Life in the Bus Lane

Not a bad month considering I missed about a third of it due to surgery.

Another suspected doping scandal is doing it’s best to ruin the reputation of professional cycling. Following on from the release of names of people implicated in the "Operacion Puerto" investigation, several of the pre-race favourites will not be taking part in this years Tour de France. Jan Ullrich was suspended by his team at the request of their main sponsor, and Ivan Basso has since been excluded by the tour organisers. No doubt many more names will follow.

I took the Ribble out tonight for it’s first proper ride. Whilst waiting for the others at the LBS I took the opportunity to pinch a new saddle off the shop wall and fit that, it still needs tweaking slightly though. Once out on the road it became clear that the gears still need fettling, and the front mech cable managed to detach itself part way round necessitating five minutes attention with an allen key. Ignoring those minor niggles it’s actually quite nice to ride. Compared with the Lemond it tends to barge its way through things rather than float over the top of them, but then it’s a couple of lbs heavier and about £1500 cheaper. It’s nice and steady and surefooted, almost perfect for the 40mph descent back into town (in a 30mph limit naturally).

At some point soon it needs a new rear mech, and possibly some different bars, other than that it’s perfect for it’s intended job.

After spending several months riding road bikes equipped with Campagnolo Ergo levers, or Campag-alike Cane Creek brake levers, I now find Shimano STI levers to be horribly uncomfortable. They are far too bulky, and completely the wrong shape. Unfortunately it’d cost me too much to convert my two Shimano equipped road bikes to Campagnolo. If anyone has a pile of Campagnolo Ergo levers, rear hubs, cassettes, and rear mechs they want to donate to a worthy cause, just let me know.

The saddle and bars were slightly too high, and the gears need a final fettle, but other than that it’s a pretty nice bike to ride.

Being a "traditional" frame, rather than the compact frames I’ve ridden until now, it looks a bit odd with only a few inches of seatpost emerging from the top of the seattube, however the reach is almost perfect with the 120mm stem pinched from the Schwinn. As time and money permit I’ll upgrade it to slightly better components, one possibility is converting the cross bike to Campagnolo and putting the Shimano parts from that onto the Ribble.

If I make it to the LBS after work tonight, it might get a proper outing on the Thursday evening ride this week.

I bought another bike.

Actually I only bought part of a bike. I picked up a Ribble Audax frame and carbon forks cheap from eBay, then with the addition of some standard-drop brake calipers and assorted oddments from the LBS I built it up with most of the parts from my old Schwinn Fastback.

60cm Ribble Audax frame with ITM Spider forks.
Most of a Sora groupset with Ultegra triple chainset and RX 100 brakes.
Cannondale Earth hubs on Mach 1 CFX rims with Vittoria Rubino tyres.
THE stem and bars, Planet-X seatpost and saddle.
Total weight 23.25lbs.

After a quick test ride it feels pretty good. It needs a couple of extras like full length mud guards, a couple of bottle cages, and a computer, but it’s pretty much ready to roll.

Pictures to follow when the weather is nicer.

This morning I decided it was about time I went out for a proper ride again. However just after I made the decision, I promptly fell asleep for another two hours which delayed the start somewhat. I eventually left about 12:30 and headed out to do the normal non-stop Chew Valley Lake ride, it’s something of a misnomer because the non-stop route doesn’t actually go as far as the lake before looping back towards Bath.

The first 90 minutes were hot and sunny, the last hour was overcast and a bit breezy which was a welcome relief after the heat of the earlier part of the ride.

In the end I did 33 miles before getting home for a lunch comprising the remains of last nights pizza and a cold beer.

My West Wing retrospective finally drew to a close today. Seven series in a little under 6 weeks. I may end up repeating the exercise when the DVDs for series 7 arrive in a couple of months.

No bike riding today, but I might venture out tomorrow at some point depending on how my shoulder feels.

After all these posts about my operation, I can’t believe I forgot to entitle one Tumor Circus.

Just to satisfy his morbid curiosity.

Well sort of.

As of about 10 minutes ago, the last dressing has been removed from my back, all that’s left now is the itching. It looks like it’s healing fairly well and hopefully won’t turn into too much of a scar.

Now that’s off, I might even try and ride a bike tomorrow.

It’s "Cycle to work day" day at work today, so as tradition dictates I walked to work instead. This year I actually had a good excuse for not riding, usually it’s just me being awkward.

Work have also just introduce Cyclescheme so a new purchase may be on the horizon.

Audi won Le Mans this year with a diesel powered car, they also took third place with another diesel car. I watched quite a lot of the race which was being shown live from start to finish, I wimped out of staying up all night though.

The pressure dressing has now been removed from my back. I can now move about more, but the loss of the padding means the wound itself is a bit more painful. At least I can have a careful shower now.

