Monthly Archives: Sep 2012

David Sedaris

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English: David Sedaris at a talk in Ontario.

English: David Sedaris at a talk in Ontario. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

15°C, lots of rain.
Glad I did the weekend’s ride on Saturday. Today, rain and a listlesness that suggests an oncoming cold. It’s Autumn now.
The new season brings new programmes on the radio- my favourite of Sundays- David Sedaris. This guy puts the kid to Americans inability to understand irony. His show is presented as s series of essays. They are hilarious.

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Parbold hill

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12°C , brisk westerly, light cloud. CK55 miles.
Saturday ride on the fixed, a good few hours ride that started with some difficulty- perhaps I didn’t have enough for supper before.
Anyway, I got up Parbold hill on the 42×16 gear without stopping. While not a very blog-worthy point, I get a lot of satisfaction from this first. Last winter, I could only make the summit with the last part on foot. Then in the 17 tooth gear I gasped to the top.
It seems that my physical energy has been liberated by that drop in work-stress.
Ride profile

Momentary misjudgement

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12C clear.
It was only a tiny slice of time, it was enough for the axe to swing its  errant path. The hit only took a thin slice from my thumb. Lucky it wasn’t worse, or unlucky to happen in the first place. That makes me luck-neutral.
A cut from a sharp edge is usually less painful, and less prone to infection. My only grumble is the site of the injury- it’s on the side of my the joint just where I normally apply pressure when changing gear on the commuting bike.
Perhaps change gear like a good fixed-gear rider.

Profile of a commute

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this profile show works on the left and home on the right.

14°C westerly
Mapmyride has updated their app. Now a week has passed and no broken routes appear in the gps tracking.
For 10 years I have ridden this route to and from work. In all that time I have never been certain why it takes of consistently longer to ride in than back home. Now I know. There is both a general climb in altitude and prevailing SW winds to make the morning route harder. Home is closer to sea-level than work.

Sound in the dead of night

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9°C. Quiet.
Early morning, in the share change of sleep. It’s not quite silent- there is a man-made sound. A high pitched modulated note like a spinning metal wheel. Most probably a distant siren, its note wavering and reflecting from buildings on its journey to my ears.
Like so many nights, I probably need a banana & to read for a while.
Goodnight.

Tracked 47 miles

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17°C  westerly breeze, brisk
Used an app to track my Sunday bike ride. It ran alright to start with. I admit that it takes a while to learn the program, but it did raise other problems. It missed 11 miles off the route, also I can’t see how to pause it during a cafe stop. Still, there is some promise. The missing section was a loss of gps signal I’d say. Either that or some space warp/hyper-space effect occured.
11 missing miles

Dead of night

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13°C, very still
What a terrible night′s sleep. It’ll be over soon.
I found myself listening to the night. Distant motorcycles screamed up the A road. Closer by, an owl- but not  one I recognised, only a solitary hoot- a lonely call into the still air. There was another sound, a coarser bark that was definitely not a dog. A fox I think.

Smart phone

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17°C sunny.
Got a new phone today.
This is going to take some getting used to. I got a Samsung Galaxy Mini 2 in the end. For this post, I’m trying the touch screen T9 keypad. Finding the apostrophe in mid-sentence is rather tricky. Phones like this can cost tonnes but I chose the Mini 2. Physically more practical, though the keys on the touch screen are very small.
Impressive features are the GPS, wireless internet and mapping. Perhaps the lasting judgement will come from the valueof any apps, like this WordPress one.

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Heat in Duxford

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26°C, no cloud ’till later.

September Airshow, 2012. It’s a long but easy drive and for the first time we got there to join a queue. Don’t know why it should be different this year. I have to say, upfront, that I don’t know why I’m less thrilled by this event this year. Even the 4 year interval hasn’t helped my dulled enthusiasm. It was nice to see the Vulcan fly over, we wowed at the noise that made your clothes flutter. The event was worth the trip, but only just. Perhaps the last for me.

Wrong time to wake.

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14°C, light cloud.

Awake at the wrong time. I know it’s wrong because when I get up in the night at this hour my body seems almost drunken. Odd that.

Sleep cycles follow rises and dips, 2am seems the lowest of the dips. That’s the time when my body is so slow that it feels intoxicated. Later in the night, my consciousness remains high enough to seem slightly awake until dawn.