But there is on YouTube.
Busy, busy busy at work. Here’s something to keep you entertained while my nose gets a good grinding.
I’ve asked for this to be included in our text team building/group hug event.
It just makes UK TV look so lame!
Author: Alex
Chasing Bikes
I am sat here snuffling away like a small, nervous mammal rooting around in the undergrowth. Occasionally this pathetic and yet volubly liquid vocal discharge is dispatched to the aural boundaries, whilst a wheezing cough hacks its way out of constricted lungs.
Now I’m not one of those sad hypochondriacs with so little in their life that they must accost and bore complete strangers with a tedious list of their symptoms. I’m more your self deluding, pathological fibber with an unreconstructed mortality fear which “ I’m sure you’ll agree “ is far more interesting. Sulking will follow if you don’t.
But, be absolutely clear, this is not whining; as all of my mental angst is focussed on white hot irritation leaving no space for vanity melancholy. As only last week, after a successful re-insertion into the heady biorhythms of commuting, I triumphed over a proper roadie while he was trying and everything. So my current status of worrying about the aerobic impact of attempting a set of stairs is on the fucking irritating side of bloody annoying.
Sliding off a homebound train, fortified by a training curry (we forwent a fatty pudding in lieu of another healthy lager), my transit home was separated only by six miles, a random scrambling of the iprodder and a gentle turning of Biryani heavy legs.
I went XC racing
Well no, of course I didn’t. Short course XC racing is for those students of proper training, garish lycra and a single minded focus on winning. So clearly not for barely fit, inappropriately biked fun-poker-at-ers who scratch their head/balls when faced with sixty or so Race Faces on bulimic bikes. Instead, I ambled round a couple of practice laps with all the speed needed to hunt down a lettuce. Fun course though and after two laps totaling an epic 5 miles, I abandoned any pretense of being a proper racer and sloped off with the camera instead.
It was dark and scary in the woods and that was before around 50 kilograms of zero body fat came screaming round the corner. Still revenge was mine, blinding them with the flash and having the odd cowardly snigger at silly narrow tyres and rigid forks. Unfortunately for my world weary cock snooping, almost all of them were competent bike handlers, smooth and fast in the twisties and propelled uphill as if a Saturn five booster had been strapped to their shorts.
Here’s a representative example.
To balance out the fast guys (and girls), there were a few that even I could have given a run for their entry fee assuming it was over one lap and uphills didn’t count. A few nutters were even on singlespeeds. Away from the podium hunters though were the fun category and the riders decked out in flowery shirts and big grins were exactly that.
Here’s a guy who was taking the whole thing with an appropriate amount of seriousness.
Here are a few more of my favourites. That’s pictures not riders, in case you think I’ve fallen foul of some man lovin’ lycra action.
There are a few more in much the same style here
It was an enjoyable evening even in the rain with the real prospect of expensive electronics giving up with a damp hiss. I much preferred the picture taking that the actual riding but you can’t fault the enthusiasm of those organising and taking part.
Apart from one guy who was just way too serious and after serially pissing me off with trivial complaints as befits a proper prima donna, I weed on his car on my way out.
I am striving for middle aged tolerance but sometimes I can’t help backsliding.
Turncoat.
Right. No easy way to say this. I’m thinking of buying another stupid one geared bike and while it is obvious to anyone not booked in for special needs cognitive therapy that this is insane, it’s even worse that that. You see last year, this article was published in the SingletrackWorld magazine and attracted a fair amount of hate mail. Which is fine, because it was written in the style of baited hook to frenzied biters. But spin the world a few short months, and I have my hand on the “buy another pointless bike” button although Carol may have her hand on the rolling pin if I do.
If anyone has a petard, I’d like to borrow it for a bit of personal hanging. Oops. Click over the page for the full story.
How could this have happened?
A drunken roam over dusty posts during the last three months show a disturbing ratio of apparent contentment to foaming vitriol. As any fule no this is not how the hedgehog operates. It should be well known that if I could be arsed to fuck about with the site name, it would be transformed into a somewhat more descriptive “thanks for listening, that was better than therapy“.
Normal service shall be resumed soon. God knows, I’m hurtling towards 40, have about three strands of my own hair left, a burgeoning beer gut, an every decreasing riding skill base (coming off a pretty low start) and enough peripheral angst to fill the cargo hold of whatever flying reaper is destroying the ozone layer this week.
