Thanks to the rankin’ Dr E, my camel has been sterilised!

So yesterday Elly, I and some other friends went to Glentress (near Peebles) for a session on their purpose-built mountain-biking runs. The friend who organised this has been here several times, while the others often combine mountain-biking with their love of hillwalking, cycling to get to routes that otherwise would take all day to even reach. I’d not mountain-biked before but I suspect this won’t be the last time.

I have to say at the start that it’s an insane sport. You get utterly filthy from mud splattering your arse and even all over your face and it’s hard going uphill along rocky, muddy worn paths with tight hairpins and no sense of getting miles of smooth tarmac under your belt. But it’s delightfully insane! The exhilaration of Can I get up this step or will I put my foot down again? and Am I going to fall over now? are nothing to the madness of doing maybe 20mph down tight slopes with jumps and cambered curves so that you can be leaning right over. It’s maybe like speedway or what velodrome cycling would be, but with extra mud, irregularities and no need to fix your feet to the pedals. (That way lies multiple fractures.)

Here’s a map of the routes. We cycled up from the trail-head to the Buzzard’s Nest car park, then did a few circuits of the green (‘easy’) route to the west of the map. This was exciting enough for some of us, but others (including me) went on some of the blue  (‘moderate’) routes. We cycled through points 11 to 16 on the map, then did ‘blue velvet’ a few times. (You go from 16 to 27 to 28, then loop back to point 27 along a forest road to do the madness again.) After that, I think we did ‘berm baby berm’ and ‘cardie hill’ (so called because it affects the innards, not your apparel) a couple of times, then descended ‘falla brae’, ‘good game’ and ‘the admiral’ back to the trail-head.

The high-point of insanity is point 7: here the blue route is a metal bridge over the upward route to Buzzard’s Nest. You only know it’s there a couple of seconds before you hit it, because it’s hidden by curves in the route and the berms you’ve been going up, over and down. So you ascend a couple of feet onto the bridge’s short horizontal surface and then realise, with no time to stop, that the drop the other side is more like 20 feet of metal and then a further drop on track. The only way is to keep going (because braking means you’ll skid, fall, bounce, splat and break things) and hang on until you’ve on the track and can begin to brake enough to make the tight curve you’re now approaching. But you can’t brake too here either much otherwise you’ll come off ignominiously and probably painfully.

The blue routes were enough for me (for now at least) – for the red (‘difficult’) and black (‘severe’), you need a lot of experience, a very expensive mountain bike with suspension at both ends (I was on a hired bike I named ‘mudlark’) and nether-regions with no pain sensors.

Anyway, here’s some pix:

• Elly halfway to the Buzzard’s Nest
• Bruce on a gentle corner 
• Bruce splashing
• Bruce at the end 

There are more pictures, but I don’t yet have permission to make these public.

Hugh thanks to Ms W for organising this and the slap-up feed thereafter, to X and Y for photos and inspiring madness and to Elly for transport and bravery – and to Glentress for providing such fun!

Lev Davidovitch Bikestein, Marianne the cuddly pig and I have done our longest journey together. Here’s the cyclemeter map for the first 60 miles. Here’s my guess at the last bit. So that’s 72·5 miles, plus cycling from Edinburgh’s west end to Ocean Terminal and back.

I know I did the first 60 miles in 4 hours 37 minutes of pedalling, hence averaging 13·0 mph. I believe I arrived at Ocean Terminal at 15:20, thus taking 65 minutes to do 12·5 miles (11·5 mph). So let’s call that 5 hours 43 minutes of pedalling and hence 12·7 mph for the whole course. I’d intended to do the 70 mile route in at most 6 hours (11·7 mph) but hoped to do it in around 5 hours (14 mph). I heard later that the really fit folk did it in 3·5 hours (20 mph). That’s some comfort, as is remembering that until today I didn’t know for sure that I could do this event.

I can blame some of the slowness for the last section on traffic (cars blocking narrow roads on the way through Cramond) and humans and dogs along the promenade. I can blame my overall slowness on

1. Me – I’m just slow!
2. Lev being a sturdy touring bike, not a carbon-fibre sprint-beast
3. the amount of stuff I was carrying:
   1. jPhone 4 on Lev’s handlebars
   2. hip pouch containing wallet, keys and other usual impedimenta
   3. frame-bag containing 3 chocolate energy-bars, spare inner tube and a tube of pain-cream
   4. under-saddle bag containing tire levers, chain-breaker, multi-tool, oil, polythene gloves, adjustable spanner, wet-wipes and a swiss army knife.
   5. pannier containing Marianne the cuddly pig, spare batteries for lights, tour-de-forth t-shirt, toilet roll, 5 flapjacks, fleece jumper, overtrousers, jPhone 3GS, autumn cycling jacket, bad-weather gloves and an extra bottle of water!

