Anyone got ‘em?
How much fun was it? Got a tooth coming out on Monday (again), it’s near enough to the front to be visible so faced with the option of
1. Looking less beautiful than I do now
2. False teeth
3. Bridge
4. Implant
I’m going for option 4. Clearly I’m passing down the path of greatest masochistic impact both to my wallet (you could buy a *really* nice bike for that much!) and to my rapidly dwindling patience for the succession of european dentists that seem to be rotated daily at our surgery, not to mention the sheer bowel loosening pain that the procedure entails as the aforementioned Spaniard/Irish/Hungarian dentists fressh out of dentist school slashes randomly away at my gum with a scalpel to expose the bone before drilling a dirty great titanium bolt in.
It’s a well known fact that I can’t make any plane journey without being identified as ‘fairly suspicious’ and being subjected to one of the standard body searches ranging from ‘a good old fondle of the crotch’ to ‘violently intrusive cavity search’ but after this procedure I’m sure I’ll be setting off the metal detectors every time I try going on holiday to the extent where the question ‘why is dad walking funny?’ is no needed.
Maybe I should just live with the gap, it probably won’t be long before another tooth needs coming out and I can hardly afford to spend £1200 each time the dentist needs to top up his Bahamas fund.
It wouldn’t be quite so galling (ok, well it would but it’s a nice opener), if they hadn’t *just* spent over an hour drilling away at this particular tooth and glueing a fake one on top of the root. You’d think before undertaking such a process they’d check that it was worth doing. I mean, you’d have to be a pretty poor professional to fix a crown and then say it all needed to come out a few months down the line. Obviously when I say ‘you’d’ and ‘then say’ I’m suggesting that this might actually be the same individual who carried out both actions which clearly isn’t true. No, my surgery uses the ‘British Gas blame disemination’ technique which involves ensuring that each and every engineer that visits your property (or mouth), is always an entirely different individual from the last and indeed, any previous visits. It’s entirely feasible that the person that installs your condensing pipe in the afternoon, is a completely different one from the chap who ripped out your boiler in the morning.
“Oh no, only Bob can install pipes, I’m a boiler remover.”
You get to the stage where you can’t even remember which dentist has done which shoody piece of tom foolery in your mouth (even if you could you’d be struggling to remember if it was Armdando or Armundo) and then the receptionist will roll her eyes at her colleague to say ‘he can’t even remember which dentist he had, anything he says from this point onwards can be ignored’, and end up angrily having to pay up for being royally rogered all for keeping a smile on your face.
Be some changes here over the next few weeks, looks and content.
We might even go back to the heady days of self-written pages. We’ll almost certainly go back to, in some degree, to the heady days of long diatrebes and short stories. We’ll see.
Bike: Crosslight
Distance: 25 miles
Not a whole of fun to be honest. The snow ranged from ‘like ice’ to ‘crispy on top, slushy underneath’ and none of it was fun to ride in. The latter was the worst, every pedal stroke the front wheel would ride up on top of the snow, then break through and then veer sideways on the mush. Couldn’t get any speed up at all and in the end I just gave up, got on the road and finished the ride on the tarmac. Apart from our road, riding along that was just crazy. Two wheels and two feet on the ground…mmmmm.
Edit: I am never going to reach my target now unless the snow suddenly all clears in the next few hours. Today is family day so no riding today. 4 days left till the end of the year, Tuesday is the Velodrome so 30miles then. I should be able to eek 50 miles across the other three days hopefully, push the total up to 5000 for the year, I’ll be happy with that.
Bike: Vela
Distance:27 miles
Well that was a shitty end to a shitty week or riding. Only did 89 miles all week and the last ride, todays, pretty much summed up my experiences.
Absolutely chucked it down, I was completely saturated by the time I got to Belmont. Heading over the moors the wind was so strong and the rain flying so hard I could barely see. I was actually worried a car might comeand not see me visibility was so badly impaired. By the time I got back down to rivington I was exhausted and cold and soaked and even though the rain had slowed to a trickle, I’d had enough and headed for home. Caned it along Chorley new road, approached the roundabout at the Reebok a bit too fast, braked too late and couldn’t stop because my rims were wet, had to make a split second decision and stood up on the pedals and nailed it out in front of a car. Oops, never mind.
Going to have to do some catching up next week. Only 89 miles in a week? I’ll be finding it hard to get out of my chair soon.
Bike: Handjob
Distance:66 miles
Grrrr!!!! Proper ride. Last biggie before Keilder, (assuming I actually get there but more on that later).
Three towers from my house and then come back and visit Darwen and Rivington again, ride home. Do it fast. Well, I didn’t do it that fast to be honest. The route profile belows says 4 hours but that’s not right, about 6.5 hours which is roughly 10 mph average but I deliberately took it a bit easier than normal. I felt FANTASTIC the whole way round, really good. My back gave me a couple of pings (it’s always been my weak point) but each time I stopped, did some stretching and that seemed to sort it, thanks DONK! Superb advice.
