Acoustically, the Assembly Rooms is a bit crap, it was also a bit hot and stuffy in there, but that didn’t detract much from two hours of excellent folk music and a few bad jokes.
I picked up my new (to me) Nissan X-Trail at lunchtime today. If you believe everything you read it murders puppies and kills rare orchids as you drive along, but it’s probably no worse than my aged Mondeo was. It’s very nice to drive, although the diesel engine takes a bit of getting used to after 18 years of driving petrol powered cars, I keep going to pull away and finding not much happens for a few seconds. The main downside at the moment is that the floor of the boot is quite slippery so anything you put in there spends most of it’s time sliding from side to side, I’ll have to get a rubber boot liner at some point.
Your Personal Loan, aka The Co-operative Bank have managed to cock things up with my loan. After paying extra for the next-day service, the money should have been paid into my bank account yesterday, however there was an "error" with some loans processed yesterday and all they can promise now is that I should have the money by the end of the month. That means I can’t pick the car up on Friday before I go on holiday, and because of work commitments I’m going to struggle to pick it up the week after we get back.
Could they possibly be any more incompetent? I could kill someone right now.
After hitting my HID lamp a few times I managed to coax it into life so decided to ride anyway. I did the usual Uni route and met the cubs playing a game up on the Downs so stopped with them for a while before heading on down to the HQ. One very tedious AGM later I headed home with the road lit beautifully by my working HID lamp. This lasted all of 5 minutes before it died again, I think it’s a dead battery which is slightly annoying as it’s not actually been used much.
Time to save up for a new light.
I looks like my HID lamp is dead after all. Rather than powering up the light, the switch just flashed a blue LED 10 times then stopped.
Looks like I won’t get a proper MTB ride tonight then as I’ll have to wait until my aged Lumicycle battery has charged enough to use the old Lumi lights for the ride home after the Scout AGM later.
A second trip round the Uni in two days, this time with Al who was riding my old Kona Kaboom. It was a fairly sedate ride, partly because Al got "lost" by discovering a turn-off I’d never seen, and assuming I’d gone that way rode off up it and disappeared. Other than a silly crash later on where Al fell off on a particularly vicious patch of grass it was a good ride.
Depending on whether I get out for a proper ride or not tomorrow, that may be my last ride for a fortnight.
The award for worst DVD ever must surely to go the recent release of Charlie Wilson’s War which features a 4 minute "advert" for a charity which I won’t name as they don’t deserve the publicity. This wouldn’t be a major problem except you can skip or fast-forward through the advert, and are therefore forced to wait nearly five minutes before you can actually watch the film.
My advice, don’t buy the DVD, just download a pirate copy which won’t force you to watch "adverts" you don’t want to see.
I headed out for a spin round the Uni on the 69er this morning as it was nice and sunny. I managed to ride the first mile or two before realising I’d forgotten to put my helmet on, so rather than tempt fate I looped back round to pick it up. Shepherds Walk has become quite overgrown since I last rode it 10 days or so ago, and I suffered at the hands, or rather leaves, of the nettles a few times. A quick loop through Rainbow Woods, then through the Uni and down a few steps, across to Sham Castle and back down into Bathamtpon.
On the way back through town I managed to bump into Tim again, I don’t see him for years, then twice in about 24 hours.
Not for me this time, we bought one for Ethan for his birthday which is next weekend. However we’ll be driving to France on his actually birthday so he had it a week early.
I’ve never seen anyone so exciting when he realised what he was getting. A couple of laps of the square showed that the stabilisers need adjusting slightly, but he was already riding off kerbs with no trouble.
I was walking up to the shops earlier today to post a letter when wandering across the railway bridge I spotted a familiar catalogue model pose. It was Tim who was in town visiting a friend, and hadn’t realised that he’d arrived at the railway station 100 yards from my house.
Does this mean all new ML8, Durance and Matic bikes will be belt driven?
For the first time in 15 years or so, I’m carless. The Mondeo has just been picked up by a friend, he’ll take the bits off that he wants, and will scrap the rest.
No more test drives needed, all being well I pick up a Nissan X-Trail late next week.
The first test drive of a potential replacement is arranged for tomorrow morning.
The car failed it’s MOT and needs a few hundred pounds worth of work to pass. Infact it probably needs more than the car is actually worth given that it’s 14 years old now.
Do I fix it, or do I replace it? That is the question I need to answer.
The car has gone in for it’s MOT and service. Will it survive, or will it cost too much to repair?
For some reason I’ve done 3500 miles in the last year which is somewhat more than usual. I’m not quite sure how.
Update: There are broken bits to fix which will cost money. Not sure how much money yet, just waiting for Ray to get his calculator out.
I headed out about 2:30 today to meet Ian for the first trip of the year down to Chew Valley Lake, and possibly the last time we have to meet part-way as Ian is moving back to Bath soon saving me the hours ride to the meeting place.
We took a leisurely trip down through the lanes on a gloriously sunny afternoon. It was so hot I nearly emptied two large water bottles during the ride. The picnic area at Chew Valley Lake was packed, but we managed to sit at a table long enough to eat an ice-cream rather than the usual tea and cake. Another leisurely ride back brought the total distance to 35 miles, and a 100 mile week for me. The first time I’ve done that since late-summer 2006.
