27th July 2015 Not a well boy!

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Monday 27th 56F, 13C, overcast and windy with showers or rain forecast all day.

I liked the similarities between the jumble of bales and the clouds.

After a short, but wobbly walk, all plans for today were put on hold. It started with vertigo and tinnitus and ended up with vomiting, feeling hot and cold, then sleeping for several hours. I have been deaf in one ear with severe tinnitus for over a week but the warm olive oil drops treatment didn't help. Whether the ear and food poisoning symptoms are connected I have no idea. Google says the symptoms of an inner ear infection are very similar to mine. Late afternoon and I am still weak and wobbly now with no desire to eat. Fortunately my wife was not unwell so that should rule out anything we ate. A dreadful day, sleeping when I wasn't nauseous, suffering from dizziness or actually throwing up. I have only eaten one round of toast all day. Another rest day in every sense of the word.

Tuesday 28th 62F, 17C, light wind, cloudy with bright moments. Showers forecast for most of the day. Despite sleeping for most of yesterday I managed to stay in bed until 5am. I didn't dare to eat any muesli but had a banana at 6am with a little water. Which thankfully stayed down. Splitting headache and feeling much worse so went back to bed at 7am and slept for another couple of hours. Feeling a bit better now. Going to try a piece of plain toast and cool, black tea.

An now for something completely different: I was just reading about the Gogoro:  Gogoro's first Smartscooters are now being delivered | The Verge It looks like a smart motor scooter but is battery driven. The compact batteries can be swapped in seconds and exchanged at a chain of outlets for a fixed premium of about £20 equivalent per month regardless of the number consumed. The scooter will cost just over £2000 initially, so probably just within electric bicycle target audience. Some electric bikes and very heavy "mobility" trikes cost about the same or even more. The Gogoro leaves them all for dead with its incredibly sophisticated electronics, range and speed. It adapts to maximise performance for its rider but also feeds information back to base for assessment of use and popular routes, in the mega-cities it is intended for. 10 million-plus inhabitants. Analysis of the mass data holds all sorts of useful city planning and traffic information. They do much the same sort of thing in analysing mobile phone traffic I believe.

It is hoped smart scooters will become an alternative, private, but still, mass transport vehicle. The first examples are just being released in Taipei. Hopefully the battery technology and rental-exchange method will rub off on bikes [and trikes] if they ever reach the West. Rather oddly it cannot be recharged at home or at work.

If it rids our own roads of the stinking and ridiculously slow, but noisy, 2-stroke scooters it will all have been worthwhile. Ordinary motor scooters can be bought for well under £1000 equiv. Which means that the smart electric scooters will need to offer something extra for the typically youthful [and probably impoverished] owner. Reliability might help the Gogoro cause. As will not having to mix 2-stroke fuel and smell like a petrol station.

On a  much smaller scale: My replacement battery for the Ventus GPS G730 dongle has just arrived. I just need to solder the leads and off we go. Well, perhaps, not today. I have really missed my GPS recording of my routes. Particularly the longer rides, of course. I am often amazed how poorly I understand the exact direction I take on my routes. Normally I use my previous experience of the area and the sun [when visible!] but I often waste time taking an indirect road or lane. Usually due to a lack of village name recognition and/or poor signposting. My longest routes have all tended to lengthen beyond that planned due to my poor sense of exact direction beyond my usual riding territory. I once drove half the length of Wales in completely the wrong direction while [hopefully] returning from holiday there. Deja vu, anybody?

I do carry some road maps, for absolute emergencies, but this would obviously need me to stop to get them out of the saddlebag. Firstly, I hate stopping and secondly I would need reading glasses to be able to read the village names. I tried making a list of villages from the route finders on the free online mapping services. But I would always miss an unmarked turn or some other navigational disaster. I always return safely home eventually. Just never not usually by the most direct route. I suppose that if I really cared I would be more serous about it. Or at least learn from my mistakes. Rain is hardly ever an issue on my more distant rides, so there is never any need for a bee-line home to avoid hypothermia. At least, not yet.

No doubt 'live' GPS, on a screen large enough to read without a magnifying glass, will arrive eventually. Hopefully with a touch screen to drag or swipe for greater magnification. A nice heads-up display in a smart, helmet visor? Now all it needs is for it to become cheap enough to satisfy my usual skinflint mentality before I lose my mentality altogether. So, basically, it is a technological race against time.

I should be grateful that I don't need prescription lenses for distance any more. Having worn glasses for literally decades, tricycling every day [in cheapo, supermarket, cycling sunglasses] fixed my distance vision within a year. However, lack of accommodation [natural stiffening of the eye lenses] is the real bugbear of old age. I now need two pairs of reading glasses. One weaker pair for the computer and another pair for reading the tiny print "they" plaster all over everything these days. Just because they can nano-print, product details doesn't mean they should! Don't even get me started on bread wrapper dating labels! I wouldn't mind but I'm allergic to cheap plastic glasses!

But enough about me: I hear Sky bosses are upset at the way their riders were abused during the tour de wotsit. Easily fixed: Just tell the French mental hospitals not to hand out free bus passes to their patients during le tour. What about drones with air-to-ground missiles to take out the spitters and obscene arm wavers? Where to draw the line? Anybody running alongside the riders makes them fair game in my book. If they haven't run the entire length of the day's stage, just to reach that spot, they really aren't worthy of competing on foot. Anybody wearing fancy dress? Definitely anybody more than two stones over a healthy body weight who pretends to jump up and down. [Reducing the allowable margin on an annual basis would thin the ranks nicely.] Anybody not clapping respectfully? Anybody with their Børøx in a g-string! Motorbikes running over riders. Cars pushing riders over barbed wire fences. The list is endless and [should be] so unnecessary.

