samuri.co.uk

Bike: Pimpino
Distance: 31 miles

Commute. It was all going great. Nice weather, no wind, pretty dark so I have started using my exposure light which is fecking bright on full beam.

Anyway, all was cool until I get to the roundabout at the entrance to our site. I have to turn right so as I approach I signal right very clearly. I reach the roundabout and as I enter it, a driver in a big fuck off posh Lexus coming from my left, just enters the roundabout, like I’m not fucking there. You cock.

I brake hard and have to scrub the central button with flowers and things in it. I then look over my shoulder at the stupid knob who nearly just killed me and tell him he’s a stupid prick. I then pass in front of him as he brakes and I look over my shoulder again and call him a cock.

Guess where he’s going…. That’s right! The same place of work that I am.

Now our site in Warrington is pretty big, it’s our headquarters and about 2000 people work there. What does he do now……?

He comes alongside me,  now bearing in mind he’s already tried to kill me once, I fully expect a sideswipe, I look at him and he’s waving at me, presumably this fully mitigates the fact that the only reason I’m not dead now is because I’m a shit hot rider and have good brakes. Nope, he’s just saying ‘sorry I didn’t kill you, see you tomorrow.’

I follow him right round the site and he drives off towards either the telemetry building (unlikely IMO, they’re all engineers there who have brains), or more likely, the asset and environment building where are lots of money type people. That’ll be it.

It rained on the home, a lot. It rained the next morning so hard that I was soaked in just the time it took me to get my bike out. So I gave up and slept for an extra 45 minutes and then drove to work.

Commuting tomorrow.

Bike: Roadlite
Distance: 39 miles

Bolton, Turton, Entwistle reservoir, Belmont, Rivington, Adlington, Standish, Wigan, Hindley, Home.

I realised I’d caned it a bit hard yesterday in sprint mode because my legs were tired today. I had actually intended to ride up to Helweth Bridge to watch the guys finishing the 3 peaks but I drank too much beer last night and overslept. Ho hum. I’d just be frustrated that I wasn’t doing it.

Interesting that the Blue Lagoon has been refilled, not sure what’s going on there, I thought he couldn;t afford to keep it that way.

Bike: Roadlite
Distance: 40 miles

Mid afternoon after doing all the family stuff, ride. A bit windy but still great. Over to Bolton, up towards Dawren and then double back to head over Rivington and back home.

They say Saturday afternoon is the most dangerous time on the road and I can see why, I had lots of near misses and cocks and bellends come near me.

Pfft! Ho hum, can;t be arsed writingh about all the incidents but there were lots.

Oh! I’d put my new Brooks saddle on. It’s very comfy right from the off but so slippy, it’s hard to stay put. Hopefuly the slipiness will wear off after a bit.

Bike: Pimpino
Distance: 31 miles

Commute, umm, normal really.  Very windy so fast and easy on the way in, hard and slow on the way back. Muddy too.

Bike: Pimpino
Distance: 31, 31 miles

Not riding at all at the weekend has let the deficit get away from me, have to bring that back in hand again I think.

What I did do at the weekend was ride some rollers for an hour. At the end I slumped off the bike, barely concious and nearly slipped in the great pool of sweat that had gathered under and on the bike. That’s shit is evil! Will have to alter the setup if I do it again, namely point a fan at full blast at me and stick a telly or something in front of me. I quite like the idea of rigging up some software that will monitor the rear roller wheel and create a graphicl representation on the screen, it’d be a nice project but my programming skills are way too rusty to do something like that, plus I’d need some graphical skills, ho hum.

Anyway, back to the present. Two commutes, many murder attempts.

I fucking hate shit car drivers, I fucking hate them. On the first day I had two very near misses, very near. I’m going to fit a video camera to the bike so I can vent and rant with more effect on the matter. I was very fast the first day, not so much the second but it did cane it down going home yesterday.

Plus I’ve got a bell now, ding a ling. I’m rining it away all the time, it’s ace. Some people take it the wrong way ‘GET OUT OF MY WAY!’ but most smile and move over. It’s staying. I’ve found the only problem is it fills up with water when it’s raining so sounds a bit dull, never mind.

Oh, and our home computer has completely borked now. At first I could keep powering it off and on and it’d eventually boot up but now if it does start the boot process then it just locks at the BIOS screen. Motherboard I think. trouble is, cos I’m such a stingy bastard (which doesn;t go a long way to explain why I’m always skint) it’s quite old so I can;t get one that will fit the old CPU and memory so I have to buy them, and then I think it’s always sensible to buy a new power supply when you do computery stuff. The only bit that I’m not buying is the drives and the case although the case is about 15 years old now! Oh, and I bought a new graphics card too which is on it’s way although I expect that’s actually fine.

Bummer, that’s 180 quid more that I didn’t want to spend.

Bike: Pimpino
Distances:30, 30 , 30 miles

All commutes. But crazy, crazy stuff.

