Category Archives: Travel

Cold, dry and dusty

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56 miles on the bike, it was dry and the roads white with salt. Gutters are even whiter with ice from overnight temperatures of -4°C. It seems more tiring when the temperatures are low, swo I decided to keep the distance cycled quite low.
-1 to +4°C, clear dry and icy , later- rain.

How winter should be

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8°C,

70 miles, no ice, but there’s mud everywhere. Really dark mud, full of leaves even though the trees stil have most of theirs,  dried &  brown.
It’s been a dayfull, 5 hours of cycling ( if you include cafe stops) and about that much again working up this animation for the charity video. the frame below shows a near-done preview. Some of this involves finding where various settings are. Now I know how to deinterlace. That stripey jagged look in the background is now gone. the firey bits look much better as of this evening.
 
remember the Sparrow killing story? Here’s some followup.
The organisers argued the killing was justified, as more than 100 people had worked for a month setting up the dominoes

learning helplessness

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 8°C, rain then sun
Sixty miles of backtonormality. I didn’t mind that it rained all morning, the rivers are all very full and absolutely everything in this country is wet. The rain has been heavy enough to wash all the clay and slippery diesel from the roads. All is left a a covering of dark brown shiny leaves.
I’d like a lightweight sturdy digital camera to take out on days like this. It needs to be able to record colour faithfully, to have some exposure control so no point-&-shoot will do. There are turquoise patches between clouds, deep orange to red bits on them offset by grey-purples. The wet roads sometimes take on these colours too. I thought in a painterly way as the miles reeled by.
 
My fingers smell bitterly of Araldite.
Interesting BBC webpage covering a topic we discussed in a staff meeting entitled "teaching helplessness".

To derrailleur

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-1 to 3°C.
Surprised: I was expecting a struggle when I decided to remove the broken off thread from a bolt-hole. especially when it’s been in there for a few years, and used through a winter. Amazing when it came out easily with a gentle twist of the pliars. Conditioning has let me not to expect that.
Anyway, I have so far fitted a Campagnolo AND a Shimano rear derrailleur to each of my bikes. The Campag one works perfectly, but the shimano is…typical shimano.
 
Both bikes have acquired shininess.
Talking of shine- I’m beginning to think that it’s a myth that magpies like shiney things. They are supposed to collect metal-foil, but in my 40+ years I have never seen this happen.
 
throat: why is it sore? There is no associated ill feeling, my mother says she has the same thing, it’s just there, sore but stable. Better keep a cap in the cycing tomorrow…

On exercise addiction

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-1 to 7°C,, some ice
Someone suggested last week that I’m addicted to exercise. This is why I think I am not:
  • exercise is a physical need like drinking water or breathing, those who don’t get it tend to develop long chronic phyisical illnesses. 
  • Exercise is natural, we are evolved to do it
  • I exercise less than people who have physical jobs, farm labourers, builders etc. No-one accuses them of being addicated to work.
  • Lack of physical exercise is a health risk, it has to be balanced with the risk of injury,
  • Talking of balance, it’s an aspect of life that should be in balance with the rest,
  • It seems that only sedentary people would suggest such a thing
  • when I am out cycling: I see fields of blokes playing footaball; wind surfers; canoists; runners;
  • exercise makes everyone feel better

-4 and still cycling

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-4 to 6°C +
Very cold, compared to what we’ve got used to. The temperature has dropped 20° in the last month. However there is no ice about because it’s so dry, there’s no water to freeze. I decided to cycle the 10 miles to work as usual, with a little trepidation, today. Tomorrow may be worse- the fog will be freezing, leaving a glassy layer of invisible ice on the road. On two wheels that is a bad thing, sometimes the wheels decide to try going in different directions. When they do that- I get dumped onto the road.
So, therefore, I will drive tomorrow. I don’t want to be dropping on the road in front of some driver who’s on their mobile, or like I saw this morning- peering through frosted windows unable to see. Mobile phone drivers are the biggest killers on the road today, worse than drunk drivers, maybe worse than teenage boy-racers even. They don’t seem to value their own lives.
 
It’s been a beautiful day though.
Important stuff in the news: Uzbekistan and; Andijon. It’s that forgotten massacre I talked of some time back. a worryingly underreported story.

Oily hands

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9°C:; light N.
56 miles. Clear fresh and bright. Was there was a rally on, I was crossed by numbered 1970s sports cars, Alphas, Triumphs, Volvos and even a Mk1 Cortina. All of them muddy, and souped up the way they did back in the ’70s.
A spectator warned me of the risks in cycling, he’d broken his back when hit by a minibus.
Pauses to think and eat another jaffa cake.
It took another 2 hours to finally finish fixing that bike. BrakesbearingstyreschaincleangreaseAndSoOn…
 
Ice due tonight @ -1°C

Spokes and truth

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10°C + all day…
Are people who true bicycle wheels just failed piano tuners?
It only takes a slight variation in tension on the spokes to cause an evantual breakage, especially with my 93Kg mass on the bike. My solution? Tap the spokes with a spanner and listen to changes in pitch, a higher pitch means a tighter spoke, lower= looser. If a spoke needs adjusting to make the wheel true, then make sure the ones either side are turned slightly as well to spread the stress. that way Wheels stay true, and breakages happen less often.
Looser spokes can be surprisingly troublesome, it’s as if the movement leads to metal fatigue, then failure. It’s the ones that are beyond the norm that are risky, either tight or loose.
Is this a metaphor for life?
 
 
 
 
er…no.
 
~

Split rim

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16°C, windy & warm

The rear wheel is split on the rim – along the braking surface. That made for a nervous ride home. It could conceivably, burst open so that the rear tyre would explode. It’s not unsafe unless it happens in front of a big lorry or something. Oh well.

Now I’m home all safe.

…that Yamantaka Eye record is fantastic! I need ot hear it a few more times before I can say anything meaningful about it, but it makes you listen.