Right now I’ll be writing later..

On By AlexIn Bikes, Site Stuff2 Comments

… so much drivel to share, so little time to do it. Can someone have a word with my boss who has loaded up a new e-mail rule entitled “forward difficult and time consuming task to Alex, he’s clearly a man with too much time on his hands”

As well as my robustly argued treatise on the importance of pissing in a compost bin, there’s an oblique reference to Joan Armatrading and a ruinously honest description of some other thing that seemed incredibly important at the time, but I seem to have forgotten it for now. But they’ll just have to wait for a while.
In the meantime, here’s a picture of a man who has stolen Rupert the Bear’s undergarments.

A poor choice of trouser

Have a fun weekend. I shall be taking the kids to London and, if they continue to behave in the same manner as this previous holiday week, I shall be leaving them there.

It has all gone off!

On By AlexIn Bikes, Other stuff3 Comments

A parade of strangeness lined up for inspection this morning as – in no particular order “ I was confusingly confronted by a pink folder, a coat hanger and a set of weighing scales.

Last year about this time a whirling dervish, defined by big hair and powerful limbs, speeded a crinkly facsimile of a proper bicycle leaving me worsted at the end of a three mile race through the centre of London. So imagine my delight when, earlier today, the pink persecutor flexed its way into Hyde park, travelling slowly on silly wheels and making the same kind of pointless fashion statement as puff ball skirts.

Eagerly I chased down my nemesis ready for another battle of the sexes, only this time with even less fitness but even more cheating. But the only person cheated was me since “ amazingly “ some other asylum escapee had purchased the pointless pivoter in a garish shade of pink. Nevertheless, this was too good an opportunity for revenge and in barely an irregular heartbeat, she was consigned to the bin of the bested.

I’m pretty sure she was impressed, I know I was.

Still whistling a happy tune, my mood was further enhanced by someone having else having a crap day. An angry post-it note traded as a modern day thrown gauntlet “ hung as it was to a damp towel “ and promising any philanderer making wet and merry with said drying garment a set of broken legs.

I love this kind of machismo nonsense and, finding myself alone in the shower room, sorted myself out with a vigorous rub down using his non consensual communal towel, making sure it was properly damp even at the corners. Don’t look at me like that; after suffering the heinous theft of two shower gels and a underarm smelly, the gloves (or possibly gauntlets) are well and truly off.

And because everyone knows good things come in threes, I approached “ still with some trepidation “ the weighing scales of fearful truth. However, having already passed the qualifying ˜third hole in the trouser belt’, I was insanely confident that the fat burning combination of a bit of cycling and a lot of beer would reap the benefits of reduced poundage.

Although I’ve yet to fully research the weight loss properties of a daily dose of half a tube of Pringles and a man sized Yorkie. That’s the chocolate bar not the small dog in case you were confused.

But that research has been canned in a celebrity lager as “ and I’ve absolutely no idea how this could have happened “ half a stone of AL has left the building since Christmas.

Being an eternal optimist, I can only assume that I have contracted some wasting disease.

Good Lord, a post!

On By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike RidingLeave a comment

Hello and welcome back. As you’d expect after a fantastic weekend weatherwise, the hedgehog is going to reverberate to the sound of photo inspired ego bumping. Here are three to be going along with.

The first shows Jason in Brechfa forest deep in the middle of Wales. A fun trail if loose enough in its top surface to engender a similar looseness in the bowel regions.

The second is at Afan (near Port Talbot) showing firstly the wind farm and secondly a stationary bike that pretty much matched my average over the weekend. More of my mincing later.

Finally, one of Andy playing silly buggers when he’s old enough to know better. I was going to have a go only to find the sun was incorrectly aligned with Venus. Bugger 😉

If you’ve really nothing to do, lots more will be posted in here including two shots of me entitled “my life as a dwarf” and “What are you doing with that can of Stella?“.

Worth waiting for I’m sure you’ll agree. But wait you will as work I must 😉

That’s what the world needs…

On By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike RidingLeave a comment

… more pink bikes. I can see my kids riding these in a few years time. The first is a good effort especially the tassels which, I’m sure you’ll agree, add a certain class.

Now that's pink!

This however is properly done, any pinker and it’d be offered as an official barbie accessory.

And that is even pinker!

Stolen from this thread on SingletrackWorld.

For a couple of seconds last week, I was possibly taking myself too seriously. Normal service is resumed. When I get a minute, I’ve a fascinating theory to share with you regarding the best way to wee into a compost bin.

