Joan Jett

Now clearly quite a few of you readers will never have heard of Joan Jett but let me tell you, she’s the ultimate rock chick.

Dead sassy, right in your face, fairly hot and a great singer. Now I used to have a number of albums of hers and a bit of a thing for her. OK, quite a lot of a thing for her actually. As time went on, I lost all the albums and lets face it, they were proper records, so I’d have nothing to play them on now.

Anyway, Classic Rock FM played ‘I love rock and roll’ the other day and it reminded me how good she was so I downloaded the greatest hits of Joan Jett and the Blackhearts from itunes.

What a fucking awesome album, brilliant! I was playing it away at maximum volume and my son virtually ran into the room. He’s 15 so he’s down with the kids and that, and he asked ‘who’s that awesome band dad?’ Now obviously since he is fifteen he actually said something in a different language like ‘Sick Charlie, that music beats like never ending innit’, which means the same thing.

I was stuck in a difficult place now. I could tell him this was a band that rocked my world 30 years ago, which would put him off forever, or I could deny all previous and lie.

“Dunno son, I’ve just found them, Joan Jett and the Blackhearts, they’re gnarly aren’t they?”

He laughed but I could see he was hooked, they do sound pretty modern to be honest. He’s gone off to download some songs for himself. Sweet!

I’m in love

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.

Ride Entry – 26th June 2010

Bike: Chameleon
Distance: 95 miles

MEGARIDE!

James had this idea about showing us some sweet singletrack he’d found. Sounds good to me. Here’s the problem though,

..if you can see that. We live right on the opposite sides of the map! Still, I had all day so thought it would be fine.

Off I set about 11:00, took my time, meandered along in the sun, mostly road so I didn’t get lost and it was nice going back to my old home town. 35 miles there. Met James and after collecting NBT and Richpips, we set off. Quite fast I might add. The lads took us upto Whaley Bridge along the canal andfromthere up into the hills about the reservoirs. We pottered about for a bit until we finally reached the top of the singletrack.

Iwas fantastic it has to be said. Rocky and twisty turny all the way down with roots and dropoffs and all sorts of things, loved it and well worth the travel. Unfortunately James, who is having some crash issues at the moment, came off a few times.

James Crash

Still, this is the first half decent video I’ve managed to get with my new 888 keyfob camera.

Not amazing quality but good enough for me and the good thing is it only cost me 8 quid plus the price of the memory card. I need to fix it to my helmet better though to stop it moving about so much, and learn how to make the quality best for uploading to youtube, my local copy is wway better than the one on there.

We finished our ride and shot off to a pub for a quick pint before heading back to James and then back to mine.

About 4 miles from James’s, I started to feel a bit funny. Maybe I should have eaten something all day.

About a mile further down the trail, I collapsed into the bushes. Hmm, maybe I should get something to eat. Properly bonked. It took an enormous amount of effort to get the tub of pasta out of my backpack but ince I had it open I wolfed it down in seconds. Some randoms went in on top of it and after ten minutes I felt strong enough to get back on my bike. I gradually felt better and better until I got back to Wharburton when I felt right as rain again, if a little tired.

I managed to limp my way home without any more food but collapsed into a chair when I got there and drink 2 pints of vimto and inhaled some chicken pasta my wife had made for me.

Quality day out.

19th Jun 2010

It’s been an eventful day.

Up at 6am, off to the velodrome. Yet again they placed my son in the wrong team for the Italian pursuit. By the time he was on the front (5th rider), the other team were about 20 metres behind them.  But then he got his go and charged away. Luckily the girl behind him who was the last rider is very quick and the two of them pulled out a very impressive distance for their two laps. I dunno, I know it’s only training but I can see the favouritism that goes on there. The riders who do all the racing get priority. Ho hum. It’s not really a problem but my son so far has not wanted to race properly and he’s one of the fastest people there.

Anyway, then we raced over to the 3 Sisters race track in Wigan where I had my single seater experience day going on. Fucking brilliant, to put it mildly. I’ve been thinking about it all day I enjoyed it so much. These formula fords are so much better on this track than the big supercars, even on my assessment laps in the Mini Cooper I was right up the arse of a Vanquish for my 4 laps because he wouldn’t move over.

