samuri.co.uk

Bike: Roadlite
Distance: 55 miles

Pretty much the same as the last ride. I looked out the window and it was spitting and there were some big grey clouds rolling in. Best wear my thick waterproof then.

2 miles out and the rain stopped and the sun came out.  I was drenched with sweat by the time I got onto the tops. I heroed along till I dropped down into Adlington and then could stand it no longer. Rolled the coat up as tight as it would go and pocketed it where it rocked around like a huge carbuncle. Bad choice. I was still soaked with sweat when I got home.

Plus when I walked into the kitchen, some water splashed onto my head. After some investigation it turned out last night’s thunderstorm had opened up a leak in the roof. Brilliant. Spent the next hour mopping up water in the attic.

Hope it doesn’t rain tonight, all I’ve managed to get under the rafters is a thin tray. And hopefully it will be a cheap fix. Never, ever get a house with any sort of flat roof. We’ve had nothing but trouble with it.

Bike: Roadlite
Distance: 55 miles

Not as far as I’d liked but I was up all night with hayfever[1] and was completely buggered. Plus I’ve spent all day since doing manual work, I had no dinner  and a normal sized tea and to be quite frank, I’m fucked.

[1] My wife and I have differing opinions about hayfever in the house. All three of us suffer with our son being the worst but my wife thinks that keeping the widows closed all day and night makes things better. I feel that the excess heat this produces means we all just sweat away like pigs and find it hard to breathe. For example, I’ve been moving a shitload of heavy stuff around the house all weekend and I’ve been literally drenched in sweat with my t-shirt completely sodden, especially while I’ve been manouvering cupboards and boxes of old clothes into a very hot attic. Still, it’s very nice and neat up there now  with lots of room and the local tip has had to workovertimeto cope with all the stuff I’ve took down there.

Anyway, I got out about 8:30 and rode for around 3.5 hours which is a pretty crap average speed, not sure what happened there although I did stop a few times. Funny cos I thought I was skinning it most of the time. It was very hilly though. From ours I went over to Little Hulton, then to Bolton, then to Egerton and up over the tops to Darwen. FromDarwen I climbed up to Tockholes and then headed to Belmont, back over the Belmont road and a nice wide loop back home. Great ride. Out of Tockholes I caught this little wirey chap who immediately stuck to my wheel and let me do all the work for the next 2 or 3 miles into a headwind. He passed me as we dropped into Belmont. Then I stopped for a little rest next to the Blue Lagoon and achap in a pink shirt rode past with legs looking like they were carved from wood, he needed to be caught.

I dunno, I must have been knackered from pullin gthe other chap along because although I could catch pink shirt, he clearly wasn’t trying as hard as me and I simply couldn’t muster the effort to go past him. Chapeau!

Then I got to the tops and stopped to set up my little video camera. Best video yet this, although I still have some quality issues to experiment with.

Went home. Drank a lot, I need two water bottles on my roadbike.

Bike: Chameleon
Distance: 95 miles

MEGARIDE!

James had this idea about showing us some sweet singletrack he’d found. Sounds good to me. Here’s the problem though,

..if you can see that. We live right on the opposite sides of the map! Still, I had all day so thought it would be fine.

Off I set about 11:00, took my time, meandered along in the sun, mostly road so I didn’t get lost and it was nice going back to my old home town. 35 miles there. Met James and after collecting NBT and Richpips, we set off. Quite fast I might add. The lads took us upto Whaley Bridge along the canal andfromthere up into the hills about the reservoirs. We pottered about for a bit until we finally reached the top of the singletrack.

Iwas fantastic it has to be said. Rocky and twisty turny all the way down with roots and dropoffs and all sorts of things, loved it and well worth the travel. Unfortunately James, who is having some crash issues at the moment, came off a few times.

James Crash

Still, this is the first half decent video I’ve managed to get with my new 888 keyfob camera.

Not amazing quality but good enough for me and the good thing is it only cost me 8 quid plus the price of the memory card. I need to fix it to my helmet better though to stop it moving about so much, and learn how to make the quality best for uploading to youtube, my local copy is wway better than the one on there.

