Look outside – it’s not dark :)

On By AlexIn Bikes, Other stuff2 Comments

This winter, I have mainly been method acting “Lithuanian Lesbian” when faced with any of the following – Dark, Cold, Wet, Injury or Apathy. Last year, the joy of spring was almost unconfined as after five months of misery, warm light evenings were a welcome reward for slogging through a globally unwarmed season. I was fit, fast and generally miserable whereas this year I’ve ensued the first two and instead spent many dark hours channeling just the latter.

But having given myself a stern talking too, my lethargy is at an end and, assuming that my bikes don’t degrade into swarf or great floods don’t start a run on build-your-own-arks, I shall be making up for lost time, lost fitness and – in the case of mountain biking – lost smiles. It would be fantastic to add lost beers to that list but frankly these past few months have introduced hops and barley as a staple diet. Although properly balanced with chocolate and milkshakes so that’s most of the nutritional bases covered.

So taking Spring at it’s word, I uncoiled from a warm bed this morning to be immediately tested with freezing fog and a light drizzle. And regardless of the clock of lies, my body was sulkily explaining it was really 5:45am. I bypassed an instinctive grab for the car keys and clipped into unfamiliar pedals so annoying my semi sleeping form even more. Instead of the motorised route hard wired into cossetted muscles, I headed out in the opposite direction to a station alternate that offered more trains and – more importantly – a far superior coffee shop.

Three things immediately occured to me me – firstly I didn’t know what time the train went, secondly the current time was hidden under three layers of fuckmeitscold layers and finally the distance was nothing more than a vague memory. Visibility of thirty feet or less hardly helped as cold lungs bitched about the yomping pace demanded by an anxious brain. But the five and a half miles were dispatched in a chilly sixteen minutes, which expanded past twenty as unfamiliar cycle facilities befuddled my sleepy and un-caffeined self.

But time was well on my side and clutching a rather lovely large Latte and pristine newspaper, I strode righteously onto the platform agog at unfamiliar commuters and the odd hated folder. Still they hardly slowed the train down when dispatched onto the line with nothing more than an evil grin and muttered “get a proper bike, you trouser clipped gaylord“. Important to make the right impression I’ve always thought.

The train was lovely – all civilised tables and empty seats. The experience was further enhanced as it failed to stop at stations separated by a short dog walk or the cheery thirty minute halts that pass for an on time service on the Amersham line. Early days though, it’s still Chiltern Railways who have a hidden charter to drive all but the most sanguine passengers to suicide attempts.

So far so good but my childish anticipation of riding home in daylight were scuppered by an impromptu meeting in an off site location serving cool beverages. And the mad dash to catch the seven pm train was compromised attempting to hustle while in receipt of the weighty laptop of doom. Next time I’ll be a little more careful which box I tick when ordering said Windoze brick because the battery alone weighs the same as Croydon and could power said town for about it a week.

And because the railway company has abandoned its’ commitment to green issues, we cyclists now have around 20{45ac9c3234d371044e23e276755ef3a4dde8f1068375defba7d385ca3cd4deb2} less bike racks to save the planet with. So while my train was serenely steaming out of the station, I was running up and down the platform in a frustrated doubletake attempting to find a slot to safely abandon the bike. The satisfaction of finally crafting a coveted wall spot was somewhat mitigated by the next four departures heading off only to my old station.

But finally, I’m heading home in non sardined comfort watching the day turn to night hoping against hope that I remembered to charge my lights.

Sprung

On By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike RidingLeave a comment

That is what Spring has done although it is as swallows to summer, with warm, breezy days sandwiched between icy blasts and freezing rain. But warming rays have thawed out this less than hardy perennial and hacking over drying trails has replaced hibernation. Hacking coughs have also been a early season feature but I’m not one to make a big thing of it.

This is Steve Watlington Wakins recently harvested from retirement and showing old school style perfectly matching his retro bike and really rather advanced years.

Not quite as old and annoyingly fitter is Nigel who casts off winter sensibility for a bit of buggering about in Swinley Forest.

For me, it’s a case of scratching the crust off old memories of how to ride and what happens afterwards. Having crashed almost as many times as I’ve ridden this year, my downhill style has been likened to nervous lemming that has been damningly blighted with self awareness. You’re not getting me close to that cliff, no way, it looks bloody DANGEROUS.

