Life in the Bus Lane

I’ll not be riding tonight due to a sore knee, so it’s time for the monthly totals.

It’s back to the sub-200 miles months again now, mainly due to a lack of long Sunday rides and the wetter weather.

Tonight was my first proper night ride of the winter. Having picked up some spokes for the wheel I broke yesterday I quickly set about repairing it in readyness for tonights ride. I would probably have been quicker to take the Stiffee, but it’s currently hidden behind the cross bike, so I repaired the Unit instead.

I settled for doing the usual Uni route, the trip across the golf course was quite spooky as the mist was descending and shrouding the trees. I might even try a similar ride again tomorrow night for Haloween, although that’ll depend on me remembering to wash and dry some cycling kit tonight.

Yet again I rode a mountain bike, and yet again I broke something. This time it was a rear drive-side spoke on the Unit, causing nothing more than a wobble in the rear wheel. Still, it didn’t really spoil the ride.

25mm road tyres don’t work very well at 30psi.

I’ve finally had to admit defeat and turn the central heating on. I was hoping to last until the beginning of November, but it’s started to get a bit too chilly in the evenings.

The replacement bulb for my Solstice HID lamp arrived today, and everything works perfectly again, possibly even better than before¹. It’s a shame the bulbs are so expensive though, even with a discount it was still the wrong side of fifty quid.

I’m not really in the mood for braving the wind for a night ride tonight, so it’ll probably get a proper test next week.

[1] The old bulb was fogging over again despite have been "revived" last November.

Supersubs Louise and Darren were playing tonight, and we had another stunning match.

In an act of selfless generosity we let Extras win one legs, but convicingly beat them in the other five to win 5-1.

Housing Admin took the full 8 points, Extras crawled home with a solitary point.

Zen ADSL seems to have been somewhat broken today. I’ve not managed more than an hours constant connection since it died just after 9am this morning.

Up until 10pm tonights entry was going to be entitled "And it burns, burns, burns" in honour of the fireworks around Bath this evening, however things didn’t go entirely to plan.

I headed out on the Kaboom at about 6:30 to ride up to Bathampton Downs to watch the fireworks, I got there nice and early and watched the world go by until Simon arrived. We watched the fireworks then walked down the hill bumping into James on the way. We then headed to the pub for a few pints and our Scout planning meeting. Five pints of Old Speckled Hen later I headed outside to unlock the bike and ride home. That’s when it all started to go wrong.

The first part of the ride home is along the canal, half way along my HID front light died completely. I dug out my emergency spare LED light and made my way slowly along the rest of the canal. I got to the end and joined the nicely lit road down to the traffic lights. I waited for a few minutes for the lights to change, stomped on the pedals to pull away and snapped the drive side crank in half. This left me with a nice 45 minute walk home back through town.

I’m not in a good mood now.

On the positive side I rode my way past 2000 miles today, and I found out why the cranks on the Kaboom were creaking.

Too wet and windy to ride tonight, so it’s Monty Python night on DVD. Life of Brian has just finished, and Holy Grail is about to start, all washed down with a bottle of wine.

UPS finally turned up ten minutes ago clutching a tiny padded envelope with two new straps in. Given that they didn’t match the existing straps I ended up replacing both, but at least I now have a fully working set of Sidi shoes ready for tonights ride.

I’m still sat here waiting for UPS to deliver the new strap for my Sidis so I can go riding tonight. Quite why the supplier couldn’t just stick them in an envelope and send them via normal post is beyond me, so I get to sit and wait for the couriers who will no doubt fail to deliver today.

At least I can work from home fairly easily.

A new alley for us tonight. We’d heard rumours of it being outside, and fairly long, and the rumours turned out to be true. However we played probably one of our best matches for years, solidly thrashing the home team in a 5-0 stylee.

Housing Admin took the full 8 points, Extras skulked off home empty handed.

Rumour has it that the Extras will withdraw from the league at Christmas, hopefully the sound thrashing we gave them will hasten their departure, although it would mean we’d lose the 8 points we gained tonight.

Something obviously doesn’t want me to ride bikes at the moment.

Yesterday I rode out to an 18th birthday party, when I came to ride home again the rear tyre was totally flat, and typically I hadn’t bothered taking any tools or spares with me. Today I headed out on the Stiffee for a quick ride and after 2.5 miles of climbing decided my left shoe was a bit loose, so I reached down to tighten it only to discover I’ve snapped the instep strap off my Sidi Dominators. I had to turn round and coast back home again.

I’ve given up for the day, I’m not going to risk a third failed ride in one weekend. I’m also going to have to find some other shoes to ride to work in tomorrow.

Having finished work at 1pm, I got home and headed out for a quick spin on the Unit, my first proper ride since Saturday. It was nice to be able to get out and ride during the day for a change. The trails were a bit moist in places, but nothing too messy.

Getting up at 04:45 to go to work isn’t much fun. I’m struggling to stay awake at the moment.

The letter finally arrived from work today with my AfC appeal notification, my score had only gone up by a small amount despite all the changes that had been made to the job description. In theory it might give reasonable cause to lodge a grievance on the ground of inconsistent scoring, but I’m not going to hold my breath. I made the mistake of calculating what I would have been owed in back-pay had the appeal succeeded, it was scary.

On a better note, a case of Guinness Surger arrived today courtesy of GuinnessBlog after I complained that I couldn’t buy any round here.

Thanks to a combination of the weather and me having a cold I’ve not ridden a bike properly since Saturday, hopefully I’ll get out tomorrow afternoon. I get to leave early tomorrow, the only downside is that I’ve got to be at work by 05:45 which could prove to be somewhat difficult to achieve.

I just fitted lights to the Ribble for commuting duties.

I popped down to the LBS after work to drop off some wheels and a chainset for Ian’s winter road bike project, and picked up some new SPD cleats and a rear light for the Ribble. I also came away with a rather nice Bontrager messenger bag for a very agreeable price (i.e. free) which will take my laptop nicely.

A very messy game tonight, it took us four attempts before we actually got a leg where no-one scored a 0. We lost the first leg but then went 1-3 up, however we then slipped a bit bringing it back to 3-3 before we finally won 3-5.

Housing Admin advance to the next round.

Strangely enough my motivation was somewhat non-existent at work today, so as soon as I got home I grabbed the Unit, pumped up the back tyre and headed out up the hill. A nice hour long blast round the usual Uni route with added student-slalom for a bit of fun in the middle of the ride helped clear my head a bit.

Copious quantities of alcohol at tonights skittles match will no doubt help out a bit as well.

My AfC appeal has failed, so my pay-cut remains in place and I lose out on two years of backpay. Anyone got a new job for me?