Do you have a few days to spare?

On By AlexIn Other stuff3 Comments

If so, I can recommend Tower Defense which will happily suck around a week from your life assuming you don’t have an addictive personality. Otherwise write off the rest of the year. It’s deceptively simple, but really quite fiendishly hard once you skip the easy level.
From Hand Drawn Games

Build a maze to slow down the “creeps” so you can blast them with your heavy ordinance. The tactics are around maze building, consolidated or distributed armament, placement of air towers and priority of upgrade. I played it about ten times at which point it tripped my talent/boredom threshold. My wife, however, is gunning for the top of the leader board.

Originally recommended by notorious crank breaker Jon over at Samuri who, as an IT geek like myself, has probably already reprogrammed his company firewalls to stop employees wasting their time. But as everyone knows, special access privileges come with network administration. Honestly, it’s the least someone doing that job deserves!

Spam

On By AlexIn Other stuff, Site Stuff4 Comments

In a period of less than four days, 534 different spam sites have attempted to prosecute their – frankly – shady products on the hedgehog, and all those who read her. For any of those with both chromosomes, around 532 would not have been of any interest whatsoever unless your beloved has requested a penis extension for his birthday. Of the other two, one offered a low rate interest loan from the bank of bqrwwallsiizx.com and the second promised that with just a single click, high resolution photos of Britney Spears would be available to me. “In every position you can imagine and some you can’t” allegedly and I’m quoting verbatim here.

You would clearly have to have the brainpower of a special needs haddock to even consider clicking on one of those links, and yet some people must because Spam’s random, scattergun approach is apparently successful. However, it firms up a couple of lingering suspicions I’ve had; 1/ It takes all sorts and 2/the web is primarily an electronic wank factory.

I feel quite proud to prod its’ vice ridden underbody with the occasional spike of the hedgehog. And yet, looking back over eighteen months, it appears I am not entirely blameless in some glorious stereotyping and ill considered abuse. A brief scan of 300 odd posts informs that the following groups have been lampooned, sent up, randomly abused or held up for a brief baseless examination before being dropped for something more interesting.

Countries and their people; London and Londoners, the Welsh, the Scottish, the Irish, Belgium (a staggering 7 times), the French, the Germans and almost every other major European superstate. I believe Macedonia has so far escaped any ill considered angst but there is plenty of time. To prove I’m not merely a jingoistic anglophile, I’ve also taken the piss out of Australia and America a few times as well. And there is a special mention for Milton Keynes. Someone had to.

Vocations and Hobbies; Policemen, pretend policemen, politicians, doctors, washing machine manufacturers, call centres (to the power of irritated), traffic wardens, security guards (hmm a pattern emerges), airlines, car dealers, cricket, football, rugby, folding bicycles, normal bicycles, road biking, mountain biking, bowling, golf and darts.

General piss taking stereotypes; The Young. The Old. The Middle Aged. Women. Men. People who can’t decide which they are. Professional sportsmen and women. High earners. Low earners. Family types. Singles. Pensioners. DIY’rs. Road Cyclists. Track Cyclists. Mountain bikers. My friends. Me.

Special one off “I’ll get you Butler” category; Chiltern Railways.

And that’s just a happy subset. So far this catalogue of angst has properly pissed off a total of two people. The first was a post that made me laugh but was – on reflection – a little more cutting than intended. The second resulted in me pulling an entry which I’ve never done before and I’m unlikely to do again. And that’s all you’re getting on that one.

It made me think about words tho. Not the shit I write, but the real craftsmen and women who forge masterpieces on the anvil of a million words. Wordsmiths if you like; writers who use the same nouns, adjectives and verbs as the rest of us but craft them in such a way that shock, cheer, illuminate or illustrate. What they also have in common is raising such a strong emotional reaction, it leaves you wondering if you shouldn’t just stick to addressing letters.

For me, it’s Simon Barnes on sport, Joe Simpson on mountains, Stephen Ambrose on War and then Dickens, Huxley, Salinger and Laurie Lee painting landscapes in your head and peopling them with astonishing characters. I quite like Dick Francis too 🙂 It’ll be different for you and quite right too although am I the only one that cannot get on with Shakespeare? It’s not the stories I have a problem with; it’s every time he was struggling to think of a word, he just made one up. I’ve been tirelessly campaigning to have “Moonscuttle” and “Gruntled” added to the OED but have been serially and snootily fobbed off.