Uphill, thankfully, nothing much has changed except I’m a little slower, a little more rubbish and a little readier with excuses pertaining to lost fitness, gained weight and some random mumbling around tyre pressures.

After the ride though, it’s the same glorious dichotomy of pain and pleasure. But I think of it as fitness pain and it is simply dulled with a quick beer or a strong brew. And either is very welcome as long as there is cake to follow. With the pain comes proper tiredness – not the kind of boring bone ache from , say, gardening – but smarting pain with an aggressive personality.

So try and run up the stairs and in it steps between your hind brain and leg muscles calling everyone out for an industrial dispute. I find it best to have a little rest until the Synapse Union and Dendrite Management have come to an accommodation. Yesterday, this took quite a few minutes and children rushed past many times, as I lay supine but marooned half way to the landing.

And the ˜Give me something to eat RIGHT NOW or I’m starting on this child’ hunger pangs are back as well. The kind of stomach wrenching non maskable interrupt that has you running “ okay limping quickly “ to the fridge and considering devouring an acre of raw broccoli.

It’s all good.

The dirty dozen of twelve riders seeking sunshine and singletrack are heading off to South Wales over the long Easter weekend. If I can shed about a stone, regain at least partial fitness and not succumb to any further undiagnosable illnesses, all will be well.

Chill Fun Cleans

On By AlexIn Other stuff2 Comments

One of the many variants of rhyming slang to describe the urban enigma that is Milton Keynes. I tried – and failed – to find a simile for “desperate wasteland” but that should in no way detract from the sentiment. There are so many problems with MK – its’ unending housing sprawl, its’ frankly bonkers road grid system and the little discussed strange outpost of the firm. The latter was clearly the template for BBC2’s “The Office” both in terms of layout and the underlying current of insanity.

But before more of that, first you cannot experience the dubious delights of the town without being flabbergasted by a road system which painfully replicates everything that is wrong with the standard US city grid without capturing any of the benefits. The US system embraces a navigational approach based on triangulation of cross streets – you know 5th street is going to be south of 6th street and that main street is the geographical centre. This makes finding you way around at least a little intuitive.

MK dispenses with this proven system, instead keeping up Roman facsimiles such as Watling Street criss crossed with really useful mnemonics including “V7 twinned with Arse, Alberta and sponsored by Admiral Insurance“. It’s the kind of place that only accountants with slide rules or obsessive internet nutters understand. And I’m pretty damn sure that the SatNav companies had something to do with the construction. Unless you have an annoying digitised voice demanding that you take the next left over two curbs and a supermarket roof, you’re destined to starve in the maze of suburbs.

The town is no better – it calls itself the call “centre capital of the UK”. This is a boast that is only just beaten to the title of “most embarrassing town slogan” by Grimsby and its timeless “Cod Basket of the East”. It is essentially miles and miles of intersecting concrete and branding desperately in search of an identity. So it’s great we have an office there.

My journey to the office floundered at the first hurdle when the SatNav directed me through a complex of lovely, traditional villages that appear to have been demolished to make room for a bypass. If it was meant to be bypassing the villages that it has concreted over, it seemed to have missed a salient point but nevertheless, I was cheerfully informed that my car was now a boat and we were surfing an unnamed river at about fifty miles an hour. I’ll not be telling Honda that the next time I make a warranty claim.

Having finally stumbled on the correct road – sorry boulevard – through a simple approach of inspired guesswork and swearing, I’m not sure I should have bothered. This is the only UK office without any fee paying practitioners and it shows. It’s an oasis of apathy with whispering replacing conversation and any outward expressions of joy seriously frowned upon.

It’s hard to create any sort of social interaction in these conditions – that is until you venture to the toilet. These are the world’s smallest toilets and feel free to sue if you want, honestly any smaller and you’d need to hack a leg off to gain entry. Socially nervous office staff have to relieve themselves into a bucket located under their desk. The rest of us squeeze in and are thrust into the personal space of complete strangers.

Honestly, once you’re a handspan away from the next mans willy, he has no secrets from you. I ended up pissing in the sink just for a bit of privacy.

