samuri.co.uk

4 commutes – day one – all 32 miles

Mostly uneventful week really as far as commuting went. All dark both ways now, lights needed right from the off to the end.

Coming home on Friday created the only incident of note. Caning it through Lowton, young lad in a green corsa waiting to pull out. He looked to his left, saw nothing coming, didn’t look towards me and went for it. I shit. I actually nearly shit my pants. Both brakes full on, in emergency situations on a fixie you *always* lock the back wheel up. There is no way you can do anything else. It always makes me laugh when I hear about fixie riders who reckon you can brake better or even within reasonable limits on a fixie. You can’t. Something happens, you try to stop quickly, all your weight goes onto the front wheel and the back wheel locks up.

In this instance, I fishtailed the back end around a while and twisted it so I was pointing towards the back of his car and just hoped he’d carry on. He then looked and saw me and his eyes widened in terror, luckily he did carry on moving though and I *just* passed behind his bumper. Cue a long, long swear session. As I rolled to a halt I looked over my shoulder and waved my fist at him, I watched to see if he would stop but he screamed it off. Still, I know where he lives so might pay him a visit at some point in the near future.

Apart from that, not a lot else going on. Major changes at work, finally got formal notification of my new role in work including a hefty pay rise, going out tonight to celebrate that. Obviously it’s cock all near what they should be paying me market rate but they have said if I achieve my objectives in 6 months I get another big rise. I made out I was dead cross that they weren’t paying me enough but secretly I was happy enough. What I really wanted was the job title. That’ll look good on my CV in a couple of years if  they still haven’t got me up to market rate.

Plus, I made out I was dead grumpy about being moved down a notch in the org. Again, and it’s a secret, in one way I’m happy about that too. It makes my role much clearer andf I don’t have to get involved in all those senior management politics that are so difficult to manage. I am completely out of the operations space now. The department leaders have made it quite clear where I sit and it’s not in operations, I shgall be using that fact to my advantage shortly.

Also, I’ve just rebuilt my computer using a new 120G SSD drive. How fast!!!?? Boot up takes a couple of seconds. I’d love to see how quick it is with Linux on there, Windows 7 at the moment though. I click something and it happens immediately. Very cool.

Edit: Ooh! There is something else. Looks like this weeks riding has just pushed me past 5000 miles for the year. Nice!!

4 lots of 32 miles on the day one.

Wet, and very windy. No other bugger is riding in to work in my area now. Jessies.

It’s been a mad week at work though, mental. Re-org, hiring, upsetting important people, making stuff happen, etc etc. Mental.

Being in charge is crazy. The discussions I have, the people who talk to me, everyone wants something from me now, the big picture is way more important. I get respect from people who never used to give it me, I have people who I thought were friends who ignore me. The politics is off the wall, when I’m better established I’m going to throw things into conversations with the politically astute people and see how long it takes to get back to me.

I can say to someone, “Yeah, as everyone knows, sneek technology is the way forwards nowadays”, and then see how long it is before they recommened sneek technology to the board, then the board decide to accept it, then my boss gets a message from the board to use sneek technologies, then I get told to talk to them. Mental!

And I get to see now, so many people are constantly terrified everyone will see how useless they are. Christ there’s a a lot of people who just drift along not realluy understanding what they do. Virtually pleading with me to make them look better. And then there’s the people you’d actively employ, those who you’d sign on a second and know would just do everything properly. I interviewed one chap this week, I know I could drop him into a volitile situation where various experts were arguing and spouting expertise, and this chap would just carve his way through them making sure our interests were covered. Yeah, some people rock, others blow.

Life and that.

New telly tomorrow. When have a 26 inch telly for our main one, that propably makes us the smallest telly users in the UK.

I pick up a 37 inch LCD tomorrow. It sounds huge to me but 42 inch seems to be the norm nowadays, ho hum. I could afford a 42 inch but it won;t fit in the TV space, silly I reckon.

29th September – Day One – 24 miles
1st September – Roadlite – 64 miles
1st September – Day One – 16 miles

Went for a fantastic night ride on my day one through the week. Up to Rivington, quick blast up to the tops and then back home. Perfect weather, nice trails, mucho fun.