It’ll all go to pot now, as in the next two weeks I’ve got three evening meetings to attend, one concert, and then I head to France for a week.
It looks like my HID lamp isn’t dead after all.
After drying it for 90 minutes or so, and possibly more importantly charging the battery, it seems to be working again.
Tonight I took three of the scouts out to do the ride for their Cyclist badge. We headed along the canal to Dundas, and then onto Avoncliff. We’d had a couple of light showers along the way, and plenty of thunder and lightning, but nothing too wet. However soon after turning back at Avoncliff the towpath started to look very wet, but obviously we’d missed the rain. Or so we thought.
About a mile before we were due to leave the canal, the heavens opened and we were deluged with torrential rain. Within a few hundred yards I was soaked to the skin despite wearing my Raceface AquaMax jacket. We eventually made it back to the scout hut absolutely drenched, and I then had to ride home.
The last four miles home were in the same torrential rain, and it had rained so hard that all the roads were at least an inch deep in water all the way back. I don’t think I’ve ever been so wet in my life.
Casualties of the night so far include my HID lamp which appears to have died completely. I suspect all the bearings in the cross bike will be a bit waterlogged as well.
Apparently Tesco have bought the Bath Press printworks site behind my house. If that opens, will I ever use my car again?
No proper ride tonight, however I had a quick trip into town to pick up a parcel from the sorting office, and a new Camelbak from the LBS. Once I got back I dug the Kaboom out of the cellar and resurrected it for Al next door, swapping a few parts to make it fit slightly better, it might still be slightly too large for him though. Following the rebuild we went for a quick spin to test it out, he soon picked up the singlespeed method of riding. I’ve got it back home again to swap some bits out that I want to keep, then it’ll go on loan to Al unless he decides to buy it off me.
Out with Ian on the cross bike tonight in almost perfect riding weather.. We headed out along the canal to Claverton, then up the sharp climb to the Cats and Dogs home. It’s just under a mile long with 420 ft or so of climbing, and I think tonight was the first time I cleared it in one go, I usually have to stop to catch my breath part-way up. After that we did a few laps of Rainbow Woods, then I chased buses back down Wellway at 40mph (in a 30mph limit).
Tomorrow I’m going to rebuild the Kaboom to lend to Al, then go for a short spin with him, and Friday I’ve got to take some scouts riding for their cyclist badge. That’s more riding than I’ve done for a long time.
That’s how long it was since I last rode a bike off-road, which makes it 258 days since I broke my ribs.
However that was all rectified tonight with the first proper ride on the Trek 69er. After work I managed to fix the front brake hose routing with some hints from Tim and respaced the chain guides on the cassette to stop the chain rubbing against them. With a newly silent drivetrain we headed out on the normal Uni route.
The 69er rode fantastically, there’s still a bit of a problem with the rear wheel creaking in the dropouts, but apparently that’s a known fault. It handled superbly on the off-road bits, and the lock-down on the forks was useful on the road climbs. The fork could do with a bit more damping, but that will probably involve waving tools at it so might be better left to someone with more mechanical ability than me.
Is it the best bike ever? Don’t know, but currently it’s the best bike I’ve ridden.
I’ve just spent another half an hour or so searching round the house trying to find my seatpack after I couldn’t find it following a similar search yesterday morning. I couldn’t work out what I’d done with it after taking it off the Tricross, and I wanted the multi-tool that was inside it.
After giving up and deciding I’d probably thrown it out with the rubbish by mistake last weekend, I convinced myself that I’d need to order a new one and replace the bits that were inside it. Then in a flash of inspiration I finally recalled what I’d done after I’d taken it off the Tricross.
I’d put it on the crossbike which is hanging up out the back complete with a nicely fitted seatpack.
I feel I should apologise to ISIS for assuming it was the shonky bottom bracket that was creaking on the newly built 69er. I was so convinced that it was the bottom bracket that I didn’t even consider anything else.
Firstly I removed the cranks, regreased the splines and did every up super tight. It creaked.
Then I removed the cranks and bottom bracket, regreased everything and did it all up super tight. It still creaked.
Then I did the rear QR up a bit tighter. It didn’t creak.
So, apologies to ISIS, it wasn’t your fault. Well not this time anyway.
The 69er is built, however a test ride into town and back nearly deafened me thanks to the ISIS bottom bracket. I need to remove and refit that later to try and quieten it down a bit.
The Shimano chain is also a bit wide thanks to it’s fat side plates and tinkles against the chain guides, it might get swapped for the KMC chain I’ve got spare if I can find it.
I also need to adjust the stem, and fit some new ODI Rogue grips once they arrive at the LBS as the supplied ones are a bit thin. I was lulled into a false sense of security by the lock-on grips on the demo bike I tried.
A nice chain protector, just what I need :)
However it’s unbuilt ‘cos Phil wasn’t going to get a chance to build it until the middle of next week.
It’s not arrived at the shop yet…
…someone will be ordering my Trek 69er today. Will it be ready for collection Saturday afternoon? We’ll have to wait and see.
