Author: Alex

Unhinged logic

On By AlexIn Bikes, Other stuff3 Comments

Note to serious people: This is so tongue in cheek , the organ in question is almost in my ear, balanced on a brass neck and being fed a diet of impudence and gall. But feel free to argue the case for the bloody things because that’s what “comments in moderation” is for 😉 Hate mail welcome as ever, you have your own folder.

Right then, hinge and bracket weirdos, answer me this; “what is the point of your bleeding, breeding folders?” Oh I know you are out there – the stats report repeated sneaky redirects from “blind-welders-argus.com” and “small-wheels-small-parts.co.uk“. Ever since I wrote this, your fluttering to the unflattering light of my abuse and catty snipes betrays a need to belong – if only longingly looking in from the outside – with us proper cyclists.

Niches do this to people and being ostracised triggers an overdose of the ‘we’re worthy and we don’t care‘ gland.

I’m not buying it – normal dudes and dudettes think of bikes as only useful transport and lavish no further time or money on improving their utilitarian lot but we’re not like that. It’s an almost painless, if fiscally insane, slide from hobby into mental illness until bikes become far to close to the centre of your world. We know it’s selfish, impossible to explain, regularly painful and absolutely on the margins of diminishing returns.

But folders don’t get in – you can have your special interest groups, your forums, your no proper bikes wanted here sites but you don’t count, you don’t get to play with the big kids.

So if you’re still here, explain please the best place for 180 degrees of separation from a real bike. If it isn’t in a handy skip or discarded under a dusty museum exhibit labelled “amazingly useless stuff that somehow made it into production“, then it can only be to span the bridge between a train franchise alleged ‘commitment to cycling’ and the actual delivery of any service in support of that marketing guff.

With a huge dollop of Grudge and a soupcon of Ing, even the foldingly blind can see transportable cycles having a place on a journey that has no place for storing real ones. But if they are really oh-so-simple to de-construct into an unhappy combination of grime and spikey tubes, then “WHY THE FUCK DON’T YOU DO IT ALL THE TIME?”

My spot in the bike cage is well earned; trips taken in dreadful conditions, snot-o-grams to facilities to fix the showers, occasional humour to entertain the queue of unwashed souls shared the changing room – all that kind of thing. Oh yeah, I know my rights and you’re bang to them. This morning not only were two halves of a child’s bike, full assembled, brazenly parked in my spot, it was joined in some unholy communion by about five others.

All built, all pointless and all in my way. So one cyclist to another, here’s a free piece of advice “fold the bloody things up and take them somewhere else“. Make them a talking point at your desk, advance your green credentials to passers by or wield them as instruments of spikey death in boring meetings. I care not what, just do something.

Or get a real bike and regain some lost dignity. I absolutely believed that I was drinking deeply from the chalice of attention seeking arse, but it appears I was merely holding it for someone else.

Oh and I’m a hypocrite as well because I’m always preaching that cycling should be a broad church respecting all faiths from recumbents to downhill monsters passing through almost every oddity in between. But not folders – think of yourself as ex-communicated.

PS. I can’t go and watch transformers either because it’s giving me nasty flashbacks 😉

Flat.

On By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike RidingLeave a comment

Remember the old adage that dog owners begin to resemble their pets ? (I assume it is dogs, as it’d be hard to imagine even the most facially adept animal lover morphing into a double take of “ say “ a goldfish). Whatever, the very same process has transpired between me and my tyres.

First thing this morning, first commute for two weeks, the ˜rat front was partially flat and a strange shining orb was lurking in the sky, looming like an alien craft. Putting two and two together and coming up with a conspiracy theory, it seemed obvious that green eyed monsters had both taken over the free world and still had time to let my tyre down.

After some brief yet grunty action with the plastic pump of piss poorness, I’d punched 120 PSI into the soft tube on the dozy assumption that this’d provide sufficient inflation for both out and back trips. Obviously what I’d forgotten was with this much pressure, the tyre bounced and jumped over all but the flattest tarmac and my teeth will now require much expensive dental work due to unplanned yet frenzied mashing.

