Bike: Roly
Distance: 27 miles
Not as far as I wanted to go but this (and further subsequent rides around Newcastle), was merely a data gathering exercise. I need to find out where the fun roads are and where the not so fun roads are first before doing some decent distances.
So, road down to Whitely Bay, ok. Road along to Blyth, ok. A189, FUCKING NIGHTMARE!!! Imagine a motorway with no lights on it. Then think about riding a bike along it. I turned around at that point, my memory based map not being able to remember any more. Back to Blyth, now it started getting proper fun. The road back to Whitley bay was uphill but smooth and the strong tail wind made it so awesome! I was proper caning it along for about 3 miles at 28mph! Up a hill!!! Brilliant! I passed a couple of blokes on bikes going the same way. YEEEHAAA!
Then on to TyneMouth and North Shields and then turned and headed into Newcastle and completed an ambition of mine to approach the Billy Mill roundabout (see Rogers Profanisaurus for explanation) and then headed for Newcastle. Note to self:- A193 into Newcastle is not a fun road. But after nearly dying 17 times I gave up and headed back to the hotel.
Tomorrow Newcastle town centre and maybe up to the other side of Gateshead for the angel of the north.
Bike: Roly
Distance: 45 miles
My GPS ran out of battery power at some point so the mileage is a low estimate. I’d check with tracklogs or memorymap but my DVD is corrupt for the former (this is the first time I’ve tried to use it since I reinstalled windows 7) and the latter has been offline for a few days now. I reckon it’s more like 55 miles but can;t check will one of the other is working. It was a bit nippy though and had to keep moving fast to keep my warmth up. I bumped into an old chap who I;ve met a few times befroe and we had a long chat this time. Roy is his name, rides an ld Colnago frame with a mixture of assorted old and new kit on it. He’s a very nice bloke, a lot like me in a lot of views he has about cars, people who ride bikes, etc etc so we set the world to rights for about alf an hour until I was freezing and set back off again.
Nice day for it though.
I’ve brought Roly up to Newcastle with me this morning too so it’s an early dart today from work and off up the North East coast to start to get my bearings and ideas of distances and times. My target for the moment is Alnwick becaue I’ve been there a few times before but that looks a bit far for a quick night ride. I reckon I’ll keep riding for about 20 miles and see how far I get and then turn round. It has been a *right* hassle getting the bike and all the kit in the car as well as all my work clothes and things.
Plus I’ve gone and left my videos USB stick in the home computer so I’m going to be a bit bored in the evening. Pants!
Hire car is a Mondeo which is pretty good. Report later.
Bike: Roly
Distance: 37 miles
That’s better. I’m starting to pick things up now. It’s having a working roadbike that makes the difference.
Mostly a repeat of Thursday today with some small variations. Faster today and with some bigger downhills. This was achieved with the sun in my face before I lost my bottle at not being able to see where I was going at all and knowing a car was coming up the hill.
Good ride though, still very windy mind. I moved the seat right forwards and my back feels fine now. Road riding rocks.
In other news then….
I need a high performance road bike. I could but a carbon lovely from say planet X for a grand but I dunno, I like steel a lot and I can get some very nice deals on Genesis bikes from a friend so I dunno. Or should I just leave it. It’s a hard choice. I’m looking for something that can be ridden a long way, steel would be better I reckon.
I’ve started planning my road trip in summer. About a hundred miles a day, head up to Scotland, across to the East coast, back down to East Anglia, across to Wales and then back up to home. Old school too. Panniers, at least two nights sleeping rough, use youth hostels or similar the rest of the time. Drink proper beer some nights. Just ride, relax, take it easy, see the country.
Also I’ve finally got my home webmail sorted to allow me to read my own mail when I’m at work.this step is critical to allowing me to take up some more intensive activities when I’m bored (which is most of the time at the moment) like bug reporting on linux systems and helping out with linux/security community issues. I’m also looking to set up a home business offering security services to local businesses who want to set up wireless/encryption/firewalls.
