Winning.

On By AlexIn Bikes, Road Riding2 Comments

I’ve largely given up on winning, although even that phraseology hints of some podium chasing form in some long past phase of my life. Loose vowels I’m afraid*, in that other than a brief dalliance with that cock-munching class who confused winning with counting money, and a much re-lived 13rd place in my first proper MTB race, I’ve always been closer to the back than the middle**

So tonight when under-commuted legs met over-sized hill, grumpy sighs and wheezy rasps charted my glacial progress into a stiff headwind – cheekily flipped 180 degrees since battering me this morning. So distracted by the world being against me, I was very nearly blown into the roadside vegetation by a pristine roadie flying by like a homesick angel.

Let us pause to examine this cycling mismatch before the inevitable excuses begin. My tarmac conqueror was a vision in white from his Sidi Road shoes through tight Lycra sponsored ensemble topped out by a£200 peakless helmet. His bike – and that word completely fails to describe the engineering miracle reeling in the horizon at frictionless speeds – was somehow even whiter, draped in expensive componentry, and sporting a set of tyres so thin I honestly thought they’d been pencilled onto the rim.

Now allow the eye of disdain pass over a rather grungy middle aged man bedecked in a flappy set of paint stained shorts, a careworn top of dubious vintage, a£20 helmet much repaired with packing tape and shoes clearly stolen from slumbering tramp. The bike was a perfect match, tired from many campaigns, heavy and made heavier by commuting accoutrements, held back by tyres knobbly and wide. On top of this rather unedifying spectacle was the legendary commuting sack, now divested of the emergency badger, but still the unhappy receptacle for the weighty laptop of doom.

“Give up now” I thought. Preserve the few remaining strands of dignity by feigning a mechanical or hacking an arm off with a rusty multi-tool. I am sufficiently self aware in my old age to understand the frustrating dichotomy of ambition gapped by ability. And I know enough about bikes to realise that Mr. Shaven-Legged-Sculpted-Thighs was going to hand me my arse on a plate if temerity became my watchword.

And yet. And yet the last vestige of an overworked competitive gland fired up some anger and demanded death or glory. Death then probably as I snicked a couple of gears, took in a huge breath and went commuter racing for the first time in 18 months. And you know, I’d forgotten how to do it because a determined effort saw me close the gap to a blissful draughting distance where everything just got a whole load easier.

But it felt like cheating. And that’s odd because I like cheating. Always preferred it to hard work on the grounds it leaves more time for beer. Never really been troubled by feelings of guilt when looking for angles and bending the rules. Tonight though, it seemed the wrong time to die wondering and somehow losing worthily trumped winning ugly.

No idea if he knew I was there. He certainly did two seconds later as I waved like the Queen I can be while pulling along side. Duck like, all was serene where it could be seen, down below the legs were piston pumping at a rate that’d have Scotty chucking a big one regarding Dylitherium crystals. The next 45 seconds were horrible. Proper going to be sick, going to explode, going to just die right here horrible.

I dared not look round as I was already spent and even the sight of the cycling Jesus right behind me could not have spurred me on. Best I could have managed would have been a hearty pebble dashing of his lovely team gear with a rather fine pie I’d inauspiciously downed a few hours earlier. So tired now, my default position of cheating seemed a good place to skulk back too. What with the alternative being A&E.

Although my turn off was some 300 yards distant, I came off the drops, passed the momentum baton to the freewheel and ripped off a Rimmer-Like Signalling Salute. If he comes back on the inside, that’s okay I reasoned. It’s fine, I’ve still won. In my own head anyway. But he didn’t, he was MILES back, miles I tell you, honestly sweeping away onto a new course, I almost had to stop so I could barrack him remorsely as his humourless form finally swept pass.

Rationally there’s an explanation. He may have had all the gear but I’m not sure he had an idea what to do with it. His level of spring chicken-ness was similar to mine from what I could determine of a face squashed between expensive clothing. I have to accept that maybe he wasn’t very good, and the very act of overtaking yours hedghoggingly had left him without the physical wit to respond.

