Sore

On By AlexIn Other stuff2 Comments

The problem with beer (and that’s a phrase that I’d wager you never expected me to utter) is that it’s not a socially appropriate beverage at 8am. Except in Scotland, where I’d stumble off the first flight from Heathrow to see some jolly jocks quaffing a couple of pre-breakfast McEwans. Outstanding effort there fellas.

So my pain management regime has been downgraded to Nurafen with every meal and not making any sudden moves. Actually it’s almost been a disappointment that the post crash injuries don’t really hurt at all. It was a pretty big off at a fairly high speed and aside from a neck with articulates about twenty degrees either side, nothing really hurts much. I realise this is twisted logic but even I’m struggling to offer myself any sympathy.

Still the ongoing chest infection / head cold / unknown virus / Spanish Flu Mutation has robbed me of my voice. Wages of Sin probably but while I start the day in fine voice, by the close of play I’ve been reduced to punching people to get my point across. A cross between Joe Cocker and a constipated poodle represents the most printable description of my current vocal output.

If it doesn’t get better soon, I’m going to open myself up with a spoon and have a good root round. Honestly I give up smoking and this is my reward ? Who says God doesn’t have a sense of humour.

I’ve told my wife for my Birthday present, I’d like a CAT scan 😉

Man Down!

On By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike Riding6 Comments

Remember this?

Al not falling off

And all my manly posturing on how easy it was on the new bike, and how all that was lacking in my mighty toolbox of skills was a little more style? Today, I tried it with a little more style and rather than receiving the plaudits of my peers, instead I received a helmet full of dirt and a full body battering.

But rewind a little. On a lovely winters day, full of the sunshine and light winds that have so forsaken the South East for the last month, we arrived in the middle of a body armour convention. I’ve never seen the place so rammed with play bikes of all description and a riding community ranging from young Gravity Dwarves to elder statesmen like myself.

The GD’s are born to ride in three dimensions launching small bikes over huge jumps while performing complex yoga moves, such as tapping a grubby ear with a Nike trainer while calmly flying at fifteen feet through the trees. Others of an indeterminable age but sporting ungrizzled stubble and motorbikes without engines were winding them up over the big jumps and drops that define the area. Well that and the air ambulances and broken bodies.

Trying to build on the previous festive ride of absolutely no style, I attempted to ape the skills of those who weren’t method acting a sack of potatoes velcro’d to a fridge door. The main aspect missing from my riding – other than the permanent absentees of bravery and commitment – was, and I’m writing this carefully, Hucking. To huck, one must perform a foolhardy firm compression of the bikes’ suspension to instigate a stylish, salmon like leap over the drop. This is best created by driving your body downwards and then allowing the bike to spring back by lightening the sprung weight. Which is this case means you and in my case is quite significant nowadays.

Now think about this – what we’re talking about is flying off a ledge with around twelve feet of thin air between you and the rather thicker ground while taking the weight off the pedals. There an integral part of what we mountain bikers call “the things that attach you to the bike and stop you getting horribly injured“. And yet, it was all going rather too well until, in a moment of unconsidered bravo, I attempted to go large.

As the ledge approached, I pushed vertically down – hard – with both hands and feet , feeling the tyres digging into the dirt. Then as the bike rebounded rather rapidly, I unweighted everything and flew gloriously into space. It was at this exact point that the total wrongness of style over substance overwhelmed me, as my feet and the pedals became pen pals. No longer were we connected by anything other than memory and as the bike landed hard on the downslope, I remember thinking “well I’m hucked now“.

Apparently you can ride this type of thing out. If you’re any good and don’t instantly stiffen up with the type of rigidity associated with rigor mortis. The “Leigh alternative” is to crash painfully down the slope, with feet acting as buffeted outriggers and bollocks bouncing on the top tube. And just when a small slither of survival gloating shafted low through the trees, my attempts to stay upright went sideways. The bike hit a lump and by the power of kinetic energy I exited sideways in a flat trajectory. Luckily, rather than a pleasant dirt surf down the slope unencumbered by stumps or pointy rock, my velocity was rapidly reduced by the shuddering impact of an earthen wall. The whole painful episode could be summed up with the simple phrase “Deceleration Trauma“.

