That was the weekend that was

On By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike Riding, Other stuff, PhotographyLeave a comment

Black Mountains August 2008 (19 of 37) by you.

How can it be 6pm on Sunday evening? Someone stole my weekend and unless that same someone gives it back, there shall be unspecified but violently executed trouble. About ten minutes ago, we were enjoying an outdoor dead cow grill-off freshened up by a couple of cold ones, and now there is only a nights’ sleep away from the corporate grind.

I’ll accept that a whole day was lost to some old school mountain biking. With all the new trail centres and dedicated riding, it’s easy to forget that inking in a huge circle round a couple of mountains and just getting on with it, was the default approach to a big day out.

The black mountains offer gradient, views, exposure and wilderness in equal parts. If bad things happen, you’re along way from help and nowhere near a phone signal. As I’d picked up the navigating tab, my nervousness as leaving us benighted on a proper Welsh mountain probably contributed to us getting lost on the way to the start point.

Black Mountains August 2008 (11 of 37) Black Mountains August 2008 (13 of 37)
Which set the scene for us (well me really) failing a number of navigational challenges including “This is a muddy sheep track and you promised us a big rocky downhill” and “How the hell do we get out of this humongous, wood before extreme hunger sets in and you’re dinner“

Black Mountains August 2008 (14 of 37) Black Mountains August 2008 (32 of 37)

And even when we finally stumbled back on track, huge 1000 foot carries separated us from the other side of the mountain. And endless climbs – framed by ground to sky glacial valleys – mocked our weedy legs and rasping lungs. But when gravity began pushing rather than pulling, we happily plunged down 10 kilometre descents, and bashed rocks until our legs, arms and central cortex could take no more.
Black Mountains August 2008 (20 of 37) Black Mountains August 2008 (29 of 37)
Which was about the point that the final 4 miles of climbing unwound from the very top of a big forest. Luckily I headed off the “Al in a Pot” mutiny by spotting a short cut which saved a) a 300 foot climb to the summit and b) my bacon.

The big day ended in a big feast where three men did something quite obscene to a huge dish of lasagna. Followed by similar acts of hedonism on some damn fine reds. All of which made cooking up a cholesterol death breakfast the first imperative of a groggy Sunday morning. Summarily dispatched, my body appeared incapable of independent movement – a state that completely failed to pass muster when confronted by a shit load of moving and grouting that apparently cannot wait.

So cleaned bikes, unloaded a ton of stone – which appears to have the same price per ounce as gold* – moved stuff around in a circular fashion, and made strenuous attempts to prevent children from trampolining into the river. When I say strenuous, what I actually mean is shouting “if you bounce over the fence, don’t expect me or your mum to come and get you. Swim down to Hereford and hand yourself over to a policeman“

And now it’s 6PM and the weekend has just been whipped away from under my foraging snout. Two questions – can this be in any way fair, and who do I blame?

* more on this later, when the insanity of buying a 200 year old cider pressing stone in leiu of food for a year dims to a dull ache.

Going aerial

On By AlexIn Other stuff4 Comments

A term describing a risky cricketing shot attempting to loft the ball over the fielders to score a boundary. Every time I tried it, it was always well received – normally by the bloke standing at mid-on. That reminds me that I once spent a happy hour describing fielding positions to an American girlfriend assuming she might be even slight interested.

Only once I’d expanded – at some length – on the nuances between Silly Mid On and Cover Point, did I realise she was slumped asleep having knocked herself unconscious with mirth at the stupidity of any game that breaks for lunch. We were at a proper cricket match as well, with the mighty Hampshire about 19-8 against a touring West Indies team. Back in the day, I knew how to show a girl a good time.