The office is adepressingly rabbit hutch with the firms’ preferred layout mirroring the geometrically mean streets outside. I ran away and found a coffee bar in twenty feet of green grass and this was a very hard place to leave. When I finally escaped through a navigational approach modeled on the German blitzkrieg, my joy was tempered by the terrible truth that I would have to go back next week.

I’m praying for some late winter snow 🙂

I could do that.

On By AlexIn Other stuff1 Comment

Four blokes in a pub, one says “if you could do any job, anything at all, what would it be“. This isn’t the setup for a crap joke, it’s a semi-accurate transcript of a conversation we tried to have while seeing whose liver would explode first. I say tried to have since much of the ensuing discussion focussed on the vocational potential to be permanently employed massaging Kylie’s tits or whether, at 39, it was too late to play on the wing for England.

Based on the current squad, I’d hazard a guess that you would be in with a decent shout but that’s not the point here. But it is close in that my perfect job would be a sports commentator. How great would that be? Travelling on someone elses cash to salubrious foreign locations and swapping work for chatting about stuff that a television audience can already see for themselves.

There is one problem though in that I’m too bloody English which, at best, is a nasty mixture of jingoism and cynicism. For example, commentating on an England football match where we were being bested by the People Republic of Who The Fuck Knows Where That Is, I’d cut across Graham Taylor discussing tactics with a snarled “oh for fucks sake, a hundred and thirty grand a week and they are still shit. God it’s depressing, I mean how fucking hard is it to kick a ball into a huge goal? I mean really?”

Okay so football is out, what about Rugby? A game I love with a passion but understand almost nothing. And while I could add nothing to the ten thousand offenses that a player can commit at a breakdown by apparently being on the pitch, I’d be able to make useful social comments such as “Brian, surely we cannot let our children watch this, there’s a man with his head up the bottom of his team mate and the referee has clearly asked at least four players to form a fuck“.

Cricket? The only game in the history of competition that breaks for lunch. Patriotism would out I think especially against the Australians “oh come on, give him a chance, let him have another go. He’s a lovely lad and neither of his ancestors sent any of you buggers to Tasmania” followed by a shrill “ah fuck the lot of you. What have you got? Skin Cancer, fuck all culture and a capital city that’s about as much fun as venereal disease.”

There’s almost no sport I couldn’t be chipperly ignorant about. But, frankly, compared to the chance of being curator to Ms Mynogue’s breasts, there’s got to be at least an outside chance of scamming a job.

Budgetory issues..

On By AlexIn Other stuff, Pretentious nonsense5 Comments

… now there was a couplet to strike terror into the heart of any freelance consultant. Fiscally, it didn’t get much worse than that unless the project sponsor was hit by the belated realisation that all your talk of stabilising event horizons or evangilising synergistic operating efficiencies was nothing more that total bollocks wrapped up in bullshit. It only ever got worse when your thin lipped accountant started nervously quoting sarbanes-oxley as you explained you’d bought a small yacht for the purposes of “business development“.

But even at our worst, which I grudgingly accept was on the euphemistic edge of dishonest, we were merely street magicians compared to Gorden “David Copperfied” Brown and his financial slights of hand. Politics rarely infect the hedgehog as it lacks the catharticism of other posts and leaves me wanting to throw the monitor into the local offices of the council. Plus, of course, I know bugger all about it although that is rarely a semantic leash to my random rabbit chasing doggedness.

But the porridge gobbler has gone too far this time. While one hand giveth, the other slaps you lightly about the face, joyfully explaining you’re screwed anyway. While I have absolutely no problem with a taxation system earnestly charting wealth redistribution through a sea of tax increases, I’ll be buggered if anyone is going to tell me that in some way it’s doing me a financial favour.

Personally I may more tax or I may pay a little less. Frankly, I don’t give a shit but I do care that a government that has crusaded as the bastion of public services appears to have spent everything while delivering very little. So while we’re laying off nurses and targets replace common sense, I’ve come up with a new idea. And I’m telling you because there is absolutely no bloody point in pretending that our vote offers some kind of representation.

How can 20,000 people, each driven by their own motives, imbue a power hungry arse to speak for them to an even greater power crazed circle, who themselves gave up listening about the same time the votes stopped being counted. This is not a party politics thing – they’re all as fucking bad as each other, they don’t care about your problem or your opinion but they certainly care about their own.