My back is fairly sore now, although that might be due to the pressure dressing pushing on my shoulder rather than the wound itself. Luckily the pressure dressing can come off tomorrow afternoon provided I can find a willing volunteer, so that might make things a bit more comfortable. Until then I’ll survive on a mix of Ibuprofen, Paracetamol, and alcohol.

Well I was in and out in four hours in the end, the surgery itself took about 20 minutes. The lump they removed was pretty sizable, and slightly larger than they were expecting. The anaesthetic hasn’t worn off yet, so it doesn’t hurt at the moment, but I’ve stocked up with painkillers in preparation for the weekend.

I never did get around to riding a bike tonight. I ended up doing my food shopping at 17:30 when for some unknown reason it was really quiet. The good news was that they had Stella on offer, so I bought three cases. After that I put last weekends camping kit away, and by then I couldn’t really be arsed going out.

Tomorrow I go in for surgery at 12:00, that will no doubt keep me off the bike for a while. I suspect MTBs will be out of the question at least until the stitches are out, although I might manage a spin on the road bike later next week all being well.

I passed 1000 miles for the year today, only two weeks later than originally planned.

The downside is that I only reached that because I had to return my new short-sleeved Endura Halcyon top to the LBS. I washed it last night the same way I’ve washed my long sleeve version and it shrank to the sort of size that would fit my 4 year old nephew. The merino socks that were in the same wash were fine which is perplexing. Hopefully a replacement will arrive in due course.

Whilst riding to the LBS I managed to snap a spoke on the rear wheel of the Langster, it was a drive-side one which means I have fun and games ahead this evening trying to get the sprocket off.

Another work ride tonight, however for various reasons it was only Sandy and I riding. We did a variation on the usual University route, up to the Uni then across to Sham Castle and down what will now be known as "Cow Shit Alley" for fairly obvious reasons. We then headed across the Downs and down into Bathampton for a pint at The George before heading home. The rain that looked inevitable never arrived, and apart from the humidity it was an ace ride.

That might be my last off-road ride for a few weeks which is a shame.

It’s that cub camp time of year again. After a minor delay getting onto the site because the gate was locked, everything went relatively smoothly. The weather was good, possibly too good in fact, and the activities went well. The overall organisation left something to be desired at times, but we overcame that. The Saturday night campfire was a masterpiece of pyromania, and was still burning Sunday lunchtime.

I’m now very tired, and slightly sunburnt. I’ve waded through over 1GB of photos, and sorted out the better ones. The camera played up a bit for some reason, a few pictures were corrupted, and a set were duplicated. After formatting the card and filling it again I can’t reproduce the problem, maybe it was down to leaving the camera out in the sun for too long this morning.

I rang Ian earlier to sort out tonights ride, or more precisely, the fact that there wouldn’t be a ride tonight. However my brain went on strike for a moment and I somehow agreed to go for a road ride at 6.

I rode with a couple of guys from work again last night, we did the usual North Stoke route with a different climb to start with. Another local riding group rode past us as headed off into the distance as we stood at the side of the steep off-road climb. The descent from North Stoke to Swineford was a lot wetter than usual for some reason, but it made it a bit more interesting. As per usual, we finished off with a pint in the pub.

Tonights road ride was cancelled, so I decided to head out on the Stiffee to check out a route I’d not ridden for a year or so. The first part follows one of my usual rides, however after the first climb and descent the usual route drops down a bit further then is flat all the way home, this other route adds three more climbs and corresponding descents taking you up to pretty much the highest point around Bath at 237 meters. I wasn’t in much of a hurry so it ended up taking me about two hours to complete the route.

Went out for a ride with three blokes from work tonight. There should have been another rider as well, but he got home too late. We did my usual Uni ride albeit at a somewhat slower pace than usual. Tongihts liquid refreshment was Old Speckled Hen provided by the George in Bathampton. Top stuff.

There is a road ride planned for tomorrow night, then another offroad ride on Wednesday with a few other people.

Catching the end of Futurama and hearing the cast sing TV Party by Black Flag.

Time to ride.

Another ride to Chew Valley Lake for tea and cake this morning. It started off nice and cool, but the light cloud cover soon dissapated giving glorious sunshine for the latter part of the ride. I had intended to take the scenic route home to add a few miles on, but my legs felt a bit heavy so I settled for the normal route back and did 35 miles. I’m not too worried about the lack of mileage as I should be riding again tomorrow and Tuesday.

Adequate

I dropped the car off for it’s MOT this morning and noticed the mileage recorded on the last MOT certificate which got me thinking. A few quick sums later and I worked out that I rode more miles than I drove in the last year.

Bike = 2333 miles
Car = 2022 miles