Month: January 2009

Sated

On By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike Riding2 Comments

Alarm shrills insistingly at 7am. My recently drunken brain equates this to work and despair leaks into my world. But, through the power of wooly thinking, I realise it’s Sunday and a happy person can select option 2 “stuff the alarm in a sock drawer and roll back over into a soft pillows and lovely, snory sleep”

Sadly option 3 has to be exercised. Along with me after a barely remembered text message exchange calling for an 8am start some 20 minute drive away. Now the horror of the 7am alarm call made sense. Well no not real sense because stumbling about in the dark and the cold, while being nipped on the toes by bin eating dog, is about the most nonsensical way to spend a Sunday morning.*

Now while the majority of the population are barely stirring, I’ve witnessed a fantastic sunrise, hit the trails in that exciting phase between refreezing and thawing, grabbed 650 metres of lovely descending, and surprised myself with a noticeable lack of gurning while depositing the height back in the gravity bank.

And at the end of it are the absolute best two words in the world** “Carb Window”. Apparently you can ape Mr Creosote for about 30 minutes after hard exercise and not get fat. It’s probably a lie, but I’ll strike down the first person who proves it. Because on a chilly, cloud locked Sunday morning, there’s not many better things than a monster cup of blitzkrieg*** coffee and an obscenely thick bacon roll.

It is in this state of ungrumpiness that I shall leave you. Expect normal service to resume tomorrow when another house quote comes in.

* I accept there may be more stupid things to do. But since I didn’t have a pride of lions, a stick and “the idiots guide to lion taming” to hand, this was the stupidest one available.

** Okay, okay maybe not but this is a family show 😉

*** The kind of stimulant that triggers the urge to go and invade a small continent, or – in these more peaceful times – go mad with the belt sander.

H’mm that suddenly looks a bit serious

On By AlexIn Other stuff, Photography7 Comments

Today I’ve been breaking things. Planes, wings and promises mainly. Avid readers of hedgehog (and I’m setting a pretty low bar here – being able to manage your own cutlery passes for Mensa for inbound hedgies) will remember in this post I crowed over near future ownership of something similar but different.

There is complexity here, but essentially boredom, beer, eBay, the attention span of a special needs moth and an inability to say no has led to an MTB like dive into relative stupidity. So while this pre-loved trainer is replete with engine, flight box, starter, gas and something scary involving fuel pumps, I’ve made a creative leap into buying another one that’s almost exactly the same.

Madness is merely method lacking explanation and my justification was a) I don’t like backing out of deals even if I seem to have done lots of them b) this fiendish looking craft is missing a radio system and c) realistically they are nothing more than expensive consumerables with me at the controls.

c) is important as this morning I launched the little electric* into a gusty sky, having courageously re-trimmed** it the night before, and the next five minutes were nothing more than a growing conviction the bugger was overrun with alien mind control. 8/8ths cloud didn’t help much and the only time I really worked out where it was, was when I was digging it out of a frozen field.

And while replacement parts are cheap for this little soil basher, the same cannot be said for the big mutha now in my ownership. The previous owner terrified me with tales of extreme balsa action, and the 200 step instruction for starting the engine. In true hedgehog fashion, I nodded sagely and went in search of a stiff drink.

During which Carol decided to relocate the wings from their clearly unsafe position behind a cabinet, bedded down on two inches of foam and wrapped in a blanket*** while failing to understand that there isn’t much difference between six foot of wing and six foot and a bit of door aperture. There is no way I’m skilled enough to effect any kind of repair, so I gaffer taped it up and hoped for the best.

This has served me well with MTB’s and it’s important to play to your strengths I feel. Which is why I’m considering a radical approach of installing no radio at all, and just launching the plane at full chat into a big sky. I’ll feel none of that terrible responsibility to bring it back in one piece and it’ll probably be less damaged than if I were at the controls.

And best of all, I can crack open a beer as it disappears over a far horizon. I tell you, that and the knob gags are going to ingratiate me to the new club in no time at all.

* I believe RC has even more euphemistic potential than MTB. Except everyone except me appears to be 900 years old and universally sponsored by the denture industry. Knob gags have so far failed to amuse. I’ll keep trying.

** I’m not explaining this. It’s dull, hence my approach being to wait until I was partially pissed before hitting the spanners.

*** Let’s just not go there eh? Although I will say that House Harmony is not at an all time high this evening.

I’m taking that lying down.

On By AlexIn Other stuff7 Comments

I must apologise for any reduction in the already poor standard of grammar and spelling. This is entirely due to the content of this post being composed from a position supine on the floor.

