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Yearly Archives: 2005
Save the Stiffee – Stage One
The Stiffee hasn’t had much use recently, partly because the last two times I rode it in anger it suffered badly from chainsuck to the point that the chain got jammed above the chainstay and needed to be split and rejoined to free it. Given that this takes ten minutes or so to fix it’s not an ideal situation. The problem is that thanks to the generous tyre clearance and beefy chainstays, there is just enough room between the middle chainring and the chainstay to squeeze a chain through, but not enough room to get it out again. I have various plans to alleviate the problem, and today was the chance of the "free" one.
The Deore cranks and BB were removed and replaced with RaceFace Prodigy cranks and a RaceRace BB from the Craftworks. The ISIS BB is adjustable so that I can move the chainset out a bit to give more clearance. I also swapped the beefy 34T chainring for a more slender 32T one which should also give a bit more room.
If this doesn’t work the next step is to "upgrade" to a nine-speed drivetrain, it’s not strictly necessary, but if I’m replacing the chain and cassette anyway it seems silly not to get new shifters as well for not much more money.
Whilst I was waving my tools around, I also replaced the front mech on the cross bike with a 9spd one which will hopefully sort out the dodgy front shifting.
Posted in Bikes
5 Comments
Larks vs Housing Admin – Hobbs Cup
The Hobbs Cup is more commonly known as the pins cup, and in the initial rounds is played over seven legs, with the team with the highest total of pins being the winners. We last won this cup eight years ago.
To be honest, tonights game was a game I never expected us to win, however after four legs we were tied on 202 pins each which was a bonus. However Larks scored an average of 60 pins in each of their last three legs and we didn’t. We went into the last leg needing 80 pins, which was never going to happen, and we ended up losing by 30 pins or so partly because we sort of gave up trying mid-leg when we realised each player needed to score 14 or more.
Somehow I ended up with top score partly due to an 11-spare in the first leg.
One good outcome of the night was that our pair of Den and Rob knocked their pair out of the pairs cup.
Posted in Skittles
5 Comments
Pizza and Beer
No proper ride tonight as the weather is consipiring against me. It started raining about 10 minutes before I left work and hasn’t stopped yet. I think I’ll settle for a pizza, the last bottle of Old Speckled Hen, and possibly a DVD of City of God.
Posted in Misc
4 Comments
Ninety Nine to go
Tonight was my first proper ride for a week. I headed out after work on the Langster with the aim of doing a few loops of double gravity, however after the first climb I realised I’d managed to leave all my tools at home which would make a puncture somewhat problematic, so settled for just the one loop followed by a slightly extended loop around Bath where I was a bit nearer to home if things went wrong. I ended up doing a fairly chilly 17 miles instead of the 20+ I was aiming for.
Only three more days at work then I’ve got a week off, hopefully the weather will be good enough to finish off the last few miles I want to do before Christmas gets in the way.
Posted in Bikes
8 Comments
Picadillys vs Housing Admin
A nice early start tonight for a change, and we soon headed into a nice lead. Picadillys were very consistent with the first three legs all totalling 47 whereas we had 50, 58, and 50. A couple more decent legs and we cruised to a 5-0 victory. The match finished at 21:18 which is a new team record for the earliest finish.
Housing Admin took the full 8 points, Picadillys went home empty handed.
Next match is a Pins Cup match on Thursday.
Posted in Skittles
3 Comments
I don’t know why I stay
Having just had a pay cut at work as part of Agenda for Change, it looks like we’ll be getting another pay cut next April. Gordon Brown has decided that NHS pay rises must be based on the governments inflation target of 2%. Given that their inflation target doesn’t include factors such as housing costs or council tax, it means an effective pay cut in real terms even if they do reach their 2% target. It looks like Labour are doing their best to kill off the NHS.
Posted in Misc
4 Comments
Hectic
Friday night was a work outing. It used to be known as the network support christmas party, but some of the other people in the department complained that we didn’t invite them along, the fact they didn’t actually work in network support seemed to escape them, so we renamed it as "Carl’s birthday" because Carl happened to have the nearest birthday to the meal that year. This year we went for a curry. We met up in the pub first for beer, most of which was sponsored, then headed off for the curry and more beer. I was still feeling a bit ill so after the curry I was only intending to stay for another pint then head home early, however 5 or 6 pints later I ended up staggering home about 2am.
Due to the overindulgence of Friday, I was intending to have a quiet night in on Saturday, but Ali next door popped his head round about 5:45 and I ended up going out for a quick beer then the cinema. Somehow it didn’t go entirely to plan and I ended up staggering home about 1:30.
Sunday so far has involved a walk out to Bathampton for Sunday lunch, then back home again, it’s probably time to catch up on some sleep now.
I’ve not ridden a bike since Tuesday, something I must attempt to rectify this week.
Posted in Misc
16 Comments
Snowy Ride
A fairly manic day at work today, mostly spent trying to work out how I’d managed to break the dial-up remote access. That ended up taking a couple of hours with the aid of a copy of Ethereal before I worked out what was going on.
I popped down to PC World after work and picked up one of their cheap Toshiba 160GB external HDs for backups. Once that was plugged in I headed out on the Kaboom for an hour or so. I wasn’t intending to ride tonight but I could see the snow on the top of the hills and decided it was too good an opportunity to miss, it also gave me a chance to deliver a birthday present in time for tomorrow. Once I’d climbed up to the top of the hill there was a couple of cm of snow in places, not a great deal but more than I’ve seen here in quite a few years. Probably one of the best rides I’ve had for quite a while. Might even try for another ride tomorrow night.
Posted in Bikes, Tech
13 Comments
Cold, wet, miserable, and offline
Headed out for a quick spin on the Langster tonight. First I popped into the LBS to say goodbye to Ian who’s off to Australia for a month, I ended up collecting my birthday present and a load of cards so had to pop home again before heading back out. It started to drizzle as I headed to Saltford, so I’d half decided to turn around at Saltford and come home again, however the drizzle had more or less stopped so I decided to carry on. A bad choice. As I rode up the hill it started raining, then turned to sleet, then snow. It turned back into sleet as I headed back down the hill again, but didn’t let up until I got home freezing cold and soaking wet, but somehow strangely satisfied.
Unfortunately Pipex seem to be having routing problems at the moment, so I can only see about half of the interweb, and can’t get any mail. I might have to find something productive to do this evening at this rate.
Posted in Bikes
5 Comments
It’s Official
Due to some spectacularly bad planning on behalf of HR, I’ve got my payslip which tells me my new pay scale before the official letter telling me what it is has arrived. I now have the delights of getting extra money in the form of protected pay to top me up for a while. Hopefully my appeal will go in next week and should be successful as my co-worker has been placed on the next grade up. The only downside is that the appeal could take six months to go through.
Posted in Misc
7 Comments