But you know what? Don’t give a flying fuck about that. Don’t care one jot. No difference to me if he was a thousand years old. I won, he lost. Oldest game in the word and Christ I cannot tell you how good that felt.

Shallow? Like a tea spoon. That’s me 🙂

* I blame loose bowels from last week leaving me vocationally undernourished, but I can see that’s information you’d rather I’d not shared. That’s the hedgehog for you, we’re all shop front and tackle out round here.

** Feel free to insert your own sexual innuendo here. I’ve done it for you far too many times, it’s about someone else showed their smutty credentials.

The hedgehog is ill.

On By AlexIn Site Stuff3 Comments

And since not even I am prepared to take a laptop into the smallest room, then nothing is getting written until whatever nastiness that has set up camp in my small intestine, finally gets flushed out.

It’s a good four chapter experience so far.

H’mm, I feel the next chapter coming on 🙁

Small is beautiful

On By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike Riding, PhotographyLeave a comment

No, this is an excuse for the size, or otherwise, of certain manly parts. Although having ridden my little ol’ jump bike on some not really trails at all today, I believe I may be searching the Internet for some bigger ones anyway,

Those of you not on the strongest of medication may have noticed that photo is composed to a skewed horizon. I’d like to say that’s exactly how I planned the shot, and it has much to do with accentuating the angle of the bike, the verticality of the little rock, the bigness of the sky. It’d be an artistic untruth though because iit is the result of an photographic technique known as “desperately trying to fit everything in”.

Size again you see. Maybe it does matter. Certainly did on this wall.

Malverns September 2009 Malverns September 2009

I looked at that in a very manly fashion, while some random XC whippets embarrassed the entire MTB genre by repeatedly riding down a couple of steps in a manner that’d mince you straight onto Strictly Come Dancing. Anyway after a few looks and a run in, I ran out of bottle and went to look for less scary things.

None of which were on offer on the final run of the day. On the upside, it was all downhill which – after much winching up the ol’ DMR on flats and a rear axle pedalling position – was a relief. Also in need of relief was my arse, ruined by a cheap saddle I never expected to sit on much, so standing up on wobbly muscles trumped lowering the throbbing chaffed appendage back onto that torturous perch.

The trail down was barely discernible, dropping steeply between still high bracket and gorse. When it did finally open out to something that might once have been a path, the improvement in visibility was mitigated by the loose yet fat rock garden that created an experience best thought of as a pinball game caught in a washing machine.

The DMR was a lot of fun though. Easy to get the scarred buttocks way over the back wheel, the small frame giving it fantastic maneuverability and the big forks ploughing through when my fear based dithering threatened to pop us into the undergrowth. It’s so unlike the Cove – more brutal, more direct, sharp angles forcing weight over the fork, pushing elbows out and grins higher.

All the parts on it are old or second hand or cheap, the frame cost buttons and it’s entirely the wrong bike for – well – most things really. But it has one feature that cannot be fashioned from fancy metals or accessorised bling. It made me feel about 12 years old again.

And that’s becoming important. More important than supposed progression or fitness or riding in new places. Because it’s become apparent to me that flying gliders on a slope – obsessive and much fun as it is – seems to be a an old mans’ game.

I’m not ready for that yet. I want to be twelve again. Best reason to ride a bike? You becha.

Alcohol dependancy

On By AlexIn Other stuff1 Comment

Breaking my own avowed radio silence this evening, I was again rendered dashboard thumping with rage as two idiots vigorously debated both sides of the wrong argument. Representing academia was a stern doctor type grouping alcohol advertising and drink related illness as Satan’s killer cocktail. Smarming from the sidelines sloped a suit declaring that£800 million pounds a year bought the drinks company’s nothing but brand awareness.

They are both wrong, but that’s largely irrelevant because the whole argument is dumb. And here’s why – we have lost the ability to apply perspective to any discussion. Rational analysis has been sidelined by the non listening classes preaching at the extremes of the argument, before packaging 30 seconds of doom mongering for our sound-bite generation.

