Urgent tottering

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15°C, sun

The olympic torch procession thing passed through town today, I think. there was a nucleus of noise and crowds which is calming down now. I was out with the dog and could hear music, horns, pea-whistles and amplified voices from a point that audibly moved along at a steady pace. There were small groups of people hurrying towards the nub. They almost broke into a trot, not quite but handbags swung with some urgency. Other people walked quite quickly too, that’s a remarkable thing for a nation that likes to walk veerryy sloowly. Maybe you had to be there to appreciate the point of it all, but the noise was not a attractor for me.

NHS direct

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13°C, wind & broken sunshine

Amid furious itching, I used the NHSdirect website to decide whether I have excema or a dermatitis brought on by exposure to some trigger. the webbing bit between my fingers on one hand are ablaze. So, I filled in the questions on the webpages and within 20 mins, they phoned. It may be a reaction to weeding in the garden. Probably the day I pulled ivy off the window-frame here.

Not normally the kind of detail I’d go into here, bit I am rather impressed with nhsdirect.

Peleliu

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18°C, wind & sunny bits

Ill and off work but after a monster sleep, you find me feeling better.

Making Scenery for FSX like old times. The default land texture for Peleliu in the Pacific is a joke. It should be all tropical jungle, but MS have put dry farmland on the little coral & volcanic island.

What is should be like is closer to this:
 The island’s shape is still wrong, but I’m not sure how much more I want to do on this one. There is plenty of detail that could be added, there are coral reefs, beaches with black sands and channels in shallow waters (The German Channel) and of course, other small islands slightly to the north. Visually, the result could be rather appealing. All this tropical island paradise conceals a grim human history- The Battle for Peleliu during WW2. The US Marines invaded and forced the Japanese occupying forces out with a huge loss of life to both sides. The jungles now conceal tank wrecks, demolished bunkers and crashed planes. There are, of course, memorials on important sites there.
I’ve been watching a series called Pacific on blu-ray which tells the story from the USA side.

So there is an ugly story hidden under the canopy of palm trees on this beautiful tropical island paradise.

What the end of the world looks like…

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18°C, torrential rain followed by nice sun

10am the sky darkened, so dark it looked like 5pm on a late November evening. The difference was, there were no streetlights to cast a dull orange glow onto the undersides of clouds. Traffic lights pierced the gloom with such vivid colour, it was quite hypnotic. Kids at school felt a sense of foreboding, maybe this is the way Armageddon might start.

I’d like to see our cities with streetlights switched off again. Would it be so bad if lights went off every night from, say 01.00 to about 04.30? Some people have said they’d feel less safe (from traffic or muggers?), but society would adjust. We’d adjust to carrying a torch and paying lower local taxes (council tax pays for lighting I believe).

38 miles without falling off.

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18°C, NW winds CR:38.5 miles

I daren’t ride the race bike on that chain, it looks like another pin is pulling out so I have binned it. The replacement is the same type- a SRAM 870. This time I did not risk joining any links and took off spares in stages before finally using the power-link to finally join the ends. The ride was okay, but unexpected gear changes still happen on the 17t cog.
I bet the derailleur hangar needs aligning- that’s a job for the shop though. the tool is too expensive for occasional use. I imagine that such a fault would allow good gear changes on some sprokets, and not on others. If I adjust the cables, then it merely change which cogs skip about. On this ride, the top & bottom ratios are okay, and the lower-middle ones play up.
Another contributory cause might be bearing wear on the freehub. The Campy service centre said they could fix that.

SRAM Power Link

SRAM Power Link (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

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Sneeze.

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16°C, rain.

This has to be the worst hay-fever since I moved to the Midlands. My eyes are filled with tears that fail to sooth the itching. Each day ends with a mild headache which reminds me of that concussion I had a few years ago. There is pressure inside my head, especially behind ear-nose-throat bits. Another victim would blame that cycling tumble at the weekend, but I know this beast from the past.

Maybe soon I will post a picture of the newest fungus that has sprouted in my garden. It’s somewhere between an oyster mushroom and those bracket fungus that grow on tree-trunks. A fine specimen deserves a worldwide internet stage.

Bad end to a mediocre ride

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14°C, showers, CR54 miles

A chain break can lead to a bruised bum- I learnt today.

Riding the last mile towards home is s steep hill. On this hill, I was thrown to the road after a sharp crunch and landed on my coccyx. Oh, boy that really did hurt, I had no choice but to swear quite a bit. But then, it could have been worse- I could have crashed down on the cross-bar and you all know what that would mean:

the pain is enough to make a shy boy Buddhist reflect and plan a mass murder

The chain was broken. That chain has been a problem since new- the very same on that tightened up a month ago which made the bike almost unridable. I shall replace it with a new one. Anyway, I walked the last  mile & half home, at least I could coast along the downhill bits which cut off about ½ mile.

Not a great ride then.

Cold summer- what shall I read?

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12°C, cool & wet.

I admit, it’s a nice problem to have- which book shall I read next? Canada has the best reviews, or 1Q84 does.
Stalker would be the easiest to get through though I an quite prepared to feel a bit embarrassed by its presence on my shelves. It could easily denigrate into an action story- all shooting & shouting.

1Q84: I have read the first chapter and it has all the magic- it leaves you with thoughts and ways of looking at things. It’s a bit of a beast though, the whole (bound two volumes) could take ages to read at my pace.

Isatis tinctoria

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English: Isatis tinctoria, Brassicaceae, Woad,...

English: Isatis tinctoria, Brassicaceae, Woad,

18°C, CR 64 miles, Sunny & sunburnt

Woad: an interesting plant to try out. A friend dropped off a packet of seeds knowing it was the sort of thing that would appeal to me. She was right. they can’t be planted until the end of summer though. I shalln’t make any dye from it but am just more interested in its history and form.

Per-doiing: fixed the gear cables in the racing bike- now the gear shift is very light. then, on a roll, I decided to fix the freehub. Campag freehubs are not as neat as Shimano. There are three pawls that spring out unrestrained when you take the freehub off the hub. Not a great design – Shimano beat Campag to the patents I am told. One spring is broken in this hub but I did get it back together and ride 64 miles today.