Life in the Bus Lane

In a re-run of the bank holiday at the beginning of the month, I headed out to Chew Valley Lake with Ian for tea and cake. The only difference was that we didn’t manage to outrun the rain this time and I did the last 6 miles or so in torrential rain and hail. The annoying thing is that by the time I’d wiped the bike down and had a quick shower the sun was back again.

The new pedals and shoes were a success. A bit of discomfort for the first few miles, then everything settled into place and they felt fine.

Took the Kaboom for a spin round Unibike. This was the first time out locally on a mtb for over 6 months so came as a bit of a shock to the system. Overall I’m impressed with the bike, it’s a bit shorter than the Inbred, and needed a few tweaks during and after the ride to sort a few niggles out.

The Kaboom has been built, time for a quick test ride I think.

More later.

Thanks to Grant I now have a Kona Kaboom frame sat in the dining room. I picked up the few extra bits I need from the LBS earlier, and now all I need to do is decide which bits I need to pinch from the Inbred.

I suspect that the Inbred will end up as a fully rigid fixed-gear bike, and the Kaboom will get the bouncy forks and a freewheel/freehub. The only real decision is whether I get another front disk brake or not.

The HD in my webserver which had been struggling along for the last couple of months finally died last night. I think I’ve managed to move the important websites across onto a new box in some sort of working order. It does at least mean I’ve reduced the excessive number of computers running in the house by one.

After a nice day out of the office today, I head back in tomorrow to deal with the inevitable huge backlog of email which will probably take me the rest of the week to catch up on.

It’s still raining here, I’m starting to get a bit fed up with it as it’s stopped me riding properly for the last week and a bit, and looks like it’ll continue to do so until at least the weekend.

Not for me though, but I think it was well received. Shame the weather was so crap today that it couldn’t be tested properly.

A fairly busy week at work this week, partly due to unreliable power. No real riding was managed due to the lingering effects of a cold at the beginning of the week, and crap weather so far this weekend. Thursday was a work BBQ, the rain mostly held off for the evening, and I drank a small oceans worth of alcohol with worringly few aftereffects. I had Friday afternoon work off so popped down to the LBS and picked up a couple of bits for the roadbike, which now sports a new stem and some decent pre-enjoyed tyres.

I did pick up a brand new bike this week, unfortunately it was too small for me so I think I’ll give it to my nephew for his birthday next week.

Rumour has it that there may be a pre-enjoyed frame on it’s way to me at the moment, I really ought to sort out how much I’m paying for it.

Busy
Scout AGM
Busy
Committee meeting
Busy
Bike ride
Ill
Scouts
Thank god it’s the weekend.

This should have been the first game of the season, but was delayed due to being scheduled for the August bank holiday. It was also probably the last time Rich Tucker will play for us as he’s getting married next month and moving to Trowbridge.

Housing took the first leg, but promptly lost the next three. However a late resurgence saw us bring the game back to 4-3, then 4-4, and then it all went horribly wrong.

Widcombe OddBods took the 5 legs and the pins to give 8 points, Housing took 4 points.

The season is now over until the beginning of September, how will I cope without skittles?

The Inbred now has some nice old cranks fitted to it. The Truativ ones which were on there had a spider which rocked when I applied pressure to the pedals to slow down. It now has some old Marin ones with a one-piece drive side arm and therefore cannot suffer the same problem. They are also 175mm instead of 180mm which should help pedal clearance. All being well I’ll head out for my longest ride so far on the fixie of about 15 mostly flat miles.

Thank god that the election will be done and dusted by tomorrow evening, maybe TV will be able to return to normal and we’ll get some proper news for a change. I’ve not been and voted yet and have no intention of doing so. All the politicians are as bad as each other, and at the end of the day no matter who gets in nothing much will change.

Back in the real world, we did a different route on our ride tonight and decided to climb up through St Catherine, a road I’d only ever ridden down, and I’d not done that for 12 years or so. Turns out it’s bloody steep but is at least a shorter climb than Bannerdown Lane which it eventually meets at the top of the hill. The rest of the ride was nice and rolling, and totalled about 17.5 miles due to us cutting it short slightly.

Comments seem to work properly at the moment, I think I’ve bodged it enough to hold together until I work out what broke. It looks like last weeks upgrade to Movable Type 3.16 was to blame.

The comment functionality is a bit b0rked at the moment, comments do get posted but you’ll get an error message after you submit a comment. Feel free to ignore it.

Normal service will be resumed just as soon as I work out what’s broken.

Due to it being a final, tonights match was played on a neutral alley against the team who have won the league this year. We won the toss and elected to throw first, something which may have backfired as we proceeded to lose the first leg. We did manage to win the second, and continued to swap legs until we reached 2-2. At that point the game turned in our favour as we won the 5th and 6th legs leaving us 4-2 up with Bards to throw. We showed 41, Bards could only manage 40 giving us the 5th leg we needed to take the cup.

Housing Admin 5, Bards 2.

WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS!!!!!!!!

In other news, congratulations to Mike and Sandra who are due to become parents sometime in November.

Bank Holiday Monday, clear blue skys, it can only mean one thing. Tea and cake at Chew Valley Lake.

I was out of the house just after 9, and got to Ians nearly 20 minutes early, and an hour later and we were sat down at Chew Valley having spent the princely sum of £1.80 on tea and cake, bargain. We took the "new" route home and tweaked it a bit to cut out a mile or so of main road round the edge of Keynsham. The dark clouds were looming so I raced home trying to beat the rain, and managed it by 20 minutes or so, the rain forecast for midday finally arriving just before 1pm.

In the end I did a nice gentle 33.5 miles in 2.5 hours, mostly in glorious sunshine. Is there a better way to spend a morning?