Life in the Bus Lane

Mature cheddar cheese, raw onion, and Reggae Reggae Sauce.

I’ve just broken my self-imposed "no organised bike riding" rule and have entered SSUK 07. Given that it’s in Bristol it seemed silly not to go. Due to apathy it’s the first SSUK/SSEU raced I’ve entered since 2003.

I suspect the drinking will take priority that weekend, and bike riding will probably be an afterthought.

Our Spanish contingent had returned from the continent, so we were almost back to full strength tonight. We won the first 4 legs quite convinicingly, but then it all went a bit wrong. We lost the next two legs, partly due to a spare from Marion, but managed to thrash their score in the 7th leg to win 5-2.

Housing took 8 points, Bath Hospitals took 2.

We’ve only got 4 league matches and a cup final left now. We can’t win the league, but we could win the cup.

Apparently I star in Kevin Smith films in my spare time.

It’s from Clerks II for those of you who are feeling slightly confused at the moment.

My biking mojo is back. All it took was a sunny evening, dry trails, and my Kona Unit.

It was my first time out on the Unit since mid December, and in that time I’d forgotten quite how much fun you can have on a rigid singlespeed. Everything on the ride went perfectly once I’d actually got going properly. However there was an aborted start when I realised I’d left the fridge door open, and whilst heading back inside to rectify that I caught my shoe on a sharp screw and put a hole in my Sidi Dominators. I taped them up before the ride, and I’ll clean them later and try and tape them up a bit better. Replacements will cost the wrong side of £100, so the tape will have to do.

I’m moving furniture tomorrow and skittling Thursday, but hopefully I’ll get another ride in on the way to the scout planning meeting Friday night.

This was meant to be the second match of the season, but it was delayed because we couldn’t raise a team.

I played like a complete numpty for most of the match tonight, I couldn’t get above a 5. The rest of the team weren’t much better at times. After getting 58 in the first leg, we soon plummeted to the low 40s. Luckliy Odd Bods were out of practice due to not having played for 7 weeks, so we eventually managed to beat them 5-2.

Housing Admin took 8 points, Odd Bods took 2.

Fortunatly Tony and Mary are back from their spanish excursion which will help bolster the team for the last few matches. We’ve also got a date and location for the Pins cup final, however it’s at Bath City FC which isn’t our favourite alley.

Well they say that it’s all in the preparation, so this evening I dug the Unit out ready for tomorrow night. It’s not been ridden for over three months, so I decided the lighter evenings provided the ideal opportunity to bring it out of retirement.

To do this I had to rescue it from it’s hiding place behind the 456, and add some extra air to it’s somewhat deflated tyres. Some of the mud left over from it’s last excursion made it’s way onto the floor giving me a good excuse to brush the floor clear of mud and various feline by-products. All I need to do is introduce the chain to some oil before the ride and everything should be ready. As I’ve not ridden the bike since replacing the seatpost I’m sure there will be a few stops to wave an allen key at it to adjust things before I reach the top of the hill. Hopefully my current lack of fitness will still cope with the 32:18 gearing.

It’s skittles tonight hence delaying the ride until tomorrow.

It’s the Bath Half Marathon time of year again, which combined with the clock change meant I got out of bed at an unfeasibly early hour on a Sunday morning.

I shunned my usual work post and headed into town for a bit of variety, we ended up stationed in Widcombe, cunningly close to Louise’s flat, it’s proper toilet, and most importantly it’s kettle. We had two pallets of water, and three pallets of Lucozade to hand out, but were left with quite a lot of Lucozade, some of which is now on the floor behind me, along with about 50 pre-opened bottles of water. The hardest part was probably shifting an entire pallet of Lucozade into the back of a van at the end of the race, it didn’t do my back much good.

As normal I was clutching a camera bag, and gave the 1.4x convertor it’s first proper test on the 70-200/2.8, I was very impressed with the results.

More pics on Flickr and in the usual place: Bath Half Marathon 2007

I’ve now swapped the aging Syncros skewers on the 456 with some allen key jobbers, and possibly identified the problem. It looks like the axle on the Hope XC hub actually protrudes slightly past the outside of the dropout, and the skewer tightens up against this rather than the dropout itself. Obviously this wasn’t a problem on the Stiffee or Craftworks with their thick aluminium dropouts, but causes problems on the 456 with it’s more slender steel dropout.

I’ll give the allen key skewers a whirl, and pad it out with washers if necessary.

McVities Chocolate and Orange Digestives are ace. Almost as good as the sadly missed Jestives.

Another spin on the 456 tonight. I had intended to take the Unit, but the 456 was nearer, and was equipped with lights and a hipflask.

Something seems a bit amiss with the 456, yet again the rear wheel had come loose and nearly fell out when I lifted the bike through the back door. Later on during the ride I could actually pull the tyre into the seatstay if I pedalled hard enough. I think that the 7 year old Syncros skewers might be somewhat past their best, I shall probably replace them with some allen key skewers when I can get hold of some.

The rest of the ride was fairly uneventful apart from the rather excessive amount of wind.

It’s now time to overdose on garlic with a mix of garlic pasta, garlic bread, and the remains of Saturday nights beef in Guinness with Stilton and lots of garlic. Tonight will be guaranteed Vampire free after all that lot.

Being a semi-final, tonights match was played on a neutral alley. However it wasn’t as neutral as you’d expect because it was BARDS home alley until a couple of seasons ago.

