Author: Alex

Cycling Myth#7 – There are no proper hills in the Chilterns

On By AlexIn Other stuff1 Comment
Stonor climb, originally uploaded by Alex Leigh.

Depending on your definition of a ‘proper hill‘. While I accept there are no sky reaching remnants of violent glacial or tectonic plate action, the soft southern Chilts do still offer many dishes of ‘short and steep‘ with a side order of ‘pain and suffering‘

Here’s one of them. Last of five nadgery climbs on a tiring loop and it’s a little monster. Steep enough to inscribe the front of your saddle onto low hanging wedding tackle and long enough to make you wonder if a third lung is a possible body upgrade. 379 vertical feet in 1.1 traction searching miles.

Weight over the front to stop it flipping skywards, hamstrings shortening by the second, shards of flint and rock to whip away hard fought grip, and a false summit hiding behind a steep corner.

Last weekend, I was able to withdraw ‘wrong tyres‘ from the excuse bank, but Sunday with fatter tyres, clever suspension and an insertion of bloody mindedness in lieu of fitness, I dragged myself up there.

Had to have a lie down at the top. And some medical assistance. And a few beers to dull the pain afterwards. Problem is I’d sort of given up ever conquering the summit again but now I’m committed to trying it every time.

Time for some quick deposits in the excuse bank I think.

Blatent Plug: Oh and if you are in the market for some digital mapping with GPS magic, I can recommend tracklogs and not only because it’s run by friends of mine 🙂

Lord of the Manor

On By AlexIn Other stuffLeave a comment

Short history of Waddesdon manner. Built in the late 1800s to house Rothchild’s collection of art treasures and wall to ceiling paintings. Typically ostentatious Victorian architecture with turrets, sweeping staircases and buttresses flying all over the place. Huge gardens including an Avery that seems to contain one of every species and a driveway that says “see that HUGE house up ahead, that’s mine that is so I win“. Rothchild’s famous for banking (I think that’s the word) but eventually ran of out proper cash and bequeathed house and grounds to National Trust.

Who now make about as much money as the Rothchild’s charging people for entry, food, drinks and – possibly – breathing. It’s staffed by a set of crusty volunteers seemingly each missing a limb or a portion of their cerebral marbles. On the plus side, from its lofty position atop a small Chiltern Hillock, you get a fantastic view of the vale without any of Aylesbury in it. But the gardeners must arrive at work in the morning thinking “bloody hell, where do I start“.

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There are some purple and yellow flowers in there – I’m really getting the hang of this horticultural stuff.

Here’s some other grumpy perennials; the Verbalus Sulkiness known for lurking behind other plants in a “life isn’t fair” kind of manner. And Randomus Notheethus, a somewhat sprightlier flower although you’re never quite sure where to find it.

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The freeride frisbee of the four winds was given a good outing. Occasionally it came to hand, but mostly, it could be seen veering off at a potentially painful angle to innocent picknickers at any tangential point off the perpendicular. The safest place was to stand right in front of the thrower.

And since Marie Antionette is represented in the house with some furniture that the kids thought “looked rubbish and all worn and stuff“, we had to have a “let them eat cake” moment.

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All this is only five miles from our house. About half that if I drive down the bridleway at the end of the road and cheat my way through a couple of electronic gates. And since we’ve now stumped up for some middle-aged, middle-england NT membership, we’ll be back.

Crashes to Crashes..

On By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike RidingLeave a comment

…Dust to Dust. Somehow in April, I managed to ride 23 days out of a possible 30 and crashed only twice – both on my apparently healed knee and obviously still-buggered shoulder. I’m seeing this as progression of a sort mainly because, while it wasn’t entirely painless, hardly any hospitals or whimpering were involved.

Global warming is – and I’m cutting out some of the more complex science here – a bugger if you like you ice caps frozen and your eastern counties above the water table. But tending to the selfish, it’s doing wonders for my tan and the trails are rock hard and dusty. And I’ve carried out sufficient face surfing, ground chewing and bone bruising research so you don’t have to.

We’ve ridden some old favourites and some long abandoned, scarcely remembered little treasures. One of these started in a time lapsed village, last visited by the real world when hot and cold running tweed were installed back in 1932. The local shop teleported me back a couple of generations with frighteningly dusty corners presenting foodstuffs never seen since we dispensed with rations books. Even more worryingly was a vast display of “hosiery” including all the support stockings you may ever want. That’s none then is it?

