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Mike showed us a bike tonight and I’ve fallen in love. I’ve no idea why. It’s nothing to do with all the Titanium, it just looks better than any other bike I’ve ever seen in my life. It’s a very simple bike. Track. the creator has made it all titanium so I should imagine it’s insanely light but I’d be perfectly happy with it being steel as long as it still looked like this.

More here.

A man could bankrupt himself chasing that bike. And I may well do this yet.

Bike: Pimpino
Distance: 30 miles

Great ride in, lovely weather, tail wind, no cars on the road bit.

Coming home it was totally chucking it down. Then I went through a big pile of dog shit and it got sprayed all over my cranks, shoes, wheels and frame. Plus all over my water bottle. I was rather cross. I had to dunk my bike in the canal to try and wash it off but it was like glue, in the end I had to use dockleaves to wipe it down and then dunk it again.

Then I had to sit with my feet in the water to try and wash the filth off my shoes. Fecking disgusting. If I could have found the person who had left their dog’s crap there I’d have shoved it up their arse.

Then it really started raining hard, but I was OK with that. You know you’ve been for a ride when you get home with water pouring off your face, it feels quite good.

Bike: pimpino
Distance: 31 miles

Commute. See below. It absolutely chucked it down the entire ride in. I was completely drenched when I got there. My coat, shoes, gloves and helmet were all still sopping wet when I left work too despite being in a reasonably warm room. Lovely putting them back on although the coat went into my bag because of course, it was quite sunny. Obviously the wind had changed direction too and was now back in my face for the return journey.

I got to work at 7, buy the time I got out of the shower at twenty past, two other cyclists were in the changing room. When I went past the bike shed at twelve, there were 4 bikes racked up and three more just leant against  the wall which was a bit bizarre. It is a site campus but it’s completely open, anyone can drive in and have a root about and bike theft has been reported in the past. Mind you, two of them were older than me. There’s another bike shed round the corner with plenty of space in it, if you get in late, just lock your bike up there surely?

Anyway, this mass of bikes had me worried about queues for the showers so I asked one of the blokes who works in my office what was the normal case and he said he’d never seen so many cyclists on one day but confirmed that arriving around 7 would always guarantee both showers be empty and they never usually got busy before 8:30. he also confirmLd that after the summer months nobody cycled in.

Leaving a copy of Singletrackworld out on my desk has done the trick too. I now know all the cyclists in the office as they all saw the magazine and stopped for a chat. There’s actually quite a few including the IT director . Funny that leaving a copy of the ride out on my desk didn;t work like that….

Great ride home too, no incidents of note although I want to change the bit through Newton, this new method may give me an extra mile and some more offroad (cyclepath), but the right hand turn in the town centre is crazy. Big line of cars behind me (obviously they start undertaking as soon as I indicate right), big queue of cars coming the other way, none of whom are prepared to let me cross although they will let cars go, (they must all be going home to Leigh), so I want to try and find something that avoids it altogether. Back to streetmap.

Edit: A negative defecit still dances tantalisingly just out of reach. each time I think i’m going to get it I miss a few days or it rains the entire Atlantic oceaon on me or I’m told out of the blue that we’re spending the entire weekend somewhere not very fun and it drags up again. Plus we have a 2 week holiday coming up where I’ll not be doing any riding. I need to commute more often.

5:00 – Jon gets up, looks out the window. If it’s raining hard, then he’ll ditch the commute and get an extra hour in bed. It’s dry so he continues.
5:30 – Ablutions completed, Jon goes downstairs to prepare his dinner and make a cup of coffee, this is the last bug out point but it’s still dry.
5:45 – Feed cats, let dog out, get bike out of storage and pack bag.
6:00 – Throw a leg over my bike and set off riding.
6:00 (and 5 seconds) – It starts raining, properly hard.
6:03 – Stop riding, get raincoat out of bag, carry on riding.
6:10 – Stop riding again, rearrange buttie box so it’as not trying to pierce my kidney. Check buttie box hasn’t grown a knife edge like in termninator two, nope, it has smooth round edges.
6:24 – Hit offroad for the first time. Obviously it’s just a mud bath, endure a constant spray of mud in my face and up my arse.
6:57 – Roll onto the work campus, gently roll round the edge of the estate cooling down.
6:59 – Put bike into bike shed, lock up.
6:59 (and 3 seconds) – It stops raining.

Bike: Roadlite
Distance: 66 miles

I’m starting to doubt biketoaster’s reliability. I need to check this one on memorymap or something. I climbed like, forever on this ride, I was always going up or down and I was out for four hours so to say I only did 66 miles and 1046m of climbing is not right at all. Plus I was going lightning quickly. No no no no no, that’s not right.

It was a fecking ace ride though, really enjoyed it. Went over to Ramsbottom, then over the tops to Blackburn, Preston, Bamber Bridge, White Coppice, Anglezark, Rivington, home. Bit windy at times but for once I got regular times when it was behind me. I will be doing it again with some fine tuning.

http://www.bikeroutetoaster.com/Course.aspx?course=159277

Took some pictures too.

Before

After

Bike: Pompino
Distance: 31 miles

Commute. Thought it would rain, and it did. I got absolutely drenched going to work despite a heavy raincoat. Plus they’d closed the shower room because of a leak. WTF do I do now? Quick look around, nobody about, in I go. It’s only one small area that’s flooded, the shower and changing area is dry so I’m sorted. I had no shirts at work so I’d fgollowed a guide on the internet for taking one in in a bag.