Both teams scored 52 in the first leg, however we started to slowly draw ahead in the subsequent legs. Going in to the seventh and last leg we needed just 36 to win. Ian, our fifth man, managed to push us past that and we went on to score 58 and beat BARDS by 23 pins.

The final will be played on a non-league alley which could be interesting.

Due to an ever increasing list of illnesses, Hobbes now has to take more medicine than any cat should have to deal with.

Morning

• 5mg Prednisolone
• 5mg Felimazole
• 1ml Zantac
• 1ml Antepsin

Afternoon

• 2.5mg Felimazole
• 1ml Zantac
• 1ml Antepsin

Evening

• 1ml Antepsin

Unsurprisingly, he doesn’t like me very much at the moment as everytime he comes near me, I thrown another handful of pills or squirt a foul tasting liquid into the back of his throat.

Also none of this comes cheap. Today’s trip to the vet cost me about the same as the Kenko Pro 300 DG 1.4X Teleconverter I had planned to order at the end of the month. That’ll have to wait a bit longer I think.

Update: Just to spite me, Hobbes did the worlds smelliest poo just inside the front door as I was about to leave for skittles. I was actually sick whilst trying to clean it up.

A cracking ride on the 456 tonight, it was almost dry under tyre. Far better conditions than the last few months worth of rides. Had I not faffed around for an hour when I got home, I wouldn’t even have needed lights.

I caught site of an old copy of Amateur Photographer earlier, it was the 6 August 2005 issue, so a little over 18 months old now. The cover promised a review of the Nikon D2Hs, and referred to it’s "almost limitless burst depth". This burst depth was actually 50 4.1M JPEG images, taken at 8fps.

Now some 18 months later Canon are releasing the 1DMkIII which has a burst depth of 110 10.1M JPEG images, taken at 10fps. That Nikon now appears somewhat sedentary in comparison.

Time to go and ride I bike I think. I just have to decide between the Unit and the 456.

Not one of our best performances tonight, we averaged legs of a tad over 45 which is low for our alley. Luckily Bath Hospitals had an even worse night and we beat them 5-1.

Housing Admin took the full 8 points, Bath Hospitals took 1.

Our next match is the semi-final of the pins cup on a neutral alley on Wednesday night. Should be fun.

Apparently Tony and Mary got robbed within 24 hours of arriving in Spain. Not a good start to their new life.

I was all set to head out for a ride tonight, but for varying reasons I ended up working late which doesn’t leave me enough time to ride before skittles. Hopefully I’ll have better luck tomorrow night.

Today we had a family trip round WildWalk @Bristol before it closes for good at the end of the month. Ethan seemed to enjoy himself, particularly when hunting for poisonous frogs. He wasn’t quick enough to spot the Dodo though.

More pictures, mainly of Ethan doing crocodile impressions.

My new Kenko Pro 300 DG 2x Teleconverter arrived today, not bad seeing as I only ordered it Monday night, and it came from Hong Kong. It also escaped duty and VAT so only cost me £75.

Having had a quick play with it on the 70-200/2.8 it seems to work very well, I had intended to get a 1.4x as well at the end of the month but I might give that a miss for a while having seen the results from the 2x.

Having done some testing, it also works quite happily on my 24-70/2.8, 50/1.8, and 90/2.8 Macro. Whilst it fits the 10-20/4-5.6, the camera won’t then autofocus correctly which isn’t really a surprise.

Hopefully this will satisfy my desire for a longer lens for a while.

After much procrastination this morning, I eventually decided I couldn’t face dragging a mtb round the waterlogged countryside, so decided to bring the Lemond out of retirement.

I replaced the poncy carbon wheels with the repaired Campag Centaur/Mavic Open Pro ones which necessitated a tyre swap and a bit of fettling. Once that was done I headed out round the usual quick Burnett route of 15 miles, mainly because my back won’t cope with much more than that at the moment. I’d forgotten quite how comfortable the Lemond is, and how much of the road induced vibration it damps out.

In the end it was a very pleasant, if somewhat windy ride.

Sigma 200-500/2.8

System information for \\patients:
Uptime: 666 days 6 hours 6 minutes 6 seconds

I wonder if there was a registration for someone call Damien just about then?

Unfortunately we were playing one of the worlds slowest teams tonight, and it wasn’t helped by it turning into a full 9 leg match. It was a very close game tonight, but despite our best efforts we lost the last leg, and therefore lost the game 5-4. Bluecoat House took the full 8 points, Housing Admin took 4.

We also bid a fond buenos noches to Tony and Mary who leave for Spain at 6am tomorrow morning. Rumour has it that they might be back to play the last few games this season if they can drag themselves away from the shorts and t-shirt weather of southern Europe.

After what seems like a lifetime, but was in fact only two weeks, I went back to work today. Getting up at 07:00 was difficult, but fortunately there hadn’t been too many problems at work in my absence so it was a reasonably easy introduction back into the working life.

Unfortunately I’ve got to spend several hours tomorrow with the auditor which will no doubt leave my trying to find ingenious ways to kill myself in order to escape the tedium.

After my lunar photography antics over the weekend, I’ve ordered a 2.0x convertor to use with my 70-200/2.8 lens. I’m sure that the performance won’t set the world alight, but it’s a cheap way to give me a bit more reach.

More here: http://gallery.dynamite.org/lunareclipse