I’ve written big elsewhere but to summize…

Cat crapped on my saddle….
Lost my work pass in between doors
Someone stole my belt from my trousers at work
It rains massively hard on my way home
Front brake stops working completely
Fixing my front brake on the pavement, a chap comes out and tells me to eff off and then gets help until I leave?????
Both tyres puncture overnight for no reason.
No Tubes available so have to patch two tubes.
Chaintug bends
Van nearly kills me (I hit the kerb and fell off) on a roundabout. Leithians laugh at me en masse
Road gets blocked by two idiots who argued about who could drive through a low bridge first.

Phew! What a week. I thought the last day would be fine but on the way home I started feeling sick. Threw up twice and felt very tired. Could hardly ride home. By the time I got home I felt better and now obviously, don;t feel tired. Insomnia is a very poor mistress. Luckily I have masses of books to read.

Bike: Roadlite
Distance: 38 miles

I knew this weekend would be tricky for riding but I did manage to get this quick one in on Sunday afternoon. Bit windy but mostly dry at least. Blasted over to Hulton with a great tailwind then road back into the wind for a long way through Bolton and Tonge Moor. Bumped into Amy as she was riding back from her Three Towers ride and stopped for a quick chat.

After that I nailed it big time up through Entwistle to the A666 and then turned towards Belomont, over the tops, down to Horwich and then opened it right up to charge along Chorley New Road with a massive tailwind doing about 60 or 90 miles an hour or something. Home.

Splendid, and more than I expected to ride this weekend what with us spending most of it either in Manchester or Birkenhead.

Bike: Pimpino
Distance: 30 miles

Commute

Yesterday was my birthday. Now whether this is a coincidence or not (I really couldn;t give a shit about getting older so I’m not sure), I was under a black cloud. I provided as much enthusiasm as I could for present opening but really couldn’t muster the energy for eating so just grunted about not feeling up to it. Went to bed about ten. Woke up about four and the black cloud was like a swarm of flies around me. I dragged myself out of bed and got ready but I felt so low. I’ve not had any real depressive phases since I left my old job 9 months ago but this just swept over me.

By the time I was riding out of my town I was looking for lorries to ride under. I have rarely felt so low as this, even in the old days of madness. I continued on my way and willed anyone else to try and start anything but nothing. Most of the ride is a blur to be honest and I can only really remember things from around dinner time when I started perking up a bit.In fact my recovery very quick and by about 2-3pm I started feeling quite happy again. Very bizarre,

I rode home with Rick who needs to sort out his drive chain. He had a puncture too and we just meandered our way home but it was nice to ride back with someone for a change. Hope he’s up for it a few more times. One cock got angry because we were riding double file and while I agree that this is sometimes annoying, it was a big fuck off wide road with no traffic on it and I was right in the cycle lane with Rick right up alongside me. Bell end.

Rick has a bell, I want one.

Bike: Pimpino
Distance: 30 miles

Commute. Legs felt a little heavy after the weekend’s riding but still pretty good. Lovely weather both ways although it chucked it down in the middle of the day making it a bit muddy and splashy on the way home. Good fun though. No major incidents of note other than taken one of my sons riding shirts to work instead of one of my own. I had no alternative when I got ready to come home since the shirt I’d ridden in in had been festering all day in a carrier bag with my shorts and socks so I had to put it on.

It’s testminony to the amount of weight I;ve lost recently that I could actually get into the thing but once I had it was snug indeed. Spray on springs to mind.

I got more than one whistle on the way home. Off ladies too.

Bike: Chameleon
Distance: 100 miles

Kielder 100.

Finished! Yay! Bloody hard though. General consensus it was a few miles more than a hundred and I think I heard about 13000ft of climbing being bandied about. Proper top notch race though, great course although there were somenasty, nasty sections of singletrack that were made of large raock stick to the ground, climbing up those was soul destroying.

My back held out ok I guess. No pain till about 30 miles and then it started aching. By about 50 miles it was screaming but I found I could make it go away by changing my riding position. Standing up straight when pedalling up hills seemed to help. Plus my saddlebag broke 5 miles into the race so I had to carry all my stuff in my short pockets which probably didn’t help.

I thought I was doing really well as very few people passed me except when I stopped at feed/water stops and I was passing people all the time but I guess that must be because all the quick people left in front of me and I never saw them again.  I got to the 80 mile feed station and realised then that I was going to definately finish which gave me a big moral and physical boost so I charged along for the next 15 miles overtaking about 20 or 30 people. Then on the last horrible rocky climb I bonked and burned. Spent ten minutes slumped over my bike just pushing sweets and cerial bars in till I felt I could move again but pretty much pushed up all the hills from that point onwards. Seeing Kielder down in the valley on the last stretch of singletrack was awesome, very emotional.

Great track, great atmosphere, it was really good to meet so many people, especially those I rarely do get chance to see like Donk, Trio, Mikeactually, Drac, Deano, Biff etc. etc. Splendid. Less rocky climbs and definately less midges please.

I came 173th with a time of 11:38 and something like 55th in the Veterans class both of which I’m extremely happy about, I just wanted to finish and ended doing better than mid pack which is just fine by me. Although looking at the results there seem to be quite a few people who were quite fast and apparently missed a timing point so they either cheated or it’s just an accident in which case I did worse than stated above.

Thanks very much to Nick for the entry, hope I did you proud.