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.
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.
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!
Bike: Pimpino
Distance: 44 miles
Valentines day ride. My son left his coat at the Velodrome after yesterdays session so I dedicaed to make todays ride a trip into Manchester. I anticipated it being very dull and dangerous but you know what? It wasn’t bad at all. I decided to ride in via normal roads and then ride back using as much canal as I could, that being the only offroad route possible, but more on that later.
Anyway, trundled in quite happily, right through the city centre, nice and quiet, clearly the best way of photographing the city is riding in early Sunday morning and snapping away before it gets busy, I’ll have to do that one day. Right through the centre, past Piccadilly, meandered around in the back streets behind the station, some cool looking alleys round there, proper old school. Then up the main road and left into the big Ardwick estate. It’s a bit dodgy but it’s nice and early, all the wrong’uns will be in bed after a long night’s causing mischief…. Nope. Rode round a corner to find a couple of big prestige cars parked across the road and a selection of what can only be described as ‘ganged up’ gentlemen stood around in poses of hardness. As soon as they saw me one started walking towards me in that wibbly wobbly walk with his hand near his crotch (I felt like I’d ridden into a gang film of some description) and told me to eff off.
Right you are. I quickly turned it around and did a nice big loop onto Turing way and reached the drome without further incident. I collected the coat and made my way to the canal (which regular visitors will know, runs right next to the velodrome). I’d looked on the map and this canal ran right into the city centre, then a bit of a gap and then all the way back home. Sweet. Nope. It’s impossible to get onto the canal. I rode round the back of the ASDA and further up towards denton, every single access point is blocked off. Hmmm, head back towards manchster and don’t find any way of getting onto the canal until I get to Canal street. Ride through the centre on the really rather nicely done up towpath through to castlefield where it got so laborious going over bridges and doubling back that I gave up and rode out to old trafford where I pretty much rode the canal all the way back to Leigh.
Splendid. Travelled a lot further than I thought mind and I did that thing where I forgot to eat any breakfast or take any food with me so felt ever so slightly[1] drained when I got home.
[1] This may be an understatement.
Bike:pimpino
distance: 24 miles
Nice enough ride. A bit sharp to be honest but suitable clothing sorted that one out. I’m certainly gaining fitness again now, charged for quite a while n some places. just up to rivy and back. Brakes playing up a bit, ho hum. I’ve taken my track bike to the track for storage now, need to get the chameleon down for riding duties sharpish and then swap out all my ultegra kit off my crosslight onto my road bike again. I need a new road rim.
In other news my old company has stumped up my desperately needed overtime which was nice and has suspiciously told me I’ve won the water aid lottery on my very last pay packet after being in it for 8 years. Only 25 quid mind. We’re back in the money now I think, just. (Old company only paid two weeks in advance plus I only worked two weeks into the month so we actually had a full month without any pay to muggle through, the specific month being december, not the easiest one to choose.) Plus obviously the bank seeing that I’d not been paid on the 15th killed our overdraft. Thanks. 25 fucking years of paying them a lot of money (mortage, wages, savings, ISA’s) and the instant my pay doesn’t go in as expected and Lloyds TSB the fecking stealing bastards turn the overdraft off, right when we needed it. It’s all automated too. No humans in the process whatsoever frm observing your account to issuing the letter.
If I could find a bank that says ‘we use humans to make decisions, if they’re not sure what’s going on, they’ll phone you and ask before doing anything, because at the end of the day, we’re all humans (although obviously in the case of bankers this is debatable – leeches aren’t human last time I looked) . Anyway, what a bunch of fucking cunts Lloyds TSB are. Other banks are certainly just as bad but there you go.
diary, rides | admin | 
March 8, 2010 10:21 pm | 
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