Life in the Bus Lane

It doesn’t look like I’ll be riding today due to the weather, so I’ll just miss out on 300 miles this month.

Tonights ride didn’t go exactly to plan.

I met Ian at the shop as usual and we headed out along the cycle track at a nice brisk 20mph. Things started to go downhill at this point as the rain started to fall. Once we reached Saltford we headed up towards the top of Double Gravity which is where I really began to struggle. My legs just wouldn’t work at all, at one point I didn’t think I’d actually reach the top of the climb. Once we got to the top Ian headed on towards home, I stopped to eat my emergency Go bar, then headed back the way I’d come.

I eventually got home wet and tired after only 15 miles which isn’t that good really.

Autumn is well and truely on it’s way, so I welcomed it’s arrival with a spin on the Unit tonight. I put Easy Star All-Stars on the iPod and headed up round the Uni again to play slalom with the newly arriving students. There was an almost perfect sunset as I rode across the downs which made for a nice scenic ride.

The cross bikes will be out tomorrow night with any luck.

A couple of years back I was in a meeting with a few colleagues from the IT department, and a non-technical IT manager from another department. We were discussing DR options for their servers, in particular mirroring a fairly large, but mostly static, set of documents across onto another server. I suggested using rsync, and went on to explain it, but kept getting a slightly odd look from this other manager everytime I mentioned the word "rsync". Halfway through the meeting it finally dawned on me, she probably thought I was talking about "arse ink".

Ever since that meeting, it’s almost impossible for anyone to mention rsync without at least one of use bursting into fits of laughter.

Rsync, a useful tool eternally corrupted by a misinterpretation.

..you can now run multiple versions of Internet Explorer on Linux thanks to IEs 4 Linux. Five minutes fiddling around on my test Ubuntu box, and I now have IE5, IE5.5, and IE6 running side-by-side.

Well we won the first leg tonight, and that was as good as it got.

Engineers won 5-1 and took 8 points, we went home with just the one.

For the first time in living memory^[1] I went for a proper ride on a Saturday. There was an ulterior motive in that there was a working party at the scout hut I needed to be at, and the hut conveniently lies two thirds of the way round one of my usual rides. I took the Unit out for a bit of flat-barred variety, and pottered round the usual route trying to avoid all the students re-emerginging from their summer hibernation and returning to university.

I spent a few hours helping out at the scout hut, most of that time was spent chopping down trees. Strangely enough, Sidi Dominators aren’t the best shoes to wear when performing tree surgery. Maybe there is a gap in the market for spd compatible steel toecap work boots?

[1] Well, a good few months at least

It’s not often that I agree with trails being sanitized, but this time I’ll make an exception. Cow Shit Alley has been resurfaced and it’s ace.

Cow Shit Alley is the access lane from Bath Golf Club to the Bathampton relay transmitter. For as long as I can remember it’s been a quagmire of cow shit and piss, and occasionally a bit of mud thrown in for good measure. Even in the middle of summer it never really dries out, it just thickens up a bit. It’s wasn’t actually that bad to ride, but you took your life in your hands risking all sorts of nasty diseases from the crap you have to ride through.

It’s now been resurfaced with a bed of gravel and stone and is a nice fast run into the proper offroad paths into the woods.

It’s getting chilly out in the evenings now.

For the first time in quite a while I took the Langster out for a spin tonight. Since it last left the house it’s gained a new chain, so the drive train is now blissfully quiet. I’m not sure how long that will last though. Having not ridden a fixed gear bike for a while it was noticable that whilst I could comfortably spin along on the flat at 19mph, I was stuggling as soon as I had to grind slowly up a hill. More practice is obviously needed.

Coming back down into Saltford and into town it actually got a bit chilly, arm warmers or a long sleeved top might have been a good idea.

Inconsistency was the keyword tonight. We might as well have tossed a coin to decide the winner. After swapping pairs of legs we eventually got to 4-4, however we cocked up the last leg and lost the match and the pins.

Engineers took the full compliment of 8 points, Housing Admin took 4.

We even drank the bar dry of proper beer which wasn’t good.

A late start today made a nice change. I eventually left the house just after 11:30 in glorious sunshine to meet up with Ian in the usual place. We rode down to Chew Valley lake for tea and cake, then took the same route home as last week via Clutton. As we rolled into Timsbury it started to rain leaving me with a conundrum over which route to take home. I eventually took the short but hilly route as it’s slightly quicker despite the extra climbing involved.

36.5 miles with 851m/2791ft of climbing.

I’ve just had an email from Ribble saying

Thanks for your recently placed order for the Record 06′ Ergopower Levers, I regret to inform you that we have unfortunately over sold of this item and are unable to supply you with the goods you have ordered. We have cancelled the order and no charge has been made against your card.

That was despite ordering 15 minutes after the sale email was sent out. I guess it wasn’t a real sale after all. It’s also taken them nearly a week to decide they aren’t going to send me any.

/me strikes Ribble off the list of shops to buy things from in the future.

Today has not started well.

I got to work only to find that my PC had died again with the usual Dell thermal cutout problem. Fair enough, it’s happened before, I’ll just grab a spare machine and transplant my drives and memory across. I get another machine, pop everything in, and it won’t boot, mainly because it won’t detect the primary HD. So I grab another spare machine, and that one does the same. It turns out that the primary drive has failed as well.