Here’s some wibbling about the day:
I met the spinners and spinnerettes (Lifecyclers) around 8:10 at the registration tent in Ocean Terminal. Here’s Lev and I just before the start. It turned out all but I were doing the sportive version (same route but setting off first, and racing). So I felt a bit alone and unsure of the route. This wasn’t the organisers’ fault: we had been given details but I can’t memorise such things. Fortunately, there were marshalls at most of the turns. I tried ‘latching on’ to a rider with a distinctive top but she left me for dust up a hill towards the first refreshment stop at Craigie’s Farm.

I didn’t stop there but carried on towards and over the Forth Road Bridge and along Fife’s south coast to Culross. I did stop here briefly to eat a banana and use the toilet. I also met up with Martin, a spinner. His bike’s left gear shifter had died, leaving him the choice of big or small front gear. Despite this, and him using his lowest rear gear, he still set what for me was a blistering pace!

We missed the official route slightly and found ourselves at Kincardine Bridge, so we cycled through Kincardine to the start of the Clackmannanshire bridge. Here, some friends were waiting. (They’d cycled from Stirling just to wave hello!) They’ve sent this photo. After this the route meandered through countryside and then some hard roads (and more traffic-jams) to South Queensferry. After a banana-stop here, I followed what I believe was the marked route along NCN route 76 to Hopetoun House. Don’t do this – it’s full of potholes and cobbled sections. Very nasty, especially as by now my knees and backside were quite sore indeed! I believe others took a road-route as far as Hopetoun.

I stopped tracking at 60 miles because jPhone 4 was about to give out. I tried tracking the rest of the way with jPhone 3GS but his GPS reception is poor. (He claims I only did 3 miles!) Coming out of the Hopetoun estate, I must have missed a sign: I realised I was cycling away from Edinburgh when I saw the hill up to Craigie’s farm again! So I whipped Lev through 180° and started back towards the A90 cyclepath. After this, I just plodded on, dreaming of stopping, while avoiding human and 4-wheeled traffic and traffic jams.

I chatted with folk for a while and then headed home through the increasing rain. (I encountered yet more rubbish driving: if I’ve not signalled left and am not in a lane marked ‘left turn only’, I’m going straight on. So don’t overtake just before the corner and then force me to take evasive action, git in the white saloon!) The end had been very welcome but I felt a bit sad when I got home – I had stopped 3 times for bananas (although I was pleased that I’d been able to reach the energy-bars in the frame bag without stopping), I’d not been able to track the entire route and I’d not achieved my pipe-dream time.
Huge thanks to

• all the folk who sponsored me: £195 so far for Mercy Corps
• Martin for keeping me going
• Lev Davidovitch for not breaking down. (I saw a couple of broken bikes along the way.)
• Lev’s ‘marathon plus’ tires for getting no punctures, despite potholes, kerbs and cobbled stretches
• the organisers for providing this masochistic fun time!
• the folk at Lifescycle who are so fun and yet professional and dedicated and who let me know about this event.

I’m a bit sore in the unmentionables but I still feel alive enough to cycle to a party tonight! (Update – I even danced for an hour or so!) And blow me but I’m looking forward to the next event, and carrying far less kit!

(Do not adjust your head if you look at the post-date! This post is back-dated to the date and time the events occured.)

How can those who are less articulate be heard? Aren’t their desires as worthy of consideration as anyone else’s? These are two questions that were raised by the story of the dreamcatchers, a piece of theatre starring ‘differently abled’ people last Sunday.

To me (but I have to admit I’m not a regular theatre-goer), it was quite unconventional – no plot, the performers took their bows before the action started and the audience were encouraged, in fact exhorted to join in and show they appreciated the dreams being presented.

After the bows, mystery in the form of music and video took us on a journey to a place where someone slept and dreamed. Then this dream came true – Elvis was back with us, singing and entertaining as if he’d never left us. Other dreams came and went, presented in dance and flashing lights while performers and audience ‘swam’ together. The message that we should never give up our dreams was made more potent when we learned that one of the performers’ dreams – of independent living – had recently come true.

Even more appealing to me was where audience and performers came together in anarchic fun – there was no difference – all bounding together on the energy emanating from indoor sun (and the producers).

So it may not have been everyone’s cup of tea – but it was fun for all who took part or came to see.

15 mph average over 7 miles, including lots of traffic lights

Before I get into this, can someone explain why my most-played albums just now are Hairbrush Divas’ Singalong Summer (lots of 80s disco* and pop), William Burroughs’ Dead City Radio and Spaced Out (a compilation of songs by William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy).

