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.

Lazy…

On By AlexIn Other stuffLeave a comment

… but funny. Stole this from SniffPetrol but I will get round to writing something of my own soon.

BRITAIN UNDER SIX INCHES OF TRAVEL CHAOS

Britain was braced for more bleeding obvious advice this week as forecasters warned of another incoming front of TRAVEL CHAOS. This new warning comes only days after the whole country awoke to find a six inch covering of TRAVEL CHAOS had covered much of the British Isles overnight with more flurries of TRAVEL CHAOS over the following 24 hours.

However, whilst a further dusting of TRAVEL CHAOS could be a problem in itself, some experts say the real danger for drivers is of being hit by a sudden shower of sodding patronising advice from motoring organisations. “If this weather continues, drivers need to be extra careful to avoid large patches of fucking obvious advice,” noted Dr Gneil Pipely, Head of Wasting Everyone’s Time Studies at All Saints College, Appleton. “For example, it’s all too easy to be in the car listening to the radio when, next thing you know, you’re being told to avoid any journey that isn’t necessary, and by the time you sense the smugly high minded tone it’s too late to take evasive re-tuning action”.

But facile warnings apparently aimed at people who just drive around in their cars for no reason whatsoever could be only the tip of a very patronising iceberg, Dr Pipely warns. With the expected return of TRAVEL CHAOS motorists should also be on high alert for other blandly useless information such as ‘carry a warm rug in the car’, ‘take a flask of tea with you on every journey’, ‘if the road looks icy, don’t bang the car into first gear and mash the throttle like a mentalist’ and ‘always arrange for a St Bernard to run everywhere after your car just in case you drive into a crevace on the M4’. Motorists are also reminded that a good way to keep warm during TRAVEL CHAOS is to smash the car radio repeatedly with a hand jack until Sally fucking Traffic on Radio 2 just fucking shuts up.

Made me laugh anyway. Although they spelt crevace wrong. I dunno, I may have to write and complain. Talking of which, I’ve had to write Apple a strongly worded note regarding the longevity and robustness of their baby IPOD. Mine lasted almost three months before entering an unwarrantied electronic sulk. Reading between the lines, the reason they do not feel any responsibility to fix it is because “you’ve only gone and used it”

I’m back to my totally beaten up but still working 3 year old MP3 player. And I shall neither be buying Apple products every again or even eating one. That’ll show ’em!

Random oddness

On By AlexIn Other stuff1 Comment

There are some very strange people out there in the wibbly wobbly world of the Internet. Who would think of setting up a website to record graffiti and vandalism in public spaces?

Don't we all ?

Well this guy and actually some of them are quite amusing. You could get all pretentious citing this as street art and a platform for unteconstructed creatives to rail against the system, but that sounds like a right load of old horse to me.

Made me laugh tho 🙂

Recycle.. Recycle..

On By AlexIn Other stuff1 Comment

.. oh fuck that.

The firm I work for makes nothing but money and burns nothing but graduates. But now we have a green agenda which, I freely admit, has come of a bit of a shock. The only green things in the building are stumbling hangovers and forgotten new years resolution fruit. But as my colleague and “head of bins” explains we are now all gloriously empowered to chase and embrace the philanthropic market first trailblazed by Bill “I know I’m a nerdy, uncaring bastard but here’s a few quid to assuage my guilt” Gates.

It makes me so proud. We’ve suffixed every email with a trite reminder than by printing this electronic blame memo, entire regions of the amazon may be deforested (and here’s the rub, every extra pointless signature burns storage disks which are about as carbon friendly as a Hummer) and the battery coop of our office space is now festooned with colour coded bins each demarking a specific recycling repository.

Being all knit my own yogurt, I am completely bought into the middle class ideal of saving the planet. We recycle at home as if our life depended on it (you know, it just might), compost with wild abandon – mindless of the consequences of starting an organic chain reaction that could easily destroy the village – and drive carefully to the local dump (sorry household recycling centre) to dispose of the myriad of nasty stuff our right on council can’t be arsed to collect. Which includes the children – that’s a joke, oh hang on I’ve just counted, can anyone remember how many we used to have?