So, for a moment of pretentious gazing of a hairy naval, I wondered about pickling the hedgehog once and for all and sending the old fella, with my best wishes, to a warm electronic burrow in the sky.

We’ll see.

April Fools…

On By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike Riding1 Comment

… the lot of us for believing barely past winters icy clutch, dry trails would abound, and the forests of the North Downs would reverberate the to the whoop, holler and occasional cry of pain from a happy mountain biker.

Here’s a spoof photo. You see, I can tell you that is from last Sunday but I know you won’t believe me.

I don’t have any decent ones to show you as that would tax my photoshop skills. Other lies include we traversed the ridgy Surrey Hills this way and that, diving off onto bar wide, secret singletrack and riding old favourites such as “barry knows best” and “telegraph road“. We were occasionally lost, mostly warm, adequately replete after a major raid on the Peaslake stores, and appropriatly refreshed after Marty supplied some post ride beer from the depths of Daisy the camper van.

In terms of lies, damn lies and statistics, the route was around twenty miles, ridden in a relaxed four hours with much stopping for a brief chat or a rather longer lie down, having breathlessly bested some of the tougher climbs. Marty brought his girlfriend along for only her second MTB ride, provided her with a heavy bike that was two sizes to big and swiftly introduced the concepts of terrifying bombholes about 20 seconds into the ride.

Amazingly she didn’t kill him afterwards but only because she was too tired. Fantastic effort tho and put some of us rather more experienced riders to shame. If I may, for one moment, remove my prism of cynicism, it is great to see someone else starting in the sport and seemingly getting the tiniest bit hooked.

It was all too good to last of course. The “sore throat of annoyance” upped the viral ante last night and now I have some kind of unspecified but quite miserable lurgey. And a sore throat 😉

Perfect preparation for four days riding this weekend. Still it’s good to get the excuses banked early.

Happy Easter

On By AlexIn Other stuffLeave a comment

An early Easter Bunny photo with a difference.

Happy Easter

Stolen from my friend Stu on the grounds that it is childish and a little bit naughty. So ideal food for the hedgehog then.

I’d just like to add, I don’t believe I have strayed onto the wrong side of the law this morning unless shouting at the kids and kicking the cat counts.

Smooth Criminal

On By AlexIn Bikes, Road Riding4 Comments

It is a bit of a stretch to pass yourself as a member of the hardened criminal classes if you are hurtling towards middle age, wear a suit to work and rarely dismember associates with an iron bar. Unless you’re a lawyer which, in the strangest of ironies, is practically a vocational criminal offense and yet provides the legal means to defend your colleagues. No wonder it’s known as being called to the bar.

But this morning, I too have stepped across the slippery line to become a law breaker. My route out of the station is a cheeky pavement sprint in the wrong direction on a short one way street. Blinking out stinging rain, my vision was filled by two yellow jacketed, importantly hatted members of the pretend police meaningfully pointing an arresting arm in my direction.

Please stop Sir, you’re in breach of the highway code the large, rotund one intoned in a voice clearly trained to strike fear into the heart of aforementioned desperate criminals. And please vacate you bicycle as well shouted the second slightly smaller but no less self important upgraded traffic warden.

Well dear readers, I did as anyone with a social conscience would “ I took a hard look at the consequences of my illegality and, after just a moments pause, put the hammer down and scarpered.

I was amazed, on glancing rearwards, to find them giving chase. Suddenly my charge sheet was reading assault with a light battery, followed by the involuntary homocide of two fat policeman, and further lengthened by leaving the scene of an accident (there was going to be one in a minute). At this rate I was looking at incarceration for almost, well, the rest of my life and Panorama would be running sobering documentaries in years to come on the Stone 1

Slightly less amazing was their swift realisation that two fat policemen are significantly slower than one desperate rider screaming You’ll never take me alive copper over his shoulder. The lights changed and I charged over the Marylebone Road in the style of a Thelma and Louse cliff side plunge.

And just to prove that I have now entered the seedy world of the habitual criminal, my status as Rebel Without A Decent Haircut was confirmed with a lawless shimmy past the startled security bloke guarding the firms’ car park entrance. I shot him with a nasty grin that may have lost some effect as I rapidly had to come to terms with an illegally parked van abandoned on my line.

Honestly, some people just think that the law doesn’t apply to them. Stringing ˜em up is all they understand with their terrorist traffic violations.

Hypocrisy is the new tolerance for 2007 “ you heard it here first.

POST EDIT: Ah I was going to write something on why I really can’t take pretend police seriously only to find I already had!