“At least my friends didn’t see that” was my first thought as they ran over the hill to see if I’d trashed the bike. A short period of grunting followed while the full body systems check ran as a priority process. Aside from very sore ribs, a stiff neck and battered pride, the initial damage report was encouraging. Only later did I realise that the stabbing pain in my thigh was a perfect mirror of my car keys. These normally harmless items had burrowed deep into the limb in some kind of futuristic organic/mechanical fusion.

The bike was thankfully undamaged. Which gave me no excuse not to limp back on and ride the drop again. The Icy Hand Of Fear was clamped hard over my nether regions but it really had to be done. And it was, with no huck but a silent “thank fuck” as I landed happily still attached to the appropriate staying alive components.

I rode a bit more, but then it stared to hurt a lot more as befits an old bloke doing a young mans sport. So I quit whilst I still had a head but on driving home, my overwhelming emotion was of bloody annoyance that I’d failed to conquer this simple skill. And it never occurred to me until I began writing this that there will be a time when I break rather than bend. But that’s some way off I hope and through the power of Nurafen Plus, cold beer and hot baths, I’m already planning my triumphant return.

And this time, it’ll be so stylish even the GD’s will whisper “not bad Grandad, not bad“.

PS. Never again will I feel silly wearing leg/elbow pads and a full face helmet. They all took a proper bashing and without their protection, I would undoubtedly be enjoying an extended stay at Bedford hospital.

Whoosh, ah that’ll be a tree flying past then!

On By AlexIn Bikes, Other stuff4 Comments

I’ve got a proper post about this but unfortunately I also have a proper beer in my hand, so instead let me just say that’s about the windiest weather I’ve ever encountered in soft Buckinghamshire. Never before have I been able to trackstand by merely turning into wind and gurning.

And at about 4pm this afternoon, the sky turned inky black and rain battered the office windows. It was – frankly – rather frightening when contextually joined with having to ride into or through it. So I hid in the pub until the nasty weather had gone away which left a mere 30 MPH headwind to struggle past. In vein I looked for a fat bloke to slipstream but they were all inside eating healthy pies so I broke my own “don’t try this, you’ll die” rules and hung onto a bus for a while.

That was also quite frightening in an invigorating my life’s about to end kind of way.

Still apart from the 11 new fence panels, half a roof full of missing slate and the unknown whereabouts of a less than aerodynamic cat, all is well.

Because I have beer 🙂

London Lyrics

On By AlexIn Other stuff3 Comments

Since it appears to be odd song and lyric week here at the Hedgehog, it seemed appropriate to share this. It seems to sum up exactly the kind of little sick world brooding inside the M25. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I don’t like London – well not all of the time anyway. But in the winter, it’s horrible.

London never sleeps, it just sucks
The life out of me
And the money from my pocket
London always creeps, showbiz hugs
The life out of me
Have some dignity honey
Euston, Paddington train station please
Make the red lights turn green
Endlessly

My black cab rolls through the neon disease
Endlessly, endlessly
London never sleeps, it sucks
The life out of me
Show some dignity honey
Sushi bars, wet fish it just sucks
The life out of me
And the money from my pocket
Euston, Paddington train station please
Make the red lights turn green
Endlessly

My black cab rolls through the neon disease
Endlessly, endlessly
I come alive outside the M25
I won’t drink the poison Thames
I’ll chase the sun out West

Londinium
Euston, Paddington train station please
Make the red lights turn green
Endlessly
My black cab rolls through the neon disease
Endlessly, endlessly
I come alive
I come alive

I found the lyrics first and then the song which is an odd way to add music to the I-Prodder, but that’s the topsy-tervy technological world we live in nowadays. And of course you’ll know who it is because you got Buggles for God’s sake and this is far easier.

I also came across a fantastic quote to test a city “No city should be so big that a man cannot walk out of it in a morning.”

Quite right too.

Video Killed the Radio Star.

