More snappage

This pretty much sums up my entire week.

That’s my litespeed roadbike snapped. Just got it out to get it built up and found that. Maybe I should buy a brand new road bike for once. Bit skint at the moment though. Not sure what to do right now. I am seriously pissed off though. No riding since Sunday.

Got home on Thursday after not doing any exercise whatsoever up North, no time to ride a bike then. So I figured I would work till about 2 on Friday, recover some hours out of the mountain I’ve built up and go for a ride Friday afternoon. IT WAS CANING IT DOWN! All day, it never stopped. So I figured I’d use the time to build up my roadbike and sort out the chain on my chameleon. After finding that crack I was so disallusioned I just gave up, had a nap, played on the xbox for a bit.

Off to the velodrome today not to ride but to watch Sir Chris and Miss Victoria. I’ll be taking my camera but don’t expect any decent shots. And then back home by about 4-5. No riding time then either. And the forcast for tomorrow is more heavy rain. PISS OFF!

Homeless Night

Another week in Newcastle. Ho hum. Up at 5, in work by 9:30, do a full day and then drive to the hotel. My first night is always an early one because of the early start but i’m so knackered this time I think I’ll have a nap and maybe go for a swim afterwards, it’s not so bad.

No record of my booking. But I’ve had the confirmation email! Not got it with me though have I? Shit! OK, just book me one now. No rooms free (I don’t believe this for a second, the hotel is fecking huge). I ask if there’s anywhere else in the area, girl just shrugs her shoulders. Great. Sit in my car for a few minutes getting angry. Try the pub at the end of the road, that’s full too. Drive around a bit, see a premier Inn, that should be OK, after all, Lenny Henry goes there.
Sure enough, there’s Lenny in the foyer, he’s not moving much admittedly. Yes, they have one room free. It’s the disabled room, no problem for me as long as they don;t try and kick me out when someone in a wheelchair turns up. Obviously I’ve forgotten my credit card PIN so I have to pay by debit card (130 quid!).

Get to the room and here’s where the real fun starts. It’s for disabled people so every thing is really low. The beds, the bath, the sink, the desk, the cupboards, I feel like going around on my knees to make it easier.

Now here’s some proof that the people running the hotel are nasty bastards. The telly, which it should be pointed out was a massive 14″ portable, was right up there on a top shelf where I had to stretch to reach on the on button. How someone in a wheelchair would be expected to do that I don’t know. I get my ASDA pasta and fruit out and start up my laptop and decide I’ll watch ‘The big Lebowski’ while eating my dinner. i’m already wrapped up in the quilt because the room is ice cold despite the thermostat saying 25 degrees.

Well that was a load of shit. Oh, I also found out that the wireless is chargeable so no internet for me.

I decide to drown my sorrows by going to the pub over the way (which doubles as the resturant for the hotel). Beer is ok priced but the staff are all as miserable as fuck so I sit in the corner with a gob on for a bit and then go back to my room for an early night. The bed has been made for a dwarf! My feet hang over the edge and my head bangs on the headrest (it’s lucky I’ll not be having sex in it), pus it’s so soft my back is going to be killing me in the morning. As I go to turn the lights off I realise the light switch by the bed is *right* next to the alarm call button for when I fall out of my wheelchair, that’ll be fun when I’m grouping around for it in the pitch black.

At least the breakfast was nice, if a bit slow. I get to work, find the booking email and rant away down the phone for a bit. The guy did actually sound hugely apologetic especially when he found out I’d had to drive around a strange town looking for somewhere to stay. He said he’d give the hotel a kicking.

Only one more night there. Not looking forward to it. I may delay my arrival, go and get something to eat from somewhere nice first or something. Somewhere that has wireless so I can actually read my emails and play imobsters.

I was only saying how it wasn’t that bad last week.

Oh, and if you fancy buying me a present, get me a pair of these. I’ll look like a cock but I like them.
Dromarti Shoes

Wooah!! O…..K…

What
The
Fuck
Was
That!!!?

Blimey. I just lost a whole load of my day. I’ll tell you the bits I can remember.

Get up at 5:00, set off at 5:30 up to Newcastle, I’ve been given a Passat which compared to the crazy pile of bollocks they gave me last week (a peugeot), is an amazing car. Right so I drive up North, pass the gates of our office at 9:30, bang on schedule. Drive to the nearest Metro stsation, no parking, drive to the next metro station with parking, wait 30 minutes on a feezing cold platform with a crazy jordie bloek staring at me, get the train back to our office and finally find myself walking to the office with the very lovely girl who works for my boss.

