Monthly Archives: August 2005

I don’t think I’ve said that enough lately, but it’s true.

Fantastic ride tonight. Went out with Ian and George on the usual evening route, but instead of splitting off after 8 miles and looping back home I decided to follow Ian on through the lanes. It’s a nice rolling few miles back to Ians house with a couple of long but gentle climbs, however after that there are a couple of steep climbs that I’d always been a bit nervous of riding and had managed to avoid. Tonight they were no problem though and I very nearly flew up them. I only ended up doing an extra 4 miles or so, but there were a lot more hills which made it more of a workout. 22.5 miles in a tad over 80 minutes in the end.

After a very lazy morning mostly spent in bed, I spent a lazy afternoon fettling. The Lemond got some new Campagnolo Centaur calipers, then the Langster got the Campagnolo Veloce calipers from the Lemond. I also fixed an errant part of the decking which wasn’t sitting level. After lounging around a bit more I eventually took the Langster out for a quick spin to check the brakes, which are noticably better than the Tektro calipers I’d replaced. They also look much much nicer which is equally as important as the performance.

It’ll be an evening of pizza, beer, wine, and TV I suspect.

Getting the back end out on a bike can be ace, especially when swooping down nice dusty trails.

However it’s less fun at 30+ mph on a sharp downhill corner when you suddenly discover a queue of traffic in the middle of the diesel-slicked road.

That’ll be time for some clean shorts then.

Luckily the rest of the 17.5 mile ride was fairly uneventful apart from trying to trace an annoying rattle somewhere on the bike, current suspect is one of the bottle cages.

Power outage at work tomorrow at 7:30 means it’ll be an early start and a manically busy first few hours.

Took the Craftworks out for a proper spin tonight, the last time I rode it properly was at Glentress over New Year. It’s a bit of a shock to the system to ride a 40+ lbs bike with 6" of travel at each end after spending the last few months on 20lbs road bikes. I did the semi-usual route round the Uni, with the added excitment of a stand-off with a large dog in the depths of the woods.

The worst part was catching my two week old wool jersey on a tree and putting a large hole in one arm :(

The day was partly saved thanks to the interweb providing me with a copy of Achtung Bono by Half Man Half Biscuit before the copy I’ve paid for has arrived. I’ll probably spend the rest of the evening listening to it on repeat.

I must be ill, I’ve just cleaned a bike.

To be fair, the crosser was no longer black, repeated trips off road and along the canal towpath had liberally coated it in mud and dust and it was filthy. A quick dousing with Muc Off followed by a liberal soaking from the hose, and a generous application ot GT-85 leaves it looking much cleaner, and probably a good pound or two lighter.

No riding yet today as I’m feeling a little fragile after last nights activities. Drinking games are always a bad move.

First ride on an MTB for a while tonight. I decided to take the Kaboom out round the University for a gentle spin taking a few pictures along the way. It feels very odd riding a singlespeed MTB after a couple of weeks on a fixed-gear road bike, I think I can cope though.

Uni ride pictures.