Now is the time when the stubborn carry on. The rational have reasoned their way elsewhere. Randonneur logic is not the common logic of the masses, it is a rarer application of obsession applied to goals that few understand.
– Kent Peterson [via his blog]
(Photo by Captain Chickenpants)
Standing in the garden this afternoon, talking to my daughter who was prodding things with sticks, I heard a strange noise. Looking up, I saw two birds flying really fast and close together over the road next to our house. They collided just above our garden fence, and came to ground just by our garage; about 20 feet from me. Standing there on top of the now dead bird was a kestrel. It looked at me for a second or two, then flew off, with the dead bird in its claws.
Sofa Search 2006
- What do you love about your current sofa?
- Alternatively, what do you hate about it?
- What is it about sofas that interests or intrigues you?Tell us all about the sofa (or sofas) in your corner of the country,
and you could WIN one of three top-of-the-line sofa packages.
[via Bloggerheads]
In the last competition that I entered that Manic plugged on his site, I won a Swiss Army Card, whiich was fantastic, but I lost it when I lost my wallet. We could do with a new sofa…
Had a great ride round Hamsterley with some people from the Hamsterely Trailblazers today. I’ve no idea how far we rode, or how long it took. It was great being able to ride some of the non-waymarked trails in the forest, rather than having to stick to the black route like I do when riding there alone. It may become a monthly occurence.
Riding in snow is ace!
Excellent post on the problems with cars: Clever Chimp: More Red Pills. Every day I get a little bit closer to convincing Sarah that we don’t need a car.
Add bread to the list of stuff not to buy at the supermarket:
His name is Doh Boy and his mission is to take the fat back out of bread. Doh Boy reckons ‘we don’t kneed it’. The only reason it is there is to help make bread quicker to make and make it last longer on the shelf. Doh Boy thinks this technique (called Chorleywood) has made fatter profits for those who make and sell it. But it has also made us all a little fatter as a result.
Stealth fat is a growing problem. These are the fats that we don’t know are there. We expect there to be fat in a chocolate bar. But we don’t expect 3 slices of some breads to have as much fat as that chocolate bar.
Power cut at work at 10 this morning, so we all went home. Class.
I just came across a website that looked really washed out, so I adjusted the angle of the leptop screen to try to improve it. I tilted it back much further than I usually have it and, wow!, the web has loads more colours than before.
Oops.
Caution: long, rambling post ahead! (This post should have more links, but it’s late. I might put them in later. There’s always Google (if you need a link to find that there’s no hope).)
I’ve been reading a lot of blogs by people who ride long distances on their bikes (Matt Chester and Kent Peterson). The Great Divide Race last year sounded superb (Canada to Mexico along the line of the Rocky Mountains), and races like Trans-Iowa and Ride Across INdiana. There was a longish Scandinavian race for fixies too, Le Tour Retard(?). And I’ve read a bit recently about the early days of the Tour de France that makes the current race sound really tame.
A colleague of my dad’s rides brevets, audax (audaxes?), randonees (basically long rides with checkpoints), like London-Edinburgh-London. Mad distances.
After riding some Sustrans routes, I’ve had a few ideas for long MTB ‘races’ (though I use the term loosly), across the North East. I was thinking of things like Barnard Castle-Bishop Auckland-Sunderland along the W2W Sustrans route with checkpoints along the way (or tasks, like noting down collection times from specific post boxes).
I just found a page with a set of ideas, all of which sound pretty cool, randoneé + alleycat. Great quote:
It’s like a horrible auto wreck between a car driven by a French randonnée and one driven by an alleycat race. One part long-distance, self-supported fast touring, one part on-the-fly, all-out speed driven routing. A match made in heaven? A recipe for disaster?
Anyway, just rambling thoughts.
This afternoon, I rode out to Hurworth to teach a class there. It’s only about 4.5 miles each way and I can’t go too fast and get sweaty, but it’s a really nice spin out on a work afternoon and it’s 9 miles I wouldn’t otherwise get to ride. 9 miles fitter. Total milage for today is 14 miles (map), all on the road.
Distance: 14 miles
Surface: Road
Time: About 1.25 hours total, in 4 journeys
Weather: Cold and damp
Bike: Singlespeed Kona Hahanna commuter bike, with 2.25″ knobbly tyres