Flat legs mimicked the tyres as three hours MTB’ing in the Flanders of South East England had sucked the gas from these vital cycling appendages and the will to live from the rest of me. Actually, my expectations were so low, that any ride not ending in hospital or custody could be deemed broadly positive.

Because jumping on a bike before going on an extended MTB jaunt has recently led to broken bits of Al being littered over uncaring trails. Since we’re off to Scotland on Wednesday for five days of riding and five nights of drinking, this seemed a disturbing portent.

Anyway, I survived through the power of extreme mincing and rapid fire excuses while making real life contact with two people who’d been unluckily washed up on the Hedgehog. It’s like Second Life in here without the celebrity endorsements.

Here’s a picture of Duncan riding a trail that I came to think of as where the f*ck is it? Still at least this meant it couldn’t be as muddy as other 19.5 miles of which mostly all was mud flingingly gloopy and yet strangely fun.

Flickr Image

Finding the London bike was a bit of a challenge since a) I’m nearly officially old and have rapidly reducing memory and prostrate function, b) I parked abandoned it while pissed and c) the thicket of bikes made it an almost Stanley like plunge into its’ grimy heart to finally dig it out.

At which point I realised both tyres were on the soft side of usuable. My mobile pumping Viagra is a difficult hybrid of gas powered and manual inflation. It’s fairly rubbish at both but, if pushed, I’d have to plump for it being particularly useless in the wanking elbow scenario. Good job I’ve put all that time in on the Wii.

My final ode to flatness was a bendi-killer-bus doing his best to achieve the unwritten target of two dead cyclists a day. One second of inattention triggered a further three seconds of abject terror as 18 metres of Al-crushing tonnage threatened to grind me flat against the curb.

I know one thing that isn’t going to be flat later tonight “ it starts with B and ends in my belly.

Climate change is not the same as the weather outside.

On By AlexIn Other stuffLeave a comment

So why is it every news anchor and his excitable producer keep trying to tell us that it is? This last week, a parade of heavyweight but interchangeable talking heads have attempted to construct a logical straight line between floods and global warming without passing through any points marked ˜proper science’, ˜historical precedent’ or even ˜common sense’.

These Serious Men In Wellies, as I’ve come to think of them, are summoning the same meteorological worthies who predicted the entire South East of England would be a Dustball by July of this year. This was, of course, before the rain started and the talk of water shortages stopped way back sometime in May.

But so desperate are the SMIW to create more doom from the gloom of waist deep flooding, they load the weather charlatans with explosive questions such as Well Global Warming is certainly a factor here, and it can only get worse wouldn’t you agree?

What follows is the doomsayer, at the dry end of the camera link, waffling total nonsense interjected with the odd nugget of useful information. It goes something like well actually the research suggests warmer and longer summers [ pause for dramatic effect ] but also for more rain as well. Huh?

That’s from the same box of wrongness that sunshine and showers came from and yet it doesn’t deter His Moistness The Smug from turning to camera “ with a sweeping arm to indicate inland sea where civilisation recently habituated “ and ending his report with a brief summary on how the world will end by about next Thursday.

Don’t get me wrong here – we’ve performed all sorts of selfish buggeration of the planet and it’s clear to anyone not President of the United States that climate change is pretty much unstoppable. But the media must stop binding every rain storm, strong wind or two unbroken days of sunshine into some kind of climatically catastrophic event.

If the Jet Stream wasn’t sat squarely above Bracknell and the Azores High could be arsed to play nicely on our Southern shores, we’d all be washing in each others wee and having the perfect excuse not to clean the car. So if the bloody BBC doesn’t stop treating me like an idiot, I shall be forced to unleash BOTH the Badger Berserkers AND the Ninja Voles. You want a catastrophic event “ then these highly trained military mammals are more than happy to oblige.

