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Monday 4th 47-61F, 8-16C! Very heavy overcast with rain and rather breezy. Rain is already glancing across the window panes of my view over my modest little world. The Head Gardener's diminutive forest of 10m, 30' oak and willow saplings are rocking gently to minor gusts. Denying me a view of the distant hills and woods but safely concealing the only few houses in the foreground. Reducing the height to [say] 10' would still obscure the houses but leave me with a view of my approach to the distant woods.
I'm never sure whether views begin to look tame from becoming too familiar. I wouldn't mind a sea or lake view but can't be doing with houses to spoil the effect. Talking of "spoilt," my view over my computer monitor, from my self-built, dormer window, is probably an improvement on the vast majority of town and city dwellers. I can see nothing [whatever] to admire in a city landscape. If it's not mostly green then it isn't a proper view in my book.
Nor do I want to see, or hear, moving traffic! Traffic is the worst curse of what we laughingly call civilization. How anybody can spend more than mere seconds subjecting themselves to traffic noise, passing their home, is a complete mystery to me. When we first moved Snowdonia, three decades ago, we would prick up our ears if a single car or tractor passed in the lane. Only ten years later the traffic was constant! Nose to tail on a tiny lane from nowhere to nowhere but now sought out to avoid driving the extra mile. If car ownership is so pleasant why do owners do anything possible to shorten or speed up their journeys to shorten the duration?
I'm never sure whether views begin to look tame from becoming too familiar. I wouldn't mind a sea or lake view but can't be doing with houses to spoil the effect. Talking of "spoilt," my view over my computer monitor, from my self-built, dormer window, is probably an improvement on the vast majority of town and city dwellers. I can see nothing [whatever] to admire in a city landscape. If it's not mostly green then it isn't a proper view in my book.
Nor do I want to see, or hear, moving traffic! Traffic is the worst curse of what we laughingly call civilization. How anybody can spend more than mere seconds subjecting themselves to traffic noise, passing their home, is a complete mystery to me. When we first moved Snowdonia, three decades ago, we would prick up our ears if a single car or tractor passed in the lane. Only ten years later the traffic was constant! Nose to tail on a tiny lane from nowhere to nowhere but now sought out to avoid driving the extra mile. If car ownership is so pleasant why do owners do anything possible to shorten or speed up their journeys to shorten the duration?
I should have gone out on my trike yesterday but became interested in finishing a project at home. Only for it to start raining as soon as I tried to work outside. It was ever thus. Now I am faced with a forecast of two days of almost continuous rain. With no obvious outlet for my energies. Having cleared the worst hurdles to trike maintenance inside the shed I should finally get around to changing the kinked gear cables. They were an entertaining attempt to convert unfortunate gear lever movements into more suitable cable and gear changer indexing. It worked after a fashion but then an American company called WolfTooth brought out their excellent RoadLink to extend the downward reach of normal, road type, rear, gear changers. So all my roughly-fashioned pulleys, levers and clamps became, quite literally, obsolete overnight.
I was, thus, able to run a huge 36T MTB sprocket using Campagnolo's very own, standard 11sp Athena rear changer with their 11 Speed Chorus levers. Gear indexing has been slightly hampered, until now and in both directions, by the kink in the cable taking up variable degrees of tension. The kink straightens out to the initial [higher] gear change tension but then relaxes again under the lower, normal, indexing tension. Which means if I set the cable adjusters to the initial, stronger pull, the rear changer then relaxes to an offset position relative to the rear cogs. Or vice versa, with no clear winners.
Only sheer laziness has prevented me from swapping to new cables already. The one part of the exercise which I do not like is the length of cable outer trapped under the tape wrap on the handlebars. It is difficult to feed the cable into the run of outer which clings to the handlebars under the tape. The cable must be fed from below into the lever's gear mechanism with the lever set in top gear. The cable can then rise through the ratchet wheel and exit at the top of the lever. Where it must be sharply bent [without kinking to exit at the rear of the dual purpose gear/brake lever. The lever end of the cable outer is hidden in a notch in the rear of the reinforced plastic lever body. It then exits rearward into the outer cable to find its way to the downtube adjusters. Getting the inner cable to cleanly enter the outer is the problem. Or has proved so in the past. I have always had to remove the handlebar tape.
The Campag original, cable inners and outers are narrower than Sram and Shimano. The latter are readily available at most bike shops. But the lack of interest in Campagnolo, in Denmark, makes their cable purchases an online affair. Which is more of a psychological hurdle. But still, any excuse to avoid the inevitable.
