Ride Entry – 3rd August 2010

Bike: Pimpino
Distance: 35 miles

Lovely weather. Not windy, a bit sunny, perfect! great ride in too, no issues at all.

Coming back there were 8 bikes all stacked up in the bike shed, it only has racks for 4! There’s a dirty great massive bike shed a whole 100 yards away where they could lock their bikes up but they’d rather just lean them against the wall, unlocked in this one! Bizarre. A couple were not bad bikes too, although I noticed the guy who turns up on the Ribble locks it up in the main bike shed when there’s no room.

Going home, much of the same. Quite nice weather, no problems on the road, all good. I had plenty of time so added about 4 miles of offroad on the end of the ride and caned it back into Leigh along the canal as fast as I could ride, proper good workout keeping a rigid fixie going very fast along a rutted path like that both for my legs and my arms. I bet all the people who slate canal towpaths off couldn’t have done it. One thing that did happen was this kid and his mum were meandering along a path near the motorway. Wide path, some old tarmac, big potholes in places. As I catch up with them (they’re going the same way as me) I start saying hello to alert them to my mpresence but they ignore me. As I get too them there’s this big pothole so assuming neither of them are going to ride through it, that’s where I’ll pass them.

As I get there the kid suddenly veers into the pothole right in front of me. I brake hard abnd shout at him, which makes him brake hard almost to a stop and then fall sideways. he lands softly on the ground and clearly isn;t hurt but he starts crying.

Do I…

a) Go back, apologise and make sure he’s OK accepting full blame for the accident and spend the evening agnoising over it?
b) Shout sorry back but on seeing he’s OK, carry on regardless?
c) Not really give a shit, they should have paid attention, ride home without a care in the world and have a nice cup of tea and a biscuit when I get there.

Answers on a bourneville cream.

Woke up this morning at 3am with the cat meaowing outside the bedroom door, no idea how she got it in the house, we normally lock them both out but she’s very sneaky and hides as soon as she gets in nowadays. Anyway, went downstairs, into the conservatory where she was waiting at the outside door. The rain was proper hammering down on the roof so anticipating the cat having a change of heart, I shut the inner door. Opened the outer door and the cat darted back under the table.

No! You woke me up at 3am to go out so you’re going the fuck out!

Anyway, seeing that proper hard rain put me off commuting in today so I’ll do it tomorrow and Friday hopefully. I’m starting to need to be offsite more and more though at work, it’s hard to organise commuting.

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!

Ride Entry – 1st August 2010

Bike: Roadlite
Distance: 40 miles

Me and my son rode to Manchester to have a go at the skyride. It was alright, bit short but I suppose it’s quite hard shutting down too many roads in the city. Good atmosphere and nice to see plenty of people on different kinds of bikes, different ages, lots of kids. Very good too see plenty of groups of lads who had just decided to turn up by themselves with their mates. About 17 miles there and they said the route was 12km so I’ll say about 40 miles.

We enjoyed it too. Another low mileage weekend for me again. I couldn’t be arsed yesterday and only 40 miles today. Hopefully I’ll get three commutes in next week or if not, I could try for a couple of evening rides.

Pictures of the skyride on my flickr site.

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 – 30th July 2010

Bike: Pimpino
Distance: 30 miles

Great ride in, lovely weather, tail wind, no cars on the road bit.

Coming home it was totally chucking it down. Then I went through a big pile of dog shit and it got sprayed all over my cranks, shoes, wheels and frame. Plus all over my water bottle. I was rather cross. I had to dunk my bike in the canal to try and wash it off but it was like glue, in the end I had to use dockleaves to wipe it down and then dunk it again.

Then I had to sit with my feet in the water to try and wash the filth off my shoes. Fecking disgusting. If I could have found the person who had left their dog’s crap there I’d have shoved it up their arse.

Then it really started raining hard, but I was OK with that. You know you’ve been for a ride when you get home with water pouring off your face, it feels quite good.

Ride Entry – 27th July 2010

Bike: pimpino
Distance: 31 miles

Commute. See below. It absolutely chucked it down the entire ride in. I was completely drenched when I got there. My coat, shoes, gloves and helmet were all still sopping wet when I left work too despite being in a reasonably warm room. Lovely putting them back on although the coat went into my bag because of course, it was quite sunny. Obviously the wind had changed direction too and was now back in my face for the return journey.

I got to work at 7, buy the time I got out of the shower at twenty past, two other cyclists were in the changing room. When I went past the bike shed at twelve, there were 4 bikes racked up and three more just leant against  the wall which was a bit bizarre. It is a site campus but it’s completely open, anyone can drive in and have a root about and bike theft has been reported in the past. Mind you, two of them were older than me. There’s another bike shed round the corner with plenty of space in it, if you get in late, just lock your bike up there surely?

