Ouch, ouch, son of a .....

Well I can now add Hail Stones to the weather conditions I ridden the bike in, and I can say that they hurt - even at 40mph through textile armoured jacket.

These Hail Stones were about the size of peas but thankfully they were melting as they hit the road so I didn't have to ride on ball bearings.

I think snow and icy roads are now the only weather conditions left for me to experience.

Catgories: Personal_ Biking_

Out of Go-Go Juice

I went to visit my dad this weekend which was nice, we took the dog for a walk up on South Downs which l think might have been a first for Meg (the dog) and it was part of the downs l've never been to before.

I came home Monday night via the M11 and came across a bloke pushing his R1 down the hard shoulder, I pull over and stop about 150 yards ahead of him and wait for him to catch up, when he finally does he says "hello" and carries on pushing.

I ride up to him and ask if he's okay, find out he needs petrol so ask if he wants a lift. I don't think he thought had occurred to him which I guess why he didn't stop.

In end I gave him a lift to the nearest service station where he had a friend waiting.

Hope he got back to the bike OK.

Categories: Personal_ Biking_

Snakes in theatres

In the story from BBC below, two Diamondback Rattle Snakes were released into a Cinema showing Snakes on a Plane.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/5277238.stm

Categories: Personal_

Snakes on a Plane

I went to see Snakes on a Plane last night and it was much better than I expected.

I guess I was expecting a very Bad B-Movie where it was funny because it was so bad, I guess the producers knew it was a B-Movie to because it was played for laughs. All in all, it was a great film which I really enjoyed.

There were snakes biting people left right and center, big snakes, little snakes, brown dull snakes, bright colourful snakes. People being bitten in nasty places, people being bitten funny places.

It did prove however that I an too much of a nature geek because I spent the whole film identifying the snake species, I think recognised about 50% of the snakes but even the ones I didn't know directly, I could identify the basic family and roughly what part of the world you would find them in.

Great film which I recommend unless you are already afraid of snakes because this film tries to play on every fear people might have about snakes.

Categories: Personal_

Keep on riding

I have just worked out that in the 4 months I have owed the motorbike, I have :

* travelled 8000 miles
* used 626 litres of unleaded
* averaged 58.5 mpg

Just for the record, I really am sad enough to keep stats for all of this stuff.

Categories: Personal_ Biking_

Cyclist charged with cycling on the road

I have an online friend who was stopped by the police at the beginning of the year because the police said he was holding up traffic while doing 3OmphThey said he should to the left of the white line marking the edge of the road, something which is illegal for any vehicle except in an emergency.

He made a note of the officers number and then contacted the police station with a description of what had happened and asking that it ode made dear that cyclist should be on road.

In hindsight that might have been a mistake, The police have charged Dan with obstructing the traffic end he had his Court hearing this week.

It didn't go well and Dan lost his case and was charged £300.

The Judge ruled that Dan should have been using the cycle path on the otherside of the road which would have required Dan to get off and cross 3 lanes of traffic to travel less than 0.6 miles to the next roundabout.

John Franklin appeared as an expert witness for the defence and said Dan was doing exactly the right thing for the conditions. For those that don't know who John Franklin is, he writes the governments own guide to cycling on the road called Cyclecraft.

This ruling does not create a legal precedent
since the court is not high enough but in theory an appeal could.

However what this Judge has effectively said is cyclist should not be on the road if there is ony sort of cycle path provision.

I have donated some money to the Cyclist Defense Fund end I urge you to do the same.

Just for the record, this judge (Bruce Morgan) has made some other decisions which have been a bit contraversal and then got over turned. He is the Judge that aqquitted an Police Man for driving an unmarked vechical at 159mph on a motorway and over 60 mph in a 30 zone http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/shropshire/4559173.stm, This decision was overtuned on the 1 Feb 2006 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/shropshire/4669594.stm.

Categories: Cycling_

Walking in Rutland

I went walking with Peteborough Young Walkers today. We started from Wing in Rutland, walked out to Rutland Water and back to Wing where we had tea and cakes at the village hall.

I've never been to the Rutland area before and l found it very nice, lots of hills and small villages.

My only criticism of the walk was that it was a bit to leisurely but I think that was because the cakes didn't get served until 3 pm.

