Cycling Myth#4 – Reprised

Since the myth was dispelled back in March, not much has changed other than the continuing gentle slide into middle age which apes the angle of the beer repository. The other morning though, a level of previously unattained fitness visited my commute, albeit briefly.

I was at one with my big ring, but what a monster curry that had been, a real bog roll in the fridge” encounter with a Jalfrazi cooked on Satan’s own burners. Toilet gags you see, always get a laugh. No? Ok even the small commuting hillocks warrant a shift in the ’39, when weighed down with the lead lined laptop and an early morning start. But today, I was shifting upwards and onwards chasing slow moving traffic and actually having to lean the bike through corners. Those passing car drivers, mouths forming an incredulous O, were privy and privileged to see a cycling titan at the peak of his physical powers.

Even a delayed train journey in no way shattered my aura. Taxi, buses and the odd scooter were left chocking in their own dust as BigRinged’Al burst through the traffic like an incredible bursting bursty thing (it’s the simile writers day off). A deep and manly laugh escaped my huge air chambers as those impotent zoo animals in their cages were blitzed and humiliated by a biker on speed. Even my fellow commuters were little more than instantly forgotten notches on my cycing bedpost (probably should have given the metaphor boy the day off as well, apologies for that).

Arriving at work, flushed with success, I strode as a colossus through the ranks of pod based gerbils and sat astride my mighty winged chair, a God of fitness, a man bethroned by greatness, an icon of athleticism. (It appears metaphor boy may have been on the mind altering substances again). A single deep breath almost emptied the building of air such was my capacity for life.

It felt quite good actually.

Obviously the journey home was joyfully awaited with visions of Ferrari’s being contemptuously dispatched as the lights dropped green and tarmac being shredded under the power of my mighty thighs. I began to consider accessorising the bike with fins and spoilers to aid downforce, such was the potential for mechanical based flight.

But 30 seconds out of the garage, the vision collapsed, reality rushed in and the true horror of the façade was not only brought home, but had barged in and taken the best chair in front of the telly.

It wasn’t fitness. It was a 20 MPH tailwind. Which was now a 20 MPH Headwind and trees suddenly looked fast.

But if that’s what it feels like, wow it’s almost worth giving up beer and cakes for. Note the careful use of the word, almost.

Old dogs. New Tricks.

You know how back in the good old days everyone was lumbered with an amusing middle name. Bob “Bogdoor” Smith and Will “GoatFimbler” Jones, that kind of thing. Well maybe it was just my school then, but anyway my friend Andy “The Loon” Hooper is not a man in the first flush of youth nor in possention of a full set of unbroken bones. The two may be connected.

Here he is in happier times. He’ s somewhat vertically challenged but belies his small size by going large, which is why his second nickname “The Crash Test Gnome” resonates so strongly.

He bust a wrist earlier this year which maybe should have peeled some warning bells in a man more aware of his mortality. Instead Andy felt that beginning dirt jumping in his mid 40s would be a more appropriate response. This is a part of the sport generally left to those with low hanging jeans, piss pot helments and acne. Pubety is something they still have to look forward to.

The picture below is at Dalby Forest where Andy managed to clear the “pack” on a number of occasions before stupidly having “one more go

He traded distance for height, left it a little short and straddled the last jump landing his back wheel on the lip. The energy that should have taken him forward, instead pitched him off the bike before planting him face down in the dirt from about seven feet up. Although encased in ankle to forehead body armour, he still re-cracked his wrist, broke a bone in his elbow and tarmac’d his entire left sizes with angry purple bruising. Three weeks on and he’s still limping.

The full face saved his teeth and possibly more as half an hour of his life has disappeared after the accident (although he remembers getting up and pushing the bike to the van). Andy reckons his “going big” days are over and has sold his freeride bike to fund a rather more XC orientated one.

But knowing “The Loon” as I do, I wonder how long it’ll be before he cracks. Hopefully mentally and not physically.

Wibble Wobble Nonsense

Firstly, although I’m pathologically opposed to any form of camping, at least this fella has an outstanding view of importance and managed his priorities accordingly.

He does appear to be worryingly fondling his bike tho. Nothing wrong with that of course but something that should be practised away from the narrow minded thinkers that make up most of the planet.

And in my never ending lonely search for esoteric conent to feed our fragile minds – otherwise known as briefly scanning the spam-lite in my inbox, I’m offering up these gems.

Cows have regional accents. Every Yorkshireman knows this. The highlight of a Friday night quaffing session would be a roam on the moors searching for a cheap if noticeably wooly date. Competition was fierce and you had to leave the pub early to ensure “you didn’t get an ugly one“. It went without saying though that however frantic, you didn’t want to stain your welly’s with a sheep of Lancashire extraction. Ugh, that’s just wrong.

Get your organic drugs here. Yes, it’s lick a toad day offering up a natural high and a slightly irritated aquaetic reptile. I mean you’d have to be desperate surely – give me the bostick and the back of the bike sheds. Far less hassle and not requiring a smash and grab at the local pet shop.

Kaballah Fluid promises a safe nuclear future. It’s as we suspected, Madonna is barking mad.

And finally Cyclists dismount because your bladder disease has returned. Some superb Welshness going on here with a translation shocking native speakers and ensuring much rubbing of crotch in traffic queues.

You couldn’t make it up. Which is good, as that’s my job.

Season’s end

This is not a lament on the changing of the seasonal guard with cold winds, incessant rainfall and turning leaves marking the transition to five months of dark, freezing and generally unpleasant conditions. And the reason I’m not talking about that is it is just too damn depressing a prospect, so I’ll while away in denial for a little longer.

