Frame Respray Completed

31 April 2007 16:11

APi have returned the frame and forks resprayed, unfortunately the forks I had brought on eBay didn't fit (the steerer tube was too long) so the guy has found a second hand fork and a second hand headset and fitted those and resprayed the forks I had already brought the same colour.

The colour is great, a sort of yellowly orange and the bike is going to look great with black components all over it.

I'll get some pictures uploaded and find away to display them in the blog, I can display a single picture without too much difficulty but displaying lots of photos in a gallery seems to be tricker without me manually editting HTML which I would prefer not to have to do if I can help it.

White Scar Cave

30 March 2007 13:33

Me and mum have just got back from white Scar Cave which is the longest publicly accessible cave in the UK.

It was brilliant. Enough development had been done to make access easy but it had left enough of the natural features to be really interesting.

My only criticism was that it was a tour rather than allowing us to explore the cave at our own pace so there was a lot of pointing at a single feature in each cavern aid moving on to the next area completely ignoring other really interesting looking features such as chimneys and fossils - perhaps because there was a better example further into the cave.

Still it was great fun and well worth the £7.50 entry fee.

Settle Walk

27 March 2007 22:42

This morning mum and me went for a walk directly from the cottage and up into the hills where we are staying.

6 miles of uppy downy footpaths, limestone caves and a baking sun which would not have felt out of place in June.

Tomorrow mum and me eve going our seperate ways. She is going Horse Riding on the Moor and I am going to attempt to do the 3 Peak's walk which is a 25 Mile walk linking the three highest peaks in the Yorkshire Moors.

The 3 Peaks

28 March 2007 20:19

Today I have completed the 3 Peaks walk which is a 25 mile walk which visits the 3 highest peaks in the area. Per-y-Ghent, Whermside and Ingleborough.

Mum dropped me off at the Pen-y-ghent Cafe at 06:50. The cafe operates a Safety Service where you can register your detail's and someone at the Cafe will wait until you get back (upto 11pm) or ring the Rescue Service if you don't show up which is a brilliant idea for lone walkers like me.

By the time I had filled in the form's for the Cafe I finally set off at around 7am.

Pen-y-ghent was the first hill and I climbed it quickly getting to the summit in about 1.5 hours.

Unfortunately I somehow managed to lose the path on the way down, I was walking through a boggy area when the path just disappeared.

I was also stalked by a Grouse in this area although at this point I was still on the path, I guess I was getting close to it's nest and it was trying to get me to go away.

Once at the bottom of the hill there was a long walk to the base of Whernside. Again the ascent was again surprisingly easy and I was feeling good while I was eating lunch.

The descert started off well with lot's of ponds lining the path which were filled with frogs, but once past the ponds the path became very tough. It was steep and very rocky which made the path slow and hard work on the knees but once at the bottom ond the path leveled out a bit I felt much better so decided to carry on and do the last hill, Ingleborough.

Ingleborough was the hardest climb, not just because it was it was the last hill but because the path was really steep end a long climb, I was scrambling up on all four's at one point.

The top was very misty and I couldn't see anything in any direction so I came down after only a short stay at the top.

The descent took about 1.5 hours at which point I met up with mum at Horton station where she offered me a lift to the ail point but I refused because that would be cheating.

In the end, the 25 mile walk took me 11 hours 10 minutes which I doit think was too bad.

I really enjoyed the walk but I am now starting to get stiff and I think I'm going to sleep really, really, really well tonight.

I am a muppet

27 March 2007 08:15

I am a muppet.

I have been posting by email to my blog everyday of my holiday so far but I have just realised that I have just been posting to my private blog, not my public one so no-one can read about what I'm doing.

I will post the old messages to my public posts now but I can't do anything about the order that the posts will appear in or the blog until I get back home.

Malham Walk

25 March 2007 18:33

Today's walk was 7.5 miles from Malham, up to Malham Cove and the Malham Tarn before returning to the car via a detour into the moors.

We were very lucky with the weather, dispite the cold wind when up higher up in the hills the sun was very warm and you only had to be in a sheltered spot for a while before getting hot.

There were some great views, especialy from the top of Malham Cove and 1 will post some picture's when I get back from the holiday.

yorkshire Holiday

24 March 2007 19:27

First day of my holiday in Yorkshire with my mum.

We have got a 3 bedroom Self Catering cottage in Settle which is beautiful, it looks like a traditional Yorkshire Cottage from the outside but inside been modernised inside.

Out of all the self catering cottages I've stayed in this is the one I can see myself living in. The location isn't perfect, it's surrounded on every side by other houses and I've yet to see a cottage which can match The Coachman's Cottage on Dartmoor for location or views.