Saturday I went for a big assed road ride in the sun. That was great too. Cock driver city though, seems like everyone who came near me in a car was driving crap. Got home aching though.

Saturday night, Cracknell and Walters are attempting to beat the LEJOG tandem record and were riding quite near to where I live so Rick, Stu and myself all nipped down to Winwick to cheer them on. They were well behind schedule when they passed us, hope they’re picking things up now. Rick and myself  jumped on our bikes once they’d passed and chased after the pair. Now bear in mind they had a significant entourage with them, 2 cars, a motorbike and two X 5′s. We catch up with the back car and immediately one of the guys in it sticks his head out the window and tells us to back off. We discuss this briefely with him but he’s quite clear on the subject so we drop back a bit. One guy in the car was shouting ‘I am an official observer, keep your distance’. The two on the bike are about 150-200m away from us. No fucking idea what that was about.

As we approach the junction where we’ll split up, we catch back up with the cars so we can give the guys once last cheer and immediately this knob hangs his head back out the window telling us to back off and turn down our lights (which were all on flash only anyway). Arsey twat. When the last X5 passed us and the chap in the passanger seat said thanks for supporting them we had a quick chat with him to point out what had happened. It’s for charity, it’s about the public supporting these lads and that idiot should chill out a bit.

Bike: Roadlite
Distance: 36 miles

This felt a lot harder and longer than I thought it would. My thighs were killing me from yesterday’s spin session. Bizarre. Must be different muscles.

As I was approaching a junction in Bolton, I could hear this car flooring it up behind me, I estimated I’d be on the junction as he reached me so there could be no way he was turning left. How naive was I?

Past me with his indicator on, immediately turned left right in front of me. My subconcious must have realised it was going to happen though because I automatically reacted and followed him round on his inside. Then, after giving him a good big wanker hand signal, I chased him down. I wanted blood.

Sadly the lights worked in his favour because he just got further and further away and after a mile or so I conceeded he was out of reach. GRADE A COCK.

Bike: Roadlite
Distance: 25 miles

This was actually just a ride to the gym in Warrington but hey. I rode down with Rick. We wwere both going for an assessment for our work related tower to tower ride next year, Eiffel to Blackpool, 500 miles in five days. I’m really looking forward to it and I’m glad Rick is going. Looks like they’ll be a few people I know going which is nice. Including my boss….

Anyway, we ride there, Rick is fast now, approaching my speed. We’re going for a 45 minute spin class which I have no illussions about. I know it will be tough. It is hard but mostly just because of the heat. It’s actually easier with the resistance turned right up on the bikes. Probably equivalent to 15 miles or so up a hill, we didn’t really stop.

Then we rode home, quite quickly.

Awesome.

Getting bored of doing these now, but probably not as bored as people are getting of reading them.

Anyway, quick sunday monring road ride, nice.

Two commutes, not so nice. First one was fine if very wet and windy.

Then this morning I was riding along a straight road getting soaked when this van passed me. It’s passed me many times before because we seem to travel at the same time. He’s actually been good in the past, if we meet at his left hand turn he will wait behind me, he is after all, at work at that point and waiting will delay him by a whole second or two. This morning, assuming it was the same actual person, he decided to avoid any nicetiest, shot past me and immediately turned left in front of me. I had to brake pretty hard to avoid slamming into him. He then stopped to open the gate of the business. I took the opportunity to shout a variety of insults at him. So he shouted some back.

Next time we meet will be interesting.

Later on both my brakes failed. Completely. Inspection this evening revealed a distinct design flaw in the Tektro cable actuated brake that I’ll go into shortly but I’ve clearly jumped the gun, don’t forget, I’ve still not got to work yet and work is 16 miles away from my house.

So I’m about a mile away from work, both levers are touching the bars and the brakes are applying zero braking force, and I’m going down a small hill. Luckily I’m riding a fixed wheel bike.
Unluckily, it’s a man’s gear on 700c wheels and it’s got fat tyres. Luckily I’m mucho man.