Driving me crazy

On By AlexIn Other stuffLeave a comment

The weather this summer has been “ if I was tending to optimistic euphemisms “quite interesting. I was making this very comment to Carol as the M4 slip road disappeared under a raging torrent of flood water. The previous 45 minutes had crammed in a whole interesting adjectives such as dangerous, awash, scary and if I can throw in a noun – biblical.

And to exciting let me add odd. Specifically the oddness surrounding a scenario where the bow wave generated by a car from the other carriageway sweeps over the bonnet, overwhelms the wipers and crashes against the screen bringing with it the real threat of imminent drowning.

At one point during this watery voyage, a BMW actually sunk up to the door seals while attempting to abandon the post apocalyptic carnage that was the motorway which, at least, shows that God has a sense of humour.

Still quite interesting this, I ventured through gritted teeth as mile after mile of aquaplaning drove slow progress westwards towards some distant vision of weather sanity. Behind us, landslips blocked the motorway and passengers were being decanted from flooded trains scheduled for “ but never arriving at Bicester. Chiltern Railways again eh? I bet God was pissing himself. Literally.

Just plotting a non water based route onto the Motorway was tough enough. The rain continued to hammer down as we were besieged in a gray dark lit only by a thousand brake lights. Our way was blocked by the unusual July hazard of the road ahead being two feet below the water table. A diversion through a roundabout summering as a tidal pond was enlivened by a flock of stranded metal ducks floating gently in this murky soup.

Being aware that buried somewhere in the handbook would be a warning that this vehicle was not fitted with the optional hull and outboard motor, my route was a more circumspect plunge through still sufficient wet stuff to bury a much loved family pet. That’s assuming your animal of choice is lion sized or bigger.

As water cascaded over the windows, my grimace of fear sounded an odd counterpoint when a little used accountancy gland secreted stomach churning bile. This complex chemical reaction could best be summarised as tell me again, exactly how much does a new engine cost ?.

The sun finally broke through clouds, still heavy with more rain, as we crested a hill hiding the first green folds of the Devonshire countryside. Ten minutes later I turned off the wipers and began the difficult mental therapy of pretending the last four hours had been nothing more than a very bad, yet extremely vivid dream.

And when finally arriving bedraggled and horribly frazzled at the holiday cottage, what do you think the first thing we did? You got it, went for a swim.

Brief Encounter

On By AlexIn Other stuff, Site Stuff4 Comments

Great Film – you really don’t need a citizenship exam for the UK if you’ve watched this. It shows all the great English traits of awkwardness, politeness and an absolute sense of doing the right thing. I always thought of myself as a bit of a Trevor Howard character but as someone kindly pointed out the other day “you’re quite strange really aren’t you?”

Anyway the tenuous link to the title pertains to my holiday preparations. Firstly I’ve invested the family savings in galoshes futures and fully expect to return from a week in Devon a multi millionaire. Secondly, a large stick has been stashed for disciplining the children because I appear to be losing my voice in some kind of wages of sin laryngitides thing. And finally not being able to shout in no way prevents me from elbowing in to play our latest pointless purchase.

Yesterday we bought a Nintendo Wii. After a quick beer* with a friend of mine, plugs, attachments and cosmic interfaces were randomly shoved into appropriate sockets and we had a brief encounter with the sports pack. Well Carol did, I just drank more beer and ran around the room like a crazed aerobics instructor until 2am this morning.

It’s a brilliant idea, well executed and extremely moreish. I fully expect not to leave our holiday cottage for the next seven days. I certainly won’t be writing any of this nonsense during that time either because a) the nearest thing they have to the Internet in rural Devon is the postal goat and b) because no computers, laptops or communication devices are being afforded boot space.

Except for the Wii of course 🙂

* the first one was very quick. Lasted about a minute. We slowed down for the next four or five.

Soul Stealer

On By AlexIn Photography3 Comments

There are still certain people who believe an image taken by a camera will steal their souls. However, these individuals are not within my immediate surround which is made up of vainglorious riding buddies and children who’ve lived their life in the digital world.

