nurburgringerFiled under: Uncategorized
So the snow stopped me for getting out on the new bike for a while (2 whole weeks!), so last Friday before I had to take my daughter for her Swine Flu jab, with just a sprinkling of snow on the ground I had a 5 minute play with the new bike. I was quite pleased with how it felt and managed to get a top speed of 17 mph. Anyone who looked out of their window on that cold dark morning probably would have thought that they were watching a child with their new toy, riding up and down the road ;0)
The first real ride out was this morning, the weather was just about perfect (maybe a little cold), I had decided that my first ride out (without padded shorts) would just be an hour long 30 mins out and 30 mins back, 30 minutes in I had managed to cycle 6.75 miles, now I would see if I could make it back in the same time, on the cycle back I seemed to lose the use of the front gear change, regardless I still got home in 29:20 so 40 seconds quicker than my outbound journey.
A quick look at the derailleur when I got home and it looked as though I had tried to select a gear that wasn’t there and as a result the cable had gotten so tight that the change wouldn’t shift in the other direction, this was easily remedied, simply slackening off the bolt that holds the cable on the derailleur selecting another gear and re-attaching the cable seemed to work.
So first ride out was fairly pleasing 13.5 miles in just under an hour and a new top speed of 24mph.
I can’t remember when it started snowing, but it did, quite heavily and with little sign of stopping.
By Thursday of the week I was due to collect my bike there was quite a covering of snow on the ground and my train into work was somewhat delayed.
On arriving at the station door that (VERY) cold January morning, I heard an announcement that trains to Liverpool St were severely delayed due to the adverse weather, the next train in was due in 30 minutes however, there was no saying that it was actually going to arrive as everything before it had been delayed and then cancelled, it was at this point the guy on the tannoy decided to mention that the journey could take up to two hours. By the time I had made my way to the platform the train had been delayed even further, with this I headed home.
A couple of hours and one quick call to Evans later, and I had arranged to pick the bike up that afternoon.
Stopping by Halfords on the way to pick up a budget roof rack I was at Evans by 14:00 and home by 16:00, With this…..
This is what I’ll be riding, from London…… to Paris!
About a week after ordering my new bike I got impatient (me, who would have thought it!?!) and gave Evans a call to see when it would be ready, they were just working through a delivery they received that morning and would give me a call back to let me know if mine was there. A few minutes later I got a call asking me when I wanted to collect it, I decided that that Saturday would be as good a time as any.
So one of the things that really bothers me is this nations adoration of mediocre, one hit wonder pop acts. A karaoke king does not make a musician or a star. The other thing that bothers me about the whole ‘Britains got a new pop idol with the x-factor on ice’ is that the general public catapult one individual into the spotlight without this person having any of the trials and tribulations of a real band etc. There’s no effort involved, you just have to look like a model from the NEXT catalogue.
Now that I’ve made my hate and disgust plain and if you feel the same way, why not have a look at RageGroup and maybe buy a copy of ‘killing in the name of’ from iTunes or HMV or Tesco or Amazon or Play.com or…… well you get the picture.
Put a proven band at number one this christmas, stop this mediocre nonsense!
I have decided that next year after the bike ride I would like to do the three peaks challenge (Ben Nevis, Scafell Pike and Snowdon), I’ve been up Snowdon numerous times as a teenager, but not in recent years, with this in mind I thought it might be good to re-familiarise myself with the suggested challenge routes.
A reccy of Snowdon in September, was never going to be a sunny and dry affair and with that in mind I had purchased a new waterproof for the job, (a North Face Resolve). It was also a bit of a last minute idea and I was prepared to go on my own, but a quick text to Luke found me with a walking buddy.
The Plan was to meet in the Pen-Y-Pass car park at 9:00 (against my fathers and sisters warnings of the car park being full by 8:00) which meant that I would have to be in the car by 5:00 on a Saturday morning. However I woke at 3:45 and couldn’t get back to sleep so thought that I might as well get on with the drive, I dropped Luke a quick text to let him know and then headed off.
About 4 hours later I was in Pen-Y-Pass car park (and had just seen Luke pull up) after a quick chat and a change of footwear, it was time to press on.
We were going to take the Miners track up and the Pyg track down as suggested by one of the three peaks websites that I had read, the Miners Track being the tough one of the two, the track passes Llyn Teyrn,
then after a bit of a climb crosses the causeway on Llyn Llydaw
and partly skirts around the edge of Glaslyn,
before getting steep
and joining the last bit of the Pyg track, which then joins the Llanberis Pass for the summit,
After a cup of coffee and a bite to eat in the cafe, it was time to head back down, both Luke and I managed to slip over once on the descent, hurting nothing more than our pride in the process.
The sun had started to break through after we got out of the cloud (as promised by the Met office forecast) which gave a nice view of a portion of the Pyg Track.
we could also see the causeway we had taken across Llyn Llydaw earlier
We were back at the car park and heading home by 14:00 all in all a GREAT day, encouraging as we were only 30 minutes off the pace on the way up and spot on on the way down…. I think I would like to familiarise myself with Scafell Pike before doing the challenge……
In preparation for the London to Paris bike ride I have installed the InstaMapper app on my iPhone, this will allow real time tracking of where I am in the world (as long as I turn it on).
The app uses GPS to locate you and then sends the co-ordinates to InstaMapper, you can then either embed a map onto your website, send links to people or embed it on your facebook page (via their facebook app). As WordPress blogs don’t allow the embeding of HTML I have had to use the link option.
So on 13th May, you’ll be able to follow Our Progress or Our Progress (mobile) to see how we’re doing!
Next task is to find myself a good quality iPhone holder for the bike….
So all was going reasonably well, (there was now four of us in total Andy, Tom, Wayne and Me), wanting to take up the challenge of cycling from London to Paris, (via Greenwich, Newhaven, Dieppe and Gourney en Bray) until We started looking into possible crossings, here was hurdle number one.
It seems that the Newhaven to Dieppe crossing isn’t in all that much demand, with only two crossings a day this would make for either a VERY early start or a ridiculously late finish, neither of which really appealed, it was time to consult the group.
Andy weighed up all of our options which were
- Early ferry, early start, then if anything goes wrong on the way to Newhaven then the weekend is torpedoed.
- Go via Calais, essentially turning it into a 4 day cycle.
- Get the late ferry, (21:00, 4 hour crossing, getting us in at 02:00 local time), there are cabins on board so we could grab a few hours.
The response was unanimous we’ll take option 3, we dont have to get up particularly early the following day so there’s no pressure to only get 3 hours sleep and have to cycle for miles the following day.
So the first hurdle has been cleared, two of the group now have bikes (Tom has his Cannondale and Wayne has just taken delivery of his brand spanking new Specialized)
So that just leaves me to get my new bike (ETA January) and Andy to decide if he’s going to change his bike……
Got an iPod classic and want to wirelessly stream music to your stereo?Well Belkin will kindly sell you the TuneStage II for hundreds of pounds however, if you’re after a bit of a bargain, or already have the original TuneStage (currently £24.99 online from a quick google search) with the old iPod connection (the small square socket near the headphones) and would like to use this with your nice new iPod (with dock connector) then just pick up a gear4 Bluetooth transmitter (currently on amazon for £27.29) meaning that if the TuneStage II costs £100, this solution would save you £45.