Except for this observation: odd summer wasn’t it? Cold and frosty through the start of spring, rainy and horrid in May, scorching hot for the next two months “ nicely coinciding when buggered knee riding ban “ and then Autumn came early in August. I’ll take a bit of global warming next year then.

No summer may not have officially ended but August marks the finale of my triple indexed, multi-tabbed, pivot tabling spreadsheet of all things bikey. Started five years ago and slowly sliding into obsessive compulsiveness, this behemoth can instantly present “ for example – the cost per mile of a single component or a graphical explosion of miles ridden further sub-divided by bike, route, month and choice of riding trouser. There are tables and formulae conceived back in 2001 which make absolutely no sense any more, but I have this sneaking suspicion that deleting them would wrench away the mysterious underpinning of the entire spreadsheet.

Recording every ride and every purchase while exchanging bikes at shockingly frequent intervals throws up some interesting statistics. A successful drunken bid on a Ti hardtail cost around£3 a mile when it both spat me off with painful regularity and then failed to recoup even half its value. Or a XT mech that’s lasted four bikes while a set of rings from the same manufacturer lasted less than three rides. Well interesting to me anyway.

Continue reading “Season’s end”

It’s not very PC.

In truth, it wasn’t a PC at all anymore, rather a hulking square of electronic junk spitting out random invective and refusing to respond to my increasingly desperate measures. And although my blameless motives had engineered this state of apparent computer suicide, nothing could prepare me for the horrors of going toe to toe with the Operating System From Hell.

Microsoft chuck it out of the” Windows was not “ as is their inspirational tag line “ helping me to realise my potential”. Unless my potential was as of a serial wrecker of PC’s or to hunt down Microsoft employees before dispatching them in messy and interesting ways. And it’s not like I’m a total PC numpty; in years past, I was the go to” guy for simple explanations of Extended versus Expanded memory, the data retrevial expert, the hardware guru. Honestly, I had the pen protectors and everything.

Technology has apparently moved on bloating software and gobbling up ever increasing processor power. Like a geeky Bobby Riggs facing the Billy Jean King of PC world domination, I was found wanting almost everywhere with experience offering little against the nonsensical abstraction of the XP layer.

I like to make it clear that the PC was broken before I embarked on this life wasting experience. I know this to be true because it was I that had broken it while stupidly modifying the registry on the reasonable grounds that it was editable. Stuff stopped working, worked to rule or worked at all the speed needed to hunt down a lettuce. Worst of all Media Player was cattled beyond all redemption leaving my MP3 player locked in a world of two hundred tracks listened to about two hundred times.

Continue reading “It’s not very PC.”

Momentum

Momentum as defined by the impossibly stuffy OED as property of a moving body that determines the length of time required to bring it to rest when under the action of a constant force“. Precise and yet entirely underwhelming as a description for the cyclist’s joy of the exact and opposite reaction to pedalling. If there were a caveman dictionary on the web it’d offer a more succinct: Momentum, Good. Pedalling, Bad.

Grieving for the loss of momentum, especially when it’s snatched away by a idling ped apparently holidaying in the middle of the road, will wrench out a heartfelt moan or breathless curse. So if I’m looking a little pissed off after sprinting two hundred yards to beat a long waiting light set only to axe that hard earned speed on the anvil of the brakes, guess what? I am.

Hence the reason, we unwanted detritus of the city streets coast through red lights, swing audaciously through stationary traffic and nibble up to the bumper in front with nary a finger on the stoppers. Momentum rocks my freewheel and woe betide the jaywalker who saunters out, labouring under the belief that stepping on the organic accelerator doesn’t hurt. After a week of commuting ferrying the leaded laptop of extreme weightiness, guess what? It does.

Continue reading “Momentum”

By the power of the loquacious…

… I give you Senator William McAdoo on Warren Harding whose “speeches left the impression of an army of pompous phrases moving over the landscape in search of an idea. Sometimes these meandering words would actually capture a straggling thought and bear it triumphantly, a prisoner in their midst, until it died of servitude and overwork

Now that is a proper put down. Reminds me of a few people. No, since you asked, I wasn’t including myself.

I’m in the wrong job.

No, this isn’t some sudden epiphany or life changing statement, something rather more mundane but intensely irritating. Today’s paper offered up a story that the Government has spunked£1 billion pounds of taxpayers (er, that’s our then) money on transport initiatives in the last ten years. Doesn’t sound much I hear you say well here’s the kicker; none of that money has actually been spent on building anything at all. No tunnels dug, no stations opened, no roads widened.

This litany of serial incompetence can be subdivided into£250 million on CrossRail feasibility studies,£74 million on “tram preparation” whatever that is,£20 million on Thameslink consultancy and a further£20 million deciding what to do with the road to Stonehenge? How can that cost£20 million without actually lifting a shovel? What kind of study was it? Loads of£2000 a day consultants ensconced in a Bahamas’ hotel wondering “well what about if we cladded it with jism and dead antelopes, that’d be authentic“.

My personal favourite is 32 million squandered by Fat Boy Prescott commissioning “Multi Model” studies whatever the fuck they are. The reports are currently being recycled as peat somewhere in the “stuff no one gives a crap about” filing room in Whitehall.

I could go on but burst blood vessels await. The TimesOnline has more.

It’s hard to know what’s worst; the fact that congestion, environmental pollution and the power of the car destroy and devalue the country every single day while a billion pounds is squandered, or that someone is earning a hell of a living grazing off the fat of Government stupidity.

So in the style of “if you can’t beat them, join them“, I’m considering moonlighting as an environmental impact advisor (dirt). This means being paid to ride my bike.