Categories: Personal_ Walking_

Airport Run

I took Jenni to the airport yesterday morning, it was a 4 am start so I was pretty knackered, especially since I was up late the night before.

About 10 minutes into the drive Jenni tells me she miscalculated the time she had to be at the at the airport and the we are now running 30 minutes late.

I had looked up the route on google Maps and remembered the route but because I'm really busy at work at the moment I didn't check it was a sensible route, unfortunately it wasn't and it took us a while to get to ere airport Luckily it was 4 arr so the traffic was light end we were able to pass what little traffic there was with ease.

I eventually got dropped off at the terninal at 6:15 ready for her 7:30 flight. I then went to find a parking spot because Jen didn't wart me to leave until she was through security.

Afte she had gone I drive home via work to pick up my bikes Jacket which I had left at work end then returned the carto the rental place.

Categories: Personal_

Bike Service

I picked up my bike from the garage after returning the rental car, £190 for a 4000 mile service. Most of that was Labour.

I think far going to have to learn how to do the short service myself because with the number of miles I'm a doing each year the bike will need another service in 3 months time.

Categories: Personal_ Biking_

Rental Mix Up

I popped into Tim Brintons Peugeot today to pick up the rental car ordered couple of weeks ago but they said they had no record of my order.

So had to fill out aload forms and eventually got a 307 Sport. Which to be honest doesn't feel that sporty, although that might be me getting used to the peformcnce of motorbikes and making an unfair comparison.

Anyway, I got work a phone call from the car rental firm wondeing when I was going to pick the car up!

It seems that I booked the car from the Cambridge branch which would explain why the St Neots branch didn't have a booking for me.

Categories: Personal_

Passport Payment

I have been recieving demands for payment for my new passport a which got delievered a few weeks ago. I gave them a ring this morning and after explaining the situation to 4 different people I finally got through to the person who's actually been sending out the demand letters and got her to confirm the number of the credit card that I had tried to pay with when I filled my application.

Looks like I got 2 characters the wrong way round.

Anyway, thats all sorted out and I now legal own my own passport and can travel the world if I so desire, of course it will probably just live out its life in a draw never getting stamped like the old one did.

Categories: Personal_

My PDA arrived

Well my PDA arrived this Friday and I have been playing with it since I got home.

I have got email and MSN Messenger working with the FON wireless router and if all goes well, then this post should have been sent from my PDA.

Categories: Personal_ Tech_

FONBasic 0.6.5

I know I said in my previous post about FON Social WiFi that I wasn't going to upgrade again until I saw a v1.0 but what can I say, I'm a geek and I just had to revisit the firmware on the router again.

So I have now installed FONBasic 0.6.5 and that seems to be stable, although I did see my Instant Messenger client disconnect MSN users with a low level communications error once so it might be that there are issues with disconnection of open ports which aren't active.

I might just go crazy and upgrade to FONBasic 0.6.6 when I have some spare time to see if the problems I had previously were due to a bad flash or something like that. I can always downgrade again.

Categories: Personal_ Tech_

Technorati Tags: FON, Wireless, Router, 0.6.5

eBay Bid Success

I have finally won a bid on eBay for a WiFi Enabled PDA. I paid £155 which seems to be the going rate for secondhand WiFi enabled PDAs regardless of model.

The PDA is a Dell Axim x51.

Hopefully this will turn up within the next few days and then I can start playing with it.

Categories: Personal_ Tech_

Great Western Trains use Terrorism as excuse to remove cycles.

According to thisisexeter.co.uk, staff at the St Davids station in Exeter have been removing bicycles because they represent a bomb threat.

Their strategy to deal with all these bombs? To cut through the locks with bolt croppers and move them inside the station right next to customer services. Also, if they are really concerned about terrorist bombs, what are they doing about all those cars which drop people off at the station everyday.

Why can't train companies just be honest, they hate cyclists and only tolerate them because they are required to by government.

Categories: Personal_ Cycling_

Snobby Women in a Merc

I went to Tesco's last night and parked in the center of a parking bay. As I was coming out a women in a Mercedes SL320 trying to reverse into the parking spot next to me, and a right mess of the job she was making of it too.

The SL320 is a small car, it can't be any bigger than a polo so how can you fail to park it between 2 lines designed to take trucks?