Anyway enough of a ramble through my sexually charged twenties, and more of an argument I tried to have with a man to whom the term “Rampant Profiteering” was entirely analogous to “Normal Business Practice”

Me: “Because I am merely a vassal for my children, can you please sort me out an aerial before social services find “In the Night Garden” has not been digitally available for 4 days”

Him:”Certainly Sir, that’ll be£212 plus the VAT of course”

Me: “No sorry, you’ve misunderstood me, I merely require someone to climb a ladder, install a length of wet string and drill a single hole in a wall”

Him: “Ah, well sir if only it were that simple. There’s alignment, gain, positioning and configuration of the cosmic interface and that’s before we start on all that digital malarky”

Me: “See that ridge up there”

Him “Yes”

Me: “See that huge bloody transmitter on top of it, which you must agree is quite significantly within line of sight as we can both see it”

Him [testily] “Yes, of course”

Me: “I can’t point my finger at that and receive Radio 3 in perfect stereo. The only alignment you could possibly need would be ‘Oi Bob, nudge it over a bit to the left.’ That can not possibly cost the thick end of£300″

Him: “Well it does”

Me: “Well it bloody doesn’t”

Can’t be hard can it? Ladder, Aerial, Drill. Get them in the right order and it’s a ten minute job. Probably.

Since I’m at one with technical stuff, serious consideration is being given to dragging the hedgehog into prickling distance of the latest WordPress release. I am only six versions behind, have no backup other than the back of a few envelopes, and understand not a single instruction from the 47 point upgrade plan.

Assuming the disaster waits for me to happen upon it, there may be some unscheduled downtime. A month should cover it.

First light. Then rain.

On By AlexIn Bikes, Road RidingLeave a comment

Blah blah dawn ride blah dawn mist shrouds the trees, blah surreal view over the Malvern hills, blah sun burning heat and light into the day, blah, 35 MPH sweeping downhill on deserted roads, blah two cars in ten miles. Blah, privilege to be riding my bike.

Pah. Draw the eye back from the flowery wank that that paragraph could so easily have become. Focus critical faculties on issues relating to perilous state of the road surface, still marked by scars that could only be misplaced WWII bombs. Craters deep enough to swallow man and wheel, a camber designed by nature to switch a road to stream in anything much more than a light shower.

And hilly, so very hilly after three years of Chilterns-Twinned-With-Holland commuting. Even with my inner smug drowning out the ground state of grumpy, it couldn’t totally suppress the thought that this route wasn’t going to be a whole lot of fun if it was wet and I was tired. Although I really didn’t expect to have the chance to test this assertion some 11 hours later.

Luckily a hardened commuting nose had smelt rain at 6am, and so a jacket was packed. Unfortunately the aural breeze wasn’t strong enough to stow mudguards or any other waterproofs, which, considering the bouncing rain and spleen trembling thunder which greeted my arrival back in Ledbury, was possibly a slight oversight.

The sky had the look of an unmilked cow, and I wondered whether this could be a good time to fit my lights. Sadly, having not packed the 12 mile arms, they too were on the wrong side of deeply unavailable. So I jacketed up and headed on into a decent impression of a tropical rainstorm. Inevitably balancing narrow slick tyres on wet slick roads was often quite entertaining. And without wishing to big up the danger, a couple of “ooooh shit, I am no longer in control of the steering axis” incidents possibly tipped the terror needle past mildly exciting.

Despite the best efforts of the alien technology* in my ludicrously expensive jacket, my upper body physiology was morphing into that of a boil in the bag. However, this was still a slightly more pleasant experience than the aquaphobic sensation of water sloshing between my toes. And yet even these soggy items came only a distant second in the “All Herefordshire Moist Limb Competition“, easily won by an arse sounding five fathoms, and suffering radial pebbledash.

Event times as miserable as this can be made significantly worse if one chooses a bold clothing decision. My removal of my – by now – smoking jacket perfectly coincided with the entire Al/Bicycle combination becoming beflooded**. Still playing to my dysfunctional democracy, each individual body part was now equally saturated, and every one was voting for an immediate halt under a tree.

Considering the lightening and a hollow feeling that could not be assuaged by the inhalation of my emergency food ***, the higher brain function took a decision to mentally raise the spinnaker and make fast sail for the pub. An athlete’s pep up of one pint and two bags of dry roasted nuts – while hard rain attempted to smash the roof – pepped me up for the final two miles home.

Of which one and a half are up a big f*cking hill demanding much twitching of the girly gear selection thumb. After this was wearily dispatched, only the final plunge through what was probably once a road separated me from a dry arse. This particular rural highway is comprised of three materials, grass, broken hardcore and tarmac. In that order. It’s reasonably involving on 100psi of 23c tyre, while squinting through the rain and darkening sky.