There is no respect for the other view, no attempt to persuade or influence, no chance of listening or even educating; no it’s just preachy bollocks that assumes the audience is unable or unwilling to weigh up subtle nunances, and then let them decide how they’d like to live their lives.

If we draw a straight line from cigarettes kill through alcohol kills, then let’s spear obesity with that linear progression shall we? Obesity must kill more people than alcohol, put more strain on hospitals and lose more hours of the working year. So come one, be properly radical ban all food advertising as well. No scrap that, go a bit further – because clearly we cannot be fucking trusted with anything – take all the food off the shelves and let the state decide what we eat.

Where’s the downside? Okay we’ll all be eating gruel three times a day and the Flora London Marathon’ll be looking for a sponsor, but we can switch funding from people dying by their own hand to keeping them hanging on a few more years thanks to our caring government.

And what pisses me off even more is it is just bad science. A recent report linked bowel cancer with Ham by correlating what people ate with confirmed cases of the disease. What it totally failed to account for whether these same people drank a gallon of wine a night, smoked themselves wheezy or shoved a live rat up their arse.

You cannot airily make a link – as our tweed jacketed chum did earlier – that every alcohol measure you imbibe is another irretrievable step to cancer, nor can you brush off an 80{45ac9c3234d371044e23e276755ef3a4dde8f1068375defba7d385ca3cd4deb2} increase in alcohol sales in fifteen years as insufficient data to spot a trend. But you can have an informed debate, and then let people make their own bloody minds up.

I despair sometimes I really do. You know what? I’m going to have a beer.

No Shit Sherlock.

On By AlexIn Other stuff2 Comments

I should have ridden in today for many reasons. One of them being I would not have been forced to suffer the unending tripe of breakfast radio shows. Hunting around my normal Radio 4 frequency – having had my fill or terrorists and public service cuts – BBC Hereford and Worcester promised much in terms of mindless music and pointless chat to speed me through the early morning traffic.

But it couldn’t even manage that. The dopey presenter regaled the torpid (it was v. early) listener with a story of how teachers had identified the “naughtiest children by their names“. On reading this list, I was struck by a number of blindingly obvious facts, and one major concern.

1) All the naughty kids read out spookily correlated with the most popular children’s names since the year 2000. One could persuasively argue that the probability of a child called “Jack” being a bit cheeky has a slightly higher statistical possibility than one named Murgatroid.

2) I thought teachers were busy. Why would you spend one second creating this list? It’s not only very bad mathematics for a educational establishment, it’s probably also got paranoid parents flooding the deed pole help line.

3) How the hell have Brooklyn, Dwayne and Jade crept into the top 10 most popular names?

I know this stuff shouldn’t bother me. I appreciate that intellectual rigour has been superseded by look-at-me statistics and poor science, but surely even dead air is better than spouting such bloody nonsense?

On my return trip, my listening experience will be the aurial delight of road noise.

Shelf Life.

On By AlexIn Site StuffLeave a comment

This has to be my best excuse for failing to prod the ‘hog lately. I need to share with you my experiences of extreme tentage in Wales surrounded by beautiful views and many varied flavours of rain and cold. Because soon either the memory will fade, or the counselling will kick in.

There’s a new sport I’d like your views on as well. It’s like a triathlon for pussies – not the feline kind either although maybe that could be something we’d like to consider.

But I’ve been putting up a non ironic shelf which seems to have taken me around three days on and off. It is a thing of beauty, and you’ll be unsurprised to hear some of the delay may have been caused by my not listening to good advice. In my defence, my deafness was due – in part – to the roar of revving powertools. The Jigsaw has taken the number one spot in my favourite tools of destruction.

Shelf wasn’t in the house of course. No, it was another one for the workshop and involved much crouching under benches and smacking lightly thatched bonces on the vice handle. So awed was I with something that ended up level-ish and still there the next morning, I’ve moved on to something even more complex.