My coffee was served on an ornamental platter, accompanied by a selection of dusty biscuits and – I kid you not – an assortment of paper doilies. All that was missing from this scene were some post Edwardian ladies who breakfast and a retired major sporting a dangerously stiff moustache and a cravat. Tomorrow’s People eat your bloody heart out (am I the only one old enough to remember that. Yes? Oh, smashing)

And with all this riding, I could be getting within sweating distance of fit – luckily my recent ‘pringle tube devastation in a single sitting” habit allied to an extension to the beer fridge has kept some nonsense at bay. Tonight, I stole a late afternoon ride to rekindle some lovin’ with my rather fantastic full suss. You see my head had been not so much been turned as owl wrenched through 180 degrees by something stiff, nimble and frisky. And there’s a set of adjectives which are universally positive unless the first applies to you, and the remainder describe something normally accompanied by mint sauce.

Here are some photos taken from my DumbPhone ™. I hate camera phones, they are a waste of time and processor but – and I’m grudgingly admitting this under duress – they do take better photos than say, your toenail, when you forget your proper camera.

There was beer to finish of course. But you would expect nothing less.

This post could have just been entitled “Bikes are ACE” and many innocent electrons would have been saved. But it wouldn’t have been proper hedgehog tho and standards – low as they are – need to be maintained 🙂

Traffic

On By AlexIn Other stuff7 Comments

I used to think that “easy targets” were just cyclists and pedestrians when being pitted against the might of the motor car. But now, in a downright populist chasing move, I’m going to lampoon the state of the UK road system while offering absolutely no solutions other than everyone cycling. Which down the six lane M25 could be a whole lot of fun.

So my easy target is the road pollution of South East England. And while it is properly shit, it is unfair to label this as the poster child for all of the UK. My experience of the rural byways and backwaters of “proper up north” are rush hours consisting of three cars waiting at a roundabout. That doesn’t include the major cities of course, or the Lake district, or most of the M6 or M1. But I still think I have made a pretty valid point there.

My lack of car usage has now passed into a total apathy around any maintenance such as adding petrol to the tank, cleaning the car (I don’t even know what colour it is anymore) or pumping up the tyres. This last laziness left me with a partial flat and a£90 replacement after failing to notice it was somewhat closer to the ground than it’s fellows, then driving round on it until it exploded.

This morning, I had a ChiltenRailwayEsque journey of over two hours to reach that oh-so distant county that is Surrey. A total of 63 miles including a desperate search for a petrol station and 55 minutes of doing precisely nothing in the World’s biggest car park. The Highways Agency keeps digging it up to add lanes to the wrong side and the car owning population responds by buying another one for their son/daughter/dog/goldfish and we’re back to where we started.

Which is going nowhere very slowly. How could you do that every day? I even left late to miss the traffic but that’s nonsense because the congestion never really stops, it just moves about a bit. Marooned on a six lane motorway with only some interesting ear wax to harvest, it occured to me that short of tarmacing the entire counties of Surrey, Buckinghamshire and Hampshire, there’s no obvious solution other than less people, less cars or less journeys.

They could take the train of course. MWAAAHHHHHHH, go on, I dare you.

Performance Enhancing Drugs

On By AlexIn BikesLeave a comment

You didn’t for a second think I would have anything relevant, insightful or – even – accurate to say about the Ivan Basso affair, or sport related drug taking in general. It seems cycling is, sadly, in the vanguard of medicinally boosted cheating and while that is clearly to be lamented, I appear to have found a legal and (sort of) safe version of EPO.

It’s beer. A subject that twenty years plus of copious and unstinting practical research has put very close to my heart. Well down a bit and bulge but you get the idea. Normally mixing beer with anything requiring co-ordination, swift reactions or a modicum of caution is a recipe for the kind of disaster that always hurts more in the morning. You know the sort of thing, beer fuelled hedge jumping at 11am becomes Nuragen fueled back pummelling when sobriety takes over.

And yet, for all that selfless experimentation, I may have missed something. Riding last night while practicing the “be the ball” sporting analogy (although I’m more “be the rubbish bloke with ‘facial scars by hedge’ kind of athlete“), my concentration was shattered when a contact lens decided to “be the trail“. It stuck for a tantalising second on my sunglasses before a gust of wind guaranteed its freedom. I was now “being the bat” riding at about half pace while my brain tried to reconcile one sharp image and one blurry one.