Make the shirt flat with another item of clothing inside and behind it (my coming home riding shirt and vest)roll other things up into a tube (my coming home shorts and my underpants and socks), and then carefully roll the entire set of clothes round the rube, cover with a plastic bag and tape closed. I now have a roll of clothes. It worked brilliantly, the shirt looked exactly like it did before I set off, useful to know.

Coming home was uneventful but was into a harsh headwind, it’s lucky I’m so butch.

Bike: Pimpino
Distance: 30 miles

Commute. A bit wet. Mostly on the ground though. Going there was great, if into a fairly hefty headwind.

Coming back was even sunny at times. I tested out the new route, not sure of the actual mileage but it might have added another mile on. What it has done is made all but I’d guess, about 2 miles out of 15, offroad now. Which is nice.

So with only 2 miles out of 15 on the road, do you think anyone tried to kill me on the road sections. Only 2 miles! On the road! Do you think some stupid fucking bitch in a shitty old Vectra who doesn’t even look when she pulls out of a crossroads, would manage to nearly drive straight over me when all I ride on the road is two miles?

Answers on a cap to pop in her ass.

Starting to be dark in the mornings now, it’s almost dark enough for lights, especially when it’s cloudy.

Please dear god, allow me to actually change the gear on this bike, it’s killing me.

I love my car. It’s a big assed whale of a car, it’s old fashioned, it’s not particularly fast, it doesn’t go round corners very quickly and it’s a monster to park.

It is however, insanely comfy, has more torque than the HMS Lancaster and it’s always been good on fuel.

Right now though, we’re on a money saving mission. Not because we’re poor or not earning much but because that’s what we do when we want to buy things, we save up. I know! It’s a funny state of affairs isn’t it? We’re not keen on credit in our house though.

So anyway, we’re saving money and we’ve found that the best way of doing this, since we’re both absolutely terrible with money, is by withdrawing all the cash at the start of the week and then only spending that. So I get 80 quid, I can do with it what I want but that has to cover everything for the week. Petrol, beer, chocolate, butties, coffees etc. etc. That includes my son’s pocket money and the costs of taking him to and enroling him in the Eastlands velodrome sessions. if you must have a breakdown, I think it typically goes, £5 for him, £5 for the velo, £25 fuel, £5 breakfast while he’s there, £3-4 a week day on a nice coffee, a chocolate bar and some mints and the rest is play money and normally goes on say a bottle of wine and some beers for the weekend and maybe buttie mid week when I can’t be arsed making any. OK?

Right, so clearly money can be saved in places but the opvious place is fuel. I can cycle to work a few days a week so that saves a bit and I can drive like an old lady, which is what I do.

Last week I put 18 quid in the tank (virtually empty when I did so), when I came to fill up the next week (again, virtually empty), I had done 172 miles. Now when I discussed this with my boss he reckoned I’d worked it out wrong. But I’m not convinced.

18 quid at £1.20 a litre is 15 litres. 15 litres is roughly 3.3 imperial gallons (I assume that’s what we use in this country), and 172 miles divided by 3.3 is 52. Which by my reckoning means I’ve done 52 miles to the gallon. Does that sound right to you?

So I love my car, which despite it weighing about 2 tons and having a dirty great 2.2 litre engine in it, does 52 miles to the gallon.

SWEET!

Edit: If we’re using American Gallons then it’s 42 miles to the gallon, which is rubbish! i don;t know whether to love it or hate it now.

Bike: Roadlite
Distance: 41 miles

Nearly couldn’t be bothered and then realised I’d wasted most of the day doing bog all so upped and went out. Bit wet, rained on and off around the entire route. It was complete and utter bell end city though. King of whom was a taxi driver in Farnworth who overtook me WITH HIS LEFT INDICATOR ON so he was clearly aiming at the junction and then braked hard to make the turn as he was alongside me. I got both levers to the bars and the back wheel swas sliding around. I almost hit him, it was very close. He then, presumably having seen the death he had almost caused, slowed to a crawl providing me with the opportunity to skip round the back, move down his right hand side and shout PRICK as loud as I could through the open window. I slowed then and looked round to see if he wanted to make anything of it because to be quite frank I was angry enough to give him what he wanted but after a quick glance at me he drove off round the bend.

After that all the other dickheads were just minor inconveniences.

Roadlite is nice and quiet now it has the inner tube bits stuck between the spokes, I’ll probably just leave them there.

Bike: Pimpino
Distance: 30 miles

This commute was even better than the previous day. No rain today, bit less wind and I didn;t wear my raincoat. It is Friday though so dress down day and I had to take all my clothes in, that’s a t-shirt, underwear, socks, shoes and jeans. Plus my butties, plus my raincoat. The bag was jam packed full and really heavy! My back was killing me when I got there. Plus someone else rode in today. I wonder if the showers get busy on hot days……

Anyway, no incidents of note mainly because so much of the ride is offroad but I really need to set a decent gear up, this is killing me.

Coming home was great too although the bag was a lot lighter because I left my jeans and shoes at work and just brought my diryt clothes back. All I have to do now is take a couple of shirts in and I’m sorted for a while. A friend has suggested a method of carrying shirts in your bag without wrinkling them so I’ll give that a try once I’ve got some emergency shirts in work.

Just looking at this Newton to Lowton road problem, I reckon it’s pretty much insurmountable. I can ride further on the Sankey Valley trail to Haydock and then get on the canal to go home but that still means a fair bit of road and it’s not a fun section….

Actually, after some examination of the OS map, I think I may have a solution, I need to check it out but if I’m right, it removes a good couple of miles of road from that section, plus it adds an extra half miole onto the route. I need to map this out in pretty colours.