We finished our ride and shot off to a pub for a quick pint before heading back to James and then back to mine.

About 4 miles from James’s, I started to feel a bit funny. Maybe I should have eaten something all day.

About a mile further down the trail, I collapsed into the bushes. Hmm, maybe I should get something to eat. Properly bonked. It took an enormous amount of effort to get the tub of pasta out of my backpack but ince I had it open I wolfed it down in seconds. Some randoms went in on top of it and after ten minutes I felt strong enough to get back on my bike. I gradually felt better and better until I got back to Wharburton when I felt right as rain again, if a little tired.

I managed to limp my way home without any more food but collapsed into a chair when I got there and drink 2 pints of vimto and inhaled some chicken pasta my wife had made for me.

Quality day out.

Right, I’ll post a longer dooberry when I get time but my ride today took me through various parts of Manchester.

Competely incident free on the way there.

On the way back, around 8-9pm, I have never experienced so much abuse in one ride ever before. I have no idea what their problem was. I was just riding along as normal and I would say at least 15-20 cars pulled along side me and either the driver or the passenger would shout some tired old shit at me, typically young men in flash cars. I just ignored each and every one of them and only one braked ahead of me and then let me pass so they could hurl some more. Totally fucking bizarre.

This trend went all the way from Bramhall to Sale with the peak occurring in Northenden.

Jesus lads, are your lives so dull and crap that this is the best entertainment you can find? There’s a whole world out there waiting for you, get off your arses and do something you enjoy rather than something that just makes you angry. It really was inexplicable and put a sad edge on an absolutely fantastic day.

Bike: Roadlite
Distance: 49 miles

GAAAHHHH! Another wasted day! Working from home until the DHL man comes to pick up this parcel (again). Obviously he doesn’t actually turn up till 3:30 despite me telling them he had to be here in the morning. He said the first time they collected it and brought it back (it was the same driver as last time), it was my fault because I’d not written the address on it. I held up the parcel showing him the address written on it,

“This is exactly what it looked like last time”, I said. He reckoned I must have written it on afterwards. WTF!!

Anyway, water bottle split so after after trying to find another one that fitted the bottle cage I gave up and had a nap.

Eventually I got out about 4:30 and the roads were nice and quiet, not many cars about at all, which was nice. Plenty of gangs of drunks stood outside pubs jeering at people on bikes though, that wasn’t so nice.

Never mind, only one more working day left for me now, and then it’s long holiday time. Pity my wife has managed to make sure I can’t go out cycling every day but there you go.

It’s been an eventful day.

Up at 6am, off to the velodrome. Yet again they placed my son in the wrong team for the Italian pursuit. By the time he was on the front (5th rider), the other team were about 20 metres behind them.  But then he got his go and charged away. Luckily the girl behind him who was the last rider is very quick and the two of them pulled out a very impressive distance for their two laps. I dunno, I know it’s only training but I can see the favouritism that goes on there. The riders who do all the racing get priority. Ho hum. It’s not really a problem but my son so far has not wanted to race properly and he’s one of the fastest people there.

Anyway, then we raced over to the 3 Sisters race track in Wigan where I had my single seater experience day going on. Fucking brilliant, to put it mildly. I’ve been thinking about it all day I enjoyed it so much. These formula fords are so much better on this track than the big supercars, even on my assessment laps in the Mini Cooper I was right up the arse of a Vanquish for my 4 laps because he wouldn’t move over.

The single seaters were even quicker and a huge amount of fun. They corner like nothing else I’ve been in and the pace car got faster and faster until it was just me and him. The car didn’t falter once so I suspect we were way off what the car can do although reasonably close to what I can do. The important thing is I took it all as a bit of fun, not so some of the other guys there who clearly thought they were gods gift to driving. Hopefully me and the pace car passing them on about lap 7 will make them change their minds. I particularly liked the look on one guys face who was shouting about getting 80% in his assessment from the cooper session and so would be right behind the pace car only to watch my 94% being written on the board. Again, if you’re so brilliant, how come you go lapped by me,  a complete non-petrol head?