The single seaters were even quicker and a huge amount of fun. They corner like nothing else I’ve been in and the pace car got faster and faster until it was just me and him. The car didn’t falter once so I suspect we were way off what the car can do although reasonably close to what I can do. The important thing is I took it all as a bit of fun, not so some of the other guys there who clearly thought they were gods gift to driving. Hopefully me and the pace car passing them on about lap 7 will make them change their minds. I particularly liked the look on one guys face who was shouting about getting 80% in his assessment from the cooper session and so would be right behind the pace car only to watch my 94% being written on the board. Again, if you’re so brilliant, how come you go lapped by me,  a complete non-petrol head?

So much fun, well recommended. I really enjoyed myself. Nothing like passing a hundred grand car in one wth only 110bhp.

Oh, then I rode about 27 miles around Rivington on my Chameleon. It was great.

Ipod touch on Ubuntu

This has been a sticking point for a while. You can access your ipod touch/iphone on your windows machine using itunes or any number of other third party pieces of software, you can access from your MAC in a similar fashion but up till now, not from a Linux box.

Luckily those clever chaps at Ubuntu (and most likely a whole load of other Linux derivatives), have done some magic and got it working. The original problem was a driver issue, the touch’s  file system couldn’t be identified under Linux and while the ‘public’ areas could be seen once the device was plugged in (and for that read – Photos), nothing else was visible.

The latest upgrade works great however. I can now access the entire ipod filesystem as an external hard drive and Rythmnbox boots up nicely as soon as I plug the ipod in and starts playing Kylie like she’s never sung before. Even proprietry formats like MP4 seem to work.

Strangely this change in circumstances hasn’t been advertised widely, I don’t know if there’s some political things going on but anyway, upgrade to the latest version on your Linux box and your ipod touch and iphone should now work fine. It can even synch the music onto your linux box (although with my linux netbook only having 16G I’ve avoided doing this).

Hands in pockets please.

I’d really appreciate it if you could donate a couple of quid to Christies for when I do the Manchester to Blackpool ride in July.
Normally I’d restrict asking for money for charity to people I meet in real life but since my son has already been round every single person we know and raised about 150 quid (plus I can hardly ask at work since I’ll be gone in a week or so), so I’m asking you lot.

justgiving.com

As I say, you don’t have to give much, just enough to make it look like at least some people care that I’m doing something.

As it says on the page, since 60 miles is actually less than I’d normally ride on a Sunday anyway, and it’s almost competely flat I feel a bit guilty about being paid anything so I’ve decided that if I raise 50 quid I’ll do the ride in the brightest disco suit, shirt, wig and moustache that I can find.

If I don’t raise 50 quid I’ll just bump it up myself and do it anyway.

Thanks.

I resign – Again

Actually I did it about a week or go. Public sector is not for me. Very frustrating and the control that suppliers have is ridiculous. I’m not really allowed to publically go into specifics so I won’t. I will say that there are a lot of nice people where I was working though and some very, very bright ones but you can just see the system wearing them down until they toe the line and sit in their little grey jobs just getting on with it.

Maybe in fifteen years time when I’m looking for somewhere to while away the years to retirement, but not now.

Right now I’m moving back into proper security architecture, hopefully a lot closer to the coal face as it were, pissing about with computers and firewalls and things, designing stuff. That’s what I really enjoy doing. And this job is a lot closer to home. Too close for a proper cycle commute although they do have proper cycling facilities. Well, it’s probably a bit further than my old commute to Warrington, I forget how far that was but it was offroad most of the way and quite nice in summer. Plus I guess I have the option of just riding directly there if I’m late, that’d be about 8 miles. I hope I like this job, plus the money is way better than what I’m on now.

I’d like to sort out a few bills we seem to have run up. They just sort of crept up on us, we’ve been lazy and extravagant, spending money on crap and stuff we don’t need and then one day I realised we were always in the overdraft, nothing we couldn’t sort out now to be honest but once we’d noticed it got really hard to reel it back in. I tried to blame my wife but then I realised I was just as bad. The clothes drier is a great example. The old one works OK, you sometimes have to give it a nudge to start but it works just fine. So she went out and bought another one for 250 quid! I didn’t know you could get them that expensive.

And me, I was just browsing amazon for DVD’s and books, once I thought I’d got everything I wanted it clicked purchase without even looking at the price, it was only when the email came through I realised I’d spent 150 quid! Nah, we need to get hold of things as well as having more money. My wife’s wages currently go into a seperate account and we try and forget about it, that money gets used for holidays and car costs (it’s a very effective method for those that are looking for methods of saving money).