Sure, I was piss wet thru from limited thatch to buckety shoes, the bike was making the kind of noises not associated with long component life, and I feared for the state of the firm’s non waterproof laptop, but it was great to be home.

Because however cold, dark and wet the commute is and whatever the frustration of a million DIY jobs undone, this does feel like home. And after living in limbo for six months, that’s a bloody great feeling.

* Allows sweat to pass, while barring rain from the outside. How can that be, surely they are both of the base element H20? Is there some kind of password? “Sorry matey, you’re not on the list, bugger off”.

** A worthy third of the terrifying triumvirate Beflooded, Benighted and Unbanked. It would take a far stronger man than I to survive simultaneous exposure.

*** Which was keeping my waterproofs, lights and mudguards company.

Cooking on Gas

On By AlexIn Other stuff, PhotographyLeave a comment

Please don't let it rain... we're cooking on that

Not mains gas of course as that would be far too a) easy and b) cheap. At some point in the unspecified future, a man either qualified to mess about with lethal gases, or the proud owner of the Queen’s favourite mutt shall connect Flange ‘B’ to Gusset ‘F’, and the bloody enormous cooker shall be ready for use.

Proposed site for a proper cooker Kitchen before..

For Carol this means the ability to feed the family using all manner of interesting flames – some confined to the oven, others threatening eyebrow removal up top. For me, it’ll provide the perfect partner for Sunday fryups built around a signature dish of eggy soldiers. I’m not much for cooking but the ‘external thermally coupled griddle with afterburner thrust” is essentially an indoor BBQ, and no real man can resist that.

The Informational Tornado

Until then we were resigned to all weather BBQ’ing augmented by any fine delicacies than can be fried by microwave. But saved we were* by our insanely kind sellers who still live next door, and happened to have a cooker going spare.

This helped the ease the moving trauma which began at an unholy 7:30 this morning, and included such highlights as yours truly being felled by a hail of coat hangers, the terrifying loss of all our booze, and the broken inevitably of two large men being overrun by a large wardrobe.

Still they’ll probably be fine. Spinally compressed and a bit shorter, but basically fine. They build them different out here and I’ll leave you with an example of exactly how different that can be.

Various builders, electricians and random interlopers have been glassy eyed confused on my retelling of how we saw a bridally bedecked tractor heading off to Church this morning. Everyone thought this was strange, me because it’s a TRACTOR for God’s sake, and everyone else not understanding why I should find this amusing.

And when they had all gone, I walked up the hill and spent ten minutes in the viewing company of absolutely bugger all. It may not be for everyone, but here and now it feels bloody fantastic.

* No ariel. No TV. Been practicing my Yoda method acting through repeated viewings.

I have the key..

On By PhotoIn Other stuff6 Comments

Finally.., originally uploaded by Alex Leigh.

.. which was the first line of a pop song we sang incessantly during a month long Inter-rail tour of Europe. It was a very long time ago and I cannot remember why, although I’m fairly sure strong drink may have been involved.

As it will be again. It seemed odd – and perilously close to stupid – to electronically hand over suitcases of cash to the very people who have spent six months being rubbish. But with that done, all that was left was to be ignored by the seller’s solicitors.

We turned up – en famille – at his door only for him to basically shut it in our face. We weren’t worthy of his attention, so instead he abandoned us in the hallway until a minion removed a pot plant from an occasional table*, and proffered document after document for us to sign.

I didn’t read them. One because I am past caring, but mainly as my attention was focussed on the humourless, fussy bearded, arrogant prick who’d encased himself back into his office. This dogs’ arse had been serially incompetent for month after month, and yet couldn’t even find it in himself to offer even the slightest welcome.

Brusqueness bordering on rude and self importance bordering on a delusional complex. Carol convinced me it wasn’t worth practicing my own brand of law** to reconcile our differences, so I was left with only one option. I tore up his gravel drive using the might Japanese horses of the Honda. It’s wasn’t much, but all I could realistically manage until the hours of darkness.

