Bike: Pimpino
Distance: 28 miles
Started out pretty poorly. A fresh dump of snow overnight meant for some mountain bike fun but then I realised the chain was way too long. The problem with the chameleon in single speed mode is there is only a limited number of positions the wheel can be in where the brake works. This time by removing a couple of links the wheel was too far forwards and was rubbing against the caliper. Ho hum. I need some half links to sort that out.
Anyway, so I got my pimpino out and went for a ride on that. Fun fun fun. nice snow. Loads up Rivington.
You’ll notice fromthat picture that I learnt a valuable lesson about white bar tape on offroad bikes. Don’t do it kids.
Then it started snowing quite heavily so I decided to call it a day and rode home. Sleet lower down. Got home, wife out. I;ve not got a key so I end up having to ride down to the leisure centre where she’s at an antiques fair. I leave my bike in the foyer (without asking), walk through to the hall, blag my way in, find my wife and get a key. (All this in full on cycling gear with a very muddy face). Get back to my bike to find it’s leaked a lot of black water onto the floor. Ooops, make a quick exit and finally get into the house.
Splendid.
Bah!
took my son to the drome in the morning, sat there doing fuck all for three hours although I did go out for a coffee and then got back and chatted to an old bloke who had come down from middlesborough for the weekend. Nice bloke. We talked about cycling and that for a while, and then he took his kecks off to get ready for his SQT. JEBUS! His legs were skinny, shaved, very dark brown and literally strewn with veins and knots of muscle and stuff. He’d suggested during our conversation that he’d spent so much time taking his kids around the country to riding events (one was there with him, a 40 year old 6 foot one bloke), that he’d not got chance to ride as much as he wanted to. His words were ‘I’ve not got many miles in my legs this year’, and then we watched him power round the track like it was all downhill while he whistled away like he hadn’t a care in the world. Proper character.
Also, this lady turned up for the SQT. Highly classy, rather sexy and had a habit of marching around the D talking to people she knew on a very direct fashion (including the old chap I was talking to). She was rather exciting to me. Lots of hair all over the place. Splendid.
Came home, had some dinner and then intended to go out for a ride but lawks! The computer broke. So I spend a few hours fixing it (new power supply) and by the time it was sorted it was too late to go out without lights so I canned the idea.
In other news I’ve got 537 in flight control on my ipod. Not bad eh?
I also spent a fair bit of time afterwards playing Borderlands. It’s a great game, get it.
bike: Chameleon
Distance: 25 miles
How much fun is mountain biking? I’ve drawn up this chart to help you.
Hope that clears it up. I must admit, I’d forgotten but today I got my Chameleon out, fixed the broken spoke and sorted the squeeky brake out and then when for a mega-fun ride. The chain snapped half way round and that’s when I found out my chain tool had seized solid but a couple of jumps onto it sorted that one out. Some frozen fingers later and I was back on my way. Rivington had plenty of snow on it and indeed, it started snowing while I was up there.
Brilliant ride!
Bike: Pimpino
Distance: 44 miles
Valentines day ride. My son left his coat at the Velodrome after yesterdays session so I dedicaed to make todays ride a trip into Manchester. I anticipated it being very dull and dangerous but you know what? It wasn’t bad at all. I decided to ride in via normal roads and then ride back using as much canal as I could, that being the only offroad route possible, but more on that later.
Anyway, trundled in quite happily, right through the city centre, nice and quiet, clearly the best way of photographing the city is riding in early Sunday morning and snapping away before it gets busy, I’ll have to do that one day. Right through the centre, past Piccadilly, meandered around in the back streets behind the station, some cool looking alleys round there, proper old school. Then up the main road and left into the big Ardwick estate. It’s a bit dodgy but it’s nice and early, all the wrong’uns will be in bed after a long night’s causing mischief…. Nope. Rode round a corner to find a couple of big prestige cars parked across the road and a selection of what can only be described as ‘ganged up’ gentlemen stood around in poses of hardness. As soon as they saw me one started walking towards me in that wibbly wobbly walk with his hand near his crotch (I felt like I’d ridden into a gang film of some description) and told me to eff off.