*I guess part of the reason for my loving this album is it contains Chic’s Le freak. I’m always reminded of one of the female singers when when Chic performed on Top of the pops – the living embodiment of ‘dead junky eyes’ if there ever was one. And, hey, there’s one connection – from having first read The naked lunch in my pre-teens, I’ve had a slight but ongoing fascination with junkiedom. And it’s gratifying to learn that the hook ‘Ahh, freak out’ was originally much ruder!

Enough of the bread, on with the filling:

velocity = distance ÷ time, velocity × mass = constant, so no bloody wonder it took ages!

Having made Lev half a kilogram heavier, and then spent the evening with Elly, returning books to the new shelves in our reference section, during all of which my right hip and knee were in large amounts of pain, it was only logical to cycle a long distance the next day. (I’ve found since that kneeling sets off the pain, and I did a lot of kneeling while attaching Lev’s front pannier rack.)

I was – and still am slightly – nervous that 70 miles non-stop next Sunday (yes, that is meant to be unsubtle) will be beyond me. My plan was to do a decent distance (i.e. over 40 miles), including some hills to attenuate this fear – or learn where my limits are. Yesterday morning was fine and sunny, so after helping my better half take a few boxes of unwanted books to the nearby charity shop, Lev and I set off west along the A8 at 10:31.

We did use the cycle-path around Gogar roundabout – we’re quite not yet ready to take on that piece of madness – but jumped back onto the tarmac soon after the squinty bridge at Gogarburn. Yes, it’s a dual carriageway, but there are no ‘no bicycles’ signs and the supposed cycle path crosses a lot of junctions that are more unsighted (and hence more dangerous) than being in plain view on a road that has two lanes, so there’s plenty of room for 4-wheeled wankers to move the hell over!

Newbridge roundabout was fine – the traffic-lights were kind, and I don’t recall having to detach my left foot from Lev. (I’m still learning SPDs – it can take a over minute to attach my right foot before starting off, and I don’t always get the left foot attached first go.) My text history tells me we did this roundabout about 11:20.

After this, the tarmac to Broxburn was smooth. We deliberately weren’t sprinting*, just settling into distance-cruising: Lev was heavier, and carrying more kit because we were leaving the city, while my right knee was still twinging slightly.
*Of course, this is a relative term. On a very good day, we can get to 20mph unaided. A decent roadie will cruise at around 30 mph!

The long uphill drag through Broxburn, Uphall and Dechmont was OK too, despite the poor road-surface. (The road is sections of concrete with 2-inch gaps every 30 meters or thereby. Why is this? I can understand expansion gaps on bridges. But this piece of road is on solid earth.) Despite this, and the arse-poundingly rough tarmac between Dechmont and the Tesco depot 2 miles on on, Lev and I were enjoying ourselves and averaging 15 mph. I pondered carrying on to Glasgow and then cycling back as far as my legs could stand. However

• I’d promised to be home mid-afternoon to help finish sorting the reference section and tidying the spare room.
• I didn’t want to wreck myself ahead of next Sunday.
• There aren’t many hills on the A8/A89/A899/A89 route, and I wanted to build in some hill practice.

So after Bathgate (which we reached at 12:01), Lev and I turned north off the A89 onto the A801. We had a quick stop so I could ‘Paula Radcliffe’, munch an energy bar and work out how to get to Falkirk without risking being sucked onto the M8. (I now realise I could have stayed on the A801 until the junction with the A803, then taken this latter road into Falkirk.) However, at the time, I thought the best plan would be to turn off the A801 and use B-roads to go via Avonbridge (reached at 12:51), California and Shieldhill. So here’s a word of warning: don’t do this! There are stupidly steep hills, some of which have blind right turns. Even where the road is level, hedges block the views around curves so I couldn’t see whether it was safe to move away from the road-edge and push on.

Then there’s a massive drop back down into Falkirk. (There was a good view of Grangemouth and the Forth beyond it, but this didn’t compensate!) We couldn’t enjoy this part because the road-surface was patchy and blind-curved – I didn’t want to find myself avoiding a pothole only to meet a corner-cutting infernal combustion engine at high speed. Ah well, it was a good test of Lev’s disk-brakes. (His front brake was slightly noisy – perhaps I’d moved the disk slightly while moving the quick-release lever to fit the front pannier-rack.) The Bathgate-Falkirk stretch brought our average speed under 10 mph. I’m not pleased about this – further hill-training is required.