One of the joys of digital photography is the immediacy of the whole experience; shoot, review, giggle or sigh and then again, again like an amped up teletubby. The whole anticipation/delay ratio of film never really stacked up for me, especially when the alternative was delivered into a world of now.

My short lived rental (ownership seems too strong a word) of the Canon 300D was mired only by its’ slow digital processing “ especially when compared to my S80 which is lightening quick “ small LCD panel and lack of fast FPS burst.

The monster! Flickr Picture

And in an amazing alignment of the karma planets, a chain of events, sales and purchases saw the 300D head northwards to my friend Mark, and a 400D replacement collected over a couple of pints last week from Bez.

As part of the deal, this monster 70-300mm lens (and with a 1.6 multiplier because of the smaller sensor that’s a whopping 110-480mm) was included which provides sufficient magnification to digitally download someones’ soul from about half a mile away. If there is ever a proper summers day and naked bathing become fashionably in sleepy Stone, I could get myself into proper trouble.

First impressions “ somewhat mitigated by not wishing to drown expensive electronics in the never ending world of wet “ are that image processing is as fast as my S80 and everything else is better. Whether this will deliver a similar uplift in performance to my photography skills is still in the balance.

All the gear and no idea? You betcha and it feels good 🙂

Is it panto season yet?

On By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike RidingLeave a comment

Because if it is, I am ready for the part of Grumpy the dwarf. I am basically method acting the little fella 24 hours a day.

This morning I found myself in the unusual position of not wanting to get off the train. Normally, my modus operandi is to be leaning on the doors desperate to escape from the sweaty tin can full of properly odd people.

But today, mentally beaten by the drumming of the rain on the carriage roof, I could hardly bring myself to waterproof up and venture out. The train had already been delayed due to unidentified objects on the line which I took to be Monday morning suicide victims unable to stomach another week of pissing rain.

One the cleaning staff started to stare and their were whispered conversations about informing the station manager, I grudgingly rotated still moist arse into a standing position and trudged wearily onto the platform. True to form, the rain increased from bloody annoying to gopping wet as I wheeled out of the station. The humidity ensures that you’re wet on both sides of your rain jacket, and one arrives at work both a little flustered and partially cooked.

Last weekend, the optimistic four drove a few hundred miles to Wales in the forlorn hope of some dryish riding. Saturday was warmish, the rain held off but the trails were still excitingly soggy. And I use the word exciting rather than bowel scrunchingly terrifying as I don’t want to be labelled a total wimp.

Especially since the trails/rivers were being lightly bashed by my hardtail. My body was more brutally bashed and by the end of the final run, I was ready to lie down in a sandy stream and wait for some passing angel to dispense alcohol. It was fun is a happy to still be alive at the end kind of way but next time I’m bringing the talent compensator. And based on my crappy riding this time around, it has some work to do.

We didn’t ride Sunday what with the two inches of rain falling in the night, the 8/8ths cloud cover, the howling wind and barely double digit temperatures. Instead I went home and was rained on there instead while operating the immortal electric lawnmower.

My shoulder is getting worse, I’m having to pay someone to explain why our roof leaks in all sorts of interesting ways. That gives me the chance to can pay someone else to line their pocket attempting to sue the original builder, who has taken the attitude got your cash, don’t give a shit. Added to this is the hated, never changing weather forecast predicts next weeks holiday will be spent inside or on the roof to evade rising water levels.

Is it any wonder I’m grumpy? And looking round I’m not alone.

Perspective is the thing though. Exactly a year ago. I had just smashed up my knee and then spent most of the following week in Hospital. It was not an experience I ever want to repeat although, one could reasonably argue, riding is the Summer of 2007 is pretty shit and “ at least – it’d be warm and dry in Accident and Emergency.

“Are you an idiot?”

On By AlexIn Bikes, Road Riding4 Comments

This was the incredulous question posed, to me, the other night by a real policeman. The main reason for his incredulity had been my brazen running of a red light that he had stopped at. I’ve always thought that if you’re going to break the law, then it must be done with a certain style. And self referential panache normally sits well with a belly full of lager which, obviously, I’d consumed during the previous four hours.