I am beginning to think of it as sculptural art. Sort of industrial wood-chic if you will. And if you won’t, well fair enough but once it’s done, I’ll be back although with less machine guns and wooden acting that Arnie. Someone told me he’s Governor of California? Pah what a jest, next thing you’ll be trying me on that we’re releasing terrorists so BP can ruin some more of the planet.

I’m not as green as tha’ cabbage is painted I’ll have you know.

Commuting rules..

On By AlexIn Bikes, Road RidingLeave a comment

.. not when it’s raining it doesn’t. Nor am I postulating on the stuff that used to keep me exercised both mentally and physically. What I’m talking about here are the hard, inflexible rules hammered into any cyclist whose spent time on the road and in the rain. The kind of thing you get wrong just once, before it’s hard-wired into your cycling psyche.

Except when your daily commute becomes a weekly or bi monthly event. Then you forget and bad stuff happens.

It gets dark. Check your lights. Long day, shorter daylight demands some form of get-me-home illumination. Of the four lights generally festering in my bag, two didn’t work at all, one flashed briefly before a spectacular – if brief – fizzling death while the fourth offered a dim flashing facsimile of something that may prevent a tractor squashing you flat.

Carry spares of everything. Including batteries. It’s worth thinking of them as fitness ballast to cushion the disappointment of these also being flat. The day I removed one of my two spare tubes, guess how many punctures I ended up with? My MP3 player was then added to the ever increasing pile of non working electronic stuff. It felt like I was riding directly under my own personal Electro-Magnetic Pulse.

Ensure you always carry a waterproof. Oh how smug was I with my trusty Gortex pal nestling amongst all the other crap I cannot bring myself to jettison. That smugness lasted exactly the time it took to remember I’d failed to re-proof though laziness and meteorological delusion* The result was a small lake pooling at the elbows and wrists that gradually – but persistently – drained through to create a feeling of clammy damp.

Mudguards look a bit gay, but… they are a marked improvement on – say – flappy wet shorts rythmically slapping your thighs with each pedal stroke. It put me in mind of sharing a small, cold bath with a Bavarian Laderhosen fetishist who’d just done a line of speed. My shoes have the same porous qualities as string creating a small watersports park for Lemmings in my socks.

Don’t go offroad because it’ll be drier under the trees. It isn’t. Rather than a wet arse, I ended up with a sandy, wet arse and crazy pebble dashing from ankle to eyebrow. And a shouty bruise delivered by that tractionless combination of thin tyre and thick mud. I’m writing to the Forestry commission to demand satisfaction on the issue of who put that tree there as well.

Keep your tyres inflated. Because while there is a certain manly pleasure in rotating squashy rubber**, the downside is a tarmac faceplant caused by rapid deflation or geographical differences between tyre and rim.

All obvious stuff you would think. No more than common sense for the serious cyclist. And I too was thinking just that as spiteful rain lashed my unprotected form, my arse became increasingly exfoliated by a localised sandstorm, and my feet exhibited the first symptoms of trenchfoot.

Right at the point when I was considering lobbing the bike under a passing lorry and hitching home, the descending sun backlit hill hugging clouds and transformed the world into something Turner-Esque and rather splendid.

Deciding I could get no wetter, I headed upwards into the lightening gloom to find myself high above the house, close to twilight with no power in my lights, not much pressure in my tyres, and every inch of skin on the aquatic side of extremely soaked. The plunge home took in grass covered roads, slick, shale corners, blind bends and an immense amount of blinking.

Arrived alive, declared to disbelieving family how much I love bikes. Swapped cold water for warm and wetness outside for wine inside. Slackness on the riding front has happened again this August, and I had begun to worry that my long affair with all things two wheeled was coming to an end.

It seems not.

* It’s never rain that hard. It’s summer for Christ’s sake.

** It’s that mental image of the Bavarian. It’s got me thinking…

Keep Calm and Carry On.