The US system as least acknowledges this and lets you vote directly for the President who may share some of your ideals such as bombing oil rich countries, or screwing the earth beyond the point of reconciliation. At least you know what you’re getting, rather than some pointless stuffed shirt asking anodyne questions about constituents that he cares only slightly less about that the bloke answering in the dispatch box.

They say the young are disenfranchised by politics. Good on them, maybe they see it for what it is.

Anyway, here’s my idea. In the same way that we receive good karma for sponsoring a goat or a cow in a country we once funded with slaves as the most profitable export, why not abolish some taxes and allow us to sponsor public servants? It’d be like The Sims but for real. I’ll sponsor two nurses in the local hospital and they can write me some reports on how many people didn’t die because someone cared about their welfare. I’d feel good, less people may suffer and it won’t cost the government a penny.

You see where this could go? We wouldn’t have to sponsor those public services that everyone accepts are either a total waste of time or a government revenue generator. Traffic Wardens – you can bugger off home for a start. Free Market economics with a social edge, I think it could be a winner.

I mean come on, we cannot really do any worse.

Morocco – the extras

On By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike RidingLeave a comment

I never did get round to cataloging the last two days of riding in Morocco. Not that I was doing much riding anyway. So here’s a pictorial story with a few words. I’d stick to the pictures if I were you. Day 3 started with a few kilometers descent on a surface best described as dusty ball bearings. Each corner was a mountain switchback which led to some fairly interesting “ohhhhshit” moments. I buggered my shoulder early on and was soon far behind and whinging.

I’ve no idea what Martyn is doing with that bike in the shot above but he’s clearly enjoying himself. I ended up back in the broom wagon which was a little scarier that riding. You really need a vehicle here that has a short wheelbase and a tight turning circle. It’s disconcerting looking over the edge to a thousand feet of vertical bugger all but after a while you sort of get used to it. If you close your eyes and take strong drugs.


I met the fellas for lunch and deciding riding was going to be more fun/less fatal than the landy, we set off on about 10k of dusty, loose fireroad that ended up being way more fun than it should have been. At this point I gave up again and so did a few of the others being faced with a huge climb. The road – and I’m using the word advisedly here – to our third night stop at a burbur lodge was fairly terrifying and I was glad of various but extensive medicinal products to dull the pain later that evening.

The last day was going to push the difficulty a bit and it started with a rocky, off camber singletrack strewn with huge boulders. Pretty technical all the way down to the village but WAY WAY safer than taking the landy back down that track of the night before. Some super steps near the trail end put paid to my riding for the weekend tho. A little too much vigour and a little too little shoulder recovery rended the arm pretty useless.

After another landy uplift, three from five (Nig had succumbed to some kind of major intestinal failure) set off on a huge traverse across the valley where vehicles cannot go. And sometimes bikes too as Jason tells of an incident when he flung himself off the trail and over a handy cliff. Somehow he only fell about ten feet and damaged himself not at all. If that had been me, they’d have been scraping me off the valley floor with a spatula.


Apparently it was a fantastic ride and one both Nigel and I are looking forward to doing next year when we go back. And we have to go back because it is a wonderful place to ride your bike and equally fantastic in terms of the people, culture and stunning scenery.

The trousers of truth

On By AlexIn Bikes, Road RidingLeave a comment

With the weather turning to the icy side of inclement and an early spring losing the heated battle with a late wintry cold front, it was time to out the Trousers Of Truth.

I’m becoming increasingly fascinated by trousers and their associated paraphernalia. Firstly a wardrobe miscalculation left me pantless, then some oik invaded my trouser storage space. But this is different, these leg warming garments have always been on the breathe in side of snug and with a 2007 history of serial non riding, I expected waistband closure issues. You cannot pass the Truthful Trousers off with water retention issues or big bones “ they are the arbiter of middle aged spread.

Last year, refusing to succumb to the bald fact that riding in the cold and pissing rain has a fun rating similar to ramming pencils up your nose, these troons became the Strides Of Smiles as my pre-season girth disappeared under seventy tough commuting miles a week. That is almost exactly the number I’ve ridden in total since Christmas so no one was more surprised than I when button closure was achieved without having to squeeze every last breath from my body.