Anyway, this mass of bikes had me worried about queues for the showers so I asked one of the blokes who works in my office what was the normal case and he said he’d never seen so many cyclists on one day but confirmed that arriving around 7 would always guarantee both showers be empty and they never usually got busy before 8:30. he also confirmLd that after the summer months nobody cycled in.

Leaving a copy of Singletrackworld out on my desk has done the trick too. I now know all the cyclists in the office as they all saw the magazine and stopped for a chat. There’s actually quite a few including the IT director . Funny that leaving a copy of the ride out on my desk didn;t work like that….

Great ride home too, no incidents of note although I want to change the bit through Newton, this new method may give me an extra mile and some more offroad (cyclepath), but the right hand turn in the town centre is crazy. Big line of cars behind me (obviously they start undertaking as soon as I indicate right), big queue of cars coming the other way, none of whom are prepared to let me cross although they will let cars go, (they must all be going home to Leigh), so I want to try and find something that avoids it altogether. Back to streetmap.

Edit: A negative defecit still dances tantalisingly just out of reach. each time I think i’m going to get it I miss a few days or it rains the entire Atlantic oceaon on me or I’m told out of the blue that we’re spending the entire weekend somewhere not very fun and it drags up again. Plus we have a 2 week holiday coming up where I’ll not be doing any riding. I need to commute more often.

Timing

5:00 – Jon gets up, looks out the window. If it’s raining hard, then he’ll ditch the commute and get an extra hour in bed. It’s dry so he continues.
5:30 – Ablutions completed, Jon goes downstairs to prepare his dinner and make a cup of coffee, this is the last bug out point but it’s still dry.
5:45 – Feed cats, let dog out, get bike out of storage and pack bag.
6:00 – Throw a leg over my bike and set off riding.
6:00 (and 5 seconds) – It starts raining, properly hard.
6:03 – Stop riding, get raincoat out of bag, carry on riding.
6:10 – Stop riding again, rearrange buttie box so it’as not trying to pierce my kidney. Check buttie box hasn’t grown a knife edge like in termninator two, nope, it has smooth round edges.
6:24 – Hit offroad for the first time. Obviously it’s just a mud bath, endure a constant spray of mud in my face and up my arse.
6:57 – Roll onto the work campus, gently roll round the edge of the estate cooling down.
6:59 – Put bike into bike shed, lock up.
6:59 (and 3 seconds) – It stops raining.

Ride ENtry – 25th July 2010

Bike: Roadlite
Distance: 66 miles

I’m starting to doubt biketoaster’s reliability. I need to check this one on memorymap or something. I climbed like, forever on this ride, I was always going up or down and I was out for four hours so to say I only did 66 miles and 1046m of climbing is not right at all. Plus I was going lightning quickly. No no no no no, that’s not right.

It was a fecking ace ride though, really enjoyed it. Went over to Ramsbottom, then over the tops to Blackburn, Preston, Bamber Bridge, White Coppice, Anglezark, Rivington, home. Bit windy at times but for once I got regular times when it was behind me. I will be doing it again with some fine tuning.

http://www.bikeroutetoaster.com/Course.aspx?course=159277

Took some pictures too.

Before

After

Ride Entry – 22nd July 2010

Bike: Pompino
Distance: 31 miles

Commute. Thought it would rain, and it did. I got absolutely drenched going to work despite a heavy raincoat. Plus they’d closed the shower room because of a leak. WTF do I do now? Quick look around, nobody about, in I go. It’s only one small area that’s flooded, the shower and changing area is dry so I’m sorted. I had no shirts at work so I’d fgollowed a guide on the internet for taking one in in a bag.

Make the shirt flat with another item of clothing inside and behind it (my coming home riding shirt and vest)roll other things up into a tube (my coming home shorts and my underpants and socks), and then carefully roll the entire set of clothes round the rube, cover with a plastic bag and tape closed. I now have a roll of clothes. It worked brilliantly, the shirt looked exactly like it did before I set off, useful to know.

Coming home was uneventful but was into a harsh headwind, it’s lucky I’m so butch.

Ride Entry – 21st July 2010

Bike: Pimpino
Distance: 30 miles

Commute. A bit wet. Mostly on the ground though. Going there was great, if into a fairly hefty headwind.

Coming back was even sunny at times. I tested out the new route, not sure of the actual mileage but it might have added another mile on. What it has done is made all but I’d guess, about 2 miles out of 15, offroad now. Which is nice.

So with only 2 miles out of 15 on the road, do you think anyone tried to kill me on the road sections. Only 2 miles! On the road! Do you think some stupid fucking bitch in a shitty old Vectra who doesn’t even look when she pulls out of a crossroads, would manage to nearly drive straight over me when all I ride on the road is two miles?

Answers on a cap to pop in her ass.

Starting to be dark in the mornings now, it’s almost dark enough for lights, especially when it’s cloudy.

Please dear god, allow me to actually change the gear on this bike, it’s killing me.