On By AlexIn Bikes, Pretentious nonsense3 Comments

I’m sat on the train encased firstly by the lowest cost bidders steel shell and, secondly by a squawking aviary of electronic Christmas presents. To my left Video I-Prods, to my right manically tilted Sony PSPs and up front the irksome warble of Mario on steroids forced out of tiny Nintendo speakers. This cacophony of polyphonics is nutritionally accompanied by Resolution Salads prepared for those desperately exercising with all the effort a blistered thumb can offer.

Give it a month and the disagreeable smell of second hand vegetables will be replaced by the warm fug of Ginster’s pasties and half eaten Mars Bars. But right now I’m feeling worthy having endured my first visit to the pub since I gave up.

Gave up what I hear you ask “ surely not the Al-defining beer that is an essential component of a complex, but often misunderstood, athletic dietary plan? Well no, of course not “ I’m talking of the drinking equivalent of the Scottish Play; the cigarette. With the Government flipping smoking from social to antisocial at the start of July, this seemed an opportune moment to abandon the cheeky fag, or cancer stick as I’m increasingly coming to think of it.

I’ve never smoked properly “ well you wouldn’t would you as it’s unhealthy and potentially life threatening. But I started early at about eighteen, unbelievably believing it was somehow cool and, more importantly, adult. What followed was twenty years of packing up for long periods interspersed with a hardcore twenty a day habit in that happy twenties phase when you believe yourself immortal. I stopped for good once the birth of our first kid belatedly delivered maturity and parental responsibility in equally unwanted measures.

Well sort of. The odd cheeky cigar or a drunken assault on a packet of twenty doesn’t really count especially if one is vested with the willpower of a moth answering the siren call of a thousand watt lamp. But as a diagnosed asthmatic, smoking is pretty stupid if being around to watch your kids grow up forms any part of your life goals. So I counted this as stopping for a given value of quitting.

And then I sort of started again but “ as you would expect “ this is in no way my fault. We’re kind of the Arsenal of the Professional Services firms with an embedded drinking culture. And with a beer came the offered cigarette that soon became two, three and then ten. This habit never really extended beyond opening hours but a habit it was and self loathing followed me home after every cigarette.

So I was already determined to stop even before mono-lung bullied squatting rights, insidiously pushing out my previously working oxygen chambers. And it’s a perfect irony that my breathlessness coincided exactly with the quitting date of December 19th, 2006. But whatever, that’s a date going down in stone so they don’t have to inscribe one for me too soon – if you get my drift.

From this I surmised one of two things; either it was too late and “ to take a phrase from a respected medical dictionary “ I was fucked or that this was a warning, a bullet just dodged, a simple truth that this level of bodily abuse was in no way carbon balanced by a bit of cycling.

I haven’t wanted a fag since but tonight I needed a beer and so horns with locked with the nemesis of the quitters. The inaugural meeting of Smokers Anonymous (Strand Chapter) dived deep into a therapy session admitting to weight gain, increased appetite and an increasingly desperate yearning to smoke a beer-mat.

Leaving after a couple (of beers, not barely combustible beer mats), I jumped on the bike donning the guise of an untroubled commuter. Racing was now a jolly jape for younger men “ I would instead perambulate with all the haste of a man heading to the dentist’s chair to face painful root canal surgery.

All was good, my progress was serene, the weather unseasonably warm, my lungs unbothered by any of that sprinting nonsense and my legs turning easy circles. And then “ because God hates me “ lurching past was nothing less than Lucifer’s folding chariot. Arrange these words into a well known phrase or saying. Bull. Red Rag. To. A.

I wanted to dump the bike in the middle of the road and scream an wretched entreaty to the sky FUCK FUCK FUCK “ WHAT DID I DO TO DESERVE THIS? WHY WHY WHY HAVEN’T I SUFFERED ENOUGH?“

But I didn’t, I did this instead: brain uninvolved with the kraken like awakening of twitching muscles, I was instantly out of the saddle snicking a couple of gears and straightlining the entrance to Hyde Park. The race was on.

I locked onto his plethora of red LED’s which put me in mind of the emergency ward I’d probably end up in. But to my intense surprise, the allegedly problem lungs oxygenated frantically gulped air to the power of my competitive gland. Muscles suffused with pure o2 span ever bigger gears and he was gone, gone, gone in the beat of a rampaging heart.