She had 2 go's at parking that I could see and came very close to my bike on the first attempt, she eventually ended up about a foot inside my parking bay and couldn't open the door fully because she was too close to my bike.

We cross paths as I walk back to the bike and she walks into the shop and she says "becareful of my car, I don't what you to drop you bike on it". grrrrr

Maybe she was being sarcastic knowing that I had seen her abissmal attempt at parking but I didn't detect any hint of humour in her voice. I think she was actually worried that I was going to stratch her car when I pull out in a straight line out of my parking bay.

Friends and Family have heard me say it many times and I'm going to say it again here. If you can't drive a car, then don't buy one. If you don't have the skill to manavour a car at 5 mph then you should not be on the road doing 70 mph.

Categories: Personal_ Biking_

Walking in the Peak District

Yesterday I went walking in the Peak District with the Ramblers, I had a great ride up there there was hardly any traffic which meant I was just able to cruise along at the speed limit rather than match what ever speed the traffic happens to be doing which I prefer.

In fact the only traffic I saw was about 100 bikers from a club called the Blue Knights who I tagged along with for about a 1 mile but they were only doing about 65 so in the end I pasted them, they were stretched out for about 1.5 miles, there were bikers from Scotland, England, France and Germany. I later found out that all the Blue Knights currently serving or retired police - hence the Blue I guess.

I arrived far to early so I drove around for a bit then watched went to find the car park and watched some movies on my iPod while I waited for the others to turn up.

I love the landscape of the Peak District, I think it's my favourite National Park in terms of how it looks although I think I prefer Dartmoor for the actually walking it offers.

When the rest of the Ramblers had turned up, we set off on what was suppose to be a 7 mile walk but ended up being 10 miles - although we didn't actually get lost every often and only had to backtrack once so I'm not sure where those extra 3 miles came from. It was very hot, especially on some of the climbs and I think the heat slowed us all down a lot, I think we averaged 2 mph following what was large a flat track.

The ride home was quite as good, lots of traffic and stiffling under by jacket but still enjoyable.

Categories: Personal_ Biking_ Walking_

Hot and Humid Cycle Ride

Today I cycled into Cambridge with Matt, we were both looking for Biking Clothes, me because most of my clothes are really designed for Spring and Autumn use and Matt because he's doing he's CBT in a few weeks time.

The weather was hot with periods of rain which really raised the humidity because the moment the rain hit the roads it's started evaporating off again which made for an uncomfortable ride home.

I also managed to get a puncture just outside Cambridge, isn't it typical that the one trip where I didn't have my tool kit with me was the one I get a puncture on, in last 8 months or so I seem to keep getting punctures because my existing tyres were so worn down.

I keep meaning to get them replaced but kept forgetting to order them on Wiggle, so we walked the last 2 miles or so to Ben Haywards and I brought a set of Marathon Plus with the Kevlar band which should stop most punctures, and a set of Slime filled Inner Tubes so that even if I do get a puncture the inner tube should be self sealing.

I managed to buy myself a set of summer biking gloves with some Carbon Fiber Knuckle Protectors which should be a lot cooler.

Despite the temperature and the rain, it was great ride.

Category: Personal_ Cycling_

Pillion Insurance

I have just sorted out some Pillion Insurance for my bike. Now I'm sure that when I first took out my Insurance a full 4 months ago the Pillion Insurance was something like £80 extra but speaking to the nice lady at Bennetts today, they is no extra premium to pay, just a £20 admin fee.

Where did the extra risk of having a passenger on board go? Have those 4 months of riding so reduced my risk of an accident that they think the extra costs involved is too negliable to count? Not that I'm complaining of course, I'm just really surprised, thats all.

Now, I just need to find someone stupid enough to go on the back of a bike with me.

Categories: Personal_ Biking_

Car Rental and Bike Service

My sister will be making a brief appearance in St Neots on the 4th Aug as she heads through to Standstead Airpot and the Taxi was going to cost her a fortune so I've booked a car rental for the friday she is coming down and booked my bike in for it's 4000 miles service.

Nothing like killing 3 birds with one stone.

Hell, I might go to the pub with some friends and kill 4 birds with one stone.

Categories: Personal_