That’s where it all start5s to go a bit funny. Burning with cold I suspect my body never really recovered and enters some sort of hibernation state, I get an eye peircing headache and start to feelhungry, oops, left my butties in the car. No money neither so I;ve effectively eaten nothing all day. Do plenty of work. About 16:30 I start to feel real funlny, decide it’s time to retire to my hotel so reverse my path. Walk a mile to the train station, get on train, ride to car park ed train station, go to stainsburies for some food. Aah, this sainsburies doesn;t do paste or anything like that so I buy a bottle of wine, some crisps, some grapes and a big chcolately croissant.

Now I start to lose it a bit,. I remember checking in, although I don’t remember drivinjg here. I remember getting intio my room and unpacking all my stuff and I’ve  been quite good because my shirts are hanging up, as is my suit and I’m dressed but that’s probably about it. My laptop and phone are on charge so I did that bit, I’ve clearly had a sleep because the bed is all ruffled and it looks like I was going to go and have a swim as my trunks and goggle are out.

Now the nasty bit, There’s signs of a poo in the toilet (I’m assuming it’s mine) although I’ve clearly tried to flush at some point, there’s a newd box of ibuprofen on the table with 3 tablets gone and it looks like I;ve had a shower. I woke up slumped in a chair with my laptop playing, ironically, ‘The hangover’. The bottle of wine is nearly empty, the graoes are gone, the croissant is gone, the bag of crisps is half empty. Oh, and there’s an half empty6 bottle of irun bru in the bathrrom.

My  headache has gone but I feel completekly shagged and I’m, sweating like a pig.

what the hell is going on?

Christmas, YAY

Happy Christmas everyone. Well I’ve have an excellent day. Way better than expected.

One of the bad things about being a dad is that as soon as the child pops out, you instantly become the least important entity in the family. Within seconds, you’re now below the cat and the goldfish in the pecking order. Broach this with your wife, and indeed, anyone who isn’t a father, and you’ll get called silly and dramatic but it’s 100% true.

It’s not apparent immediately, and for quite a while you carry on as you were but over the years you start to realise that perhaps the order of things is not quite as it should be. One of the times this shift in status is most obvious is at christmas. Children get something absolutely fantastic like a rocket that shoots up into the air under water power or a new bike and you get a pair of socks and maybe some slippers. You will lavish money you haven’t got on your wife in an attempt to remind her how you love her so much and really should actually be treated as an equal in the relationship but you’re kidding no-one. Your job now is to protect your family and provide them with money until your children have reached a stage where they can fend for themselves, then you can die. You’re expendable and everyone in the family knows it. Think about that when you’re eating breakfast with them.

Anyway, back to christmas time. It used to be ace, but now it’s shit. Unless you buy yourself something great. This year, for me, was different. Either by luck or genius, my wife and son clubbed together and bought me a selection of presents which really rocked my boat,. I was as chuffed to bits.

Some ace DVD’s, some whisky, a cycling shirt, a great game, book, puzzles and a tapas kit! Rockin! Plus my mum has bought me an experience voucher which I’m pretty sure I’ll be spending on either a stunt day or a rally day.

On top of this, we bought our son Rock Band 2 and the guitar and drum kit and while these games have never interested me fromafar, they’re actually masses of good fun. We’ve been playing on it most of the day.

But now the fun ends. We have my wife’s family from hell coming over tomorrow. I say they’re ‘coming over’, we have to go and get them, they’re staying overnight and then we have to take them back. Having seen the kids in my wife’s other neice’s house trying to simultaneously kill the goldfish and prize open the telly, I am locking anything precious or fragile somewhere a long way away, like fort knox. The cats will no doubt sprint for freedom the instant they arrive but the poor dog will need to monitored constantly. The girl’s boyfriend has also exhibited an alarming tendancy to get *extremely* loud and aggressive when he starts drinking, which will wind me up about 900%. He’s one of those people who is always right in your face too, I doubt he’s actually malicious in any great way but he’s clearly someone who relishes confrontation. Smashing.

Right, it’s snowing….

…so why do you feel you can drive like it’s the middle of summer?

Now I grew up in the Peak District, on the lower slopes of Kinder to be precise so I, by my own modest admission, like to think I know a thing or two about driving in the snow. My first drive ever was in the snow and we could usually guarantee a good month every year of snow driving. So I know that you never take things for granted, always leave a big gap and do everything gently.