But this wasn’t enough and because there was more, I sprinted on even though a small accountant process was screaming that I probably shouldn’t. But I was high on how it feels to be fast; the unadulterated joy of working your body hard, pushing swift circles while perfectly balanced between pedals and bars. Sometimes your heart takes flight and you have to bottle that feeling, guard it carefully and only let it seep out in your darkest hours. It’s the stuff of life.

Sadly this metamorphis didn’t last long and on locking up the bike a few minutes later, I was suffering a bit. But that’s ok, because in that glimpse of something I’ve always taken for granted told me more than any shocking advert or government warning ever could that the time has come to stop. For good. It feels like crossing the last river to adulthood. Gulp.

Oh and the title? It popped into my ears when surrounded by the emperor’s new toys on the train. A small prize if you can name the artist. And no Googling because I’ll know 🙂

I’m turbo powered!

On By AlexIn Bikes, Road Riding7 Comments

Have you looked outside lately? The country appears to be mainly underwater although there is a jolly jest doing the rounds that the hosepipe ban is still in force. Although exactly what purpose artificial rain could perform is somewhat beyond me since everything outside is sodden and gloopy. And if you happen to be lucky enough to have a roof like ours, quite a lot of inside as well.

So all new for 2007, indoor riding is where it’s at. What other riding experience delivers a warm, dry and windless environment? Well summer of course but that’s almost years away and how would you feel careering downhill at 25mph+ while watching a DVD or reading a book? Broken and stupid, that’s how you’d feel.

That’s why I’ve borrowed a friend’s turbo trainer and by cunningly sequencing MTB DVD’s on the PC, a new riding style has been born. One could reasonably argue that spending an hour riding while traveling precisely nowhere is rather pointless but then I say again- have you looked outside?”

It’s all a bit more structured than passing a couple of grunting and wheezing hours before the pubs open. Dusting off the heart rate monitor and actually researching how one is actually meant to utilise such a heathen device was an eye opening experience. My previous regime of just riding as hard as possible until either you bested your opponent or you’ve died trying was conspicuously missing from the fitness book of words. Except for the bit that says if you do this, you will get sick although we barely need to mention this as nobody is that stupid“.

/Waves.

There’s a plethora of conflicting information awaiting the unwary internet browser much of it I’ll file under the heading obsessed body Nazi’s�?. However, it’s become clear that pedalling like a cocaine fuelled hamster until your heart attempts to rip itself out of your chest and black spots descend before your eyes may not be the elixir to long life and happiness.

So shuffle for rock music, stuff in the earphones and hit play on the DVD player before gentle pedalling prepares your heart for some three figure action. As your ramp up the revolutions, sweat rapidly exits every pore and rapidly creates an inland lake where the floor used to be. An hour is all you need and that’s sixty dull minutes you’ll never get back but it’s obviously been of use since you stagger off the bike having lost the use of your legs. The following hour or so could easily fill a wild west film sequence where the director is keen to show how an aged cowboy may walk after a few days in the saddle.

But let’s be clear, it’s not training. The great thing about the bike being clamped into the turbo means I can’t go and ride it on the road. And although my personal targets involve reclaiming “ by bloody minded force if necessary “ my 38 year old lung capacity and possibly shedding a little of the mid life, mid body excess, this does in no way constitute some kind of structured plan. Because sad old roadies do that and I’m only two of those things.

And the final benefit? You get to where all that old cross country Lycra without anyone outside chortling as your gut crests the waistband. I know it’s wrong but it feels so right 🙂

Happy Birthday Mr. Hedgehog

On By AlexIn Site Stuff2 Comments

Yep, this blog is exactly a year old. That’s quite an achievement since it was started with no real idea, style or substance and has continued in the same vein since.

