Right, come on. Who’s responsible?

On By AlexIn Other stuff4 Comments

Yes, that’s you I’m talking to at the back, with your shuffling feet, guilty demeanor and chest pressed chin hiding a face shaped to verbalise “not me gov, honest, I’ve never taken nuffin‘”

If not you, who? Someone in malicious authority has flicked off the sunshine switch and simultaneously turned the rain tap full on. Grey skies clamp the planet and occasional sunny strobes are instantly hidden behind a curtain of wind blown wetness with hail to follow. Two consecutive sodden commutes suggested a deed pole like email address change so if you’re in the market for some deep water harbour action, mail me at almostdrowned@athousandfathoms.wet. Anything with a draft of less than ten feet can be easily accommodated.

Meteorologically, I am absolutely in sync with the sky meets ground low pressure system after my football team was relegated from the top flight on goal difference. Goal Difference for fucks sake. That’s like being dumped by your first girlfriend after she’s tearfully explained you’re the best shag in the universe but she can’t been seen playing hide the one eyed womb ferret with a bloke whose middle name is Derek.

Obviously the team is not at fault. Others conspired against us by playing eleven of the crowd against our nearest rivals or cheating the transfer system through a process technically known as “ah fuck it, they’ll never notice“. And before anyone and I MEAN ANYONE spouts some shit that it was in our own hands and this bitterness is nothing more than sour grapes, let me remind you it’s Sheffield we’re talking about. We don’t do rationale argument, we do ‘it’s someone elses fault‘ and ‘everyone hates us because we’re a bit rubbish“.

So I’ll be supporting Chelsea against the craven Manchester United who turned up but didn’t play last weekend, and AC Milan when they take on the club we’ve come to think of as “Historical Artifacts who think the shell suit is a class garment“.

If the weather doesn’t improve soon, I’ll be writing to the MP who I failed to vote for. But since he was sworn in with a majority of forty three million, it’s unlikely to make much difference.

Duckin’ hell, that was wet.

On By AlexIn Bikes, Road Riding2 Comments

You may be astonished to hear that I occupy a very important position in the firm. But please restrain your flabber from gasting once you understand that this lofty perch is merely geographical. While some lesser lights toil in open plan darkness, bribery and sustained sprout induced germ warfare secured me the rights to a window seat. So a bank of mucky windows separate me from London city smog and the occasional desperate urge to leave the building from the seventh floor.

In summer, this expanse of glass focuses significantly more dangerous radiation than an industrial microwave, except during rainstorms where each watery drop mocks my soon to be moist personage. Personal grim reapers the lot of them and “ if you listen very carefully “ you can hear them malevolently whisper he’s mine, mine, MINE.

The drumming nemesis of my homeward commute was perfectly accompanied by the head to desk counterpoint beat of a man who is coming to terms with a recent courageous decision to remove the mudguards from his bikes. The compelling rationale behind this I tell you what, why not do a rain dance instead choice was “ and I’m sure you’ll be laughing almost as much as I am here “ because they were aesthetically disagreeable.

So having splashed through forty five minutes of elephant trunk playtime, my entire being graded a level of immersion not seen since the Man From Atlantis hit our screens back in 79. Mark Harris and I began to share some disturbing similarities as desperate Darwinism was adding oxygenating gills and a food processing system based on osmosis. The key difference was tho was while old water-boy seemed to be enjoying his lot, I was having a properly miserable time.

If this is wet, I was ———————————————-> and still heading in that direction of travel. The only difference between riding and drowning was a bloody minded refusal to die of water damage. My shoes were a watersport park for a party of lemmings, my arse was pebble dashed by a one inch tyre bringing the waterwheel bang up to date, and my bum crack could easily double as a deep water harbour, and I’m bloody sure hundreds of Cuban refugees were queuing up to dock.

After about an eternity, it was finally over and I waded indoors to the delight of the children who were broadly convinced that Daddy looked far better as a duck. I think that’s what they said, it was pretty close to how I felt anyway.

Worryingly, there are some who live amongst us “ similar and yet not the same because they are missing a vital organ; to whit, one brain. Spot them as they enjoy nay embrace this type of wet and miserable riding. This is the same therapy group who espouse the joy of winter mud enemas and apparently take perverse pleasure in racing around a field with five hundred other recently escaped nutters.

These are dangerous people and should not be approached.

The forecast for the remainder of the week reads like this; Rain, More rain, Misery, Trench foot, Mudslides, Creation of inland seas. So I’m off to the zoo for some surreptitious animal gathering and then onward to the Boatyard.

So that was summer was it? Thanks.

Today is not a good day to die*

On By AlexIn Bikes, Road Riding3 Comments

It’s been a while since a complete stranger has made my acquaintance in that thoroughly modern manner of trying to kill me.

Last time, a bloke high on testosterone but low on intelligence failed to co-ordinate a mobile phone, a road junction and his optical collision detection system. Before that, a rather pleasant older gentleman just ran me over

So it’s a bit of a relief to have one in the bag while maintaining a firm grip on all my limbs if not my sanity. There is the Alex Two Bomb Randomisation Theory at play here; if you smuggle a bomb onto an aeroplane, statistically you’re in great shape as what is the chance of SOMEONE ELSE DOING THE SAME? Pretty damn clever eh?