It is difficult to convey the sheer number of birds I see and hear on my walks and rides. I set off today in light drizzle. Almost before I had started down the drive I had seen several Wood pigeons showing off their flying skills at recovering from quite deliberate stalling. Blackbirds, Chaffinches, Yellowhammers, Greenfinches, Rooks and Crows were all busy doing their thing. Jackdaws like lodging themselves, like stationary spies in dark suits, silhouetted in the tree tops. Cheeky sparrows chattered only 4-5' away as they bobbed about in the boundary hedges as I passed. Neat nests, both old and new, populate the mixed roadside hedges at frequent intervals. Traffic noise is obviously no hindrance to temporary residence. Though it often means developing a pair of lungs to sing above the passing racket!
Starlings were gathered in tight groups on the extensive lawns which were once small, agricultural fields. The former, long farmhouses are now parked like monochrome, railway carriages in forgotten stations beside linear, gravelled drives. Skylarks sang overhead as mink gulls swooped and glided effortlessly even higher up. Or shouted to each other above the cumulative din like children in the playground. Geese and ducks zoomed across the landscape at a tremendous rate of knots. A score of tiny, unidentified birds passed untidily over. But traveling so fast in the tailwind, that they covered a mile into the far distance in only a few seconds. Blue tits moved incredibly briskly through the trees in search of food. While the Great tits foraged, while still making their squeaky "see-saw" song or alarm calls. Both think nothing of crossing an entire field in hardly any time at all. The air is full of their calls everywhere I go.
Actually hearing the busy landscape is a rare treat when one can get away from the traffic noise. I may exaggerate the problems of walking the busy "main" road but there can be long gaps between the follow-my-leader, FBI-style, commuter convoys. Allowing me to hear, even from a crow's mile away, as a huge loader filled a builder's lorry with sand in only one or two bites of the heap with its massive bucket. The tracks of an excavator trundled rhythmically as it worked to permanently clear fields of winter flooding in the deeper hollows. Gnawing at the muddy fields to make drainage ditches for hidden, corrugated, plastic pipe placed safely deep from the ploughs. Domestic dogs barked and quickly fell silent to an all too well rehearsed shout from their owners indoors.
A rare dog walker grunted in passing with his Alsatian safely tethered. That dog once hurled itself at me when I was passing on my trike in a very narrow, local lane. Fortunately, for me, my rock hard, rear tyre ran over its paw and it was so surprised the dog landed upside down on the verge. Back then the dog had no lead and would often go ahead or trail its owner by a hundred yards. I was always wary of its behaviour and received no apology for the dog's misbehaviour. "Not my dog!" "Not my child!""Not me!"
A huge tractor, dragging a pig's muck, giant squid spreader turned abruptly into a gap in the hedge and opened its malevolent arms. Hopefully the rain and wind direction will dull its ability to excite our senses and futile anger. The washing will have to come back indoors again. It may be protected from the rain but the stench carries everywhere. There really is no escape for the countless innocent victims of industrial farming.
A small cattle farmer uses a JCB to load his bulky straw manure into an old fashioned, propeller driven, open topped, muck spreader. As I pass, the smell is almost benign compared to pigs. Then comes the concentrated, eye-watering stench of ammonia. Reminding me that all too many pony fields reek exactly the same. Making their neighbours the poor relations in the idyllic deal. Even denying home owners a sale. Some ponies enjoy accommodation denied to probably a billion fellow, human beings. With the ponies having no other purpose than to decorate the landscape.
The rain increased until my jacket was darkly wet. Though I was still warm, dry and comfortable as I huddled down into my high, upturned collar. Sheltering against the cold, stinging droplets carried by the easterly breeze. My binoculars are waterproof and had their rain caps on the eyepieces to keep the lenses dry. A distant tractor's headlights caught my attention beyond the trees. An agricultural B52, carpet bombing the fields with pigs diarrhoea, a superfluity of antibiotics and the inevitable load of highly-enriched, multi-resistant bacteria. It's all fair in love, hate and war living in the countryside! Civilian casualties are just more collateral damage.
The weather cleared up nicely before lunch with even a few, brief, sunny spells. A late morning ride needed three miles before my legs stopped aching. Very unusual for me and perhaps a residue of lactic acid from my longer ride mid-week. It didn't help that I had to climb a long drag into the easterly wind. Once that was over my normal strength returned. I passed a specialist spraying machine on a prairie but it was distant enough not to pose a threat to health and welfare.
