Eleventh hour.

Posted on 11th Nov 2012 by essiep

9°C, NE light, sunny. CK:48.8 miles.
Rode along the coast to Southport. Before I got there I came upon a memorial ceremony at just before 11am. So, I pulled over and stood there. And watched. I removed my helmet for the duration.

On the drive home this evening, we stopped on Cannock Chase for a night-time walk in the forest. We’ve done this a few times now. Autumn has it’s own sensations that can not be experienced at any other time of year. I look forward to the onset of deep winter under the same circumstance. Night walks away from street lights is a vivid experience in snow. Could this mean I an finally finding ways to enjoy the season. Will my annual loathing of Christmas start to recede?

Red clay roads

Posted on 28th Oct 2012 by essiep

CR:52 Miles. Rain later.
This ride wasn’t too cold but it did rain on the return leg. I could have avoided it but for the roads. The mud was as bad as it can be, the back wheel skitted about alarming me enough to get off and walk. I had to walk a few times on this ride, even that was less than easy in cycling shoes. The shoe-plate is not intended for walking and are treacherous on slippery surfaces. The delay added up enough to allow the rain clouds to build. Now it has started, the rainfall should do a decent job and wash that mud away.
The Racelite bike is definitely the wrong mount for these conditions, the mud built up under the brakes such that I had to stop twice to clear it. Tyre levers are good for flicking mud out to free the wheels.
Now shut up, I need to go out and hose the bike down.

Continue reading →

Tyrannosaur

Posted on 21st Oct 2012 by essiep

8°C, fog.
Thick fog: can’t see the road outside. There is fog dripping off tree’s branches, the washing line and the gutters. It taps irregularly on an upturned bucket.
I shall give it a chance to clear before riding later.
Tyrannosaur: I’ve had this bluray disc for over a month and now, finally, watched it. Stunning film, I highly recommend it to most people. It’s not an easy film to sit through, so be careful who you encourage to watch it. The reviews online are correspondingly varied.

As you can see I have been playing with a bitmap editor called Pixlr. It consists of 3 sets of adjustment layers on three themes- frames, lighting and texture. No doubt there will be more to come from me, especially since it’s an app that can be run on Google Chrome on the computer too.
It’s interesting because it affects the way you take photos. This offsets the accusation that I make of myself that I’m jumping on a bandwagon. And since it’s on your phone, you can get results fairly quickly. This picture is of an abandoned educational institution near my regular dog walk. The place has an interesting garden which is simultaneously entering both Autumn and a period of neglect. This shot shows a fennel plant at near full size.
I now have one for my garden too.

That’s why I’m so hungry

Posted on 7th Oct 2012 by essiep

12°C, no wind, sunny. CR˜61.4 miles.
I feel this way every week when I get back. Some slight aches, thirsty and refreshed. Above all- hungry.
The phone app says I used up 3,227 calories on this ride alone. Hence this insatiable hunger. No matter how much I eat, even with a full belly the hunger is still there.
The phone app is probably more trustworthy than the speedo that claims to record calories. It can’t because it doesn’t know my weight, nor does it record hill climbs. The app does both, so I’m inclined to believe it.
Anyway, good ride and dinner is in the oven.

Parbold hill

Posted on 30th Sep 2012 by essiep

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.

Momentary misjudgement

Posted on 27th Sep 2012 by essiep

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

Posted on 20th Sep 2012 by essiep

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.

Tracked 47 miles

Posted on 17th Sep 2012 by essiep

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.

Heat in Duxford

Posted on 9th Sep 2012 by essiep

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.

Bearing in

Posted on 22nd Aug 2012 by essiep

New school/old school crankset (credit: Wikipedia)

17°C, cloudy & light westerlies

It is in, the fix is in. This morning I put a new bottom bracket bearing in the race-bike. Will ride soon to test it out and try out the larger inner-chainring. It’s now 42-53, a smaller jump than before. That should put an end to the triple shifts that I often am forced to do when shifting chainring.