We’ll do the same with my new car allowance, I’ll just transfer it into another account as soon as it lands and try and forget about it, that money can be saved up and placed in an ISA of whatever looks the most likely at that time.

Canyon Roadlite – 1st Ride Entry

Well, it’s finally arrived. And sweet it is indeed.

Mostly good anyway, lets have a look at it.

Very light, very stiff (yet surprisingly comfy), very very quick and proper new bike solid. I absolutely love it. Fits me like a glove, everything works great and I had a brilliant ride, really didn’t want to go home to be honest. It accelerates like no other bike I’ve ever ridden, like a scalded cat it is.

Bad bits? Minor things really. They connected the brakes up European stylee with the front on the left despite me emailing them about four times asking them not to do that. The STI’s are a little high on the bars too for my liking. They only had compact or triple so I went for compact and a tiny cassette which is OK but I wished they’d have offered standard.

Still brilliant though, very happy so far. I’m struggling for storage space at home though so until I get more secure/dry storage sorted out, the Kaffenback has had to go back in the attic. Plus on the way back through Wigan a complete and utter feckwit in a brand new RangeRover just drifted across a big roundabout forcing me into the outside lane where a car almost drove over me, I shot back over to the cock and hammered my fist on the side of the car then accelerated in front of him and gave him a big fucking finger right up close to the windscreen, he took one look at me and floored it off. Bell end. Hope I dinted it.

Eye of the beholder.

Now I’ve never been what you might call a looker. I guess my best period was my late teens, early twenties when I was ultra confident and very buff from weight lifting and various martial arts and I did alright with the ladies. Not as well as some of the people I knew but not bad at all. I never wanted for more female company at least, which was just fine by me. I suppose some of this could have been down to my looks.

During these periods I wore contact lenses. Now my eyesight is pretty poor to be honest. -6 and -5.5, throw in a healthy dose of astigmatism and you’re looking at some fairly thick milk bottle bottom glasses. No matter how good glass technology gets, that’s always going to be one whole load of magnetism going on which sadly will have an effect on what one’s eyes look like when viewed by another. And it’s not the best of looks. If you’re shortsighted like me, the effect is that my eyes look a lot smaller than they really are. And this seems to have had an effect on the way I am treated, especially by the ladies. Now obviously I’m married so it shouldn’t matter but it’s nice to be flirted with, even if it’s going nowhere.

Since I’ve started wearing contacts again, albeit on a rare basis, I’ve noticed a few interesting, and almost alarming differences in the way I am treated, again, particularly by the ladies, amongst other things.

For example, if I were to go into a shop to buy something and I be my normal pleasant self, say hello and goodbye in pleasant tones, joke if the opportunity arises, WITH MY GLASSES ON, I will, for the most part, get a fairly stoic response. In extreme cases I will just be ignored right up to the line of virtually acceptable customer service, but certainly no further.

Now I go to the same shop and act exactly the same way with my contacts on, the difference is dramatic. I get lots of smiles, plenty of eye contact and today when I was joking with the girl in ASDA, she started flicking her hair about and started doing coy glances at me. It could have been nothing but I still remember from my younger days that these things were a tip that I could push the conversation further than just polite to ‘fancy a date’ territory. And this is from someone who has a) previously given me nothing more than a vague courteous smile and b)was half my age. Now I could have caught on her a good day today but this is just one of many similar instances I’ve been through. I’m pretty certain that how my eyes look have initiated this change in reaction to me.

For example, my son was with me today in the ASDA, which goes to show how innocent I was treating the conversation with this girl, and even he noticed. When I mentioned that this sort of stuff only happens when I wear contacts he did point out that my eyes were looking particularly blue today.

So there you have it, girls might say that what really attracts them is a mans personality, sense of humour, reliability and wallet size but it’s all lies, what they really like is a nice pair of eyes.

edit: Oh and other things about wearing contacts.

1. My eyes feel cool all the time.
2. I can wear proper cycling glasses, it’s great!
3. Everything looks bigger.I notcied when I was buying some beers how big the bottles look. The real question is obviously, are things real size with contacts or with glasses. I hope the former because my knob looked huge!

It’s been ordered!

I can’t remember being this excited about buying a new bike before.