Pity the same couldn’t be said for the bike. The indexing was screwed from the start despite me checking it before I left. The back brake very quickly reverted to ‘fucking useless’ and the front packed in about ten miles from home. The rear mech exploded about 5 miles from home and I finished the ride with the chain looping round the bottom mech wheel bolt, that made a nice noise. I can buy a new mech but the brakes need to be replaced under warranty. I need to have a sit down tonight and think what I’m going to do with them. I have some mini’s on the chameleon which I could move across, or buy a couple of deores and sell them after Kielder, seems like a whole big waste of money though. Never get these ones sorted by friday though so I might not be able to make it. Bit ironic really, I’m fitter than I’ve been since I was 18 and riding road races on a pig iron Raleigh, probably even fitter than I was then to be honest, and the bike has let me down big time, or shimano have at least.
Anyway, profile from today. Sweet!. Click to make it bigger. 66 miles, 2223m of climbing, get in!
Edit: Weekly mileage update. Going to be shockingly crap, hang on…..
246 miles for the week, cripes, I should just go and sit in front of the telly all week, it’s hardly worth it.
Term coined by Jo.
I finally built up my new bike. A white pompino, tricked out with expensive kit, a lot bloody more expensive than I anticipated too. I *almost* went white everything including white spokes and white chain but that would have been just stupid, thanks to Tim or talking me out of that one.
Forks are Karate Monkey’s, beautiful Cane Creek levers and quite delicious White Industries cranks.
I have to thank On-one/planet-X, Charlie the Bike Monger who was a lot of help at the start, Tim at Sideways Cycles and finally my employers who have elected to make me work just about every weekend going and a lot of nights through the week which has ensured the samuri coffers are overflowing enough to enable blatant frippery like this to go ahead.
And yes, those are white pedals.
Anyway, might as well just let the pictures do the talking. All are clickable.
Loads more on my flickr page.
Bike: Handjob
Distance: 51 miles (1560m of climbing)
First proper hard offroad ride of the year I think. But I felt really good. Climbed up to the pike without missing a step, straight back down. On the way down to the gate I decided it would be a good time to brake. I pulled the levers and absolutely nothing happened, both levers hit the bars. Nearly pooed myself. Tried again, that got something, tried again, that started them working properly. They remained like this all the way round the ride, had to pre-prump them for any descents.
Got onto the Belmont road, met a load of Ironmen. Rode down into Belmont with them and then veered off through the cones to go over to Witton Weavers way. (Passed a load of ironmen on the descent and then passed a load of roadies on the next road climb. And they were trying to too! I felt great! Witton Weavers way over to Tockholes, start the Darwen climb, pass 4 or 5 blokes on the way up there. FLY up to Darwen tower, don;t even bother stopping and shoot back down the other side.
Into Darwen, road climb up to the tops and then back on the Witton Weavers over to Entwistle. No shooting on the rifle range so fly right across to the base of peel Tower hill. This is a very steep climb and for the first time today I have to drop out of the big ring…..and then the middle ring. Make it mind and sit down for a rest. Great! Descend back down to Ramsbottom and due to time constraints I don’t bother trying reversing my route but just back through Bolton on the road and pick up some local trails to get me home.
Great ride, really enjoyed it and felt quite good once I got home, despite the MOTHERFUCKERS NEXT DOOR COMING HOME AT 4:30 AND MAKING LOADS OF NOISE TILL 7!!!!! And to think we’re trying to keep them sweet about this conservatory. In fact that’s the only thing that stopped me going round there with a pair of flails and suggesting they bring it down a bit if they don’t want to never wake up.
edit: And that’s 183 for the week, quite happy with that.
edit, edit: If you think 183 miles in a week sounds a lot. Try looking at a complete crazy lunatic’s mileage for one week….. Yep, that’s right, 351 miles on one week, and Matt rides mostly offroad.
Fucking nuts!
Bike:Vela
Distance: 31 miles
Nice ride out on the road. Lots of idiots about mind but too windy to go really fast and too wet to really enjoy it.
My mum bought me a supercar experience for christmas and I cashed it in this weekend. I really wanted an Aston Martin drive but they don’t have them at Wigan so I went for the Ferrari 360. 400bhp sounds OK and it is a Ferrari.
Straight away I had my eyes opened. I love computer racing games and anticipated the real thing being substantially different but just the 4 laps in the back of a mini cooper S taught me a thing or two about line and braking. (And for a little car with 4 big blokes in it, that thing could move).
So I eventually get in the Ferrari. Few more eye openers. It’s cramped. And not the quality I’d expect. Our Audi is way better put together. First problem is that my foot was too wide. The brake and accelerator are too close together and I pushed them both at the same time so I had to take my shoe off and drive in my sock, a common problem apparently. Sounds lovely though.
Off we go.
Did one lap following the instructors guidelines and then opened it up. WOOT! That things sticks to the road like glue and once it got on the back straight and gets into it’s stride it absolutely flies, proper compressed into the seat acceleration. Loved it. What a great laugh. Only got 6 or 7 laps of a short circuit but so much fun. I thought I was going fast but had to back off to let the single seaters go past on a couple of corners, I want to try them next.
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January 14, 2010 9:58 am | 
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