Bike: roly
Distance: 41 miles
I totally rocked! Apart from one bit where I didn’t. Flew up the hills at the start, over to Rivington, up over the tops on the Belmont climb, down into Belmont, turn left at the Black Dog and head over to Withnall, back across to Chorley, Limbrick, reservoirs, Rivington, Horwich, Reebok, almost went home but felt a burst of energy and caned it up to Wingates. Blasted my way up to the Chequerbents roundabout, round it at warp 9, head down the country lane to Atherton, trigger the speed camera after the bridge at 33mph, mini roundabout with my knee out and back home in time for tea. Brilliant.
On the Reebok roudabout there were so many cars coming I had to stop, when A gap appeared I pushed off hard and my foot slipped so I fell onto the bike and my foot came out of the pedal. So there I am, wobbling away, sprawled across the bike, in rush hour, on a major roundabout. Not very many people were impressed, especially the guy who had to drive round it again because I made him miss his junction. oops.
Apart from that though, I felt great.I do feel a bit stretched out on Roly, maybe move the seat forwards all the way. might have to get a shorter/higher stem.
Distance: 1 mile
Went down the hotel pool at 8. There was only two lanes! A slow lane and a fast lane. This clearly had left the normal middle lane meanderers in a confused state so they all moved into the fast lane. It say ‘FAST’. At both ends. Look! So I would do a length. Catch the person in front, stand there waiting for them to get maximum distance ahead and then just as the person behind me reached my end, I would set off and then catch the other person again at the other end, repeat. If all the slow people all created a convoy and swam in a big line (since they were all clearly as slow and dangerous as each other) it wouldn’t be such a problem, I’d at least get two lengths before having to stop and wait again but no, they space themselves out equidistance. Added to all this, at least one of them had decided the best place for swimming would be RIGHT DOWN THE FUCKING MIDDLE. Not such a major issue apart from her generous floating aids meant she acted as a sort of crabbing oil tanker which even slowed down the other slow people.
After about 20 lengths I’d had enough and was just getting out when I noticed them all huddle at one end together, have a bit of a conflab and then move en masse to the whirlpool thingy. Great! I got my head down and knocked out a quick 20 more laps. Stopped for a rest and then this girl got in. Now one problem with being a blind gimp is that when I go swimming I can’t see fuck all. I can make out shapes but ask me to read something or identify someone without my nose touching them and you’ll be on a very slow boat to nowheres-ville. So the only thing I could make out was that she was possibly quite pretty and certainly very skinny. Pants, that’ll slow me down. It turns out not. Actually she was shit hot fast. Easily as quick as me in long distance mode and even when I opened it up a bit (to impress her like), she responded in kind and kept away from me for a good 4 or 5 laps. Good swimmer too (way better than my crap technique) and understood lane etiquette. Good girl!
Obviously if she was impressed I’d have no idea and without her actually talking to me I’d have no idea if she was giving me the eye or not (moot point obviously). I notched up 2k in the end and my shoulder was (and still is) hurting from my extra effort laps. Those last couple of flat out sprints were probably a bad idea.
Next morning I see a woman looking at me in the breakfast hall. She’s certainly got the right build and the right colour/length of hair but like me she’s wearing glasses (although not of the eye warping intensity that I’m used to) and I catch her looking at me a few times. I expect this is the woman and she’s wondering if I’m the man.
Bike: Roly
Distance: 30 miles
Got up this morning wanting my breakfast, had some alpen a piece of jammy toast! Oooh ooooh and a cup of coffee.. Errm yeah. Then I got my chameleon out and set off down the road. I knew the bike would be fine because I spent an hour or so sorting everything out yesterday. I even rode it around the block a few times to make sure it was spot on. Why then, does it start making this horrible whirring noise 10 yards down the road? Looks like the rear cog is a bit worn, the teeth are hooking.
No matter, I made sure my pimpino was ready for a rider yesterday as well so that will be fine too. Again ,ten yards down the road the rear brake starts rubbing and could I stop it? Bizarre, no matter what I did the wheel just kept rubbing. The whel is perfectly true, I even removed it and placed it in a wheel jig to check, it’s absolutely perfect. Back in the bike and it’s rubbing at one point. No idea why. Got frustrated in the end, changed back into my maintenance clothes and set to work getting a road bike built up.