But the firm is spectacularly poor at being good at this kind of stuff, so instead of a simple voluntary system based on a disposal approach well understood from our own domestic shit, they’ve only gone and devised an entirely new regime. This has committee written all over it with a complex arrangement of multi coloured bins each with a narrow remit and lasting about five minutes before the (environmentally diffident) emails started to fly.

Now you could reasonably argue that the employees don’t really give a shit and would rather lampoon any well intentioned approach with questions such as “Do coffee cups count as wet or dry waste” and “what expense code do I charge my floor roaming bin hunt too?” and you’d be about right. But because the system is so complicated and the simple disposal of a bacon sandwich and quick gulped hot beverage requires an urban fox like visiting of about ten bins, they’ve kind of brought it on themselves. A Frequently Asked Questions email followed the removal of our personal bins attempting to stem the piss taking tide but from the raucous laughter of the majority, one feels that maybe not all the questions were that serious. Well not as serious as the answers which precisely described the exact disposal procedure for a half eaten banana.

So here’s what happens. Even the keenest wishy washy liberals amongst us take one look at bin alley before muttering “fuck that, I’ve got work to do” and deposit the entire contents of their desktop in the ‘non recyclable bin‘. Earlier today I chucked in my Laptop powered by dead hamster in there as well but so fetid were the contents it chucked it straight back out again. Alledgedly the bins are emptied twice a day but from the Friday fishy smell this morning, it would appear this is aspirational at best.

The smell makes my compost (you need to wee on it, no honestly you do, I have a thousand words on the subject, no honestly I have) seem appealing and a entire black market around selling empty hotdesks for bin space has thrown up many opportunities for personal currency advancement.

The firm will probably find a way to tax that so in the end, which may be the very reason they started down the road in the first place.

Me? I have recycled all my filing and am now filling every empty desk drawer with rotting compost. I admit as an act of rebellion it lacks something but once it explodes over the fire officer, my work will be complete.

Cycling Myth #6

On By AlexIn Bikes2 Comments

A two hour repair takes two hours. No it bloody doesn’t especially when you are a/ in a hurry b/ working with cheap stuff and c/ called Alex. I’ve talked before about my signature workshop skill leaving a stamp of FBA on everything I a/ touch b/swear at and c/ break with powertools. I like to think of it as Fixed By Alex “ others choose a different verb.

Saturday was full of family things leaving me a only couple of stolen hours between Is it light yet? and What do you mean you need a shower, we’re late already!. Sufficient time you would think to swap cassettes, tyres and tubes between the wobbly wheels of certain death and a pair of dubious and previously enjoyed hoops, secured through the power of beer barter.

First task was to remove the cassette from the world’s cheapest wheelâ„¢ that had clearly been spec’d on my London bike after the product managers realised they had only 11 pence left to complete the build. This sphere has a similar weight and specific gravity to a celestial orb but with a wobbly orbit around a set of ovalised bearings. It had made the bike truly dangerous to ride with the half an inch of lateral movement harnessed only by banging into the brake blocks.

Selecting the chain whip and my largest wrench (well that’s put me in line for some interesting meta searches), five minutes of pre-dawn grunting were rewarded by a motionless cassette and a irritatingly animated tool wielder. Changing tack, I attempted to beat it into submission using the business end of the wrench articulating my displeasure with breathy I AM wang NOT IN THE smash FUCKING MOOD FOR THIS. The spikey sprockets of impediment glared back unmoved by my testosterone fuelled discourse.

Plan B “ engage brain before opening toolbox. The donor wheel already had a cassette of about the right shape and size so giving me the perfect excuse to finish off the militant one with the big hammer. Sweating profusely now, the removal of two tyres soon morphed into the removal of the skin from my fingers. I was just reaching for the big screwdriver and small tactical nuclear weapon when, in the briefest moment of sanity, I realised this would put my only commuting tyres on the wrong side of usable.

Muttering to myself put the screwdriver DOWN, walk away from the tyre, I grabbed two additional tyre irons and ambushed the Kevlar bead while it wasn’t looking. A bit more grunting, which probably convinced Carol I was involved in some kind of practical animal husbandry demonstration involving a goat and some double cream, the tyres were transferred to the new rims and some vigorous pumping action was applied.