It wasn’t doing very well and neither was I so calling in the wife support vehicle was the chosen alternative to a depth perceptionless headplant into a spikey branch. Skillfully, we crafted a fine combination of mobile phone signals, a handful of cash and a pub as our enforced rest area. Being almost completely helpless in the face of alcohol, my worthy “Just an orange juice please mate” was spookily transmogrified into “pint of best and the jumbo bag of pork scratchings to go“.

And go we did, leaving my wife and two shivering kids to finish their drinks while we span cold legs up a steep road hill while beer sloshed unpleasantly in our bellies. But then we turned downhill and my inhibitions and irrational fear of left hand corners wafted away on a rear facing organic jet pack of processed hops. Dutch Courage it is sometimes called although “London IPA” would be a better description as the bike swooped majestically betwixt tree and shrubbery and – unfettered by panic braking – floated over rooty obstacles with barely a whimper.

Nothing to do with me of course. I was merely whiffy ballast providing the music on hold. So if anyone was enjoying a late evening stroll in the quite lovely woods of the Chilterns last night, I apologise for the smell of second hand beer and a crippling rendition of “My Way” arranged for strangled cat. So impressed with the power of the pint was I, that we went home and had several more. And the way in which I fearlessly attacked the stairs on the way to bed just further proved that beer is in fact a performance enhancing drug.

So I’m trading in the Camelbak for a rucksack mounted “Watney’s party Seven” and reprising my internal pub singer. You know, I think I’m onto to something here!

Vote “Random”

On By AlexIn Other stuff3 Comments

Politics and, more specifically, politicians have drawn a suspicious response from me, tapping the rich cynical vein of “anyone who wants to be an MP should automatically be prevented from ever being one“. Groucho Marx? Or Harpo? One of them anyway – unlikely to be Karl.

This evening, a venerable gentleman carrying a clipboard and wearing a tie responded to my wary countenance with this opening gambit “Good evening sir, I’m assuming we can count on your vote?”. Roused from my political lethargy, I spluttered “how the hell could you assume anything of the sort?“.

He was a Conservative of course. This was obvious from his lack of liberal cheese knitting tendencies and, failing to sport that slightly bonkers, partially epileptic doorstep dance that easily identifies the right-on new Labour candidates. I think of them as patronising, pointless and partially mad and refuse to have anything to do with them.

He did try though, bless him. Changing tack, he explained that the local council hadn’t had a Labour member (I sniggered, I know I shouldn’t but I just can’t help myself) since 1473 and the Conservative member (he ploughed on apparently oblivious to my tears of hysteria and recent elbow biting habit) was voted in with a majority of four million last time round.

I countered that voting just encourages them so, rather than “wasting” my chance at representation by tactical voting, I’d tactically not vote at all. His attempt to distance local politicians (merely parish councilors on a power trip) from those wankers in Westminster was met with a spittle flecked riposte that the words untrustworthy bastards had been specifically developed to categorise anyone who has ever felt the urge to address the chair

Random pitched up, clearly pissed off that this old man with his clipboard, badge and worryingly forced smile, had interrupted our game of Spinning Uno and asked why you’d want to send the chair away to some elses house. This seemed an apposite time to gently slam the door in his face leaving him to go and bother my neighbours, most of which had started small fires or left the country to avoid such an interaction.

Me? I think Random may become a politician since my card stack had about doubled while hers had spookily gone the other way. When challenged, she looked me in the eye and promised Dad, I haven’t done anything to them. You do trust me don’t you?

If there’s some loony losing his deposit while standing for some single issue nonsense like the Beer for Breakfast party, he or she will get my vote. Until then, I’ll practice political democracy with Random “ tomorrow she’s going to explain how her sister is responsible for everything bad in the world.

So I’d encourage you to Vote Random and it’ll be jelly for everyone.

Use your head

On By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike Riding, Other stuff6 Comments

The original title of this post was Drop the Pilot, try my Buffoon but this seemed, even for loyal hedgehog aficionados, an obscure musical reference too far. Striving to be murky or incompressible and possibly windswept or interesting, the point was that the contents of an armoured cranium has alot to say when rather less subtle muscle groups are heading off in a different direction.

I’m thinking of it as the Cowardly Captain Brain desperately resisting vigorous advice from Lieutenant Stimulus and his troop of non commissioned Reactions. Around this time last year, riding the same bike, on the same South Wales trails but with a different Cranial Captain at the controls, progress was fast, unworried and essentially left to muscle memory and a hands off neural officer class under Commander Confidence.

