Ealing -> Wendover -> Ealing

Weather was nice for a change so there was a big bunch rolling out. We had some ‘larger’ fellows with us and the bunch was dawdling. Someone wanted to see the end of a 50mi TT and the bunch was directed onto some main road and lots of raised eyebrows and shrugging shoulders resulted. “What are we doing?” “I dunno”.

We rolled on, Steve’s front wheel siezing up and fixing itself and then cheered a few Willesden riders coming in to the TT finish line, including Ed.

Eventually we got moving properly, but still on this main road, pissing off a few drivers in the process. I don’t get it, it’s Sunday.. what’s the rush? Shouldn’t you be slower than us anyway. Impatient c0cks.

New guy manages to run one of the old guys off the road when he punctures on a steep descent. Not sure why there was turning required. This was explained to him..

Cafe at Wendover is expensive and as a result I had only a tiny coffee (My arse is large, this was not a LARGE coffee) and a cake. This didn’t help later..

We rolled out and CSC guy starts attacking the bunch. eh? Fsck it.. I’m keen now and don’t wait on climbs any more so I chase him down. Off he goes again so I chase and pass and end up half a kay up the road. Bunch catches up and.. off he goes again.. so do I.. now we are joined by Steve and the older guy who was run into the dirt and Suzz. We are not rolling turns, through and off and yet there’s still break aways! It’s mental.. the bunch is waay behind now and we are ripping along around 40kph and still guys will break up hills, etc.

I’m loving it.. about time we got some pace. Club runs are so not the training rides we had back in Melbourne! We made it back to Denham (rather quickly!) and split. 5k to go I was bonking something chronic! Going hot and cold, dizzy, blasting through gaps 🙂 Make it home alive and scoff some sugar.. all better. Sweet! Really need to try the Quest bunch rides..

LFGSS "Bridges" Ride

The Bridges III – Saturday 21st July

The Bridges – Route

Although there was a list of 10 or so riders it was only DavidK and myself that rode all the bridges from Tower Bridge out west to Kew Bridge. It was a good laugh zipping through the suburbs at 9-11pm Saturday night. We’d made a couple of bridges before it pissed down with rain but we’d dried off by the end so it wasn’t too bad.

Visited a few places I’d heard of but never been to in the SW. We stopped once for drinks and did the lot in around 1.25hrs, I think? The bigger bunch took around 3hrs. I think we missed Hammersmith Bridge but we did Kew Bridge twice to make up for it. Left DK at his place and rode home. A much healthier and less stressful night than the alternative 🙂

T-Bone

I left early to work from home the other day. Saw Buffalo ‘where’s my razor’ Bill on Grays Inn Rd. Lalala happy riding..

Riding out of Shepherds Bush Green on the Soma, the day after I’d swapped the ITM full-carbon forks for aluminium-steerer Quest carbon forks.. when..

Some stupid fscking idiot rides his frickin’ bike through a gap in the moving traffic, alongside which I’m riding. Bang! Flashes of over-the-bars collarbone breakage. Smash into the sh1thead’s back wheel. Luckily I was already on the hoods and being careful due to driver’s tendencies to tighten up and squash cyclists into the gutter on that corner. Still, no real braking achieved before impact.

I flip out. This idiot complains about my language! (He must be English.) Now he wants to start something! He quickly gives up returning the grief when I must look and sound just as keen to kick it off.. I’m checking over my bike and realise it’s okay. He says something about my bike being fine and his being fscked. I look at his bike – his back wheel is totally fscked. It looks like a taco. I’m almost happy at this point so I don’t end up kicking his face off. No need to call the police.

Anyway, I’m over it now and actually help him – taking pleasure disconnecting his rear brake and kicking sh1t out of his wheel to bend it back into a rough line. I leave, happy, given the circumstances, until I get home and at the door notice my Selcof headset has a split down the side.. FSCK!

I’m going to ride it until it fails totally (which hopefully wont be during the 200k Dunwich Dynamo).

Speaking of failures, I was planning on swapping the Soma’s stem for the 100mm Bontrager XXXLite off the Ribble, but noticed hairline cracks around the bolt holes! Handlebars falling off at at 60kph.. err.. no thanks!

Ealing -> Stokenchurch -> Ealing

Nice ride today. Just beat the thunderstorm home. 120k to Stokenchurch via the Chilterns (some hills). The scenery was awesome – it’s so green out (weeks of rain has advantages) and we took roads that were placed on the side of hills and open to look over the small valleys.

The club runs aren’t competitive at all (they don’t even have a regular sprint point the cretins!) but the last couple have seen Steve and myself have little digs up some of the hills. Good fun but I really think I should give the faster Quest bunches a try. They might burn me a leave me in the middle of nowhere but I’m looking for a faster ride. It’d be a pity to leave behind the friendly club run crew though. I’ve been told the fast bunch does about 50mi on Sat and a 60-70mi ride on Sunday. I could do the Sat fast bunch and Sunday club run.. and poor Mal becomes the true “cycling widow” as me Mum put it. 🙂

The Tour hits London town!

Mal’s Spyshot: Me hard at work marshalling the prologue..

The day started off boring as we arrived at 8am and then did nothing for a couple of hours. We were also off the race route which sucked but then all the team buses rocked up in our area and the riders started warming up.

It quickly turned to carnage. We were just volunteers and were not supposed to be crowd control or blocking traffic, etc. but a bunch of us ended up standing in the middle of the road: checking a multitude of passes and wrist bands to allow people into the “pits” (none of which we knew the meaning of – anyone with any pass got in), stopping dopey pedestrians from being run over by team cars and riders.

Meanwhile a bunch of coppers just stood around and watched us! One of them even had the nerve to say “do you know you just let a known felon through?”

Well actually if they are a known felon shouldn’t YOU fecking do something about them?!?! Secondly, they came from the OTHER end of this area, ie. from behind me, aka not my problem coppah!

Like I said, it was carnage. Did this for hours and then had to eat before I decked the next member of public trying to sneak in. I bailed and spent the last hour of the race watching the race! I didn’t feel guilty because I’d already heard that most of the marshalls were just standing on the route taking photos! I didn’t have a camera because they said we weren’t to take photos but I got Mal’s and snapped some during the last hour. See below. It was all good fun and wearing the jersey got us pretty much anywhere. We had a look into all the team areas, we got a clear space on the race route. Nice!

Hippy: Tour de France Prologue

Mal & Hippy’s pics

mmuk’s photos – london prologue

weightweenies.starbike.com – CSC

addiscombe.org

Jacobs Engineering Group management are knobs

“A firm which advises councils on green transport has come under fire for banning its staff from cycling to work. Jacobs Engineering Group has sent an email to employees advising them to drive or use public transport. The firm, which has advised Transport for London (TfL) on sustainable transport, said it wanted to protect staff from road accidents.”

“London Assembly member Jenny Jones, who advises the mayor on green transport, said TfL should consider cancelling its contracts with Jacobs. She said: “It is hypocritical to offer advice on promoting cycling, but at the same time ban your staff from using bikes. “If Jacobs does not understand how important cycling is to TfL, we need to ask whether they are the right sort of company to work with.”

bbc.co.uk – green experts ban cycling to work