Sadly, not everyone had this educational introduction to driving as is apparent on this mornings drive to work. In fact, I get the distinct impression that some people don’t actually believe you have to change your driving habits one iota when it’s snowy. Not even when your car is telling you to calm down a bit.

It all seemed to go OK until we got off the motorway and then the cocks started showing their true colours. A woman in an A3 (who I’m pretty sure I recognised as one of our customers [confirmed when she drove into their site] ) and a bloke in an A4 BOTH slid past me on the slip road with their ABS going nuts and then CUT in front of me. They did this through skill and breathtaking control, they did not do this because I held back and let them in. You can tell this because neither of them had to wave thanks. So not in anyway alarmed by almost causing a multiple pileup, they both continued at the same pace until an annoying lorry driving far too slow held them up, so they both nipped into the outside lane to overtake it.

You know, everyone is driving in the inside lane for a reason, IT’S BECAUSE THE OUTSIDE LANE IS FULL OF FUCKING SNOW!!! That isn’t stopping these two characters though, they’ve got traction control you know. Yes, so has everyone else with a car less than 6 years old but they’re not letting it go to their heads. So they both charge along flinging snow everywhere until the lane ends, unfortunately they haven’t yet got past the lorry so they’ve got to stop. But you see, stopping is a problem when your car is axle deep in snow with no doubt, a good covering of ice underneath it. How they didn’t cause a crash I don’t know but I saw both cars drifting sideways, the A3 definately hit the kerb.

A normal person would at this point realise they were behaving recklessly and rein it in a bit for the rest of the mile journey to work. But these two are already late, they’ve been held up by this white stuff. Needs must , time is money! As the lorry drove past them, they both nailed it to get in behind it. YOUR WHEELS ARE SITTING ONTOP OF 3 INCHES OF SNOW THAT YOU’VE JUST POLISHED BY SKIDDING TO A HALT!!! But not enough to stop them moving at all, so they both half edge out into my lane (in front of me) and then stop, front wheels spinning crazily.

I stop because I can’t get past them and the cars behind me (a lot of whom also appeared to be driving too fast), all do that kink drift thing in the queue as they skid to a halt. Eventually something pings in their heads and they realise that skinning it makes your car stop in the snow and the two Audi’s roll into my lane. Again, this was all done with amazing skill since they felt no need to wave thanks  to me for waiting.

And again, again. Do you think this has made them drive sensibly? Nope, both cars could be seen fishtailing round pretty much every roundabout from the motorway to the business park where they work.

Bell fucking ends.

More snappage

You probably don’t know because I don’t like to talk about it much but I have a pet hate when it comes to cycling kit.

It’s not white tyres or overpriced courier bags or cycling socks or carbon mechs.

No, the biggest rip off in the world of cycling, is handlebar mounts.

Lets say I buy a GPS, which of course will break after two months – as will the 3 replacements after it), and I want a handlebar mount to fix it to my bicycle. I have to go to a GPS shop and buy the exact, correct handlebar mount for that GPS, which will cost me ten quid. I can’t go anywhere else and they fucking well know it. It arrives and it looks, to my untrained eye, like a bit of moulded plastic with a screw in it. In fact it looks so much like the bit of mouled plastic with a screw in it that I got with my 4 quid set of commuting lights from Asda, that I have to go and check it’s actually different. It is, but only a bit, and obviously the GPS won’t fit it.

Of course, when it comes to high quality lights the same can not be true, surely…

Indeed, expensive light mounts are made from metal, whoopee fucking do. Obviously I have to pay extra, because it’s metal. It’s a *tiny* bit frustrating because I’ve just spent £250 quid on the light itself. It smarts just a tad that I then have to pay twenty quid for a handlebar mount. Twenty quid!!! It’s must be made out of Titanium! Nope, it’s made out of steel I think. It’s got a bolt, a little hinge a little knob and a spring! Well worth it, eh? Plus at that price it’ll last a hundred years. After all, the ASDA commuting bracket has lasted over a year already and that gets the shit kicked out of it.

I pull on the knob (ooh eerr), and the end of the knob flies off, the spring jumps thirty feet to never be seen again and the knob comes off in my hand (I’m not even bothering with any more Finbar stuff). At least exposure (oops, I mentioned the manufacturer) (the GPS that broke 4 times was a Garmin HCX by the way) replaced it immediately, and this one worked when it arrived. Sweet!