We had another stop in Falkirk so I could get my breath back, munch another energy-bar, text Elly (13:17) and wow the locals with my lycra. There’s a 1-mile gap in the cycle meter map because I forgot to restart recording – oops! Then we took the A803 east. The road’s gradient varied but seemed to be uphill all the way to Linlithgow, and uphill again from Linlithgow to Kirkliston (reached about 14:52). Yet Linlithgow is on the Union canal: so shouldn’t it be in a dip? Also, the road after Linlithgow was littered with ‘bricks’ of shit and straw: not nice for my right knee, which was by now threatening secession, and my arse, which was now very sore despite two layers of padding. (I was advised today that Lev’s saddle is right for my pelvis width. I just need to increase my ischial bursitis resistance.)

Lev and I had just reached Winchborough when my bluetooth headphones warned they’d soon give out. They finally did so not long after Kirkliston, leaving us to take on the dual carriageway into Edinburgh without stimuli. For anyone who’s interested (is anyone even remotely interested?), here’s the track list I’d been using:

It was mixed by Bárány Attila.

I emphasise that this was dual carriageway but that bikes are allowed on it, and that the supposed cycle-path is riven by cracks, blind entrances and a bridge with huge steps at Ratho Station. It’s also a pedestrian path with bus-shelters, so it would be very easy for a pedestrian to step into a cyclist’s path, with unfortunate consequences for both. Cyclists are free to use roads – infernal combustion users have to pay a fee to use them, presumably because they damage tarmac, so I feel justified in using the road.

The traffic wasn’t heavy, so there was no excuse for cars not moving into the inner lane when overtaking me. I think I was right to be utterly incensed when a Smart didn’t do so, but then moved over at the slip-road up from the airport roundabout – and yet there were no cars coming up that! I’ve not bellowed so loudly in a long time. Smart car, maybe. Dumb dangerous fuckwit wanker of a driver certainly. I think Lev’s next addition should be rocket-launchers. (I’m not sure that anyone has a ‘right to pollute’!)

The stretch from Maybury to Servants’ Quarters was less painful – perhaps because I’d realised by now there was no chance of Lev and I achieving an overall average of 15mph. Because we’d only travelled 56 miles, I even pondered getting onto Edinburgh’s cycle-path network for an hour or so. However, a text from Elly telling me that she was about to come home limited the extra to a trip up to the cycle co-op to buy a lock-extender. (I didn’t map this because jPhone was about to go flat.) Now Lev and I have bonded, I want to attach his D-lock to Servants’ Quarters and make damn sure he’s not stolen.

So that’s it: an enjoyably testing (despite the above moans, I was exhilarated when I finally got home) 60 miles in under 5 hours pedalling (about 5¾ hours door to door), so slightly over 12 mph average. I believe I’m ready for next Sunday.

Domestic bliss

The afternoon and evening were filled with

• Elly bravely applying Heineken pain-cream to the parts I couldn’t reach
• finishing sorting the reference section
• reinstating the spare room where the reference books had been stashed so my brother and his partner can stay next weekend. (My main role was fixing and repainting a drawer unit.)
• taking Elly for a cocktail at the nearby 52 canoes tiki den. (Photos here, here and here.)

Shakedown cruise

My much better half has just bought herself a touring bike. Fidel is in the same range as Lev but was produced this year, has higher quality brake and gear mechanisms, and also has butterfly handlebars, enabling a more upright, sight-seeing position. He came with SPD pedals but Elly wanted toe-cage pedals. (He also came with average tyres but we got those swapped for Schwalbe marathon plus tyres – these and Gatorskins are the only brands I trust.)

So we fitted swapped the SPD pedals for toe-clip pedals and took cycle-paths to the promenade at Cramond. (We also checked that I’d fixed Fidel’s front rack so the front brake doesn’t foul it.) Here I held Elly and Fidel upright so she could practice getting her right foot into its cage without having to think about balancing and moving. When she was ready, I gave her some emergency-stop practice. (Pulling the left foot backwards before putting it down to the ground while braking safely isn’t an innate skill.)

We also raced each other a couple of times. As I predicted, Elly is stronger and faster than me on a similar bike – the only advantage I have is some cycling stamina and more road-reading experience so I’ll know when it’s safe to push on!) Elly was delighted to find that Fidel takes in his stride hills that would severely tax Che (her commuting bike). Elly says that while she’s not yet in love with Fidel, she is infatuated!

We did about 14 miles today, culminating in yet another trip to the cycle co-op to buy a stand for holding Fidel when he’s resting at Servants’ Quarters and frame-luggage for both Lev and Fidel. With this, Lev now has room for a spare inner-tube, some energy bars and a tube of pain-cream without needing panniers. Even better, I believe I can reach the energy bars while moving!

Random photos of Rain on Che’s raincoat: here, here and here!

‘[Whether] you’re getting killed by a lead bullet or lead-free … doesn’t really matter…’

Well, not quite…