Tomorrow at 8am, the movers arrive. Since one of my only tactical tasks is to plug us back into the global websphere, I fully expect hedgy to be back on line sometime before September.

I wonder if it’d be okay to sneak off for a ride Sunday? We’ve waited so long for the house, the DIY hell can wait for a bit. Or a competent man dealing in cash transactions. Whichever comes first.

* Very occasional considering how wobbly it was

** Qualifications not required. Stick with a nail it, mandatory.

All’s well that ends well….

On By PhotoIn Bikes, Mountain Bike Riding, Other stuff, Photography2 Comments
Afan Summer 2008 (2 of 3), originally uploaded by Alex Leigh.

.. apparently. Tomorrow we are meant to be signing over a huge cash wodge to take ownership of a house we’ve been trying to buy for – what feels like – most my adult life.

A second before that photo was taken, Jason was hammering down the trail with the look of a man knowing exactly what he was doing. Then – and I can only assume solicitors were in some way involved – he plunged into the bushes, only to be rewarded with a headfirst face plant into mucky sheep poo.

That’s a pretty good simile for how the house purchase is going. Here are the options for the latest deadline, expiring tomorrow:

1) We exchange and complete at the solicitors’ office. World peace breaks out, global warming is reversed and the credit crunch actually turns out to be a typo and in fact we’ve all been living in fear of a cereal bar.

2) A solicitors’ office is suspiciously torched in Malvern. A balding middle aged northerner is spotted in the vicinity sporting a box of matches, a can of petrol and a satisfied expression.

All I can say is when the latest missive from our legal team assured us the contract was fireproof, I sincerely hope he was speaking literally. Not that we’ve heard much since refusing to pay a bill that slightly voids the spirit of “fixed price service”

Still a day of non signage paved the way with rocks and huge lunches at a top trail spot in Wales. It was so much fun, I almost forgot to be extremely pissed off about the house. Or lack of it.

For the moment, I am sunburned, leg weary, co-located with beer and fairly sanguine. I do not expect that state of affairs to last one second past “Ah Mr and Mrs Leigh, there’s been a bit of a delay”.

Must dash. Flamethrowers to prime.

Fast and Furious

On By PhotoIn Bikes, Mountain Bike Riding, Photography4 Comments
Pace 405 XCAM (3 of 7), originally uploaded by Alex Leigh.

Like Thelma and Louise, Laurel and Hardy, Keith and Orville – there’s a partnership going on here and we’re both bringing different stuff to the party.

The bike is bonkers fast, silly committed in the twisties and barely out of a straight jacket when pointed down steep hills. I am annoyed at myself for lacking a third bravery testicle, irritated that I’m never going to get near the limit, and bloody annoyed that I broke my other bike.

After a couple of Cwmcarn laps, the bike was dusty and I was sweaty and smiling. Downhill it is a devil chuntering on your shoulder “faster, faster, FASTER YOU LESBIAN“. I did my best until a third run at the final descent dispatched me giggling into the shrubbery. Can’t blame the steering for that, because the wheels had somehow left the ground.

Uphill,life is more pedestrian and that’s about the speed I was climbing. Bit fat tyres, biffer on top and the fat frankinfork out front ruins the credentials of this lightweight frame. But it’s comfy, the view was quite lovely, the sun was warm and point that fork down the mountain and it becomes a barely guided missile.

Honestly I think that bike would be faster if I just hooked myself behind on a skateboard. I am going to have so much fun in Scotland although I may die horribly being flung off the side of a Munro-light. Still it’s the way I’d want to go.

Anyway it is apposite that a working bicycle is mine to stroke because the other one reacted extremely badly to a simple change of a gear cable. The chain was so miffed by this act of pointless maintenance it now wraps itself wound a very expensive titanium chainstay whenever I try something radical. Like changing gear.

I have no idea why this happened. I have tried eating the offending tool in a mature 40 year old response to the problem. That didn’t work and there is a tense standoff between the recalcitrant bike in one corner and big ‘ammered Al in the other.

I expect it’ll be fine when Carol has a proper look at it 😉

Moving on Friday. Or declaring martial law, firing up the scorpion pits and exposing any solicitor to the real consequences of handing over their ridiculous bill.