What started as a brief after work drink inexorably finished as a train wreck. So impressed was I with the new smoke free pubs, that I had a number of additional drinks to celebrate. On sober reflection, probably not the greatest idea for a man about to play with 25 minutes of dangerous traffic.

Due to my level of social confusion and enveloped in the happy fug of the properly trolleyed, I never even saw the red light. Or the police van. I was barely aware of the claxon call of the siren and associated flashing lights until Mr. Plod barked out his understandable question. The rest of the conversation went something like this:

Me: “Yes”
Him: “Didn’t you notice the big white van with Police written all down the side”
Me: “No”
Him: “And the red light, did that register at all?”
Me: “Nope”
Him: “Do you have any reason or excuse why you did that”
Me: [thinks, comes up blank]: “Er, No”
Him: “Have you been drinking this evening sir”
Me: “Oh yes”
Him: “Were you aware that their is a law against being drunk in charge of a bicycle”
Me: “Well, currently, I wouldn’t exactly say I’m in charge of it. Rather the other way round”
Him: “I should give you a ticket for both offences”
Me: “Yep, you probably should”
He rants some more, asks me where I’m going, I reply to the best of my dribbling ability. He decides to let me off. In pity,I think.
Him: “I suggest you use the cycle paths and ride slowly to the station sir. I don’t want to be fetching you off the tarmac”
Me: “Thanks alot. It’s not true what they say about the police is it?”
Him: [narrows eyes]: “What would THAT be Sir?”
Me: [oops]: “Oh nothing, finer bunch of fellows you couldn’t hope to find, I’ll be off then, ok?”

I did feel like an idiot tho and more so when I sobered up. The decision not to share with him that I had to ride 6 – mostly lightless – miles home at the far end of the train ride was probably the right one. This part of the journey was spent mostly either musing how I’d manged to lose both my decent rear light AND my lock on a four mile wobble through town or – blinded by oncoming headlights – in a verge.

Last weekend, I nearly committed to paper hard and fast resolutions about not running red lights anymore (and I’m really only an occasional transgressor (careful how you spell that) now), not getting wound up by cycle hating motorists, not getting involved in pointless altercations, etc, etc.

This morning when a white van carelessly swung across my nose without so much as the whiff of an indication, I couldn’t but help ask if he’d always had a small willy or it’d be hacked off in a nasty industrial accident.

Resolutions you see, not worth the paper they’re not written on.

iPhone smoothie

On By AlexIn Other stuffLeave a comment

Rather irritatingly still busy at the moment. However, this from my friend at work who has the knack of tracking down fantastic links. This from our batty friends at “Will it Blend”

The iPhone smoothie

When I get ten minutes, I’ll tell you the full story of last night’s run in with law. Running the very same red light that a police van is waiting at, and being only a single wobbly wheel from completely trolleyed nearly ended in a night falling down some stairs, behind the cells.

Oops.

How do they do that?

On By AlexIn Other stuffLeave a comment

I want to talk to you all about facebook. But I’m not quite ready as my initial snootiness has been sanded down to mere astonishment by just how bloody addictive it is. Anyway until sufficient mental damping files a placeholder for some meaningful words, here is another conundrum. When did the kids get so old?
Taking advantage of a entire day when the sky didn’t explode, we decamped to the garden for some proper family messing about. And photo-tarts as they are (chip off the old block there), random and verbal performed a grass-exercise (like a floor exercise only soilier) from their gymnastics class. I tell you, it must be their mum where this stuff comes from.

Verbal goes vertical

If I tried that, a devastating chain reaction would be triggered by a collapsing shoulder and likely ending in a month of traction. This didn’t stop them asking if one day they’d be as old and flabby as me. They spared me the adjective ‘useless‘ for which I’m grateful.

It was about yesterday when they learned to walk. I’m going to check the veg for GM content.