Miss you crazy lady

October 2013 this rather fantastic, fun, witty and compassionate woman died.

She was my mother and I miss her very much. 

Thanks mum, for all you did for me. Love you xxx

Brave New World(ish)

So we are alive again. After years, drifting in space we are back. Possibly we will use the page as a more diary type arrangement, which will probably reduce the readership from the abundant 3 to myself. So, you can surmise i am using this page for narcissistic tendancies. So, first day of February, been getting back out on the bike the past couple of weeks. We are manipulating our world insomuch as we have built a garage. Had we even bought a house the last time i posted? Haven't done for a while so might take some time to get into my stride. I will post some rides though.

and some photos:

and some G-Spot:

Alive

Alive. not dead.

restful sleep...

With so much going on, getting the chance to have some time to think and ideas to form has been tricky. Things have been falling into place and I think progress is slowly emerging. Had an early night and got some sleep without being haunted by worries of concrete, promotion campaigns or the work we have to look forward to over the next 8 months.

2012

Been neglecting this as it seems to have lost its purpose. Will have a thinky and see whether it should carry in or get binned.

stuff Sept 2011

Since the last post I drifted into a deep sleep only waking to take occasional meals and watch old episodes of Farscape and Babylon 5. During this period I communicated a requirement to purchase property and some additional cycling equipment (pedals). Obviously I have fallen behind with my reading, writing and work load in general. My apologies to those waiting to read more of my cycling adventure. A lesson was learned. This was that sometimes the path more often taken is taken for a reason. But this is also a reason not to.
Whilst asleep I have sustained some injuries. Apparently, I had taken to sleep wood working, involving the purchase of tools, required sleep driving, and some sleep sawing. All is well, I still have all six fingers and thumbs, banjo playing is not compromised. I may be prone to extended bouts of sleeping, "up to two years" I read. But that might have been on the back of a t-shirt in mothercare.

MTB Shortcuts

Today we went for a small cycly up near Aberfoyle. Starting from the car park a Bravel ( or whatever) we followed the route as per the image below. Steep start but reasonably enjoyable, the weather started out fine. I quite liked the route as it had some tricky section which were kinda fun. Found some mud that swallowed a full half of my wheel. Managed to get the front out but the back stayed put. My bike squeaked for the rest of the trip. We got to the point 14 km in and I thought "we could just nip over that hill and save tonnes of time!". Wrong. dragging our bikes up the 22% gradient to find a blighted and impassable plateau led to an eventual short cut of 2km. 1 km short of the original route, but the original route was practically level. I got us lost again at 18.5 km (that conspicuously pointless arm that goes to a quarry and is on the wrong side of the hill; or nowhere...) but after that it was plain sailing. Well no. Lots of steep uphill and gravelly steeper downhill. Oh yeah, the sun pissed off about a third in and I was a bit miffed.

Summary? Weird route that needs two bikes. for the NCN 7 sections you need a road bike, for the others a hard tail will suffice, although on the rocky sections you might like more cushion.

Additional: We travelled counter clockwise and we heard a woodpecker! :o)

Cove Stiffee

Cove Stiffee 2010 - Marzocchi AM4 150 mm (2006) - Nuke Proof Generator DH wheels - SLX mech and changing gear - Front E'ore Hollowtech Triple - Rear SLX 9 speed cassette - RaceFace Stem and Post - Charge Spoon Saddle - E'ore Hydraulic Brakes 180 mm rear - 160 mm front - kona wah wah platform pedals

Arrochar Cycle Madness

We had a nice cycle up by Arrochar over past Loch Lomond.



It's a pretty easy trail to follow. We had a technology failure and the downloaded GPS route took about 40 minutes to compute and kept crashing. Finally SB found the map of the route on line and just kept it on her phone.

I tracked using my garmin so I have a gpx file of it if anyone wants it. not expecting a rush I have to say. I'll post it online and link to it.

Lately...

This has been a bit quiet. Mainly down to me being busy. We had a stag for a friend. Which was possibly nicer than is actually decent for such things. Great weekend.
As part of work I have to go to Brussels which is cool because it'll look cool on the CV and I have to do a workshop. Hopefully I will fall into character and not freeze up. It's all shit I know inside out, so shouldn't be an issue.
Been reading more. Philip K Dick has been the focus. Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said; Radio Free Albemuth was very good. Cosmic Puppets was less PKD than any other stuff that I have previously read, more thriller. Slightly Stephen King (pre-dates massively). Now on The Divine Invasion, which is good.
Bikes have gone mad. I now have my Cove Stiffee with 150 mm Marzocchi forks which I got for £100.
I got a cheap medium sized GT Avalanche frame to replace the small that I had been running with since 2009. All the bits were transferred and it has the Manitou 100 mm R7 fork which works perfectly. Size difference is notable, and I can see why I bought the small, but...
Road Bike is still the Specialized Tricross Sport. Lovely bike, needs a good servicing. I'll do it.