On By AlexIn Other stuff2 Comments

Nearly seventy years old, but still as punchy and concise as the day it was first displayed. I’m feeling rather punchy after the concise message from the garage that all is not well with the Love Bus. Apparently they’ve never before found a fault with the steering caused by someone not driving it. You may be shaking your heads in the time-honoured warranty fashion on hearing “I was just riding along and my frame snapped in four places“. But I tell you, Friday fine, undriven till yesterday, last night: broken.

This is distracting me from two other rather pressing issues. The first being a tent being handed over by a friend of mine with the mischievous narrative “Oh it’s really easy to put together, just follow the instructions“. NOTHING is easy to put together if it has instructions. I can quote at length from flat pack furniture through children’s toys to mountain bike components accompanied by a manual translated from Chinese to English, via Urdu by a man who only knew enough of both languages to sell a camel.

But erect* it we must, because the second Elephant In The Room is holding an umbrella and scouting about for a very large dingy. Yes I know camping at the Autumn end of August isn’t very bright, but neither is attempting such lunacy with four members of the family who’ve never done it before. One of them which smells and snores even worse than I do. Hard to believe, but sadly the ear perforating, nasal hair shrivelling truth when one considers the aural stinky disaster that is Murphy the Labrador.

Our camping experience is a light one. Well not really as we have nothing more than ten quids worth of dim electric candle and some head torches of similar, dubious quality. And a very small – yet potentially lethal – stove. And a kettle. And that’s it. So if it** rains, that’ll be four people and a mad dog confined in a small canvas dome wondering if “I Spy” can be classified as mental torture under UN rules.

Still assuming the car gets fixed before we’re meant to leave, then at least I can sleep in it. The last two occasions I’ve created a tentage experience, someone else has had the pleasure of sleeping in it, while I shoe-horned myself into the back of the truck. Unlikely to get five of us in it – primarily because the doors will be locked and I shall have ear plugs in. So deaf to the entreaties of my family who may well be shouting “WHOSE BLOODY STUPID IDEA WAS THIS?”

Ah. Well. H’mm. And on that salutatory note, I shall bid you farewell, only to return in a few days with tales of trenchfoot and emergency B&B’s no doubt.

* I’m too fraught to offer up my normal stable of giant erection “nobody thinks they are funny but you” missives. Be thankful.

** When

Dog flies, I bleed, welcome to the weekend.

On By AlexIn Other stuff2 Comments

I am only writing this because nine nails are bitten to the quick, and the other one is encased in a very large plaster. Cricket you see; a logical part of the mind chastises “it’s only a game, there is nothing you can do to alter the outcome, you should care this much” whereas the other part – that bit that goes aarrgggthh ever time a gloating Aussie scores 400 with the bat stuck to his head or something – just wants England to win back the Ashes.

Other way round, we have to make 550, they have to bowl us out, it’s over in 50 overs with a batting average reading capitulation and humiliation. They bat and the buggers just think “550? Pah, we’ll be done by tomorrow lunch and have the rest of the day off“.

And who says recycling saves the planet? It may well do but it didn’t save my finger which was surgically sliced by an unseen broken glass. Probably lost in all the wine bottles. 10 minutes of bleeding and no sympathy later, it was off to the community hospital in Ross to lie about my last tetanus and be bandaged up yet again.

It’s almost as if I’m clumsy or something. Whatever, blood loss must have been the trigger for an all expenses raid on the local camping shop, from where we left staggering under the weight of “essential” equipment. Yes, next week we’re going to try camping for the first time with the kids. Not to save money as the cost of all this kit could easily have paid for a nice hotel, with a snug little bar.

Instead we’re borrowing a tent, and heading out to the wilds of Cardigan Bay. To spend three or four days marooned under stormy skies with only a moist, smelly dog for company.

Sounds ace doesn’t it? But if the inevitable cricketing tragedy plays out, at least there’ll be radio silence. In the meantime, here are some more levitating dog pictures.

Murphy - August 09 Murphy - August 09

Murphy - August 09 Murphy - August 09

Anybody wants me, I’ll be whimpering under a blanket with only radio 4 and a hip flask for company.