I speak to you from this position after an involuntary collapse, following a nasty run in with the quote for the groundworks. It is not as if the work is unbudgeted. However the if you subtract the estimate in the – increasingly financially abstract – spreadsheet from the ginormous number that mugged me earlier, the amount that remains could essentially create the kind of liquidity conditions where Monkeys would be approved loans to buy houses*

At times like this, innovative out of the box thinking is clearly required. I’m considering either faking a gas leak and insisting the gas board dig up the entire plot to a depth of 10 feet to find it**, or using Verbal’s “Science Experiments for Enquiring Minds” set to create some kind of barely controlled explosion.

I’d be looking for a homage to that huge crater in Mexico which triggered the start of the end for the dinosaurs. I asked little Random what it was about the meteor that long term led to their deaths. “Well it would have hurt if it hit their heads” she offered.

Fair point, well made. Anyway, it’s either the teach-yourself-high-explosives or some kind of quick get rich scheme. And although neither look particularly promising right now, I’m pretty sure solutions will magically appear when viewed from the bottom end of a decent red.

It’s Friday, It’s 5pm, It’s crack-a-bottle.

* as opposed to the monkeys who are still trying to sell them.

** A ruse that is unlikely to succeed with no gas pipes being laid within a 2 mile radius of the house.

I’ve killed the dog.

On By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike Riding, Other stuff, Photography1 Comment

Okay I haven’t but how the hell can that be comfortable? I tried lying like that – cementing the owner imitating pet myth – but quickly ran out of flexibility, dignity and limbs. We’ve been leaving the cage open over night and, aside from the daily loss of at least one wicker bin, he has so far failed to eat the furniture, cat or anything structural.

I feel he may be merely luring us into a false sense of security. One day we’ll sleepily fall downstairs* only to gasp aghast “Where is the ground floor? All I can see if one fat, sickly looking dog!”

Talking of fat, I’m merely filling until time and wine converge to bring forth the much awaited** missive on plumbing. It has a poem and everything. No, I know you can hardly wait either. But tonight, I abandoned this much stared at tube to go and ride my bike. Yes that’s right, riding it, not fixing it, hanging pointless bling off it, or staring at it with frankly worrying thoughts.

It’s thawed. Hard trails have disappeared under muck. Tyre trails snaked more sideways than straight on. Trees viscously reached out of the dark to deliver a barky headbutt. Nothing much was frozen, except for feet and noses. We lured in a newcomer with talk of an easy ride and almost no hills; and now he’s bruised and broken, but vowing to come back for more.

Top night all round really 🙂

* now Carol has removed the carpet which makes a “Headlong Plunge Fakie Bloodied Skull Finish” the descending move of choice.

** This might be classed as a phrase quite close to marketing. Which is the Dictionary Of The Hedgehog is the entry next to Painful Death.

What can you acheive in three years?

On By AlexIn Site Stuff9 Comments

Some great public works? The creation of a much admired business enteprise? A trip to all four corners of the earth* maybe? Any of these things has so much more worth than over a thousand day’s of nonsense that makes up this blog.

3 years since I wrote this. 2 years since I said I was stopping and a year since I realised I’d already said everything twice, but no one seemed to have notice. Someone once said “every person has one book in them” and – while they may be right – that’s really where it should stay. The only thing you can charitably say about individuals exposing their vanity electronically is they’re not wasting any real paper, and only wasting their own time.

Not much more to add other than a thousand thanks to Andy who hosts the site and puts up my dumb questions and occasional mass deletions. And a reply to those of you – who clearly also have time to waste – asking what all the random characters are in the archived posts.

At first I thought you meant my friends. Then I mused it was merely lazy spelling and zero proof reading, but on further investigation it seems one of the interminable upgrades has morphed ‘ to {45ac9c3234d371044e23e276755ef3a4dde8f1068375defba7d385ca3cd4deb2}${45ac9c3234d371044e23e276755ef3a4dde8f1068375defba7d385ca3cd4deb2}^{45ac9c3234d371044e23e276755ef3a4dde8f1068375defba7d385ca3cd4deb2}X. I’m seeing it as a bit of an improvement, and with 300 posts to edit, it has a resolution priority just below counting the hairs on the dog.

Later this week, I shall bore you with a non ironic post heavily detailed in the joy of plumbing. 42 this year, which must mean I am due to understand the meaning of life. And possibly plumbing.

In the meantime, the hedgehog rocks on!

* What is that all about? It’s ROUND. 3 years on and this stuff still annoys me.

Fly like a ….

On By AlexIn Other stuff6 Comments

… turd. That’s more than an adequate description of the manikin like gyrations of the little SuperCub I’ve been abusing over the holidays. I’m yet to be convinced my twiddling of the sticks* is in any way controlling the random perambulations of the flying rabbit** as it terrorises innocent patches of sky.

It’s more that a few thousand bits of foam happen to be flying in the same direction. Only when it magically appears back overhead does the full horror of my total lack of spacial awareness become terryfyingly apparent. I must be the only man ever to be dive bombed by his own air force. Well apart from the British when the Americans forgot to update the arial SatNav.