Well, for one ride anyway, after that the light rattled around annoyingly until I learned to put a small strip of paper in between the light and the bracket. So, a happy 9 months of night riding was spent. I say 9 months but obviously this was mostly during summer so it’s probably seen about ten or fifteen actual rides. Which means it’s got a good 1000 more left in it.

PANTS!

I’m not bitter or anything. But it’s a huge great pile of smoking crap.

Give me my money you bastards

We changed electricty suppliers. Why? Because the current suppliers were overcharging us massively.

So I phone up to provide the meter reading and that’s where the fun begins.

“Here’s our final meter reading to you like you asked in your letter”
“That’s different to what your new supplier told us, do you want me to change it now or just ignore this?”
“Lets get it sorted now.”
“OK, hang on.”

/5 minutes later

“OK, it’s done now, the cheque that was on it’s way is now invalid and we’ll issue a new cheque which should get to you some time in February”
“Sorry? February? If I owed you £500 (Yes, that’s how much we’ve been overcharged) you’d be on my back immediately, I’d not get two months to pay you back, you’d set the lawyers on me after 5 days.”
“You didn’t let me finish before sir, (I don’t remember him even starting), this now has to be re-processed through our admin department (clearly the slowest department on earth), and there’s christams so it’ll be February.”
“But when I asked to get it sorted now, you didn’t then say ‘you understand this will add two months onto you getting the cheque’. Would you like an extra 500 quid leading up to Christmas? Do you understand why I’m trying to get this sorted now? Come on,  you must understand this is a lot of money to anyone and we want it as soon as possible and getting it before Christmas would be a bonus, change it back, forget I phoned you.”

What a bunch of cock. He was a right arsey little bastard too. I try to do the right thing and it cocks us up. 500 quid extra!!! He seemed to agree to do it but I bet he doesn’t because I had a go at him.

And don;t get me started on the phone bill. They send us a letter dated date n which is 4 days ago saying they’re cutting the phone off unless we pay them 200 quid right now (my wife mis-understood the package I’d got which was free calls anytime to landlines only), we’d had no statement or warning letters.

So we sorted it too late and they cut us off, 15 years paying them a fortune and they cut us off like that because they didn;t send us any bills. CUNTS! So I phoned, paid the bill and let them know we’re changing providers very soon now purely because of their shitty business attitude. Watch them run scared now!! Eh! Eh!!

Crim creation.

Now I’m strongly of the belief that criminals are made and not born. It takes a set of (specifically home based) circumstances to create a career criminal and it’s these things we should fight.

Take my niece for example. She’s technically my wife’s niece not mine. Her brothers daughter. Now she’s had a hard life and no mistake. Very poor upbringing, mother died very young, her father suffered many mental problems and has just died. She’s had three kids so far and has another on the way. But she’s OK for the most part. She has extremely low self esteem and as a result has hung around with some seriously dodgy blokes. The most likely chap being a fat, scouse thug who I’d shoot like a mad dog if the law allowed it. He’s beaten her up, her father, her current boyfriend (who’s claimed he’s going to rectify that situation shortly) and no doubt a selection of people who have looked at her at all).

Anyway, she’s got a variety of children to the blokes she’s known. We went round her house (me for the first time) the other day. This is what greeted me.

One 6 year old playing GTA4 (highly violent, sexually explicit – you get to have sex with prostitutes in it) on a nintendo.

One 18 month year old baby on the fire guard, ON THE WRONG SIDE!.

One 18 month year old baby staggering about with a nappy round her ankles being followed by a very bad smell.

A quick tsck! And the 18 month year old lad was retrieved from within 6 inches of the fire. Then him and his sister adopted the position. I’m still of the opinion that crims are made and not born but these two were against the fireguard, arms against the grill, legs spread wide. They were ready to be searched. Get used to it!

Then, the 18 month year old boy found A SHARPENED SCREWDRIVER FFS!!! And started trying to prize a cupboard apart like he was jemmying a door. It really was quite impressive, he was almost in when I decided to take the sharpened tool off him. I wish I could have taken a picture of him doing it. Like a professional he was.

The tableau was complete when the older lad dropped his nintendo and shouted at my son, “Chase me, I’ve nicked some money and you’re the coppers. You’ll never catch me”, and darted out the door into the kitchen.

Again, get used to it, expect expect to be caught more often.