Maybe I’ll think some more about my job where the spoon of hurt just isn’t cutting it. I now have to courier in the entire utensil drawer of everlasting pain to my place of work.
Chasing Cars*
Welcome to your commute. The local time is 06:40, the outside temperature is a chilly ten degrees and our arrival time is expected to be 09:05 unless someone succeeds in killing you first.
Back off holiday, back to playing with the desperate traffic, back to maximum concentration and minimum road sense. Whiffing of the closet masochist, I’d been looking forward to joining the battle and “ as expected “ the grimy jewel of our capital city didn’t disappoint.
First up Seymour drive closed again for reasons closely aligned to because we can and do I honestly give off the slightest impression of giving a fuck?. Well fuck you right back, couple of hard lefts stretching aching legs past lines of stationary traffic before crafting a cheeky move with slightly more pavement than the highway code advocates. From the frustrated horn section behind me, I’ll have to upgrade that to properly cheeky.
Love it. Love it. Love it.
Summer sun burns off the cloud and I burn off down a down a festival constrained funnel of Hyde Park. Facing tourists adjusting focal lengths by stepping blithely into my path, I begin with a pathetic dinging of my bell and finish by leaving a carbon bar end burn on their arse. Keeping it real there Mr. Livingstone, let’s do lunch.
Only by engaging Colin McCrae Sega Rally Mode can progress me made through the random perambulation of squeezed humanity on an ever thinning track. Elbows out, Bar ends to the fore again and an expression that politely but firmly expresses the dangerous truth that you are nothing more than mobile slalom in the path of my morning coffee.
Ride on in the sunshine, break a few more rules, bait lycra roadies and attempt to perfect clipped in trackstands before flipping the security guard a flash of my pass and a hidden finger. Dump the bike and hunt down the dripping bacon breakfast of champions. Not bad for a Monday morning, not bad at all.
The end of the day starts with beer which instantly imbues bravery as per the law of lager armour. Bravery instantly tested by a taxi attempting to save ten seconds by smashing me into small body parts using the curb as a mallet. Survival instinct kicks in and he’s almost as surprised as me to find a beery mountain biker hanging onto his passenger door.
As our six wheeled carriage wobbles down the Strand, I breathlessly explain to him to and his “O mouth shaped fare that if he doesn’t cease and desist RIGHT NOW, I shall be punching my way out through the drivers side window.
He fucked off quite pissed off although I hope he didn’t think, even for a moment, that I gave a shit. Believing myself indestructible, a¾ circuit of Hyde Park Corner will live long in the memory filed under mnemonic Go, GO, Oh Shit, Oh Shot OH SHIT, switch lanes “ DON’T LOOK “ safe, don’t you DARE come over here, sprint, spring, looked fucking amber to me, sprint, breathe
Fantastically, London wasn’t done delighting me today. I cruised up about half a mile of 150MPH executive cars travelling at approximately zero due to aforementioned coned off streets. I cannot bequeath them the names of roadworks because the second half of that word was conspicuously missing.
Anyway I counted about half a million pounds worth of leather clad car park before my mental arithmetic was exhausted. The worlds’ most expensive queue began to snarl slowly forwards as the lights changed but I had been and gone before they had even reached ramming speed. My delight was raised to a level that I can only term non Yorkshire when it became apparent that some brain stunted arse had parked his van on the yellow box and the queue was stationary again despite the green light.
Sometimes commuting is shit “ cold, dark, horrid, miserable and dangerous. Today was not one of those days.
* Spookily the first track on a perfectly shuffled riding mix. Is it wrong to like Snow Patrol? Oh I see, I am deeply sorry.
That hurt a bit.
Chilterns 2007. Ibstone., originally uploaded by Alex Leigh.
But I think it hurt my friend Martyn (pictured) a bit more.
A great ride taking in everything I love about riding in the Chilterns. Including chasing some lambs at “ramming speed” but the less said about that the better.
Lots of lush and Cheeky singletrack, including one involving walking the bikes through a busy Churchyard. Fast and grippy downhills on a choice of flint, chalk, dirt and roots. Many uphills in which the BBC3 Gear (Granny – Granny – everyone secretly likes it but no one admits to using it) was absolutely required. A fresh pair of legs half way round wouldn’t have gone amiss either.