Okay there was a bit of a seasonal overhang but nothing that a baggy thermal layer and the yellow jacket of stoutness couldn’t conceal. And it was a good choice because riding home tonight mirrored the sting in the tail of last year. First there was the sleety rain trying to be snow, aided and abetted by a 20mph headwind and once you’ve thrown a couple of frozen roadies into the mix, it was as close to proper riding as you can get on the roads.

The roadies had chosen fashion over form with their silly lycra and transparent sponsor waterproofs rendered laughable in the face of my totally waterproofed form. I stalked them up the Mall, taking a tow and waiting for my lungs to catch up with my ego. They belatedly did half way up the drag through Hyde park and I beasted them both in a leg pumping, bar wrenching pass chowing down on wet snow and planting a cold nose on the stem. This aerodynamic pose of the athletic idiot saw me pile on the power up to Marylebone though thickening snow and apparently blinded drivers.

One less than diffident tap on a wing mirror and an endorphined fuck off you wanker if you think you’re having THAT lane propelled me into the warmth of the station where tubey commuters were inadvertently scattered. They looked on my dripping and steaming form as late Victorians would have cautiously viewed the elephant man.

But I didn’t care because they’ll never get it and I’ll never get tired of it. Summer riding is ace but only because of days like this. I could still be an angry young man if I wasn’t so old and bollixed.

Death by a thousand (power) cuts

On By AlexIn Other stuffLeave a comment

After spending most of Thursday evening abandoned and nasally impaired, the 2mm of late winter snow predictably ground the railway to a further halt this morning. As usual it was everybody’s responsibility but nobody’s fault with Chiltern blaming London Underground and London Underground going with the like we give a flying fuck option.

Progress to Amersham was stately but pleasantly unexciting. From there on, nothing much happened for the next hour, other than the secret enjoyment of pulling faces at the platform based lemmings who shivered in their non train-ness. Not going anywhere is on the dull side of tedious, but slightly enlivened by chuckling at the less fortunate abandoned on a chilly, snowblown platform.

Yet in another inspired decision, the caring railway company decided the best course of action would be open the doors and cram a few more desperate people in. The reasons are occluded although strong evidence to support an alternative approach were readily provided by the full carriages with people already standing, and a groundswell of grumpiness that was ready to explode at any point.

This explosion came during the third halt, this time in the tunnel within spitting distance of Marylebone. And people were spittingly angry as an ominous silence from the PA system was drowned out by a hundred tired, angry and now “ frankly “ sweaty passengers wondering what the fuck was going on. Trains passed us imperiously on either side, while our stationary non progress was marked only by increasing physical and mental temperatures.

We finally arrived at 9:45. The journey had taken a smidge under two hours. My total commute this morning was three hours and ten minutes to travel 54 miles of which eight of them were done on my bike. This compares favourably to the last Monday morning of chaos but this in now way even raised the slightest of wry smiles on my chill chapped face. I just want to find someone to blame/shout at/dismember with the utensil of hurt – anyone in the CR Butlins uniform will do.

The driver did finally honour us with his dulcet tones imploring passengers to Please take all belongings with you. We have had a recent spate of the will to live being left on the train. You can collect these from the lost property office or by moving to another country.

I’m sat on the returning train as I write this and we’re making slow progress again “ this time apparently due to the price of cabbages.

Maybe I can get a bus. Or a helicopter. Are they expensive?

Bike Page Update

On By AlexIn Site Stuff5 Comments

It’s been weeks since this page was updated and with the revolving door bike purchasing scheme in operation at Leigh central, this seemed an opportune time to update it.

I was considering changing the site skin as well but there was some quite dirty CSS jiggery pokery to make this one work and I’ve absolutely no idea what I changed. Basically random size and pixel values inserted anywhere that looked promising. On second thoughts I’d have to be seriously starved of entertainment to even consider searching for a new one.

Talking of entertainment, I had a hundred quids worth of non-entertainment yesterday, fifty of which was spent watching the mighty Sheffield United crushed by Chequebook Chelsea. Not that I’m bitter in any way about it. Then a few rounds of drinks were required to deal with the embarrassment of being stuffed by the Welsh in the Rugby. I left the boys around 7pm as they were considering hunting down a curry as the way I was feeling, death by spicy popodom was a serious possibility.