I end up getting a brand new machine, and start reinstalling all my apps, the only problem is that I’ve lost my email archive, and the backup of my work is a few weeks out of date. After much faffing I decide to try rebuilding the dead drive with the electronics from a working one, and much to my surprise it works perfectly. I’m now trying to find space to dump the contents of the old drive so I can sort through it all. At least I’ve got my Firefox bookmarks back though :)

Summer made a welcome reappearance for the weekend, and Bath thrashed Leicester yesterday. Things are looking up.

I met Ian in the usual place at 10am this morning to attempt a circumnavigation of Chew Valley Lake, something we’ve toyed with for a while but never really got around to. The route Ian had planned actually turned out to be really good, slightly undulating with no real climbs to contend with. We stopped off for our usual tea and cakes which took longer than expected due to a influx of spectacularly useless serving staff, combined with hungover students faffing around with their orders. Whilst imbibing our chosen drinks we planned a different route home via Clutton and back to Timsbury. This had a couple of annoying climbs in it, but not that much worse than our usual route home. Once back in Timsbury I took the longer, but easier route back home, and eventually got back after a nice round 50 miles making it my longest ride of the year, and finished off my highest mileage week ever with 117.5 miles. The only downside was that the wheel magnet for my computer self destructed after 10 miles, so I had no idea how far we’d ridden until I got home.

50 miles and 3400ft/1036m of climbing in about 3.75 hours of riding.

The Lemond in it’s current incarnation.

More changes next week hopefully when the new Record levers arrive.

I had a minor accident with the credit card earlier today. All being well the Lemond will soon be sporting Campagnolo Record Ergo levers. They are far too good for the bike, I’d have been happy with Chorus ones, but for some bizzare reason Ribble were selling Record levers for less than Chorus ones, so the bike gets some nice pimpy parts.

I also rode a singlespeed tonight for the first time in over a month. The climb out of town was a bit of a slog but it was an ace ride after that, especially riding across the downs as the sun was starting to set. The days are getting shorter so proper night rides will soon be on the cards, I’d better stock up with whiskey for the hip flask.

Yet another road ride tonight. Despite the fact that I thought I’d fixed the creaking from the rear wheel, it’s back again which is mildly annoying. I only did 16 miles in the end on a pretty similar route to last Friday. Some of the Saltford Pavé is gone which was nice, but it had been replaced with freshly laid tarmac which felt like I was riding on treacle.

I’ve got an early start at work tomorrow, so I really ought to be a good boy tonight and go to bed nice and early. I suspect there’s no chance of that happening though.

Excerpted from the league rules, some of which seemingly aren’t written in english.

• The game shall consist of eight players on each side, the first team winning five legs to be the winners. If the leg shown is not beaten, the team shall be winners of that leg.
• Points are to be awarded as follows:
  • 2 for a win
  • 1 for the largest aggregate of pins
  • 1 for each leg won

Easy isn’t it? Obviously there are a few variations.

Pairs Cup
Similar to a normal match except there are only two players. The winning team advance to the next round.

Pins Cup

• Teams to consist of 8 players. The team with the highest number of pins after each player has thrown 21 (27 in the final) balls to be the winner.
• In the event of a tie on the total number, three balls will be thrown by each player until a decision is reached.

Nomination Cup
Played as per a normal game except:

• The players shall nominate their object pin before the ball leaves the hand.
• Any pins knocked down by a player who does not first knock down his object pin, must be left down and not replaced on the frame.

Singles Nomination Cup
As per the Nomination Cup, except there is only one player on each team.

This is our regular season opener, and we usually lose. Tonight however that was not to be the case. We won the first leg quite convincingly then went on to win the next couple. We faltered a bit mid-match, but soldiered on to eventually win 5-2.

For some inexplicable reason I was top score by a clear 7 pins, it can only be downhill from here.

Housing Admin took the full 8 points, Widcombe Oddbods settled for two.

The return match is postponed for six months or so because we can’t raise a team next week.

For varying reasons I didn’t get any riding done this weekend. Saturday I had to work during the day, then I was out on a stag night for the evening (a more sedate affair than the one Grant was on). As a result of that I wasn’t really up to riding on Sunday, and even if I had been it was a bit too windy to ride safely.

This morning’s weather forecast looked promising so I planned a quick hour on the bike for this evening before the skittles season resumes. The first few hundred yards of the ride were quite promising, then it started to rain. As I was on the Lemond, and not the rain-suited Ribble, I got as far as Saltford then called it a day and turned round. Typically it stopped raining just as I got back home, but by that time I was too wet to bother riding any further.

At least the rear wheel wasn’t creaking on this ride. I’m fairly certain that it’s the bladed spokes on the NDS shifting slightly against each other. A quick tweak of each spoke pair with my hand before I went out seems to have helped.

Skittles starts again tonight with a somewhat depleted league, there are now only 12 teams instead of the 16 we had a couple of seasons ago. I’ve no idea who we’re playing tonight, but I suspect it’s the usual season opener against Widcombe Odd Bods.

Despite the claims of the weather forecast it actually turned out to be a nice day today, the weather this evening was almost perfect for riding, with some photogenic skies to watch on my evening ride.

I headed out on my semi-usual route past Burnett, but instead of coming back along the cycle track as is usual, I took the opportunity offered by the road being closed and came back through Saltford and into Bath along the main road. The first part of the road from Keynsham to the middle of Saltford has been ripped up and leaves a surface resembling the infamous pavé of the Paris-Roubaix. The cross bike would have been better suited to the surface as it gave me a bit of a battering on the road bike, albeit in a fun sort of way.

I only did 15 miles in the end, a nice gentle end to the week.

The new rear wheel is creaking a bit now, I think it’s two of the bladed spokes rubbing against each other, I might whip it off the bike and give it a tweak over the weekend.