Life in the Bus Lane

It’s now a month since I last rode a mountain bike. I’ve been out on the crosser a couple of times, but mainly I’ve been riding the road/commuter bike this month. I did get my Stiffee out when I got home from work tonight and give it a gentle fettling in preparation for taking it out for a ride. It now has the nicer Hope/F519 wheels back in place, and after a quick poke and prod, the existing forks will suffice for the time being.

Tomorrow night should be another ride on the crosser which should hopefully be getting some new forks this week to stiffen the front end up a bit.

Today was the grand opening of Ians new workshop. After spending a couple of weekends helping out, it was good to see it finally finished and decorated.

I also got to fondle his new Trek Madone 5.9 frame which is scarily light, in fact I’m convinced that I’d snap it in half if I rode it. I do have a craving for a new road bike in time for the summer. I think I’ll borrow the Lemond demo bike from the shop one weekend and give that a try out with a view to buying a cheaper Lemond. I’m not sure I can justify the Steel/Carbon spine bikes, but they do look very very nice.

Nowt much else exciting happened this week, although I did get myself a new mobile phone.

Went out for a 25 mile spin on the cross bike tonight with birthday boy Ian. We did our usual flattish route to Bradford on Avon and home again in around 90 minutes. Got a bit wet on the way home, and my legs were very very tired. It was my first proper ride since the beginning of December, and it’s amazing how much fitness you lose, especially when you didn’t have much to start with.

Same again next week hopefully.

A slightly messy game tonight. We deserved to win the game, but didn’t really deserve to win the last leg which we took 37-32 giving us a 5-2 victory.

Housing Admin took 8 points, Half and Half took 2.

The Bill Giles Memorial Cup will be decided next week.

Well the weekend rolls around again and it’s another wet one. The weather does seem to be doing it’s best to conspire against me and stop me riding.

Nothing exciting happened this week.

Having lost 5-1 last week, we were out to seek revenge. We quickly established a lead, and never really relinquished it. Our last leg of 61 complete with a 15 spare from the captain sealed a 5-2 victory. Somehow I took top score, partly helped by a 13 spare in the penultimate leg.

Housing Admin took 8 points, Bluecoat House took 2.

The Ultegra cranks arrived from Simon today, and after a bit of trouble getting the bottom bracket in, didn’t take long to fit. It’s too wet for a proper test, but they don’t creak as badly as the old ones, and have probably shaved about 3lb from the weight of the bike.

Off to a skittles match in a bit, hopefully the rain will have died off a bit by then.

In preparation for a delivery from Simon I decided to have another go at removing the bottom bracket from my road bike. I’d tried to take it out a year or so back when I built the cross bike, but with no success. The biggest problem was keeping the removal tool connected to the bottom bracket whilst hitting it with the largest hammer I could lay my hands on. After a bit of digging around I discovered that the hole in the handle of my crank extractor was big enough to take a crank bolt and could therefore be used to clamp the removal tool in place. So armed with a large adjustable spanner, a kettle of boiling water, and a large hammer, I finally managed to persuade the bottom bracket to release it’s tenacious grip on the frame.

Percussive maintenance is very theraputic.

Well we won the first leg, after that it went a bit downhill. I didn’t play very well but that was due to drinking four pints straight after work.

It was almost the end of an era tonight as New Tramways is closing at the end of Feb, so it was our last game there.

Bluecoat House took 8 points, Housing Admin took 1.

Popped down to the sorting office after work to collect some packages. I must be ordering too much as the postie saw me in the queue, turned round and picked up my parcels and just handed them straight over.

Thanks to one of the parcels, the road bike now has slightly strange bars on it.

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They feel a bit odd to start with, but seem to work quite well. It’ll be interesting to see how they cope when I ride into work next.

To stave off complaints from certain people that I haven’t posted anything recently, this is a completely meaningless update. Nothing interesting has happened since the last update except that I was ill all weekend and didn’t leave the house.

In slightly less dull news, New Model Army have finally started mixing what will become their first studio album for over 5 years.

It’s been a long time since I posted a link of the day, so here’s something to keep you amused for 5 minutes or so: http://eclectech.co.uk/mindcontrol.php (needs sound).

Apparently free guided walks through the Lake District National Park are being scrapped because they currently attract “middle-aged, middle-class white people”, and this doesn’t meet the government targets of only attracting black disabled children (or something). How soon before they put signs up at the entrance to the park saying “No whites allowed”?

Following on from a post a couple of weeks back about a lack of bread at the sandwich bar, I went down today to get some lunch, only to find that they still haven’t got any bread, and now reckon it’ll be at least Thursday before they get any more. What sort of suppliers are they using that can’t supply bread for two whole weeks?

Good job there is a supermarket in the village behind the office, even if the sandwiches aren’t as good.

Unfortunately I have to go back to work tomorrow which will no doubt come of something as a shock to the system. It’ll probably take me most of the week just to catch up on all my emails. Getting out of bed before 7am will be a challenge.

I seem to have somewhat wasted the last day of my Christmas holidays today. I tried to go to the supermarket but the car park was full, so I settled for a trip to Halfords to replace the broken headlamp bulb in the car. Somewhat confusingly, Halfords had been replaced by a large Maplin store which is handy, and it turned out that Halfords had only moved next door into a larger store.

Best try and get an early night I suppose.

A slightly belated Happy New Year to all my readers, all 6 of them :)

New Year was spent with Grant in Scotland. We rode Glentress on the Friday, including two runs down the new Spooky Woods which is rather ace, then mistimed midnight quite badly and missed it. Grant was in the toilet, Jen was in the kitchen, and I was trying to find a dummy for Connor.

Saturday was spent sessioning the XBox due to the shite weather, and the drive back today was made "interesting" by blizzards, multiple crashes, and the horror of the M6.