I’ve been banned by my wife from trying to suggest that there might be alternate moral paths for various members of her family to take but really, I can see exactly what needs to be said and done to this family to stop them turning into the family fromhell. I can stop it right now and make their life better overnight, but oh no, we have to look after the mothers feelings. She’ll suffer immensely in the years to come as her children deal out suffering to a succesion of strangers and it could have been stopped with some simple and easily applied controls but no, it’d hurt her feelings.

Foil hat time? I’m not sure it’s going to work.

You’ll remember that I’ve not ridden a bike for about a month, without getting soaked to the skin. I automatically assumed this was simple bad luck, and a cumulation of circumstances. It is after all, the rainy season. I now believe different.

Yesterday was the only day this week that I could commute. I’ve got the velodrome tonight, working on a different site Wednesday and Thursday and I’m working from home Friday. So the plan was to commute yesterday, velodrome tonight, ride maybe Wednesday or Thursday night and have an ‘offsite visit’ on Friday.

So I get up, bright and early Monday morning, (after working till 1am I might add), to the sound of heavy rain. Now normally I;d just get on my bike an go but you know what? I really could not be arsed. I really could not be arsed, getting onto a wet bike, riding to work in near zero visibility with lorries and cars spraying gallons of water over me, of getting a 15 mile long enema and of stripping off my sopping wet clothes and hanging them on the radiator at work knowing that it would either not have enough warmth to dry them for the return trip or some cunt would throw them on the floor. So I went back to bed.

This morning, bearing in mind riding in is not possible today, imagine my surprise when I looked out the window to see a PERFECT commuting morning looking back at me. Not just ok, but absolutely fecking perfect. Lovely clear sky, dry winter glow, dry ground, crisp (but not too cold) air, bang on, grade A….perfect.

I’m willing to bet, that we see exactly the same Wednesday and Thursday too (although the weather will turn nasty in the evening). I’m also willing to bet, that by Friday, we’re back to rainy city again.

The *only* explanation for this, is that someone is reading my thoughts and adjusting the weather accordingly. Now obviously anyone with a thought reading machine can do this, but adjusting the weather correspondingly is a trickier task. I looked on Amazon but they don’t sell rain makers. So it’s got to be god. The only question is, why, is god targetting me so? I’m not a bad person, there’s certainly a lot worse out there, so what is it that makes him hate me so……

Got it.

He’s jealous of my idylic existance. It bothers him that an earth bound mortal should have such a perfect life. Yes, that’s it.

GNNNNGGHH!

I presume that middle aged men such as myself all go through a similar thing. They reach a point in their lives and just get extremely frustrated that due to a variety of influences on their lives, they’ve not achieved what they wanted to and realise that there’s no way it’s going to happen now.

Take me for example, I’m 42 or something. I’m fitter than i’ve ever been in my life before although i’m not going to win any races even though I want to.  i’ll never be able to beat the young lads in short races now and I’m probably too far behind to ever beat any of the serious vets in longer ones. I *may* have a chance in short races against vets and I’ll be trialling this theory in the next 6 months but I;ve seen these guys go. Some may be old but that doesn’t stop them being fast. It’s *highly* unlikely that I’ll place anywhere memorable, other than last.

But I was watching TV tonight and I just sat there for about 15 minutes thinking about packing EVERYTHING in and doing something else entirely. You spend your entire life building a career, a reputation, pension, savings, house with a conservatory  , and yet it can all be lost in an instant. I think the objective is to be *comfortable* in your later years, not live on a dodgy estate where you’re afraid to go out and generally have a happy end of life. But I realised that all that is pointless if you live like I do to get there.

I want to ride in the Andes, I want to cycle for 300 miles a day, every day for two weeks until I get from one end of Asia to the other. I want to have sex with girls of different nationalities and creeds. I want to win stuff and lose more than I already have, I just want to get out of what i’m doing now and do something I want to like writing., photography, riding or moving around a lot. trouble is I’m too crap at these things to get paid for it,  bummer. I can either try and steal some money (and trust me, I’d not last long in a hard prison with bubba and clint) and live the life of riley or swallow my principles, ditch the noble techie job and work in a ruthless field for ten years to get enough money in to stop working in my early 50’s and start doing stuff.

christ what a moaning twat. i’m almost already in my fifties now it seems. my biggest problem is knowing what to do next. The major problem with this situation is that I tend to just leap at the first thing that looks but invariably isn’t, and cock my life up even more.  Yay for irrational leaps of faith.