Off to Brussels on Sunday, have a major project coming online shortly, and another in the offing that I hope to see to completion. Really enjoying my job just now. It isn't easy, and sometimes frustrating. Ultimately good.

Pictures coming soon.

Stag stag stag

Friend's stag. Hmmm.

holiday spirit

so I looked out of the window on Thursday morning. Raining. This brought a weird sense of joy as the water was liquid! Cycled into work. was fab. bunny hopped Clint (specialized tricross) over several lumps of ice, got there alive.
Friday is holiday for me. 3 day weekend, result.
bottle of Berberana and so to bed.
Still reading Neil Gaimen. slooow reader, good book.

Death in Vegas - Dirt

This has bugged me for a while. At the start of the above track there is a section of live vocal. during this, it is announced that "it's a free concert from now...". This annoys me, as you would already be there and have paid. Were they giving refunds? Doubt it. Hmmmm

Getting to work....

our place of work have very kindly offered to let us use next year's holidays to cover days we can't get into work. How sweet...
Is that even legal?

winter travel and snow psychosis

on to work after a few days of feeling distinctly peaky. Not convinced all is well. Walked through to winter wonderland to the station to find trains cancelled. Whilst waiting for bus, hoping it wouldn't turn up, i got chatting. Cat litter was the wisdom i imparted. This will get the wheels turning to their purpose. This morphed to cats being attracted to the spot. Setting up a community, building a society. The usual problems and stresses, catnip addiction, fundamentalism. Cats coming to your door, paw extended, meeoorroow...
Chaos.
If only they'd gritted

Mother Forker Manitou R7 upgrade

I have a pair of Manitou R7 air forks (100mm)on the Cove just now. so it's really built for cross country. The compression adjuster on the right leg (TPC) wasn't very good and I upgraded to the ABS+ unit. 10 minute job and total adjustment is over a 180 degree rotation. This gives nice and soft at one end and a much missed lockout facility at the other. £35!


quick turn and I won't bob all the way to the top of the hill (assuming I make it to the top)



My preety Cove Stiffee

silly msn spam

I usually get the usual silly spam.
Breast enlargements are tempting as are most of the money laundering scams from Africa and Asia. The MSc and PhD offers are considerably less enticing.
I got this today:

"Copulate with any girl like a strong bull"

which is just so much the wrong side of bizarre. Surly a stallion would be more appropriate.
Or maybe a swan. be like Zeus!

Liverpool

Brief visit to Liverpool to pick up and award for being lovely, yeah go us!
So here I sit looking over the river, pretty it be.
The brief walk around we had in our search of lovely beer and curry suggested that Liverpool is quite nice. People seemed nice and the buildings are cool. Listening to The Temporary Thing and Red Snapper. Suckerpunch is such a totally cool track.

Therapy

I've been trying too get back to a state of mind that once was so easily taken for granted. Where you can just close down and let the thoughts slip and your mind wander. The stuff we do to allow us to live becomes the purpose for living, and most times that's a betrayal.
So. Music. The stuff you can lose yourself in, that reminds you of the reasons and the genuine anchors and tethers. The ones we would fight and die for.








It's late, I'm emotional.

cat deeley, my new hate object

a few things really annoy me. Musicals and soap operas are top of the list. Along with show tunes and contemporary dance. But that Cat Deeley hair advert... Makes me despair, really. How thick would you have to be to record yourself tossing you hair about and posting it online? Maybe i'm not getting in the mood but these people should be rounded up and fired into space.

Tasty Napalm Chicken

Recently SB and myself went along to the big chinese super market at The Point in Glasgow. I have to confess there ere many thing that I had no idea what they were. Still, we managed to spend some money and picked up some lovely weird stuff. Among this was the sauce mix for "Spicy Chicken" as pictured below.
This was added to chicken, mange tout, baby corn, and a courgette.
OMG
for spicy read 90% chilli flakes and oil. It was very nice but was sooo spicy the back of my head was sweating. Motor function gave out by the third mouthful and I stopped trying to use chopsticks. This was after I tried to tame it with quarter of a litre of natural yoghurt.
Buy it, it's nice. but only use one tenth and approach with caution.

Touch of cat...

I'm not sure if it's the cat allergy or the sulphite allergy.
no cat + wine = breathing issues
cat + no wine = breathing issues
cat + wine = breathing issues
no cat + no wine = no breathing issues
have cat, maybe had last bottle of Superbock last night...