Right you are. I quickly turned it around and did a nice big loop onto Turing way and reached the drome without further incident. I collected the coat and made my way to the canal (which regular visitors will know, runs right next to the velodrome). I’d looked on the map and this canal ran right into the city centre, then a bit of a gap and then all the way back home. Sweet. Nope. It’s impossible to get onto the canal. I rode round the back of the ASDA and further up towards denton, every single access point is blocked off. Hmmm, head back towards manchster and don’t find any way of getting onto the canal until I get to Canal street. Ride through the centre on the really rather nicely done up towpath through to castlefield where it got so laborious going over bridges and doubling back that I gave up and rode out to old trafford where I pretty much rode the canal all the way back to Leigh.
Splendid. Travelled a lot further than I thought mind and I did that thing where I forgot to eat any breakfast or take any food with me so felt ever so slightly[1] drained when I got home.
[1] This may be an understatement.
Bike:pimpino
distance: 24 miles
Nice enough ride. A bit sharp to be honest but suitable clothing sorted that one out. I’m certainly gaining fitness again now, charged for quite a while n some places. just up to rivy and back. Brakes playing up a bit, ho hum. I’ve taken my track bike to the track for storage now, need to get the chameleon down for riding duties sharpish and then swap out all my ultegra kit off my crosslight onto my road bike again. I need a new road rim.
In other news my old company has stumped up my desperately needed overtime which was nice and has suspiciously told me I’ve won the water aid lottery on my very last pay packet after being in it for 8 years. Only 25 quid mind. We’re back in the money now I think, just. (Old company only paid two weeks in advance plus I only worked two weeks into the month so we actually had a full month without any pay to muggle through, the specific month being december, not the easiest one to choose.) Plus obviously the bank seeing that I’d not been paid on the 15th killed our overdraft. Thanks. 25 fucking years of paying them a lot of money (mortage, wages, savings, ISA’s) and the instant my pay doesn’t go in as expected and Lloyds TSB the fecking stealing bastards turn the overdraft off, right when we needed it. It’s all automated too. No humans in the process whatsoever frm observing your account to issuing the letter.
If I could find a bank that says ‘we use humans to make decisions, if they’re not sure what’s going on, they’ll phone you and ask before doing anything, because at the end of the day, we’re all humans (although obviously in the case of bankers this is debatable – leeches aren’t human last time I looked) . Anyway, what a bunch of fucking cunts Lloyds TSB are. Other banks are certainly just as bad but there you go.
Bike:Pimpino
Distance: 20 miles
That didn’t go as well as planned. Nice and fast night ride but within about 2 miles my front brake sounded like it was metal on metal. Lived with it and went a bit further. Then my right cleat started feeling loose. Which is when I found I had no allen keys with me. Few more miles and my front lamp starting rolling around, again, no allen keys.
I soldiered on for a few more miles and then just gave up and came home. It wasn’t to be.
I get home after working a full day and driving over 150 miles and find that the home computer has been bust since a certain someone turned it off before it had shut down properly. So within seconds of me arriving at home I’m prexsented with the following.
1. Fix the computer
2. Make sure all the important documents are restored
3. Make sure office, all the solitaire games, google architect?, all bookmarks and everything else work fine.
O….K…. Not happening, the main hard drive is screwed. Looks like some nasty physical contact has occurred.EDven booting to live linux and attempting a format results inmany errors. That disk is goosed. Luckily, I have a 160G disk lying around (plus the 1 Terrabyte data disk in the computer), so after lots of very low level messing around with teh screwed disk I have everythging I need to start again.
Windows 7 here we come. It installs in about 30minutes and is up and working on the internet in 10 more. WOW! It’s great. So fast and easy and quick and clear. Love it!
Still sorting things out but it’s on here and working very well now.
Swim
Distance: 1 mile
Picture the scene.
You’re a slightly overweight, not hugely fit gentleman who is stopping in a hotel and who quite fancies a swim. You don your trunks, suck in your tummy (you will need to maintain this pose now for the entire 30 minutes that you’re in public view) and admire your amazing physique in the mirror for a few seconds and then head to the pool. For a hotel pool it’s not bad at all, almost 25 metres (although they claim a full 25 metres), with three wide lanes for swimmers all helpfully marked with directional arrows to make sure you go the right way round. The slow lane has about three fat ladies in all sort of floating there. The middle lane has nobody in it and the fast lane has a skinny bloke caning up and down it at warp speed. Do you…
a. get in the slow lane (and if truth were to be told, this is your correct speed rating)?
b. Get in the middle lane, you’re not actually fast enough to be in hear but it’s empty so what the hell?
c. Ignore the slow and middle lanes as an afront to you masculinity, jump into the fast lane because you’re a SWIMMING GOD (you’ve had to walk past both these lanes to get to the fast one) and then move your opulent carcass up and down the lane at a speed not insignificantly different from ‘dead fucking halt’. You will futhermore ignore any direction arrows, a skinny bloke cannoning into you because you’re going the WRONG FUCKING WAY, any subsequent suggestions that you’re in the wrong lane or indeed any of the 19 obvious signs that someone is trying to get past you, you fat arrogant twat!!!!?