Confidence has subsequently been posted to almost everyone else I ride with, while Captain Cowardly and his mincing management team have refused to accept that any speed about a decent walking pace can end in any way but bloody disaster. An example beckons I think from a dry and fast descent dropping a few hundred feet to the valley floor:

Lieutenant Stimulus Captain, we’re travelling at ˜strolling speed’. All is clear ahead, suggest increase to all ahead frightened
Captain Cowardly Stimulus, there’s a 15 degree corner coming up, ARE YOU ON CRACK, remain at strolling
LT: With respect sir, your friends have exited the trail, had a beer, fathered a number of children and “ in one case “ passed over to a better place. The Reactions are confident we can advance to mincing in a worrying sexually ambivalent manner
CC: Stimulus, I’ll have you on a charge, my mission orders demand that I ride this fantastically expensive trail bike in the manner of a sack of spuds dumped on a roller skate and I’ll take no more insubordination
LT: Having watched Crimson Tide Sir, I’m going for XO override, speed set to terrified, Hands set to Death Grip on Bars, Communications set to 999. ”

Pause. Noise. Sky. Ground. Sky. Ground. Ground. Ground. Sky. Ground. Ow.

CC: What is our position?
LT: Upside down in a bush with speed of zero. Damage stations report Pride badly damaged and Bravery exhausted. Friends have been set to laughing their tits off

Faced with such mutinous behaviour, I abandoned the well trodden path of riding more and stopping being such a tosser, instead buying a new set of tyres and ignoring the problem. A facet of this was a return to the dustbowel that is Chicksands “ a venue which reverberated to the sound of a head bouncing AL on my last visit.

All was going extremely averagely, until the Lieutenant took control of a practical experiment to establish exactly how I’d crashed last time. It took me a while but as the sky and ground swapped places and the Cap’n suffered the ignominy of dealing with a high speed stump impact, we got there in the end.

And having landed really quite spectacularly on my head again, it’s a shock to find the biggest bruise is technicoloured on my arse. Still, as my best friends never fail to remind me, it’s quite a big unit.

You may argue there is no point to this post whatsoever. From which I can only surmise, you’ve read none of the previous 200+.

Who are you calling “fish face”?

On By AlexIn Other stuff1 Comment

Verbal and I were exploring coping strategies to combat the daily mental warfare which eight year old girls seem to prefer to actually doing any school work. While the boys still “ I assume “ duff each other up in the playground before cementing lifelong friendship by stealing a car, the fairer sex are masters at name calling, groupy cliques and the occasional bout of she started it hair pulling.

Right then Verbs I offered up in that peculiar football manager speak when no proper noun is ever allowed more than two syllables (Becks, Wazza, Curbs, Pards, Knobs, whatever) you need to get your retaliation in first, anyone so much as spills your pint, give ˜em the old one-two in the chops and finish ˜em off with a Glasgow kiss and a swift book laden schoolbag to the testicles

This rendered her momentarily speechless which, being such a rarity, forced me to switch tactics. Clearly punching your way through school is all a bit seventies and apparently ˜telling tales‘ is such a sin (this is a CofE school after all) that turning the other buttock (CofE again with a modern twist) is the accepted response if it’s your turn to be picked on.

Drawing on twenty years of corporate experience, I was able to offer proportional retaliations such as ˜writing them an officious email copying in their boss or hunting an individual down with a copy of the last weeks minutes so humiliating them in front of the whole team. In extreme cases, one could consider blanking them in the canteen and weeing in their shoes but it all seemed “ well “ a bit childish.

Eventually we settled on an appropriately verbal parry going something like Don’t mess with Me, Fish Face. It has “ I’m sure you’ll agree “ almost everything in terms of a crushing put down set in a contextual construct of not apparently being bothered and carrying just a hint of violent threat.

I think I may try this at work.

Breaking plans for Nigel.

On By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike Riding4 Comments

Today is obscure musical homage day. If anyone can correctly identify the band with a hit single almost entirely similar to the title of this post, a keepsake from my box marked pile of crap, remember to burn shall be summarily dispatched. To help you out there were the best best thing to come out of Swindon since the Honda Civic.