This made running for the train, all 50 metres of it, something of a long term recovery programme.
Trying to kick my compulsive bike bit shopping disorder. I'm finding it difficult to come up with any reasons not to buy the “upgrade” for my forks. Who wouldn't want a lockout facility?
Save save save....

Carron Valley MTB

A few weeks ago, in the pouring rain, a friend and I headed up to Carron Valley for a little night cycling. I liked this route rather a lot but it did highlight the requirement for a helemt light. Some corners are quite sharp and on the runway it's nice to be able to glance to where you are inevitably heading. Apparently there are owls lurking around and they have been known to swoop down or at least be flying across your path. Didn't have that issue, cause it was so wet they were all at home watching a remastered DVD of Hitchcock's "The Birds". Would suggest spare trousers just in case. As I imagine it might be a bit "startling".
Gates close around 7 in winter but there is space for a few cars to each side of the gate.

Pollok Park, Glasgow

Finally geting around to using the features on my Garmin GPS.
There are still have a few things I don't get. Below is the screen shot of Pollok Park Mountain Bike Circuit.
The first section, turn sharp right on going through the entrance, is rated green and is a reasonable warm up area. The transition point goes on to a bshort climb and the track has lots of nice slippy roots.
The transition to teh red route finds you crossing a park road and there are some rolling humps drop offs berms and logs etc. All handy for practice. There is a moderately steep climb after a log feature, which I always find way too slippery.
Getting back up to the blue/ed transition will take you downhill to a left sweeping curve. The main feature on the return are the steps that take you down to the final straight.
Pollok Park is a reasonably quick short woodlandtrack minutes from Glasgow City Centre. Good for perfecting some skills, but watch out for the occasional dog walker, some of whom think walking the dog on a formal mountain bike path with the whole family in tow is an entirely valid passtime.

fork

I recently read that forks require servicing on a level which sounds almost like coddling(?).
Armed with a downloaded service manual and referring to a slightly revised/reworded version from Singletracks website, I took them off and stripped them down. A weird almost globulous red gloop wept from the left leg as I removed bolts and seals. This caused slight concern as nothing I was putting back looked similar. If any of the following sounds wrong, leave a comment. Oil level on the right leg was measured from the base of the inner leg. I did this using a glass tube marked at the 105 mm level and just inserted and observed where the level sat. This needed about 85 mL of fork oil. Anyway, all reassembled and hopefully will work and not leak.





How much shit can you possibly need?

__________________________________________________________________________________________


The forks, all ready to eat the cat's dinner then get back on the bike. Left these over night to see if they leak oil or air.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

The Gloop

Introducing my new bike

Bike all built minus chain and adjusting.

Meet, The Recipiant:

New bike :o)

Finally managed to start the build of my “new” mountain bike.
I would probably have stuck with the GT Avalanche which started life as a 3.0 but has grown with gradual upgrades: fork, brakes, chainset and running gear. Sadly the frame has not expanded, and is a teeny tad small. So new frame, Cove Stiffee. White, apparently so last year...
That's ok, it's a 2009 frame :o)

Anyway, last bike I built I banged the headset cups in using a socket and a hammer. Was completely fine, but it lacked grace. Today was mainly spent making the tool below. This required a few hours cutting the aluminium and on the lathe. Took longer than the socket and hammer approach but was very satisfying and better than:

a) Paying for someone else to do it (just seems wrong!)

b) Paying £60 for a tool that will get used possibly a few times a decade and is easy enough to make.


Hoping it will live up to expectations.




On an unrelated note, occasionally I like to partake in a little star trek, voyager, who can be fixated by the appliance eye candy of Seven of Nine?
Anyway, appropriately enough there is someone with the surname “Smutko” involved. At least I know I am not engineering unintended associations with the content.

Busy busy

Went up to Skye for a week to relax and get some walking and cycling in.
Got slightly delayed heading up and missed the ferry at Malaig by about 30 minutes. So had to head up to Kyle of Loch Alsh for the bridge. By this point it's dark and raining. Heading to Glendale was a bit of a trek with lots of single track roads. Strangely, the sections that had been resurfaced were the worsed. perfectly smooth, no feedback from the surface, no lines on either side, am I still on teh road or have I come off and died and this is purgatory, and because of the rain totally black, space flight (geek :o).
We arrived alive and once inside launched ourselves at the nice bottle of red and then the bottle of very nice port. Surprisingly, we were functional the next day. The next week were spent dragging ourselves up hills on bikes and on feet, following a clifftop path whilst inside the cloud with only a few metres visibility. I admit I may have been a bit whiney at this point as being killed after a fall off the cliffs in sudden bad weather isn't only bad for my health but, considering my opinion of the idiots that go up hills in flipflops, terribly embarrassing. Obviously we lived. SB was slightly annoyed as it totally cleared after we had come down from the scarey bit and photos had been missed.
SB bought lots of wool. It smells nice but still couldn't find that perfect grey wool smell.
I bought a cast iron raven for the garden we don't have yet.
I got a bottle of Talisker 57 degrees north :o)