Answers on a massive pair of calf length trunks please.
After he had got out I had the lane to myself for a while again and then these two muscley young lads came out of the steam room for a swim. They stood at the end surveying the lanes and debating which one they should go in. After much discussion (I only heard it all because I’d stopped for a rest), they decided that they couldn’t be arsed going in the fast lane??? and got into the middle lane where for two apparently fit and strong young men they really did show that they couldn’t be arsed. In long distance mode I was passing one of them every half lap and the other every full lap, and I’d consider myself ‘not that quick to be honest.’ Anyway, I did 2k again, still struggling to get myself to the speed where I can do 3k in an hour and thence two miles.
In other news I was rather incensed, (to put it mildly) to find my first expenses claim has been rejected. The reason? No home to office deduction. So lets get this straight, not only do I have to travel much further than everybody else to get to my permanent place of work (a 90 mile round trip), but then when I work away from home, I get victmized even further by having to remove the costs of travelling this greater distance from my expense claim? Yeah, that’s fair. That’s the most arse about face thing I’ve ever come across. Ranty email time I think, dear me, it’s not the first since I started here.
Bike: Pimpino
Distance: 45 miles
That’s better! Now I’m starting to feel like riding my bike again which is good. This was a great ride, really enjoyed it. And felt reasonably fit too. I stuck loads of offroad in too even if it was a bit flat. Pretty much rode road over to Manchester and then picked up the TPT to Warrington, Sankey Valley trail from there and then local paths back to our house, probably more offroad than on.
As I was riding along up the Sankey Valley trail rummaging around in my pocket for the last few jelly babies, I realised how much I’d enjoyed the ride and more importantly, just how chilled out and relaxed I was feeling. I reckon crayons was right on another post, maybe this weirdness I’ve been feeling over the last week has been down to my body having to do a reset on itself to cope with all the relaxedness it’s going through. Driving up to Newcastle every week and stopping in hotels may be a pretty shit way to earn a living but it’s certainly 8 million times better than working like a crazy lunatic constantly with very few breaks. I’m sleeping a whole lot better now too, I’ve got in at least 2 days in the last week when I’ve not been so totally screwed by early afternoon that i’ve had to take a nap to try and catch up.
Bike: pimpino
Distance: 29 miles
Great ride. I was fecked at the end of it too. Proper fast riding for a fixie ride plus I’m still not rid of this virus thingy or whatever it is, lung cancer… blish. Went out and rode quickly, charged through a big group of lads smoking pot in the woods in Hulton, a few shouted shit after me, yeah, fucking hey. Over to Haigh Hall, blast through there and then offroad all the way home, nice and fun.
My lungs were killing me and I felt really tired out on the ride but hopefully I’ll be getting a lot more in now from here on in. I’m going to try and take my bike up to Newcastle with me next week, see how that goes.
I got home and was totally fucked. Had a shower, then a nap and then sat on the couch for twenty minutes doing nothing just waiting for my breath to come back. BP is 125 over 86 which for a 42 year old bloke is actually very good. I’m drinking more beer now, just to make sure I’ve killed it all.
In other news.
Driving up to Newcastle all the time is very rapidly becoming very shit indeed. Plus it’s (as I’ve stated before), bonkers in public sector. Here’s a scenario for you to digress.
“Oh look, this proposal from one of our suppliers is complete and total bollocks, they’re taking the piss and spending all our money”
Now in private sector there would be a very rapid arse kicking during which the price would halve and the solution would double in value. In public sector every one just shrugs their shoulders and says ‘oh well, that’s the way it is round here’
That’s *your* tax money by the way. Crazy.
Oh, and since I’m driving a lot of hire cars at the moment, I may well start a car review page, just for fun.
diary, rides | admin | 
February 21, 2010 1:37 pm | 
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