Skipton and Brimham

27 March 2007 07:24

Yesterday we went to Skipton to do some shopping, I've been looking for a camping matress but I have not been able to find any locally although i know of where I can find one in Harrogate.

After shopping we went to Brimham Rocks and explored the area.

I have brought my camping stove with me but it ran out of fuel half way through boiling some water so we had some luke warm tea - hmm, tasty

Animal Farm

19 March 2007 22:06

I've just been watching Animal Farm on Channel 4 which was exploring genetic engineering in the food industry and was hosted by 1 pro genetics' presenter and 1 pro organic presenter.

During the program the organic guy made a statement which really made me doubt that the guy brew what he was talking about.

He seemed to be arguing that between cloning and transgenics (where you take one animal and put them in other) it was during that was the most worrying science.

???

Surely cloning is just copying a known state. How good the outcome is determined by the orginal animal plus any error's that might be introduced by the cloning process.

Transgenic's however involves deliberately introducing gene's which you could never breed together, and no matter how well you think you understand the process there will always be that element of risk.

The series continues next week dealing with Pharming (where urinals and plant's are altered to produce medicines)

Missed the walk

18 March 2007 10:01

I overslept this morning and got up too late to be able to get to the Oundle walk in time.

Instead l tried to get the shed alarm working but without success, the only thing left for me to try is to disconnect one of the sensor's end see if it work's then.

PYW Pub Meet

15 March 2007 07:17

Last night was the Peterborough Young Walkers pub meet at the Five Horseshoes in Barholm.

I arrived at the pub at 19:50 for the 20:00 meetup but found that no one else was there yet so I got charge out of my biking gear slowly while I waited.

At about 10 past Roger arrived so we went in to start drinking. We sat there together wait for anyone else to turn up.

In the end it was 20:40 before anyone else turned up and Jo and Barbara finally arrived at about 20:45 after getting lost on the way to the pub.

Gordon was the last to arrive at about 21:00.

It was a nice pub although any more people would have beer a problem given the pub was divided into 4 or 5 small room's.

There was much drinking and talking about who has fallen over on walks, the varying effect's different types of alcohol have on next morning's headache and many bad jokes where the punchline was maragled. Although I can hardly complain given how bad I am at telling jokes.

APi Phoned

14 March 2007 10:06

I've just spoken to Andy Palmer at APi which is the company that I'm going to use for the bike respray.

I've had a quick talk to him on the phone about what I want end I've decided to go for the apricot colour instead of black.

Andy is going to pickup the frame and fork's next Tuesday after which we will discuss the option's in more detail.

I need to give him the combination to the shed lock and give him detail's of the chainset if I want him to fit the bottom bracket.

RE: Pub Quiz

11 March 2007 23:50

Just got back from the Pub Quiz in Cambourne with Matt, Chris, Nicola and Matt's brother- Chris.

Once again we came third and and it is Starting to get annoying always being so close but never being first.

Still this week it wasn't that close. We scored 23 out of 30, second place scored 24 but the winners scored 29 - that is some impressive mobile googling.

Shed alarmed

10 March 2007 18:01

Today I have been trying to install an alarm in to the shed but it hasn't gone well, the alarm is constantly sounding.

I think it is because of the layout of the door's has forced me to mount the sensors and magnets at a right-angle to each other.

I'm going to have mount a strip of wood along the top of both doors make the mounting position align without having sensor and magnet at right-angles.

Meal at the Yim Wah

08 March 2007 07:02

Last night I went to the Yim Wah with Matt, Martina, Ginny & Richard.

Since we weren't due to eat until 20:30 I had some time to kill after work so I stopped off at Shepreth Wildlife Park to Pick up a couple of leaflet's and find out the entry price as an idea for the Rambler's.

After the wildlife park I headed into Cambridge to find some security screws for the shed but neither B&Q or Homebase sell them so I'm going to have to order them online.

I still had a load of time to kill so after filling up with petrol I went for a ride making a huge circle around the Chinese.

The food was nice but I think 20:30 was too late and by the time we actually started eating I wasn't hungry anymore.

The Stupidity of Thieves

05 March 2007 23:08

This evening I hung the shed door back on its hinges.

While I was doing this I noticed that as well as all the screw's which attached the hinge to the shed, two screw's were missing from where the hinge attach's to the door.

At first I thought he had started unscrewing the door side hinges before realising that would involve undoing 12 screws instead of just 9 from the shed attachment.

When I tried to put a few screws into the holes I notice that the shaft of the screw's were still in the door cut off cleanly, it look's like they tried to hacksaw through the 12 screw's behind the metal plate of the hinge.

That's what get's on my nerves so much about the theft, the bastards that took my bikes are probably so stupid that they don't even know what they have got.