The traffic in the village was completely ignoring the 25mph speed limits as usual. It doesn't matter if you own a smart 2-seater Mercedes, [yes you] or a teenager in a rusting heap, your absolute human right to ignore the law still stands. Meanwhile the police are steadily cutting back on village policemen. Not that there are any local ones left anyway.
I really ought to get out one my old film camera flashguns and hover in a dark, empty shop doorway to frighten the bøøgers. That'll larn 'em! Fortunately I am not daft enough to try that. Many driving psychos became so aggressive when caught red-handed that they physically attacked the occupant of the police camera van. It got so bad that they had to phase out civilian staff and only employ uniformed, armed policemen in the vans! I'd have given the civilians guns and plenty of close target practice! One young [choose a suitable word here] posted a very poor film of himself on YT, beating the hell out of a number plate, recognition camera with a hammer! Only in Denmark! 10 miles not out.
The afternoon was spent in a balmy 62F replacing both gear cables and one lever. I still had to remove the handlebar tape to fit the left, front changer lever. It wouldn't hold a sufficiently outward position of the changer cage to run the big chainwheel with the smaller rear cogs. The indexing ratchet wheel in the lever was probably knackered. Works fine now with the new lever and cable. I had been putting the job off to use the new lever only as a spare if the older one broke. Had the trike up on the workstand to check the indexing. Seems okay now. Cleaned and then polished the whole trike with a rag, followed by maroon Scotch-Brite, while I was at it. The lacquered joints are getting rather dark but do not readily succumb to Scotch-Brite fiber. If I remove the lacquer I will have to regularly maintain the joints to keep them clean.
Just in case anyone [like me] is daft enough to use brake noodles in their gear cable runs I'm now warning against the practice. The nose of the alloy cone crumbles over time where it fits in the flat based, downtube, adjuster socket and this greatly increases friction. I've gone back to using genuine Campag gear cable 'outers' from the lever right down to the front downtube adjusters. The shiny noodles looked nicely "techy" but were just not suitable for the job. On brakes they seem fine. Probably because there is so much extra leverage compared with gears. Filing the conical noodle nose off might have worked too. In case you haven't a clue what I'm talking about just do an image search for "brake noodle" and all will be revealed. Three noodles appear in the old image above. They are usually used to form the sharp curve for side entry brake cables but seemed ideal for sharply "bending" gear cable runs too. In actual practice, they were not.
It is difficult to convey the sheer number of birds I see and hear on my walks and rides. I set off today in light drizzle. Almost before I had started down the drive I had seen several Wood pigeons showing off their flying skills at recovering from quite deliberate stalling. Blackbirds, Chaffinches, Yellowhammers, Greenfinches, Rooks and Crows were all busy doing their thing. Jackdaws like lodging themselves, like stationary spies in dark suits, silhouetted in the tree tops. Cheeky sparrows chattered only 4-5' away as they bobbed about in the boundary hedges as I passed. Neat nests, both old and new, populate the mixed roadside hedges at frequent intervals. Traffic noise is obviously no hindrance to temporary residence. Though it often means developing a pair of lungs to sing above the passing racket!Starlings were gathered in tight groups on the extensive lawns which were once small, agricultural fields. The former, long farmhouses are now parked like monochrome, railway carriages in forgotten stations beside linear, gravelled drives. Skylarks sang overhead as mink gulls swooped and glided effortlessly even higher up. Or shouted to each other above the cumulative din like children in the playground. Geese and ducks zoomed across the landscape at a tremendous rate of knots. A score of tiny, unidentified birds passed untidily over. But traveling so fast in the tailwind, that they covered a mile into the far distance in only a few seconds. Blue tits moved incredibly briskly through the trees in search of food. While the Great tits foraged, while still making their squeaky "see-saw" song or alarm calls. Both think nothing of crossing an entire field in hardly any time at all. The air is full of their calls everywhere I go.
Actually hearing the busy landscape is a rare treat when one can get away from the traffic noise. I may exaggerate the problems of walking the busy "main" road but there can be long gaps between the follow-my-leader, FBI-style, commuter convoys. Allowing me to hear, even from a crow's mile away, as a huge loader filled a builder's lorry with sand in only one or two bites of the heap with its massive bucket. The tracks of an excavator trundled rhythmically as it worked to permanently clear fields of winter flooding in the deeper hollows. Gnawing at the muddy fields to make drainage ditches for hidden, corrugated, plastic pipe placed safely deep from the ploughs. Domestic dogs barked and quickly fell silent to an all too well rehearsed shout from their owners indoors.