Admittedly a close third was the M4, but the fab three still enjoyed modest success while still living at home with their mums. We did finally manage to break my friend Nige last weekend in Swinley after he’d boffed a hundred and sixty off road miles in ten unbroken days. The previous four had accounted for about half of those and since in the winding forest singletrack every mile counts double, it was no surprise this was the final resting place for his legs.

Bit of a relief frankly; he’s finally free of the robotic host which sent him up hill and over dale while the rest of us had called it quits for beers. In lieu of post ride beers “ which lamentably do not form any part of the café menu at Swinley “ we instead gorged ourselves on high priced ice creams and conceit. It’s clearly fat people wearing Oakleys season already and stretched t-shirts fail to hide pregnant bellies while expensive sporty shades wobble atop jowelled cheeks.

I mean “ at nearly 40 “ there’s barely a man alive who doesn’t have the beginnings of middle English handles some label as love but are really beer and chips but surely being able to see your feet is not simply a lifestyle choice?

And with 200 miles bagged since April 1st, a certain sleekness of torso and tiredness of legs have manifested in some belt tightening for the man behind the hedgehog. That sounds almost as rude as I was hoping for. But since my dietary approach to exercise can be summarised as Time for a milkshake and chocy flapjack before the train is delayed?, a barely remembered hollowed out feeling did a Nigel on me trying to get home the other night.

The body is an amazing thing “ even one as abused as this example “ but the mind is even cleverer. While a fusillade of non maskable interrupts briskly instructed muscles to stop pedalling and begin hunting for food, what I’m charitably calling higher intelligence ordered them instead to adopt a rotational approach to foraging. Two miles and a small hill was all that separated an empty stomach and fading legs from an oasis of chocolate and energy recovery drink (clever branded under the Speckled Hen moniker).

But what a two miles that was, nothing really hurt but even less worked. Cars bullied me for the first time in ages because raising a heartbeat, my game or a smile was lost behind a desperate sweaty grimace hiding a broken man.

Even unclipping in sight of food was now beyond me, I shuffled the bike into the barn and inhaled two Nutrigrains while still attached to the bike. On reflection, I probably should have removed the packaging.

In the last three weeks, every bike I own “ (and that’s alot although this is in no way the same as too many) “ has been given a proper outing. Even the 38lb behemoth was dragged up to some illegal jump spot and given a proper thrashing until darkness claimed us some five miles from home. That ride back, chasing a mate with only a blinking LED for navigation, through bar wide forest bumping over invisible obstacles hidden under a blacked-out trail was about as much fun as you can have standing up.

And having spent most of the day juggling big drills, sledgehammers and the FreeRide Frisbee in a doomed attempt to extend the kids play fort, I feel I am speaking with some authority.

I want my knob back

On By AlexIn Other stuff1 Comment

My knob has fallen off. Still fairly sure we were fully populated in the kid schema so nothing to be too alarmed about. Mildly embarrassing in the showers but the English are generally good about ignoring such things or dismissing the subject with a breezy ah knob fallen off eh? Never mind lovely weather we’re having“

Okay, it fell off my dumbphone. That’s the official line although there may be a few witnesses to a slightly more violent version. They’ve all been well paid for their silence, so suffice it to say that my communications device has suffered electronic castration and now lies broken and battered in the depths of my desk drawer.

You see without the thumb numbing jog-wheel, you cannot access any of the features, however even before this eunuch conversion, the bloody thing had already forsaken some of it’s more advanced functionality “ to whit making and receiving calls. It combines that fearsome combination of slow and stupid with anything useful like trying to find someone’s number hidden behind a few hundred key presses and the world’s slowest screen refresh.

If the marketing men had gone with the slogan it’s really shit and every day it’ll piss you off in some new and innovative way BUT occasionally it may grant you access to email they could have avoided the charge of telling great big bloody whoppers when describing it as a handheld PDA with the functionality of a PC. Assuming the PC had been badly savaged by a hungry bear, ignited with rocket fuel and put out with a fire hose.

Still it did give me license to trader hilarious knob gags with the helpdesk. If I get fired, it’s the way I would want to go because in what other vocational situation can you ring up a complete stranger and ask can you help me, my knob’s dropped off?

Sadly, I think they’re going to give me another one. And it’s going to look suspicious if this was suffers similar deceleration trauma as the much maligned craphoneâ„¢ currently being converted to compost in my recycling desk drawer.

Can we still do Telex? Tin cans and some string? Shouting at people? There’s really got to be a better solution.