I think we may need an extra order of spiders.

C’mon feel the noize.

On By AlexIn Other stuff2 Comments

Shh.. Can you hear that noise? It’s the sound of Friday afternoon in offices up and down the country. The silence one associates with absolutely nothing happening. This is the trigger for me to declare open season on the legal profession as yet another house completion deadline passes.

The last email we received had nothing to do with any work actually being done, no it was an airy missive explaining how his charges were likely to be inversely proportional to my future bike spending budget. Apparently he’ll be working on the full financial horror this weekend which does bring the charge “surely you should be working on getting our house bought instead?” squarely into play.

Still if I’m not allowed to go mad with the harpcat(tm), then I’ll just spend the next six months finding reasons not to pay the cheeky bugger. That way he can too share in the joy of apathy – a gift that just keeps on giving. When we receive his bill, I shall ensure it must be counter-signed by random individuals who have no interest in notorising it whatsoever. Further, I will communicate only by writing on the side of a cow using an ancient dialect that nobody other than legal vultures can understand.

Then after dragging the whole process out for as long as possible – even if this means purchasing a fax machine and spare cow – I shall grudgingly settle our account by dispatching a truck full of pennies to be deposited outside his office door. And then, just when he thinks it is over, I shall unleash Harpcat and his nutter posse of ninja voles.

We do really want to start working on the new house, although my motivation may wane once I have reviewed the To-Do list. On the upside, it has only a single entry, on the downside, that entry reads “Everything”. The first order of business is a bonfire of pine, anything we own in this ubiquitous softwood need to feed the flames of my aversion therapy. It really is like living in a sauna here – except for the heat of course because that would imply some kind of summary weather.

It’s nearly the weekend, yet my internal radar is picking up grumpy targets from all quadrants. My attempt to repel scowly borders may be aided by the Much Marcle Steam Rally. I have no idea what happens here unless you really can rally steam. But I don’t care either as a) it’s being held right next door to the pub and b) I can amuse myself by identifying locals using the following formula: Divide Number of fingers by Six and set “local” to true if non fractional number returned.

There may also be some riding of new bicycles but one half of my braking system is in the hands of the Royal Mail. An organisation that prides itself on being late and offering almost no value for money. Kindred spirits with solicitors in my book.

Hit this, broke that.

On By PhotoIn Bikes, Mountain Bike Riding, Photography20 Comments
Pace 405 , originally uploaded by Alex Leigh.

Before the furniture police banned any personalisation of your “hotdesking workspace”, two fading truisms were taped to almost every desk. The first sets out the chair based human capital appliance – or employee as we old timers like to call ourselves – work ethic: “I can complete one task every day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow isn’t looking good either“. The other astutely observed “When you’re arse deep in hungry alligators, it’s sometimes hard to remember your plan was to clean up the swamp”

It is the second to which we must turn the eye of angst to, but not before staking my claim as the Olympic representative for the single minded pursuit of but one task per day. On a good day that is. Assuming there is nothing interesting happening outside the window.

I would have happily tossed* myself in the alligator’s maw at exactly 8:03PM last night. Surrounded by broken tools, cast off spare parts and a mixed collection of sizable hammers, my frazzlement sparked a sweary outburst ending in “why the f*** do I f***ing bother with this f**king s**t?”

A good question yet some distance away from the aura of tranquility and peace in which the build began. But things went wrong right from the start; the curious design of this fine Yorkshire frame sees the rear brake hose seemingly routing via Harrogate. A visit to a bike shop promised a swift solution, but delivered only lies and outrageously expensive options. Then the cranks didn’t fit because some copy monkey failed to notice the difference between the numbers 68 and 73.

Easy mistake to make I suppose. Especially when compared to forging an wheel dropout that was about 2mm narrower that the axle that was supposed to drop in. Undeterred I harvested the big file and – under strict instructions to ensure an adult was present – handed it over to Carol. Who filed away with a technique and patience that couldn’t be further than my only contribution: “for God’s sake woman, watch what you’re doing with that and don’t file my new bloody frame”

Flushed with success, we swiftly moved onto the scary proposition of lopping a few inches off the steerer tube. For those of you uninitiated in the dark arts of bicycle maintenance, this involves a pipe cutter, a£300 box fresh fork and a very deep breath. Fifteen minutes later, I’d broken the cutter, the record for a sentence with the most occurrences of the work bollocks, and a hacksaw blade.