The rest of the way was taken carefully. At work I attempted to fix the problem but no luck. I ask if I can borrow a pool car to drive home in, nope. Some friends offer to drive me home but I’m a cock and say no thanks, I’ll manage. Rick even lives a few miles away from me. Bizarre.

Anyway, I ride home with no brakes. It’s not a major issue most of the way since I’ve got a fixie, it’s mostly offroad and I’m dead butch. I only have one scary incident near my house where this guy walks out in front of me and I have to swerve rather than brake.

Anyway, at home I take a caliper off and have a look. The brakes both failed with a loud twang and after manipualting the caliper for a bit I see what is happening. The cable pulls one end of a piston which rotates and works it’s way up a spiral thread moving the piston inwards towards the disk and the static pad on the other side, all great. If the piston rotates too much, it reaches the top of the spiral and drops into a gap which holds the piston in a fixed position resuilting in zero braking. Good work lads!

The fix is to hammer the piston back into place and then position the caliper and static pad so the mnoving pad piston never rotates more than a certain amount. Of course, this may work for months as mine has done until the wear in the pads allows it to move far enough outwards and TWANG! Ooh, I’m going to die. Aaah, design is a funny game isn’t it?

In other news I’ve had a seriously shitty day for reasons I can’t discuss but I’m very unhappy about things at work at the moment. I need to dwell on the situation and work out how to turn it to my advantage. It’s probably going to involve some subterfuge and carefully delivered hints to the right people.

All commutes, 4 of them. Good week for commuting. Heavy, heavy wind, heavy, heavy rain. It was awesome!

Consistent too. Riding into work, seriously hard at times, coming home WEEEEEEEE!!!!! So fast with that massive tailwind. Lights now too.

Two incidents of note, contact in one case. This chap pulls alongside me at some lights, lights change, I ride away quickly. He screams it past me them immediately slams his anchors on, he’s turning right into a petrol station. There’s a car coming the other way so he has to stop and does so leaving me a tiny gap between his car and one parked on the left. I have absolutely no-where to go and with my rear wheel locked up I skid inbetween the cars and my bag hits his wing mirror. Only knocks it round like, he half turns into the petol station and then stops, essentially blocking both sides of the road. Out he gets, I’m angry so I loop back round and call him a stupid twat, tell him to learn to drive. He starts swearing back and comes out with a couple of the same old shite comments about cyclists. He is interrupted by one of the guys who he’s held up who’s also out of his car now who tells him to move his fucking car before he knocks his fucking teeth out. So he does. On I go.

Then later in the week, I’m riding behind the dodgy estate in Newton. Some kids are on the path (it’s a cool foothpath weaving in and out of the trees for about a mile), as I pass one of them throws a stone at me which misses but does come close. What can you do? It’s rare to find anyone other than dog walkers on the path so I’ll recognise these ones again but , ho hum.

Other news then. Motorbike purchase is on hold. My wife suddenly changed her mind about her being OK with me having one. Not sure why, she used to go everywhere on a motorbike. I could still get one but it would be a lot of earache. I’m just waiting for her to settle down on the matter a bit. (Thanks for the link Nick – time will tell). I’m still selling my pompino though, then I’ll have all the cash I need to get one once she gets over it. I hope she does, I’d already bought all the gear. Almost 200 quid on helmet, leathers, boots, locks etc.

Tat is itchy, bit of a scabby sheen over it at the moment. Picture for non-FaceBook friends….

Fell behind but needless to say, I’ve not done a huge amount of riding here. Two commutes followed by death-migraine and then a slow and careful potter around Sunday morning in a state of wariness. 32, 32 and 34 miles, whatever.

if my son is going to start going to these Thameside rides on a regular basis on Sunday afternoon I might sack my morning ride and go riding round Hyde while he’s doing that. Need to work out if there’s any good riding that way.

Other stuff, I did a Palmersport day which was freaking awesome, got a tattoo and almost bought a motorbike. Not bad eh?

Bike: Roadlite
Distance: 40 miles

Tried to beat yesterdays speed. Which I did, but it was hard, real hard. But I did it, because I rock, hugely. YAY

Bike: Roadlite
Distance: 40 miles

Nice ride. Wet and windy. Hmm.