On another long trudge to fetch the bloody unsteerable thing from a far away field, I under-breathed admitted that maybe I needed some help. Nothing new there, but specifically in the art of bringing the plane to heel. I’d tried shouting at it – a technique daily demonstrated with the dog and even less successful; the dog just stands there with a “who me?” look about his fizog, while the plane buggers off over the horizon – and when that didn’t work sort of ran out of ideas.

But my grumpy DNA mixes badly with kind people explaining gently how to do things. It’s not that I think they’re wrong, it’s just that I can’t bear not being right. And my brief immersion into the Radio Control fraternity suggests Mountain Bikers + 20 years and even more bloody pedantic.

You know how it’ll go; I’ll turn up somewhere, do my best to be quiet and still then somebody’ll quote a rule at me, and the next thing it’ll be smashed balsa everywhere, and the police will become involved. Instead I decided the best way to learn was to up the ante in terms of danger and cost. That picture goes by the precedent name of “boomerang” which suggests it’ll be arriving back on earth in a smash of glazing and expensive parts.

We’re talking over ONE HORSEPOWER of raw power there people. And a radio system that has the word “computer” emblazoned all over the manual. And I’m buying it secondhand because – as everyone in the know knows – trainers are flown by calm, rational people who hardly ever scream “Oh Fuck I’ve dropped the controller and now IT’S COMING RIGHT TOWARDS US – EVERYBODY DOWN!” before a noise like the world exploding, and the traditional burying of the remains in a carrier bag.

Now with my unblemished history of second hand motors and computers, nothing – snigger if you must, but I tell you – nothing can go wrong. Especially since some poor unsuspecting bugger has offered to help. I feel money may have to change hands after the first flight.

I have neither the time or money for another hobby. Apparently we’re in training for the HONC***, the house spreadsheet has entered scary new worlds of advanced calculus, and there’s all sorts of stuff going on at work that really demands my full attention.

Still, always time to polish a turd eh?

* Not that stick. This is bloody well hard enough already.

** As named by one of my children. Yes, it was the random one.

*** New year, new rule. No beers with more than 4.5{45ac9c3234d371044e23e276755ef3a4dde8f1068375defba7d385ca3cd4deb2} alcohol content. Oh yeah, I’m serious about this race

You can be smooth, then fast…

On By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike Riding, PhotographyLeave a comment

… but you can never be fast, then smooth. Sage advice for almost any walk of life, but properly pertinent for those riding avoiding death. It was delivered as the single version of a truth by a man who was both, to another man who was neither. And since that day, I’ve spent quite some cash and a little less time looking for what happened between fast and stacked.

Afan December 2008 Afan December 2008

The problem wasn’t a lack of bravery. That’s the default position of the riding hedgehog and it’s never really been the high water mark of speed, perceived or otherwise. No it was the constant fear of crashing on every single corner, the neural link between that and the brakes, the frustration of being left behind – again – by my riding pals, and the total lack of bloody enjoyment every time I went out.

Afan December 2008 Afan December 2008

Get a grip I hear you say. And you’d be right because a second unquestionable truth is that once your front wheel is pointing in the right direction, most other stuff is merely distracting detail. Having lost that grip about half a second before ripping my knee open, it’s only taken me two and a half years to find it again.

Afan December 2008 Afan December 2008

That and frozen hard trails at Afan, a year riding the same bike and so much grip that – short of taking the front wheel out and installing a melon – the corners would go as fast as your eyes can deal with. This proved to be jolly good fun, and most of it came together on the last trail I real remember riding properly on.

Afan December 2008 Afan December 2008

To be fair, it wasn’t all one way Karma, two of the fellas received frostnip on a day colder enough to promise IceWilly(tm) later. Dave forgot most of his kit on the way down, and the rest of it before every ride. Andy’s lad made the near fatal mistake of chasing his dad, resulting in some quality learning time lying dazed some way away from his bike.

Afan December 2008 Afan December 2008

Nige found that eight weeks, and one wedding is not the ideal training regime for hauling cold muscles up big hills, and Jason’s poor wardrobe decision left him with extreme chafing where no man should feel even the lightest of chafes. Still I had a great time, and would take frozen and hard over cold and sloppy* regardless of chill blaines in the nether regions.

Afan December 2008 Afan December 2008

Last year we slopped about for two days trying to find some grip. This warm up to 2009** must be a sign that we’ve paid our cosmic debt, and a proper summer is merely a few months away. Probably means I’m due another huge stack then.

* Any situation. Every time 😉

** The whole new year nonsense can go and get stuffed with what’s left of the turkey as far as I’m concerned. I covered that off last year and nothing much has changed. Except getting a year closer to death. but hey let’s not start the year on that kind of downer.