But I can’t be bothered to write a proper anniversary post. Instead I’ve gone for the lazy option of picking my favourites from the last year. Yes, I know that’s rather conceited and no, I don’t really care 🙂

Chicksands
Chip’n’Ping:
When Bromptons attack:
Street Riding:
24:
Washing machine crisis:
A brush with the floor:
Bristol Bikefest:
Riding when drunk:
Hangovers:
Hospital Diaries: 1,2,3 and 4
Darts:
Lifts:
Degrees:
Bingo Night:
Being Five:
Toilet Humour:
Five things about commuting:

I’m not saying they’re any good, I’m just saying they float on the top of the racid collection of other scribblings.

You can call me Al

On By AlexIn Other stuff3 Comments

Never really understood the original lyrics but then the whole Paul Simon thing kind of passed me by in a “who cares how clever you are, it still sounds shit” kind of way. But anyway, my blazing trail of the entire medical facilities of North Buckinghamshire has highlighted something mildly interesting.

Lots of starched uniforms have poked a head round a corner with a query “Alexis Leigh, is he here?“. Most of my fellow sufferers – on what I’m starting to think off as death row – perked up to see if there were any shoulder pads and eighties Dynasty icons* in the building. My mum – bless her and frankly I blame the drugs they doshed out at childbirth in those days – came to the strange decision that Alexander would be a bit much too sign. Instead I was christened (actually they never got round to it and for the first three years I was known as “whatsit over there” which is possibly at the root of my insecurity complex) Alexis after some Greek God of Furniture or something.

No-one ever called me that. I kept it shrouded and hidden away as my guilty secret preferring Alex in my youth, Al later on and back to Alex once that bloody song came out. I can’t look a Chevy Chase movie in the face anymore**

And it was a good instinct because when my registration to the secondary school saw Alexis Leigh placed on the GIRL’S list, you can probably imagine the humuliation and suffering at the first assembly. And then the registration for the following 8 classes. It’s hard to be cool when you’ve got a pudding basin haircut, national health glasses and the baying of 29 other kids screaming “what’s your real name you bloody ponce“. I learned alot in the first two weeks about fighting – or to be more accurate getting beaten up – and displacement activity.

Sorry about that, it was almost like therapy 🙂

So having been prodded, X-Ray’d and sorounded by happy leaflets which you really don’t want to open, never mind read, sometime in the next 10 days, medical science may offer some diagnosis of my mono lung downgrade.

It’s probably nowt. The nurse looked at my notes raising a quizzical eyebrow and asking “a full set of full blood tests? again?“. She didn’t add “you bloody hypocondriac, don’t you know we’ve got some proper sick people here“. But she didn’t have to, the eyebrow was enough. Honestly, go in with a cold nowadays and the next thing you know the buggers are putting you down for a CAT scan. It’s seems almost surly to refuse.

I’m definately getting old tho. I found a liver spot but my guess is that’s just the organ trying to leave my body by any route possible, such is the punishment it’s had to suffer this last twenty years.

I tried riding to work this morning. That was – on reflection – a bad idea ending in the kind of heavy breathing that would merit an ASBO or an arrest or, more likely, both. By 2pm, it was clear that whatever the medication needs to be, being at work wasn’t it. I cycled back at normal lung minus 50{45ac9c3234d371044e23e276755ef3a4dde8f1068375defba7d385ca3cd4deb2} and actually it was rather pleasant taking just three minutes longer than my normal sweaty, aerobic one man charge at the station.

I feel like the Giraffe in Disney’s Madagascar***. Smell a bit like it too.

* I could do a link but I really can’t be arsed. Google is your friend if you care even the tiniest bit.
** See above 😉
*** Take a wild guess

I want my lung back

On By AlexIn Other stuff2 Comments

This is not my favourite season for many reasons but mainly because winter bring short days and longer illnesses. Everyone I know is snotty, coughing or “ if they’re a bloke “ suffering from a combination of botulism, typhus and dysentery easily categorised as man flu“. Me? I get all of that and as a bonus disease permanent asthma.

I’ve had it forever; diagnosed about the age of seven and so subjected to much prodding and sage nodding of heads. Treatment back then was the hated Spinhaler” into which you inserted a powdery tablet and then cracked it open using a shotgun ratchet action. All that remained was to suck in the ensuing dust, although this was a tad problematic when your peak flow was averaging about 300. Peak flow is a good measurement of lung capacity and mine’s now about normal for a bloke of my age. Back then it was about half of what it should have been which reminds me of many a night desperately wrenching critical air into tortured lungs.

