It’s the end of October which means we have reverted to GMT giving us darker evenings. After fairly crappy weather for most of the day, I finally headed out at dusk for a quick spin on the Langster, it was quite strange doing the last half of the ride in the dark, and still getting home before 6pm. A pretty good ride in the end, I really must do it more often.
Today is not a day to ride bikes unless you ride wearing a wetsuit. It’s a day far better suited to sitting down with a mug of tea and a book.
I might actually get around to sorting out the brakes on the Inbred though.
Well it would be if there had been a photo credit.
The less said about tonight the better. Nothing was happening, decent throws were taking one or two pins instead of four or five.
Somehow we managed not to lose one leg, but Crazy Gang took 5 legs, and we made do with 1. Crazy Gang took the full 8 points, we went home with 1. Somehow I managed to get top score.
It’s the New Model Army time of year again, so I headed up to Kettering on Friday for the weekend. Saturday morning we went for a ride up to Market Harborough for a bag of chips and back, a total of 28 miles and one puncture. Saturday night we headed into Northampton to see New Model Army. It was the last night of the UK leg of the tour, and the night before the 25th anniversary of their first gig. As with last year, they were very very good, the only downside was that it was unbearably hot in the venue as they kept the airconditioning turned off for most of the evening.
Setlist
Whirlwind
Believe It
Water
Fate
Wonderful Way To Go
Carlisle Road
Another Imperial Day
Here Comes The War
Snelsmore Wood (Justin solo)
Red Earth
Before I Get Old
Island
51st State
No Rest
Poison Street
Get Me Out
Flying Through The Smoke
LS43
125 mph
225
The rejigged Inbred made it’s maiden voyage this morning, and it all seems to work reasonably well. The Magura brake on the back doesn’t really work, so I’ll have to rummage around and see if I can find a spare v-brake and lever at some point. Some late-night fettling last night replaced the cable-tie on the forks with a proper nut and bolt which stiffens things up nicely.
With the addition of some cheap full-length mudguards, the Inbred has been reborn as a winter commuting bike. The only complicated bit was that neither of the forks I had easily to hand were drilled for mudguards, however I found an old set of Univega RaceLite forks in the cellar which do the job with the aid of a few cable ties. I also fitted some more suitable tyres, but left the gearing at 32:16 fixed for the moment.
Weather permitting the test ride will be tomorrow morning provided I remember to fit the lights.
Now with added pictures: whole bike, cable ties save the day.
This turned out to be our fourth 5-3 result out of four games this season. However unlike the previous three games, this one went in our favour.
Housing Admin took 5 legs and 8 points, Crazy Gang took just the three.
Took the Langster out for a spin today, and pedalled my way past 2000 miles for the year. This year I managed it 34 days earlier than last year thanks mainly to doing a lot more road riding this year. Nearly a quarter of those 2000 miles have been done on a fixed gear bike.
We took the scouts to visit the police station tonight as part of their badgework, it was also the first proper outing for the Sigma 24-70 f2.8 EX lens I picked up cheap a few weeks back. The visit was quite useful for the scouts, and the new lens worked very well, something that can’t be said about the batteries in my flashgun, luckily I had a couple of spare sets ready to use.
The rest of this last week has mainly involved being busy at work, along with getting over the after-effects of a cold which has just left me with no energy at all, consequently I’ve not ridden a bike properly since Sunday. Hopefully I’ll get out at some point over this weekend to do the 20 miles or so I need to get past 2000 miles for the year so far. If I manage it it’ll be over a month quicker than last year.
A new series of Fifth Gear started tonight, and they’ve managed to turn it into a cheap pathetic version of Top Gear. It’s office based rather than studio based, but the "conversations" are stilted and humourless, and they’ve finally pinched the idea of having a chart of laptimes of test cars. What a waste of an hour of telly.
With the aid of my trusty hammer, the Langster has now surrendered it’s freewheel saving around 0.25lb in the process. I might stick in on the Inbred at some point. No riding tonight as I feel like crap, but hopefully I’ll get out for an hour or so tomorrow, possibly a proper(ish) nightride on the Kaboom.
Another gentle ride today. We headed out to ride part of the Collier’s Way which is a new Sustrans route from Dundas Aqueduct to Frome. We met in Midford and got about a mile past Kilmersdon before Ian decided his knee had had enough and we turned back. I ended up doing a shade under 35 miles in the end, and had one slow puncture which was an irritating hindrance.
The main downside of the route at the moment is the part between Midford and Wellow which involves a long steep road climb, followed by an even steeper descent which I resorted to walking up on the way back. The sooner they sort out the proper link between Midford and Wellow the better.
Hobbes has been feeling a bit left out as he’s not had a picture on here since he broke his foot, so here he is reclining on the sofa.
I think I need a sturdier tripod though.
A week or so back I posted about my new laptop and a networking issue when setting it up.
Apparently other people have had the same problem as I did and not found a solution, so here is how to work around it.
Problem:
Windows will quite happily see the WEP encrypted wireless network and will claim to have joined correctly, but it will not pick up a DHCP address, and if configured with a static address will fail to see the rest of the network.
Work around:
Temporarily disable any encryption on the wireless network, this will allow the laptop to join the network quite happily, you can then re-enable WEP and MAC address filtering as appropriate and everything will continue to work correctly.
I’ve no real idea what causes the problem, I only worked it out after 20 minutes of fiddling when I noticed that my new laptop would connect to my neighbours unencrypted AP quite happily, but wouldn’t work properly with my WEP enabled AP. I had the same problem with both the builtin Intel 2200BG adapter, and a PRISM based Netgear WG511 card from my old laptop.
When recabling the gears on a bike just before a ride, first make sure that the spare cable you intend to use is actually a gear cable, and not a brake cable.
I ended up having to ride to the shop in bottom gear, then had to recable the front shifter on the shop floor before the ride started. Luckily everything went together nicely and the shifting is far better than it was at the weekend. The ride was quite good as well, I rode home with Ian then back into town being held up by the cars as usual. I need to get a clear run back in one day just to see how much fun it is way over the speed limit.
Ronnie Barker has died aged 76.
Is it time for jokes about "four candles" at the funeral?
My least favourite cup on one of my least favourite alleys meant it was never going to be a good night. We lost the first leg, but managed to win the second mainly due to a 13-spare from yours truely. We quickly slipped to 4-1 down, but managed to win two more legs to take us back to 4-3. However that was as good as we got and we eventually lost 5-3 for the third game in a row.
Somehow I managed to get top score with a total of 53.
A fairly short ride this week compared with the last couple of weekends, but we did stop for tea and cake this time which more than made up for it. The rest of the ride was a fairly uneventful 24 miles or so.
The weather is a bit crap at the moment so I think the rest of the day will be spent drinking tea in front of the TV catching up on DVDs.