A rare dog walker grunted in passing with his Alsatian safely tethered. That dog once hurled itself at me when I was passing on my trike in a very narrow, local lane. Fortunately, for me, my rock hard, rear tyre ran over its paw and it was so surprised the dog landed upside down on the verge. Back then the dog had no lead and would often go ahead or trail its owner by a hundred yards. I was always wary of its behaviour and received no apology for the dog's misbehaviour. "Not my dog!" "Not my child!""Not me!"
A huge tractor, dragging a pig's muck, giant squid spreader turned abruptly into a gap in the hedge and opened its malevolent arms. Hopefully the rain and wind direction will dull its ability to excite our senses and futile anger. The washing will have to come back indoors again. It may be protected from the rain but the stench carries everywhere. There really is no escape for the countless innocent victims of industrial farming.A small cattle farmer uses a JCB to load his bulky straw manure into an old fashioned, propeller driven, open topped, muck spreader. As I pass, the smell is almost benign compared to pigs. Then comes the concentrated, eye-watering stench of ammonia. Reminding me that all too many pony fields reek exactly the same. Making their neighbours the poor relations in the idyllic deal. Even denying home owners a sale. Some ponies enjoy accommodation denied to probably a billion fellow, human beings. With the ponies having no other purpose than to decorate the landscape.
The rain increased until my jacket was darkly wet. Though I was still warm, dry and comfortable as I huddled down into my high, upturned collar. Sheltering against the cold, stinging droplets carried by the easterly breeze. My binoculars are waterproof and had their rain caps on the eyepieces to keep the lenses dry. A distant tractor's headlights caught my attention beyond the trees. An agricultural B52, carpet bombing the fields with pigs diarrhoea, a superfluity of antibiotics and the inevitable load of highly-enriched, multi-resistant bacteria. It's all fair in love, hate and war living in the countryside! Civilian casualties are just more collateral damage.
The weather cleared up nicely before lunch with even a few, brief, sunny spells. A late morning ride needed three miles before my legs stopped aching. Very unusual for me and perhaps a residue of lactic acid from my longer ride mid-week. It didn't help that I had to climb a long drag into the easterly wind. Once that was over my normal strength returned. I passed a specialist spraying machine on a prairie but it was distant enough not to pose a threat to health and welfare.
The traffic in the village was completely ignoring the 25mph speed limits as usual. It doesn't matter if you own a smart 2-seater Mercedes, [yes you] or a teenager in a rusting heap, your absolute human right to ignore the law still stands. Meanwhile the police are steadily cutting back on village policemen. Not that there are any local ones left anyway.
I really ought to get out one my old film camera flashguns and hover in a dark, empty shop doorway to frighten the bøøgers. That'll larn 'em! Fortunately I am not daft enough to try that. Many driving psychos became so aggressive when caught red-handed that they physically attacked the occupant of the police camera van. It got so bad that they had to phase out civilian staff and only employ uniformed, armed policemen in the vans! I'd have given the civilians guns and plenty of close target practice! One young [choose a suitable word here] posted a very poor film of himself on YT, beating the hell out of a number plate, recognition camera with a hammer! Only in Denmark! 10 miles not out.
The afternoon was spent in a balmy 62F replacing both gear cables and one lever. I still had to remove the handlebar tape to fit the left, front changer lever. It wouldn't hold a sufficiently outward position of the changer cage to run the big chainwheel with the smaller rear cogs. The indexing ratchet wheel in the lever was probably knackered. Works fine now with the new lever and cable. I had been putting the job off to use the new lever only as a spare if the older one broke. Had the trike up on the workstand to check the indexing. Seems okay now. Cleaned and then polished the whole trike with a rag, followed by maroon Scotch-Brite, while I was at it. The lacquered joints are getting rather dark but do not readily succumb to Scotch-Brite fiber. If I remove the lacquer I will have to regularly maintain the joints to keep them clean.Just in case anyone [like me] is daft enough to use brake noodles in their gear cable runs I'm now warning against the practice. The nose of the alloy cone crumbles over time where it fits in the flat based, downtube, adjuster socket and this greatly increases friction. I've gone back to using genuine Campag gear cable 'outers' from the lever right down to the front downtube adjusters. The shiny noodles looked nicely "techy" but were just not suitable for the job. On brakes they seem fine. Probably because there is so much extra leverage compared with gears. Filing the conical noodle nose off might have worked too. In case you haven't a clue what I'm talking about just do an image search for "brake noodle" and all will be revealed. Three noodles appear in the old image above. They are usually used to form the sharp curve for side entry brake cables but seemed ideal for sharply "bending" gear cable runs too. In actual practice, they were not.
Click on any image for an enlargement.
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