Cold beer and hot BBQ’d dead animal to finish. I didn’t even need a shower, because on returning home, the family turned the hosepipe onto me. Possibly smelled a bit?
There’s so many places to ride in this country. Many of them have greater technical challenges, bigger views, less people and virtually limitless opportunities for limb removal. And that’s all well and good but sometimes just getting out and riding with your friends until your legs stop working is about as good as it gets.
Much 🙂
Ready to ride
Night Bike 3, originally uploaded by Alex Leigh.
German engineering at its finest. The new bike rack was put together in all the time it takes to invade a small country and has been about as intransigent ever since. It’s all kicked off with border skirmishes started by the Swedish Roof bars and escalated by the entire Japanese car.
Honestly, I thought I was going to have to call the UN. Anyway, ready to ride tomorrow but I must must must remember the car is now ten foot tall and low hanging foliage cannot form any part of my route to ride.
Woops, missed.
Last night while riding home into a gloomy, late spring evening, I failed to crack the tough navigational challenge of finding my house. My third year of commuting has been ushered in with barely a whimper after years one and two were at least accorded a hedgehog sized nod. But the event was marked by a failure of muscle memory grooved by 250 return trips and while the autopilot tripped out, I tripped on towards the badlands of Aylesbury.
But for a sudden jerky awareness that my present surroundings were unfamiliar, the termination of the ride would have been exactly that. Thursday night at dusk in the a town populated by a lesser class of boozy thug is not a safe place for anyone without a tatoo or an anger management problem. I would have been killed and eaten and then very possibly charged for the privilege.
I can only put this misjudgement down to one of two things. Either my cognitive functions are already starting to fade or, the terrifying level of concentration I was applying to work related problems means I have started to really care about my job.
Either is a worry, frankly.
Paint: Rhymes with Total Boredom
In my mind it does anyway. And once my smooth yet violent transition to world dictator is complete, it shall phonetically as well. Any linguistic scholar who wishes to diffidently argue the point, shall suffer death by killer vole. The ninja badgers are behind held in reserve for the first person who refers to themselves in the third person.
Rather than a planned ride/drink/hospital visit weekend in the Lake District, fate cruelly dealt me the joyless hand of painting the front fence instead. So forgoing the life affirming experience of bouncing head first onto sharp pointy rocks while admiring the view, I excavated the shed in search of paint, brushes and some enthusiasm. Two out of three ain’t bad.
Now, according to those lost souls who sacrifice their weekends on the alter of home improvement, a professional finish relies on painstaking preparation. Heeding such advice, my preparation involved leaving it for about five years until the Neighborhood Watch assumed the house had been abandoned. This apparently isn’t exactly what they had in mind, so firstly I zoomed up and down the flakey picket with power tools accompanied by plane noises. A satisfying if ultimately disappointing approach which rapidly low teched its way down to a scraper and bucket of water.
Is this the best 21st century technology could offer? Apparently so – yet it was only four hours later when as much as one third of the fence was cured of flaky leprosy. Much of this time was spent cussing the idiot who had previously slapped on some cheap paint in a style I came to think of “looks ok must be ok”. According to my wife, that idiot was me, although I have no recollection of it whatsoever. Probably therapy was involved to blank it from my mind.
My mood was in no way improved by the entire neighborhood strolling past in their guise of self appointed members of the piss taking committee. While one particular individual launched her jolly japes into a sea of misery (you know the kind of thing “oooh you missed a bit” and “at this rate, you’ll be finished by Christmas“), I painted her dog. Needless to say, there is no way that poor mutt is going to win any prizes at the next kennel club; “That’s never a pure bred dalmatian, it doesn’t have any spots”
She was right about one thing tho, this was taking bloody ages. The fence seemed to stretch out to infinity whereas my patience was stretched to about snapping point. Boredom took over at an inopportune point, as by this time I had the pain(t) brush grasped firmly in my mitt and was waggling away in the style of “happy slappy“. The collateral damage included two new derivations of well known flowers – “the hoster gloss-paintus” and the “Buddlea White-Spot”
What a dumb way to spend the final 8 hours of your holiday. Honestly, it was so bad, I’d have preferred to have been at work. Which is exactly where I’ll be the next time to subsidise a proper tradesman who has the requisite painting skills and stratospherically high boredom threshold.
Or I’m concreting over the entire garden and renting it out as car park space.