The steerer remained resolutely uncut although badly mutilated. A good lawyer might have got me off with ABH but it took a bad Al to complete the job, somewhat lengthened by having to remove the stem with that well known Zen technique of twatting it with the biggest hammer.

When I say I completed the job, Carol returned from dealing with abandoned children, ignored my whining, took control of the cutting tools and lopped off the right length pretty close to square. How that woman didn’t then take the same approach to my testicles, as my whinging ratcheted up to near hysteria, shall form one of the many tenets of her future Cannonisation.

The tools were then gently prized from my bloodied hands, as further spannering was suspended for fear of an Al being denonated in an uncontrolled explosion. There is still much to do in terms of general tweakery, cable installation – featuring the frustrated tears of indexing hell – and complex suspension jiggery-pokery. I fully expect this to be completed in the same mixture of inner peace and outer accomplishment that has defined the build so far.

Alligator steaks all round then.

* Steady.

Digital Hermit

On By AlexIn Other stuffLeave a comment

You may have noticed we live in the Digital Age. Except ‘we‘ don’t, but our kids do. Anyone surfing onto the planet since about 1990 has never interacted in a world stripped of the immediacy of mobile phones or the lies of the Internet. And that’s scary.

They’ve grown up surrounded by the power of now – digital cameras, Google and YouTube. Watch a ten year old learn a new computer game “ for them instructions aren’t written down, they are on line. Load up, get fragged a few times, parallel process a solution through video walk thru’s and on-line friends.

Now factor in Facebook and MySpace – the kind of social networking representing the default state of the generation who will be taxed to fund our pensions. It will blow apart just apart every working practice and start a revolution that’ll leave us wondering why the hell we spent all that time in the office. Still that’s a subject for serious discussion and this is the hedgehog so let’s get silly.

After working with technology for over twenty years, it is only with great grudgement that I’ll attempt to operate anything with a manual bigger than the actual product. Which in this ever escalating miniaturisation arms race is just about everything.

Take my Bluetooth earpiece which sports a multitude of tiny buttons which issue a R2-D2 parody of beeps and squawks without actually performing any obvious function. It’d randomly pair with the phone at the exact time the “ tiny “ battery expired. But this at least saves me from the get over yourself tele-conferences where a worried looking bloke appears to be addressing the condiments isle.*

Such is my suspicion over the maturity of technology not yet ten years old, my approach was to either ignore the bloody thing or to swap seats with Carol and letting her drive. This was slightly more difficult on the motorway in a Chuckle Brothers to me to you seat swap, but it keeps the kids amused. In our car, this practice is known as Human Bluetooth

So my surprise was somewhere off the scale “ where the maximum is you have received a tax credit “ when my sodding GPS ran while the PHONE WAS IN THE BOOT. Crashing seemed to be inevitable while I frantically scanned the sky for the alien craft which was telepathically mind-beaming the interplanetary favourite what time will you be home?

I’m not sure how my wife interpreted Woooah, what the fuck is going on, the map is talking to me, it’s the fucking map I’m talking about, I am not shitting you, THE GPS has demons inside, get a bloody Priest lined up. Calmness personified, Carol reminded me I’d foolishly paired the dumb-phone to the electronic lazy-map months ago, and insidious technology had taken over.

I’m not so sure. I fully expect to open the fridge and a government talking head to chide me for reaching beerwards, and demand I divert to the salad tray. And it’s going to get worse before I get better “ but like cheese and marmite, government and honesty, cider and dangerous machinery, Al and technology clearly cannot coexist on a planet still lightly bolted to reality.

So sod these bloody digital natives, I’m opting out, unplugging myself from the matrix, getting reacquainted with maps, u-turns and hand written letters. The time of the digital native is over, it is time for the digital hermit.

* If you ever are unfortunate to hear “hello dear shall I get the foie gras or the shop pate“, the correct response is Neither Get meat paste you pretentious knobber.