family and provide them with money until your children have reached a stage where they can fend for themselves, then you can die. You’re expendable and everyone in the family knows it. Think about that when you’re eating breakfast with them.

Anyway, back to christmas time. It used to be ace, but now it’s shit. Unless you buy yourself something great. This year, for me, was different. Either by luck or genius, my wife and son clubbed together and bought me a selection of presents which really rocked my boat,. I was as chuffed to bits.

Some ace DVD’s, some whisky, a cycling shirt, a great game, book, puzzles and a tapas kit! Rockin! Plus my mum has bought me an experience voucher which I’m pretty sure I’ll be spending on either a stunt day or a rally day.

On top of this, we bought our son Rock Band 2 and the guitar and drum kit and while these games have never interested me fromafar, they’re actually masses of good fun. We’ve been playing on it most of the day.

But now the fun ends. We have my wife’s family from hell coming over tomorrow. I say they’re ‘coming over’, we have to go and get them, they’re staying overnight and then we have to take them back. Having seen the kids in my wife’s other neice’s house trying to simultaneously kill the goldfish and prize open the telly, I am locking anything precious or fragile somewhere a long way away, like fort knox. The cats will no doubt sprint for freedom the instant they arrive but the poor dog will need to monitored constantly. The girl’s boyfriend has also exhibited an alarming tendancy to get *extremely* loud and aggressive when he starts drinking, which will wind me up about 900%. He’s one of those people who is always right in your face too, I doubt he’s actually malicious in any great way but he’s clearly someone who relishes confrontation. Smashing.

Bike:Van Tuyl
Distance: 35 miles

Right now, I’m guessing, there’s a short roadie bloke, who may be hammering away at the keys on his little keyboard, bitching about how when he goes to the velodrome, there’s a whole load of idiots who can’t ride at all. I’m also guessing, should he actually be doing this, that he will be mentioning a balding, bespectacled bloke and a young lad who clearly shouldn;t be allowed anywhere near a track. I’m almost certain, that if he is doing this, then he will NOT be mentioning that he offered to punch the young lad (about 14) on the nose and that he should get off the fucking track. Nice man.

We were racing. I was struggling a lot because one of the falls I had on Sunday, appears to have damaged my ribs a lot more than I first thought. I’m finding it really hard to breath deep and any attempt to lift my right arm up  causes a jolt of pain to run across my chest. So we’re racing and we’re in the last couple of laps,the chap in front of me is slowing a little so as we come out of the bend, I move out a little to start overtaking him. As I do this he twitches his elbow and veers up the track. I’ve got no choice but to go with him, not realising two chaps were starting to overtake me. Now this, as far as I’m concerned, is racing, you’ve got to be ready for stuff like this.

I got a fair bit of abuse and fair enough, I should have looked, but so should the guy I was overtaking. As I say though, ho hum, it’s racing.

Later on, some kids who had come to help a charity (who never turned up), were allowed to have a bit of a ride with us. Don’t take the word ‘kids’ to mean a group of slow, inexperienced, bored teenagers to mean that though. These are the people you’ll be seeing on podiums at national and international championships (maybe even the olympics) in the future years. Trust me, they’ve got lots of experience, are used to racing and are fucking fast, only one or two of them were struggling with our pace and a few were leading out the sprints no problem, not bad for a group of 14 year olds.

Anyway, short angry roadie was following one of these lads in a 5 lap sprint when said lad veered up the banking without looking. Bad mistake, but hardly worth being told he was going to get his head kicked in. Glad to see he didn’t leave the track and just carried on. I approached him afterwards and suggested he raise a complaint but he didn’t seem interested. It was clear then that he’d not told his family what had happened (I only knew because I shot under them as the bloke was having a go at him), who then started questioning him about it.

(I know if my 14 year old son was riding and an adult told him he was going to punch him, there would certainly be some punching going on), but he’d left anyway by that point.

Bell end.

…so why do you feel you can drive like it’s the middle of summer?

Now I grew up in the Peak District, on the lower slopes of Kinder to be precise so I, by my own modest admission, like to think I know a thing or two about driving in the snow. My first drive ever was in the snow and we could usually guarantee a good month every year of snow driving. So I know that you never take things for granted, always leave a big gap and do everything gently.

Sadly, not everyone had this educational introduction to driving as is apparent on this mornings drive to work. In fact, I get the distinct impression that some people don’t actually believe you have to change your driving habits one iota when it’s snowy. Not even when your car is telling you to calm down a bit.