The day after getting back I did my first Pedal for Scotland. This is the ride from Glasgow to Edinburgh 51 miles (82 km) which Pat (Jesus Loves Amerika) and myself did in around 3 hours 45 minutes. Not a world record but hey.



There is a convenient graveyard just at the bottom out of shot.

update

been busy and neglectful to this. Figured I was being quite dull anyway.
still doing a bit of cycling and latest brain dead moment was when I bought a new bottle cage and it was all wrong. didn't fit any bottles I had. I was confused. So I went and bought another. At some point I had a revalation (of sorts). yes, I'd put it on my bike upside down. doh. hilarious. :o|
Nearly lost my teeth on the Carron freeride downhill.
Going to Infest
holiday in Skye

what's with the amount of Range Rover Sports that are on the road? Everyone of them driving around pretending to be gangsters, except the gangsters of course. who must be a bit miffed that their menace has been hi-jacked by anyone who can sign a credit agreement.
Of course, I'm probably just a bit envious as somewhere within me there is a desire for a long shiny estate car into which I can fit all sorts of stuff and not even a second thought about shovels, hammers, bin bags and a bow saw. Need to focus!!

Bike Week BUG Ride

There is a cool BUG ride on Wednesday 23rd at 12:30 leaving from George Square up to Kelvingrove Park.
map below:

weather

nice and warm. actually quite humid. Keeps looking like rain, but yet...
Hmmm
Reading "American Gods" by Neil Gaiman just now which is really quite enjoyable. nicely paced.
Finished "Mobius Dick" by Andrew Crumey which was very good. Very weirdly good. So weirdly good I bought "Sputnik Caledonia".

bike bike bike Avalanche 3.0 upgrade

I have become only moderately obsessed with my bike habit.
Having two very different bikes has been quite nice for the fast on the road and the going down stairs/single track urges. Last time SB and I were ot at Carron Valley, I was hammering it down the track to the car park and nearly lost the front wheel on some loose gravel. This was the day I'd made the executive decision that we wouldn't be doing anything dangerous, hence cycling hat was not required. Didn't come off, which was nice.
On my GT avalanche 3.0 disk, which was bought as my first real bike in years, I have just replaced the front forks (Suntour XCM V2). These have had some panning in the popular press (internet forums) and I have to say they served me well for over a year and still work fine. I had them set as soft as possible and they seemed to do the job. However, they are not light at 2.64 kg. Off they came and on went my shiney Mantou R7 2009 which I picked up for about half price. With their air sprung loveliness they come in at a hair under 1.56kg which makes the various jump options on the way to work rather joyful. The chain drive has been replaced with a shimano Deore Hollowtech arrangement. This has a slightly bigger final chain ring (more speed!) and whilst not the lightest, the change in bottom bracket has shaved a total of 300g off there. I have also taken the rack off. Next on the list is the seat tube and saddle. I also fancy a Shimano Saint rear derailleur which looks like the business. maybe upgrade to 9 speed as well....

Meanwhile the Specialized Tricross Sport is a lovely beastie too. Just had him service and he feels like new again.

I'm not obsessive, honest!!!

lost connection

i tried to post the other day whilst on the train. well paced and witty it was. observational too. connection fell over and my spontaneous verse was lost to the ether. dammit.
Bike stuff. turns out the scabby old bike is a Carlton and might have some pedigree. I guess I have to rebuild it now.
need new forks for my mountain bike as the originals are even more shockingly bad than I previously knew.
The Specialized Tricross is still without a name. but is very nice.
better post, batter about to die 4.6%

Holiday - with rain, as per usual.

Last year, we went up the west cost of Scotland, it rained. A few months later, in Portugal, it also rained. This weekend we are in Buttermere in the Lake District of England and beautiful as it is, it is raining. We dragged our sorry frames out of bed this morning to the sound of the usual holiday rain. things looked promising for a while. Inside the cloud seemed fine. calm, bit damp, slight air of a rural Silent Hill about it.
It's all good though. It was fun and when it stopped being fun we came back down for some beer. Still seems like a holiday to me.
:o)