So much fun, well recommended. I really enjoyed myself. Nothing like passing a hundred grand car in one wth only 110bhp.

Oh, then I rode about 27 miles around Rivington on my Chameleon. It was great.

Bike:Roadlite
Distance: 32 miles

Another waste of a day! Work and commitments meant I was only ready to ride at 7pm!

Jump on the bike, blast out towards Parbold, up and over Parbold hill, get to the bottom, realise I’m running out of time, climb back up over Parbold hill and sprint for home. The roads were fantastically empty though. Bit windy mind.

We’re reaching the weekend of discontent for bike riding though. Tomorrow the entire day is taken up with things, not all bad mind, righ tthere in the middle I get an hour of driving a singleseater car around Three sisters, should be good for a laugh. After that though… I may get out on a bike, unlikely though.

Sunday, we’ll be in Derbyshire most of the day, I might get an hour on the bike nearer the end but again, unlikely. Not a major problem though because come Thursday, I have over a full week off. And I bloody well intend to go riding every single day. In fact, I hope to get out two days for a ride a long way, bivy, ride back adventure. And I mean a long way, I’m trying for a hundred miles each way. Probably not but we’ll see.

Bike: Chameleon
Distance: 34 miles

I did intend to go out a lot earlier but I had to wait for the DHL man to come to collect a parcel.

Between 9 and 5 they said. So come 3pm he still hasn’t come. What a wasted day! My son comes home so after leaving him instructions on what to do if the man comes, I dart out to do all the jobs I have. Get back home at 4:30, cycling clothes on, out the door. It;s gonna have to be quick so I take the shortest route to Rivington, past the barns, fly up to Georges road, past the mast, down San Marino.

OK, back up, here we go….. It’s really, really loose. The track is so dry all the gravel just shifts around like sand, very hard and I lose traction again and again. By the time I get about half way I’m absolutely knackered. This gear is way too hard too, I have to stand up all the way so get no respite at all and end up stopping a couple of times. I get to the top. I am very, very hot and sweating like mad….. 12:45.  How the hell Matt does it in 9 minutes is completely beyond me, he must fly!

Back past the two lads, down the ICR like I’m on fire, home.

Nice ride but very hot.

This has been a sticking point for a while. You can access your ipod touch/iphone on your windows machine using itunes or any number of other third party pieces of software, you can access from your MAC in a similar fashion but up till now, not from a Linux box.

Luckily those clever chaps at Ubuntu (and most likely a whole load of other Linux derivatives), have done some magic and got it working. The original problem was a driver issue, the touch’s  file system couldn’t be identified under Linux and while the ‘public’ areas could be seen once the device was plugged in (and for that read – Photos), nothing else was visible.

The latest upgrade works great however. I can now access the entire ipod filesystem as an external hard drive and Rythmnbox boots up nicely as soon as I plug the ipod in and starts playing Kylie like she’s never sung before. Even proprietry formats like MP4 seem to work.

Strangely this change in circumstances hasn’t been advertised widely, I don’t know if there’s some political things going on but anyway, upgrade to the latest version on your Linux box and your ipod touch and iphone should now work fine. It can even synch the music onto your linux box (although with my linux netbook only having 16G I’ve avoided doing this).

I’d really appreciate it if you could donate a couple of quid to Christies for when I do the Manchester to Blackpool ride in July.
Normally I’d restrict asking for money for charity to people I meet in real life but since my son has already been round every single person we know and raised about 150 quid (plus I can hardly ask at work since I’ll be gone in a week or so), so I’m asking you lot.

justgiving.com

As I say, you don’t have to give much, just enough to make it look like at least some people care that I’m doing something.

As it says on the page, since 60 miles is actually less than I’d normally ride on a Sunday anyway, and it’s almost competely flat I feel a bit guilty about being paid anything so I’ve decided that if I raise 50 quid I’ll do the ride in the brightest disco suit, shirt, wig and moustache that I can find.

If I don’t raise 50 quid I’ll just bump it up myself and do it anyway.

Thanks.