At about 3pm, after having dinner and doing a load of jobs around the house, it was ready to roll. Admittedly, it’s not the most beautiful bike in the world and something clearly need some fine tuning but it actually rides rather well. Not bad for stuff I had lying around. It’s quite light too.
All bikes need a name right? So since Roly donated the frame I’ll be calling it that, at least till I snap it. Not sure what I’ll be doing for a decent road bike. Might buy something off the shelf, I’m enquiring around at the moment. Took this one out for a quick 30 miler up some hills though and despite it being quite windy I managed a 17mph average. A bit slow but then I was a tad reluctant to really cane it up the hills, it being a new build and all.
Bike: Van Tuyl
Distance: 30 miles
I LOVE riding at the track. What I dislike, it has to be said, is queueing for over 40 minutes in post football match traffic. I should sue manchester city for the loss of time I experienced by not arriving in time to start the session at 6. I’ll never get that time back you know.
Good session although there was an extraordinary wide range of abilities there tonight. Normally Sunday nights are for fast and experienced riders but tonight it was clear some riders had never done an SQT before. Ho hum. Still good though.
Bike: Pimpino
Distance: 28 miles
Started out pretty poorly. A fresh dump of snow overnight meant for some mountain bike fun but then I realised the chain was way too long. The problem with the chameleon in single speed mode is there is only a limited number of positions the wheel can be in where the brake works. This time by removing a couple of links the wheel was too far forwards and was rubbing against the caliper. Ho hum. I need some half links to sort that out.
Anyway, so I got my pimpino out and went for a ride on that. Fun fun fun. nice snow. Loads up Rivington.
You’ll notice fromthat picture that I learnt a valuable lesson about white bar tape on offroad bikes. Don’t do it kids.
Then it started snowing quite heavily so I decided to call it a day and rode home. Sleet lower down. Got home, wife out. I;ve not got a key so I end up having to ride down to the leisure centre where she’s at an antiques fair. I leave my bike in the foyer (without asking), walk through to the hall, blag my way in, find my wife and get a key. (All this in full on cycling gear with a very muddy face). Get back to my bike to find it’s leaked a lot of black water onto the floor. Ooops, make a quick exit and finally get into the house.
Splendid.
Bah!
took my son to the drome in the morning, sat there doing fuck all for three hours although I did go out for a coffee and then got back and chatted to an old bloke who had come down from middlesborough for the weekend. Nice bloke. We talked about cycling and that for a while, and then he took his kecks off to get ready for his SQT. JEBUS! His legs were skinny, shaved, very dark brown and literally strewn with veins and knots of muscle and stuff. He’d suggested during our conversation that he’d spent so much time taking his kids around the country to riding events (one was there with him, a 40 year old 6 foot one bloke), that he’d not got chance to ride as much as he wanted to. His words were ‘I’ve not got many miles in my legs this year’, and then we watched him power round the track like it was all downhill while he whistled away like he hadn’t a care in the world. Proper character.
Also, this lady turned up for the SQT. Highly classy, rather sexy and had a habit of marching around the D talking to people she knew on a very direct fashion (including the old chap I was talking to). She was rather exciting to me. Lots of hair all over the place. Splendid.
Came home, had some dinner and then intended to go out for a ride but lawks! The computer broke. So I spend a few hours fixing it (new power supply) and by the time it was sorted it was too late to go out without lights so I canned the idea.
In other news I’ve got 537 in flight control on my ipod. Not bad eh?
I also spent a fair bit of time afterwards playing Borderlands. It’s a great game, get it.
bike: Chameleon
Distance: 25 miles
How much fun is mountain biking? I’ve drawn up this chart to help you.
Hope that clears it up. I must admit, I’d forgotten but today I got my Chameleon out, fixed the broken spoke and sorted the squeeky brake out and then when for a mega-fun ride. The chain snapped half way round and that’s when I found out my chain tool had seized solid but a couple of jumps onto it sorted that one out. Some frozen fingers later and I was back on my way. Rivington had plenty of snow on it and indeed, it started snowing while I was up there.
Brilliant ride!
diary, rides | admin | 
March 8, 2010 10:21 pm | 
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