A few lucky people grow out of Asthma but not many, leaving the rest of us have to manage it“. First seek and destroy “ or at least avoid “ the triggers that fire it up in the first place. Not easy when this list includes animal hair, colds, chest infections and hay-fever just for starters. And stress which is the diagnostically lazy rubber stamp to almost everything “ can’t sleep? Probably stress related, can’t stay awake? Are you feeling stressed out? Getting Ashtma at odd times? Probably need to check out your stress levels.

Secondly, drugs. A daily steroid now delivered through a simple gas shot straight into the cakehole and crisis management via the never-to-be-left-at-home Ventalin. Amazing stuff, opens up the pipes in an instant and has the added benefit of removing blue as your primary colour.

I’m pretty lucky in that it doesn’t really affect me that much or that often anymore. At school, it allowed me to skive games and the muddy cross country run was always for other people. But it’s also a cross to bare as it makes you different and so easy prey to pick on and tease. I hardly noticed it while studying for my degree as drinking beer and talking shit doesn’t require much lung action. One night though, it struck with perfect timing “ I had neither drugs nor access to any, being some five miles from civilisation and about half of that to a phone box.

Continue reading “I want my lung back” →

Sod the expense, feel the quality

On By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike Riding3 Comments

Our mini roadtrip consisted of 360 miles, one night in a bed and breakfast, one curry in the terrifying post apocalyptic horror that is Maesteg and various cakes, coffees and beers. Oh and an epic 14 miles riding. That works out about £3 a mile and you could run a Challenger tank on that.

There are mitigating circumstances. Firstly daylight is something that only happens in seasons other than winter. There is a counter argument which goes something like “well you have a set of very expensive lights you could use when it gets dark”. That’s all very well but a dark, cold Welsh forest in the middle of winter inhabited by things that may kill you or at least deliver a light mugging, is not my idea of fun when the option is warmth, light and beer.

Obviously we could have set off earlier but that would have removed one of my excuses for not wanting to ride more than once. MonoLung(tm) and heavy bikes mix as well as Relatives and Christmas. Uphill was actually ok as I’ve learnt to manage my lungs when Asthma strikes. Downhill, working hard to get the most out of the bike, left me breathless and stationary at the side of the trail.

Still it gave me time to wonder how the route could be so dry and so much fun. Man made trails are great in winter, they offer a consistency of experience regardless of the weather. There was plenty of grip and not many people which makes for great riding between desperate gasps for a lungful of clear air.

Winter light. DarksideBrad freepushing.Brad last hairpin. Darkside3PM in Wales. I want BST backBrad black run

One lung, not much ideaBrad Whytes

So once the man with the bike carrying van said no and the night plunged down the hill, we abandoned any thought of riding and instead dreamt of edible recompense for our awesome calorific efforts earlier. A sweep of the local offerings suggested no one in South Wales eats outside their own houses until March. We resorted to a meandering trip through the nearby ex-mining town of Maesteg, which told me everything I didn’t want to know about what happens when an industry dies. Streets full of thrift shops, boarded up buildings and really quite scary eyeballing young people.

Still we ate like kings for a tenner each and were burpingly joyful on returning to the car and finding it still had all the wheels attached. We talked long of a big day out tomorrow and slept the sleep of the worthy.

Unfortunately 8am brought Noah out looking for a lost giraffe.

We bought coffee and watched DVDs in the cafe and silently hoped neither of us really wanted to go out and drown. Eventually we abandoned any pretence of riding in Wales, perambulating in a ziggyzag fashion back to Oxford via other possible riding spots. All of which looked fantastic if your imagination could insert “dry, warm and summery” when your eyes reported “slippy, wet and bloody freezing”.

I felt a little guilty about the whole thing until it occurred to me what a great mood had now rolled over my previously miserable form. I didn’t feel any better physically but mentally the excesses of the holiday period had been properly cleansed.

It’s still cold outside but the rain has stopped and the wind died down to a point where I no longer fear for the fence. I think I’ll take monolung out for a gentle ride.