Life in the Bus Lane

Not as good as last year.

I won’t be riding again, so you get the totals a day early. This was my worst month for three years, quite pathetic really.

Hobbes isn’t well. In addition to the existing FIV and thyroid problem, he’s now got either lymphoma or adenocarcinoma, we should know more tomorrow when we get the result of the biopsy. If it’s lympoma apparently it can be treated to an extent with Prednisolone, if it’s adenocarcinoma it can’t be treated.

He spent the day at the vets today for tests and came home minus large patches of fur where they’d taken blood and done an ultrasound scan. There was of course the astronomical bill to go with it. He is at least eating food again which is something he’s not done for nearly a week.

The most important job today was to compile a list of names for future servers, by referring to the Father Ted Canonical Priest List we’ll be fine for the next 100 or so servers.

Feel ill, ride bike, feel ill, eat breakfast, feel ill, open presents, feel ill, eat lunch, feel ill, ride home, feel ill, sleep, feel slightly better.

Bit of an anti-climax really. Hopefully I’ll feel better for the re-run on Saturday.

Apparently it’s christmas tomorrow, and I don’t feel in the slightest bit festive. The closest I’ve come was a few pints of Festivity at our work christmas party on Friday night.

A quick night tonight, partly due to a speedy sticker-up, but mainly because we won 5-0, and by 31 pins which was pretty much their average score for a leg.

Housing Admin took the full 8 points, Treasurers went home empty handed.

Last night saw me wandering round Westonbirt Arboretum armed with a 30D attached to a monopod. Some of the pictures came out OK, a proper tripod would have been useful at times though.

Plenty more pictures in the gallery: Westonbirt Arboretum photographs

All shots were taken at ISO3200 and are unprocessed. If I get a quite hour or two over Christmas I might fettle them properly.

First ride on the 456 this morning. I did the usual Uni route so I could try it out on some familiar ground. There were a few issues with the seatpost slipping, probably because I greased it too well, but other than that it was ace. It rides well, not too disimilar to the Stiffee, but it fits better, and you can run the forks at 130mm without feeling like you’re going to fall off the back of the bike. I left the forks at 100mm for most of the ride, increasing them to 130mm for the trip down off the downs, but dropping them back to 100mm as I rode along the canal.

Now for the obligatory bike/sofa pictiure.

I’ve unshimmed the brake, sorted the saddle out, and have now test ridden the 456.

After extensive testing in the wilds of Caledonian Road, I can report that it’s very nice indeed, even with the forks wound out to their full 130mm. Proper ride tomorrow probably.

A quick pic from earlier.

I appear to be 34 now.

With the same kit on as the Stiffee apart from the seatpost, saddle, and bottom bracket, the 456 weighs in at a generous 32lbs. Rather more than I was expecting to be honest.

• Spend ten minutes moving a fleet of bikes out into the garden to make some space to work in, avoiding the pile of cat vomit along the way
• Pop broken bike into the workstand, remove broken chainset and remove the bottom bracket ready for later
• Pop old bike into the work stand
• Unbolt the rear brake, trying not to drop the caliper spacers.
• Pick up as many of the dropped spacers as you can find.
• Start to remove the rear wheel then panic when this unbalances everything and the workstand falls over.
• Stand on the back of the workstand and stretch across and try and carefully remove the front wheel. Drop it and the watch wheel bounce out though the back door.
• Retrieve the front wheel from half-way down the garden
• Remove stem, then drop the forks out with the aid of a big hammer.
• More hammering time, get the headset remover out and start whacking.
• Retrieve the dropped headset cups and scrape the mud off. At least you hope it’s mud
• Spend ten minutes trying to find the workshop chain tool, then give up and try and find the rucksack and play "guess the pocket" to find the spare one before removing the chain.
• Cut the gear cables and remove the front and rear mechs, then remove the chainset.
• Find somewhere safe to put the old frame, the kitchen seems a safe bet.
• Grease the new seatpost clamp and seatpost and fit to the new frame, then put the frame in the workstand.
• Stand back and admire your new toy.
• Grease the headtube and press the new cups in, look slighly confused when part of the headset press gets stuck in the cups, end up randomly hitting things until they fall out again.
• Refit the forks and stem whilst trying not to tip the workstand over again.
• Frantically search for extra headset spacers, realise you’ve used them all so cannibalise another bike.
• Refit the forks with enough spacers this time.
• Refit rear brake caliper and ziptie the hose to the guides on the top tube because you’re too lazy to get the bits to do it properly.
• Fit the "universal" front mech hoping that you’ve got all the spacers in the right place.
• Grease and fit the pimpy XTR rear mech.
• Grease and fit ISIS BB, it probably won’t be in there long though.
• Fit cranks, then spend five minutes trying to work out why the crank bolts don’t fit before remembering that you’ve used a different bottom bracket.
• Finally finish fitting the cranks with the correct bolts.
• Refit the chain.
• Try and remember how to replace the cables in SRAM Attack shifters. Poke and prod things, find a likely looking bit of plastic, unscrew it and drop it under the washing machine. Replace the cable. Repeat for the other shifter except this time drop the bit of plastic under the tumble drier.
• Cut full length outers to about 110% of the required length, poke the ends with a pin to open them up again. Fix cables to the mech in the appropriate manner, this takes a bit of trial and error with the strange front mech.
• Try shifting, realised you haven’t tightened the cables enough, so start again.
• By some miracle the rear shifting is almost perfect, just a quick nudge to the high limit screw.
• Fettle the screws on the new front mech to stop it trying to shift onto the outer chainring which isn’t there.
• Realise the front mech is stuck so hit it a few times, attack it with GT85 then hit it again. That seems to fix it
• Pop the saddle on and drop the bike off the stand.
• Realise the saddle is at a funny angle, try and adjust it and fail, look confused, wander across and look at the cross bike, then realise you’ve fitted the in-line seatpost the wrong way around.
• Take the head of the seatpost apart, drop several bolts, faff a bit more, then eventually get the saddle back on in something approximating the right angle.
• Realise that you need to align the rear brake caliper properly, sort the saddle height and angle out, and protect the chainstay, but you haven’t got time.
• Eat a quick tea and go babysitting
• Worry about the rest tomorrow