Project Europa

Project Europa - Low Maintenance All-Weather Bike Building Excerise

This page will be used to as a home page to all my posts related to the bike build. Europa is what the bike will be called once the build is completed.

Last Tuesday (27 Jan 2007) I had my two working bikes stolen from my garden shed, they took my Dawes touring bike (Callisto) and my Fuji mountain bike (Ganymede). The gits did leave 2 frames behind, an aluminum Trek 7000 frame and an unbranded steel frame with a few components on (forks/headset/handlebars/wheels).

I have decide to build the Trek frame into a bike because although the steel frame could be built up quicker and for less money, the components it has are all quite ugly and to make it something I would feel proud off would require stripping the components it already has off anyway.

Note: You can always get to this page via the Project Europa permanent link found at the top of the side bar (over there -> )

Date	Description	Links	Cost
05 Feb 2007	Trek 7000 Aluminum Frame		£0.00
05 Feb 2007	Generic Rigid MTB Forks	Forks Brought	£8.89
14 Feb 2007	APi Discussion	Respray Discussed	£0.00
31 March 2007	Frame Respray	Frame Respray	£150.00
Running Total			£158.89

Bike fork's arrived

05 March 2007 10:03

The rigid MTB fork's I ordered on eBay have arrived they look reasonably good and should look ever better once they get painted.

These fork's have cost £8.98 including delivery.

Project Total: £8.98

Camping in Littleport

04 March 2007 07:39

Last night I went camping at Riverside Camping & Caravanning, Littleport.

This camp was mainly to check my equipment and to check that I have everything I need to go further a field.

What I have got all worked well but I really do need to get myself a matress of some sort because the ground was very cold last night.

Actually the air was very cold as well, there was ice on all the car windows this morning.

The campsite dog came over and said hello after I got the tent setup by sticking his head in the door and giving everything a good snif so if got really hungry I wasnt going to have any trouble catching the local wildlife.

The camping stove worked, Saturday night I had one of those meal in a bag things (Beef Stew and Dumplings). In the morning I had scrambled egg.

Everything fits on to bike for travelling but I don't have enough room to store the camping equipment and all my biking clothes on the bike while I'm off walking. Maybe a helmet loch would solve that problem since the helmet takes up 1 side box by itself.

So I just need to get something to lie on and I'll be all set for going further-a-field next fine.

Milton Park Walk

04 March 2007 15:16

After packing the tent up from the camping last night I went straight to Peterborough for today's walk. Actually straight is misleading because the road from Littleport to Wisbech was flooded halfway along so I had to double back to Littleport and pick up the A10 and the A47 to reach Peterborough - Note to self: investigate inflatable side pontoon's for the bike.

I eventually got to the meeting point with to minutes to spare so thank god that road was shut or l would have arrived about 1.5 hours early.

The walk was 5 miles around a park near to Peterborough so it wasn't exactly challenging, even the constant rain and section's of path which were flooded didn't make it challenging.

I seemed to spend the entire walk catching up with Barbara because we haven't seen each other for a while. Sorry to eveyone on the walk I didn't talk to.

At the end of the walk only a few of us went to the pub, I always go to the pub at the end of the walks which may make me one of the most sociable people - now that's a worrying thought.

Hello, is this Mic on ?

02 March 2007 07:13

You may have noticed that this blog has been quiet for the last couple of weeks, that is because Google have been having trouble accepting posts from emails which meant that the only way to update the blog was via the website which I don't find very convenient.

So what's been happening during the "blackout"

Work is getting on my nerves for reasons that I won't go into on a public blog but the long and short of it is that l don't feel particularly appreciated for the extra effort l have put in in the past, I'm currently working strict office hours and looking for a new job.

l would like to get into technical authoring but l'm finding it hard to get my foot in the door, as a way of giving myself some authoring experience l have volunteered to be the technical author on an open source project.

I have created a first draft of the installation guide but the project owner is not responding to my entails so I can't send him the work or get a prioritised list of feature's he want's documented or essential technical information like version numbers etc.

I have also been robbed, some gits took the shed door off it's hinges and stole my mountain bike and touring bike. They aren't covered by insurance.

The police examined the shed yesterday while I was at work but I haven't heard anything from then since.

The git's did leave the 2 frames so I have decided to build 1 up into a bike.

I won an eBay auction yesterday for a set of ridged mountain bike fork's for £8.89 aid I will now be looking to get the frame end fork's resprayed.

I have decided to document the bike build so I am going to get a cheap digital camera end take lot's of pictures, I have sent off for some argos voucher's from one of my loyality card's to help pay for it.

That just about cover's everything i think.

Categories: Personal_