Last Thursday wasn’t fun. I got SMIDSYed on the way home from work. Went flying over a car bonnet and ended up lying on the road. My bike is looking the worse for wear (bent fork, bent wheel, torn saddle, scratched rack and perhaps the frame is bent) and I’m hobbling around with a knackered knee, ankles and other random bits. This morning my neck started aching. And I’ve not slept in days. Basically, I’m pretty screwed.
I don’t know for certain, but apparently I trashed the car pretty well. The reason I don’t know for certain was that within seconds of landing on the road random bystanders came over and were insisting I didn’t move in case I’d broken my back. Noone seemed to believe that it wasn’t a problem because I’d not done it before in falling off a mountain. But from what they said the car was in a bit of a state. A knackered front wing, windscreen and perhaps the front bumper too.
Eventually an ambulance turned up. And the police. And I got carted off to hospital. Although I’d hate to have to review A&E departments I can easily say Oldham’s was a lot worse than Inverness. Apart from not being seen for about half an hour when I did escape there wasn’t a map of the local area. Just as well I had a vague idea where I was otherwise it would have been utterly lost.
It’s all just another accident I could live without.
The Manchester to Blackpool charity ride was a few weeks ago. This year it was pretty much exactly 60 miles. And I managed it in 3 hours 5 minutes or so.
But it was a dull ride. Noone seemed to want to go faster than 18mph so I ended up riding the whole distance alone, unlike last year. There’s nothing much more to say. It was dull.
For an interesting holiday I can highly recommend Coll. I got back about a week ago and it was great fun. There’s nothing much to do but that’s a good thing really.
All there was to do was to wander along the miles of deserted beaches.
Admiring the views.
Wandering up the hills (all one of them even if it’s only about 100m high) to get better views (like seeing the Cuillins on Skye on the horizon).
Finding the prehistoric bits (this is down on the OS map as a cairn, but it’s a giant boulder sitting on the small rocks).
Yesterday was mountain bike day. Four of us went off around the peak district doing this route over Hope Cross. It was all good fun, even with the uphill bits.
There were a few casualties from the day. James had a few punctures in his rear wheel (snake bites from rocky descents). Andy punctured his front tyre within sight of the cars at the end of the ride. A sprocket on my cassette lost a tooth which meant it kept jumping from one gear to another: ????????
Worse than that was a slight fall I had. It seemed quite innocuous, but made for some impressive looking scars:
But that wasn’t as bad as today. With the wet weather in town today the roads were a bit too slippery and on a dubious corner I fell off. Various bits of the bike were bent and scuffed, but nothing’s broken. On the bike at least. In the fall I banged my hip pretty badly and it’s a bit of a mess with a nice big lump and an impressive bruise.
Unlike me, my clothes won’t heal. There’s a small hole in my jacket and my trousers are pretty much trashed (not like that’s a problem - the same pair were already pretty knackered from the fall down the mountain) along with the gloves I was wearing. Worst off was my helmet though.
But it did it’s job and I’m not in hospital. Besides, I was thinking of getting a new one anyway - the old helmet was getting on a bit and was due to be retired.
The pompino had another puncture the other day - the third in a month. From the look of it the rim tape was ok, and the rim wasn’t too bad (a couple of dints but nothing serious) so the finger was pointing at the tyre.
There was a slight bulge where the tyre bead didn’t seem to be able to hold onto the rim. And then there was the gash where a shard of glass had gone straight through the carcass. Basically it just wasn’t working well. So the emergency 700×32c tyre came out.
And since there was going to be some rear wheel related faffage it was time to flip the hub. One step down from the old single speed - the bike is now a fixie, in defiance of the coming FGA. Besides, the PistaDex is meaningless in Manchester. Hell, in the north of england surely we should have a PompinoDex instead. After all, they are made by Calderdale’s second largest bicycle company.
One of the neatest features added to the leopard version of apple mail was the ability to add an RSS feed. Now it’s a doddle to keep up to date with various blogs and cartoons.
So here’s a handy list of my current favourites, which were being generally ignored until apple mail popped up and volunteered to handle RSS the other day.
Keep track of the oncoming of the fixed gear apocalypse with the regular PistaDex updates along with biting comments on the awful bikes up for sale on Craigslist.
A truly inspired blog. For all those people who think that americans are stupid - this blog has the “best” (worst?) of the BBC’s “have your say” section.