It all seemed to go OK until we got off the motorway and then the cocks started showing their true colours. A woman in an A3 (who I’m pretty sure I recognised as one of our customers [confirmed when she drove into their site] ) and a bloke in an A4 BOTH slid past me on the slip road with their ABS going nuts and then CUT in front of me. They did this through skill and breathtaking control, they did not do this because I held back and let them in. You can tell this because neither of them had to wave thanks. So not in anyway alarmed by almost causing a multiple pileup, they both continued at the same pace until an annoying lorry driving far too slow held them up, so they both nipped into the outside lane to overtake it.

You know, everyone is driving in the inside lane for a reason, IT’S BECAUSE THE OUTSIDE LANE IS FULL OF FUCKING SNOW!!! That isn’t stopping these two characters though, they’ve got traction control you know. Yes, so has everyone else with a car less than 6 years old but they’re not letting it go to their heads. So they both charge along flinging snow everywhere until the lane ends, unfortunately they haven’t yet got past the lorry so they’ve got to stop. But you see, stopping is a problem when your car is axle deep in snow with no doubt, a good covering of ice underneath it. How they didn’t cause a crash I don’t know but I saw both cars drifting sideways, the A3 definately hit the kerb.

A normal person would at this point realise they were behaving recklessly and rein it in a bit for the rest of the mile journey to work. But these two are already late, they’ve been held up by this white stuff. Needs must , time is money! As the lorry drove past them, they both nailed it to get in behind it. YOUR WHEELS ARE SITTING ONTOP OF 3 INCHES OF SNOW THAT YOU’VE JUST POLISHED BY SKIDDING TO A HALT!!! But not enough to stop them moving at all, so they both half edge out into my lane (in front of me) and then stop, front wheels spinning crazily.

I stop because I can’t get past them and the cars behind me (a lot of whom also appeared to be driving too fast), all do that kink drift thing in the queue as they skid to a halt. Eventually something pings in their heads and they realise that skinning it makes your car stop in the snow and the two Audi’s roll into my lane. Again, this was all done with amazing skill since they felt no need to wave thanks  to me for waiting.

And again, again. Do you think this has made them drive sensibly? Nope, both cars could be seen fishtailing round pretty much every roundabout from the motorway to the business park where they work.

Bell fucking ends.

Bike: Crosslight
Distance: 27 miles

So I did have a few drinks last night, and I did have a lie in this morning. Plenty of snow had fallen overnight and it was clear there was going to be more today. Didn’t leave the house till ten. Nice timing, within about ten minutes the snow was so heavy I could hardly see more than a couple of metres. It stopped and started so I kept taking shelter. When I was riding on the road I was the fastest thing on it, brilliant.

Riding in the snow is so cool though. Even though it was heavy snow/hail at times, this was a great ride. Wore my glove liners too and my fingers were toasty warm the entire ride.

Still plenty of sheet ice covered in snow around and the last couple of miles back home found me on my arse more than once.

Glad I bought these cheap monster tyres from Halfords too, they’re excellent in the snow.

Bike:Crosslight
Distance: 27 miles

Snow! Not much, but enough to be fun. The road sections getting to Rivington were absolute mayhem. Worst case was a woman who overtook me just as we were approaching a parked car, she realised she would have to stop to let a car come the other way and just squashed me against the kerb and closed the gap on the parked car, I had nowhere to go. I’d rather hit her than the parked car so I just banged my bars into her side window. She absolutely shit herself and veered out, making the oncoming car bang his horn. I snicked through the gap and then turned round to look at her, she blanked me (obviously) and then floored it past me. The guy in the van behind her pointed at her and then tapped his head, I assume he thought she was mental. Me too.

Once I got to Rivington though, things were ace. Bit nippy but I have some good winter clothes now.  I love my Northwave boots and my Sealskin gloves are BRILLIANT! I do have some thin wool glove liners that I think I’ll be needing soon mind. Bit skethcy in places, I fell off about 5 times going down my 200 yards. But I don’t mind, riding in the snow rocks hugely, it makes me feel like this.

Sweet! 87 miles so far this week, only need 13 tomorrow to push it over 100. I should really try for a massive amount to try and get that deficit down but really I can’t be arsed now. I’m close enough to call it quits and the weather is likely to be pretty crap tomorrow. We’ll see.

I just fancy a lie in, not had one for months. I quite fancy getting bladdered tonight too, not done that for a long time.