So by nearly, but not quite, having an accident today makes it statistically improbable that my twitching form be impaled under a set of designer bull bars tomorrow. Oh and before the protractor and pocket protector brigade wade in to explain that this is total nonsense, because each incident operates in a single randomisation context “ I KNOW OK, but it makes me feel better anyway.

Hyde Park Corner has been packed full of excitement and danger since the inauguration of my weekly battle with the uncaring motorised killers of our great capital. Short lights on the rotary are balanced by a long set when you’re trying to join, but this is largely irrelevant since everyone jumps each set. I know this but with misery enjoying the company of being pissed on and pissed off , I incautiously speared a front wheel into the lionised tarmac of the apparently red-held traffic.

Not being totally insane, it was a manoeuvre censured with an emergency double take, into which a belligerent taxi driver barged through the long lit red in an apparent attempt to terminate my worthless existence. I parked the bike on his bumper and my face in his window so we could discuss the merits of such an approach.

I was forthright. I may have tended to the frank and possibly even spilled over into vexed. During one diplomatically tricky exchange, there was just the possibility of a stray into quite annoyed. In Non Violent Conflict Resolution classes, it’s not clear to me where You fuckhead, you stupid fucking clown, you arrogant fat, stupid arse fits into using passive language to settle the incident to everyone’s satisfaction. But I tried if not punching the twat counts.

Even above the shouting, I could dimly here a hundred horns belting out their staccato umbrage. The cycle killer couldn’t move since my bike was still resting on his bumper and my hand was resting somewhat more firmly on his jacket lapel. And with all this at 5:20pm on one of the busiest junction in town, not much was moving behind us either. Shame.

We eventually parted, not with kind words, but with threats and promises that next time there would be proper violence. I was properly white hot, vibratingly angry “ unable to stop shaking or construct a well argued or even a grammatically correct sentence. I filled the gaps with lots of swear words though and that felt good.

But here’s the thing; it’ll make no difference at all. I can’t be cowed by the motorist however much they try to cattle me, and the guy in the cab will never see cyclists as anything but annoyingly slow bugs waiting to be mowed down and crushed. What’s worse, bugs that don’t even pay road tax.

Got to stay out there though. Otherwise it’d feel like letting them win.

* I always wanted that bloody Klingon to get the fear and heroically intone today is a good day to get pissed and fondle innocent tribbles.

What the fuck is that?

On By AlexIn Other stuff2 Comments

Twice in one day. First the cast iron hinge pretending to be a mountain bike and now a “whatingodsnameisthat” new printer has been installed in the office. Apparently it’s super efficient drawing little power and using space age technology to save ink and, presumably, lives.

What is less clear from the spec sheet is the size of this planet friendly amalgam of fax, print, email and – from what I can glean – lentil growing. It is bloody enormous – I thought we lived in a world of ever increasing miniturisation where technology stuff is so small, it’s useless for both input and output; but hey who gives a shit, it looks great plonked on the pub bar.

But if you’re going to buck a trend, then give it a damn good bucking i say. We have HAL installed on the 7th floor with it’s eerie fan, frankly terrifying random paper sorting, dangerous whirling noises and a colour instruction screen clearly nicked from NASA. Technically sophisticated it may be but it looks like the bastard union of a filing cabinet and a 1970s photocopier. With a suitcase glued onto the end.

There is know way I’m risking sending any of my documents in the direction of “big mamma” because then I’ve had to go near it.

And it scares me.

Hummer Time.

On By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike Riding5 Comments

Shuffling embarrassed into my inbox this morning was this horror which understandably put me right off my breakfast.

Arrgh, my eyes

It’s a Hummer Mountain Bike and you can read all about it here. There is not sufficient mathematics in the world to begin to count the number of things wrong with it. But almost worse than that is this; the marketing bollocks which accompanied that photo.

I’ve seen some outlandish claims made for mountain bikes over the years but this one doesn’t just take the biscuit, it nicks the whole bloody packet and makes a hostile bid for the manufacturer.

All HUMMER Tactical Mountain Bikes use Montague’s patented military folding system, developed to allow Paratroopers an easy exit from military aircraft with a full-size mountain bike

I’m sure you “ like me “ have many a time lamented the lack of ambition from your bike designers. So how useful would it be to be able to leap out of a plane knowing your robust off road transport has been thoughtfully designed to fall out of a Hercules transport plane? That has to be the most pointless Unique Selling Point since the SDLP combined two power crazed lunatics into a single political party.

Obviously if this behemoth ever did go on active service, chances are it’d land on your head, killing you instantly and creating a tidal wave that’d make the current rising sea levels look like a bit of heavy surf.

And yet, the copy spares itself no embarrassment whatsoever with what follows:

Developed for extreme riding, the HUMMER Tactical Mountain Bike can be stored inside your HUMMER, car, boat, plane, closet or wherever else you stash your gear.

Or possibly up your arse, which should be the immediate and final resting place of the advertising blurb.

If one was spending useful time nailing colours to masts, mine would translate to unreconstructed bike snobbery and irrational hatred of folding cycles. But in this case, it is perfectly justifiable to lampoon the whole ludicrous concept with it’s cheap, heavy components, pointless front fork, spindly yet weighty frame and “ to cap an almost uncappable folly “ a price tag of£750.

You could buy a car for that. Or at least a nice bike. And – although I honestly believed nothing would ever put me in a position to say this – it is EVEN WORSE than the Sinclair Wheeled Death Machine

Pass me the angle grinder. It’d be an act of selfless public service.

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!