With 30 minutes remaining, this seemed the perfect time to change the brakes. Lately I’ve been reduced to a child-like SPD sparky foot on the floor when attempting to arrest my progress. Ignoring the traditional advice which witters on about changing the entire braking system, I cleverly bastardised the worse parts of two suspect brakes to create a high performance stopping arrangement.

So successful was it, that now neither of the wheels would actually rotate. Backhauling some distant memory on how to set up non disk brakes outed a pointless small screwdriver with a big hammer for backup. At the exact point when my precision approach has passed the point of fuck it, close enough, the front wheel exploded.

I’m not being lazy with metaphors here; honestly the reaction between a high pressure tyre and an emaciated rim was both noisy and spectacular. The ensuing shrapnel and swarf convinced me that this wheel was probably no longer fit for purpose. I then spent an additional twenty minutes I didn’t have putting the tyre BACK ON THE WHEEL I’D TAKEN IT OFF IN THE FIRST PLACE.

Now – some two days later – I’ve calmed down, the result of my rudimentary spannerwork no longer perambulates in a random crab like schism towards certain death. Four finger braking and a brief prayer are no longer required when attempting to remove a taxi door from an immediate future, and the gleaming drive train now completes a gear shift within the time of a single commute.

This is clearly bad karma. Anything that has been FBA’d always “ and I mean always “ detonates in some kind of uncontrolled explosion. It’s just a question of timing.

So that’s something to look forward to then.

P.S. Other cycling myths are available

When I am world dictator..

On By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike Riding2 Comments

.. and it is only a matter of time before my inauguration as supreme ruler of the planet, every citizen of earth shall be forced to wrap up their working week by riding a mountain bike quickly and then drinking beer a little faster. Trust me on this, world domination through the structured agenda may appear slightly less raffish than the movie bred mad media barons with their cackling laughs, but it is going to happen.

So if you are a traffic warden, a Chiltern Railways employee or the person who invented the automated call director, the world is soon to become a far harder and more painful place. With more scorpions arranged in a pit ensemble. May I just be allowed a small cackle at this point and some deranged exclamation marks? !!! Thanks, that feels good.

But not as good as riding two gears faster than two weeks ago on a local loop much loved for its secret singletrack, yet less appreciated for its nine months descent into gloopy hell. It’s generally unridable much before May as clay subsoil and winter rain turn fast summer curves into wheel locking ciphers. Even dried by a rain shy March, it tempted us fourteen days back but still rolled out the muddy, leg sucking carpet for around half its length. We nodded as wise trail sages and cautioned a few weeks delay before trying again.

But we slipped back tonight under cover of a sustained dry period of dry weather and found hard baked trails broken with enough cracks to make a fast bowler smile. Seventeen miles and a little over ninety minutes later, we too wore the dusty grins of men not quite sure how we got so lucky. Friday the 13th it may well have been but the only bad luck we suffered was the death rattle of an empty beer barrel at rides end and that was simply circumvented with a simple “pint of anything else then and throw in a few whelks for our trouble”

The trails are back pummeling dry as identified by me and another change of bike, after last weekend when my approach to happy gravity could only be called riding because I couldn’t remember how to spell portaging. Today back on familiar trails with my nutty hardtail and a style best described as “non braking bar death grip“, we shimmied between gasping trees and ducked under springy branches. I worried less about falling off and more about staying positive except for two incidents which triggered a Kryton like “Panic Circuits Engaged“.

Didn’t crash tho which as world dictator incarnate seems about right. I mean what kind of leader of the free world falls off his mountain bike? Well apart from George Bush but since he has been almost fatally injured attempting to digest a terrorist pretzel, I think we can agree he is a special case. As in special needs.

The last trail was a insanely fast dusty descent, tyres whumming on a six inch ribbon of joy banked in by an imposing hillside. I had almost forgotten how much I love riding mountain bikes faster than I should but slower than I can, then stretching the post ride glow with a couple of cold beers. If I could bottle that feeling and spread it out over a week, almost everyone I meet would have a somewhat nicer experience. And that’s important if you’re going to have four billion employees – you need to be a people person.

Right I have some European boundary planning to attend to. If you’re interested in being the “Duke Of Good Cheese and Smelly Frenchman“, drop me a line and I’ll see what I can do.