Instead I meandered, drunk, through the vast confusion of the tube system before setting fire to my face by stupidly biting into a station pasty that had been heated in a jet engine.

I can’t decide whether to attempt to fix the brakes on my bike for about the tenth time or rush headlong into some pointless DIY that’ll end in a desperate call to a plummer.

The world is my lobster today.

Planes, stains and shortage of mobiles

On By AlexIn Other stuff3 Comments

Last night Chiltern Railways put in a truly stunning performance with the emphasis on ˜stunned’. The 7:15 service mooted to arrive at 8pm actually arrived an hour and a half later at 9:30. Well to be fair, the 7:15 never actually left London, with passengers from this and a previously cancelled train shoehorned onto a live one which finally wheezed out of the station at 7:30

I couldn’t believe transporting this sea of frustrated humanity was within its operating parameters “ there were bodies crammed into every available crevice including the bog and luggage racks. So it came as a nasty surprise when somehow another 50 squeezed on at Harrow.

I was lucky enough to have my own seat and an hour long nasal performance from someones’ sticky armpit located fetchingly about an inch from my face. It offered up a complex mixture of smells rarely sequenced together and for good reason. The almost overpowering BO was tainted by fresh sweat and a hint of cheese left in the sun too long. The physical manifestation of this aural disaster was a dirty, gray fungal like growth staining his white shirt. It was essentially mobile biological warfare delivered by a rejected M&S garment. A year ago I’d manage to immobilise at least two people with a similar tactic so I guess this was payback time.

The reason for our progress best compared to a three legged sloth with a head wound was Chiltern Railways bete noir “ the ubiquitous power failure. This is the third time in a month the entire network has gone dark when someone plugs in a kettle.

But our driver was surprisingly jolly. He would cheerfully announce The next stop is Chorleywood but we don’t expect to get there for at least an hour so no rush for the doors. He also reminded us there was a toilet on board but dashed our hopes that the red cross would be coming through the train with food parcels.

At Rickmansworth our crawl became a shuddering halt and we stopped dead. A physical state all the trapped passengers were wishing on the kettle pluggerinner. And in an astonishing example of hope over intelligence yet more people stuffed themselves into our sardine can. This had the unfortunate consequence of moving the armpit of hell a couple of inches closer to my wrinkling nose. I was already fairly pissed off but plunged further into the kind of abject depression that only an announcement there are four sectors of track filled with trains all stopped on a red signal ahead of us. We will be here for quite a while can bring on.

To divert attention from my aural system shorting out and the nasal passages melting under the continued whiffy onslaught, I began to stealthily read the book of a fellow Chiltern Railways’ prisoner marooned on the seat next to me.

It was a romp of a novel where the muscular Christophe was vigorously attempting to deflower the virginal Melanie in the hay loft. Never heard it called that before – anyway my commuting pal was a bit of a slow reader but that was just fine as we seemed to have all night.

Typical of the evening, just at the exciting climax when a horse stomped into the stable and shot Christophe with an elephant gun declaring you fiend, you have had sex with my favourite set of stairs, she got up and left. Well the book was in French and I was doing my best.

At this time we emerged from a mobile blackout area and carriage lit up with a hundred beeping phones indicating voicemails from enraged spouses. One guy was desperately trying to convince his wife that he wasn’t in the pub but she wasn’t having it. I grabbed his phone and shouted no he really is on the train but he didn’t want to call you because you’re such an untrusting stuck up bitch. Marriage counselling needs no training really, some people just take to it naturally.

The driver came back on and suggested that if you hadn’t frozen to death or disembowelled yourself with a small spoon to alleviate the boredom, the next station might be Amersham. Here the entire platform was devoid of life so I assumed any remaining passengers had given up and taken to shanks pony. Except for two drunks who mistook our train for a bar and spent the next 20 minutes shouting at each other. Their conversation could be summarised as embarrassing places we’ve been sick in

By the time the train arrived at my station, I had given up the idea of applying for compensation unless it offered 30 minutes alone with the chief engineer. And I was allowed to take in the spoon of hurt.