Can you tell that I’m a bit bored at the moment?

In almost world record time I stripped down the Stiffee and transplanted all the parts onto the 456. The gears seem to index properly, the rear brake needs reshimming, and a test ride will have to wait as I’ve run out of time. Pictures to follow when the weather improves.

It’s here!

Time to see how much of it I can get built before I have to go babysitting.

I’m currently sat waiting for the courier to arrive with my new frame. I could go and strip the old bike down first, but that would probably mean that I won’t hear the doorbell, and would therefore miss the delivery making it a rather futile exercise.

I bet it arrives about 5pm which will be too late for me to get it built today.

The joys of reusing tracking numbers.

Collected: 13/12/2006
Arrived at Hub: 26/08/2005 00:35:45
Arrived at Delivery Depot: BATH Depot at 26/08/2005 05:24:28
With Delivery Driver: 26/08/2005 06:45:24

Either that or Amtrak have invented time travel and will be delivering my frame 16 months ago.

I’ve just had a very pleasant evening in town. We went for a quick pint in one pub, then ended up decamping to another one for proper beer and got tempted by the pie and mash and stayed for some food. I had a Ho Ho Pie (venison) and mash with Guinness and red onion gravy, washed down with a pint of Old Peculiar.

When I got home I found an email with the dispatch details for my new frame, so that should be with me tomorrow, and hopefully built up ready for a ride on Friday.

No tracking details, so presumably no frame tomorrow.

My TNF Nuptse jacket is on it’s way as well courtesy of Millets 25% discount at the weekend. I’ve been after one for a few years but had never been able to justify the fairly exorbitant price until the sale effectively knocked £40 off making it merely "bloody expensive".

Apparently my new frame is in the country, well Doncaster actually, and should be with me tomorrow or Thursday. A small package from ChainReaction arrived earlier with a seatpost clamp and some gear cable gubbins. Oddly the gear cables themselves are black, not seen any like that before.

I bet I’ve forgotten to buy something vitally important, or they forget to put the seatpost and saddle in the box along with the frame.

Tonight started off with Tony and myself playing a pairs match. Unfortunatley we lost 5-1, however the game was closer than the final score line would indicate. We were scoring about 11, they were getting 12 or 13.

A few pints later the proper match started. We swapped legs until it got to 4-3 to us, then we managed to buck the trend and win the 8th leg to take the match 5-3, however we lost the pins in the process.

Housing Admin took 7 points, BARDS took 4.

Can you spot the problem with one of these seatposts?

I went to dig the Unit out for a quick spin this morning and decided something looked a bit odd. On closer inspection I discovered that the Planet-X Probe seatpost was bent backwards at a angle that shouldn’t be considered normal. Luckily I’d not got around to rebuilding the Inbred yet so the seatpost from that was sat on the side ready and waiting.

Once out on the ride my heart wasn’t really in it thanks to a combination of my cold and the cold weather. Even the sight of several fire engines racing up to a stranded coach didn’t lighten my mood. I rode across the top to the Uni then instead of taking the mud-clogged route onto the Downs decided to head back down into town via the roads. I nipped into the LBS and picked up an Easton Havoc seatpost as a replacement, then fought my way through the crowds back through town and home.

Time for a warm shower and a mug of tea.

It’s the first day of my holiday today so I’m celebrating my defrosting the freezer. Once that’s finished and it’s been restocked, I might play with my new massive tool, it should help me knock things out and ram them back in again.

Not the best of nights for us. BARDS managed to win the first two legs before all their team had even arrived. Somehow we managed to win the third leg, but that was as good as it got.

BARDS won 5-1 and took the full 8 points, Housing Admin went home with a solitary point.

Consistency was the keyword for the start of the night as we threw 5 consecutive legs of 47 putting us 10 pins ahead. However we managed to lose all of our lead in the 6th leg leaving both teams tied heading into the penultimate leg. We showed a leg of 48 which was lower than we would have liked, but luckily Bath Hospitals only threw 43 to lose by 5 pins.

Housing Admin reached 315, Bath Hospitals reached 310 which means Housing Admin advance to the semi-final.

Yet again they forgot to cook any food for us until we reminded them, luckily they found a few sausages to go with some chips.

Our next match is a league game on Thursday night.

Christmas must be on it’s way. My first card arrived this morning, and I’m off for my first christmas meal of the season in a short while. I’ve not heard Fairytale of New York yet though, so it’s not a real christmas.