Froome seems like such a nice guy. But, if he is ever found guilty of illegal doping he should be strung up by the Børrøx from the finishing line arch on a mountain top finish! Just as a warning to others. Like the Italian 'Giro' team with two doping strikes in one year. Plonkers!

Wednesday 29th 56F, 13C, bright and breezy. Risk of showers for the next two days and rather windy later. I woke very early but am feeling much better today. Yesterday I soldered the new Li-on battery to the GPS dongle using my best micro-surgery, lack of skill and a very small bit in the Weller iron. Now on battery test, the dongle has been running [naked] for over 12 hours. It is supposed to stop when stationary so must have scribbled imaginary routes all over the world map by now! It had, but only local. I had 17 hours out of a short charge on the new battery. So it can't be very old stock. It's a shame they don't date them. The originals, in the GPS dongles, weren't dated either. It looks as if a new model of the dongle is available from Canmore with silver details on the case. The GT-730-FL if memory serves.

Brooks has sent a heads-up mail on some new and old promotional videos. Well worth viewing most of them: Though the "retro" bike shop assistant really ought to be filthy. Nobody would be allowed to look that clean for more than five minutes. Cleanliness meant a skiver! Or the bosses son. There were no biological washing powders or miraculous hand cleaners back then. When I were a lad... I used to use Vim and Fairy washing up liquid with a scrubbing brush to clean my hands after a bout of "mechanicals." The mixture was probably toxic given the off-gassing of chlorine! I'm still waiting for the oil-less plastic chain after more than half a century! All they can come up with is fat, cogged belts. I'd like to seem them manage an 11 speeds cassette and a triple up front! 

http://brooksengland.us1.list-manage.com/cinema/click?

Still too weak and wobbly to go for a ride. It was hard enough work shopping briefly in the car for the absolute essentials.

Thursday 30th 61F, 16C, very humid [84%!] rather overcast with dark clouds and rumbles of thunder. Which later turned out to be fighters practising WW3 at high altitude. Showers and wind forecast but nothing yet. Just an hour's walk to check on the coot family and that the village was still there. The verges were laden with thousands of dead, dying and battling slugs. A revolting sight at the best of times.

Still not 100% recovered for triking. Weak, sweaty and head-achy sums it up. Normal services are resumed after the Danish annual holidays.  It started raining so I stopped to put on my jacket. Only for it to immediately stop raining again. I'm never sure whether to be grateful it has stopped or miffed for causing a false alarm. The headwind had picked up too. Though it didn't seem to make so much of an impression on the young chap who overtook me. Only 10 miles but at least I'm back on the road.

Friday 31st 57F, 14C, cool, windy, overcast and light showery. Short walk for some fresh air. Still suffering from vertigo, headaches and tiredness. Have made an appointment to have my blocked ears syringed next week. No ride today.

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25th July 2015 Regaling with gales.

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Saturday 25th 62-64F, 17-18C, gales with very heavy rain. The forecast was exactly right as we were woken at 5.30am by thunder and torrential rain. It was precisely this forecast which had sent me for a decent ride yesterday. Knowing that there would be very little chance of a ride today. There is a pause around lunchtime but much more is due later. I missed my chance as it began to pour just as I finally made the decision to go out under darkening skies. Tomorrow holds greater promise after forecasting an earlier wash-out.[sic]

I'm calling this one: "Inarticulate aliens first attempt at scribbling crop circles in Danish." Too pretentious? Well, I am a tricycle artiste!  ;ø]

Sunday 26th 55-61F, 13-16C, windy and overcast. Possible showers with winds gusting to 35mph later. A blustery walk, admiring the forces of nature, after the storm. The roadside trees were flailing as I was passed by a peloton of some twenty-odd, keen clubmen cheating by riding fast with the wind. Then a Norton and BSA twins cheating by riding the opposite way, into the wind, assisted by large engines. I noticed that the BSA rider had a very long plait. So he [or she] must have at least one close [and very patient] friend.

There were countless slugs washed out of the landscape by yesterday's heavy rains. It is difficult to be sure whether the crop damage was done by down-draughts, or rather, down-blasts in this case. Or the sheer quantity of water falling from the sky. Other bits of Denmark got a bit "soggy" but it wasn't too bad, here, for most of the day. 18mm/ 3/4" in a half an hour cloudburst was recorded just north of us. It is odd how the stiffest crops suffer the worst storm damage. It hardly moves in the wind but gets battered flat just the same. While the softer stuff, which wafts in waves to every breeze, survives unscathed.

The crosswind was strong at the start of my ride, with fierce gusts, but not too much of a problem. A roadside tree from an elderly avenue of Hornbeam had snapped mid-trunk. Probably over two feet in diameter at that point but likely due to rot.  Passing gaps in high hedges and between buildings with a crosswind is always a bit of a worry with overtaking traffic limiting elbow room.

Our hero [moi] "rescued" a large frog in a supermarket car park. I came out of the shop to find the frog sitting under the back axle of my trike! Presumably it stretched its legs while it was tipping down yesterday or overnight.  After several attempts to contain its huge leaps I finally caught it in an empty carrier bag and carried it straight to the boundary fence. Where I spotted a pond and released "froggy" to find its own way back down the bank. No doubt he/she/it is still exploring the car park. I was going to ask him if he was "Edible" but thought better of it.

A tailwind pushed my speed up to 28mph on one descent but I still couldn't go any faster despite the tri-bars. Better than the 26mph last time though with a much lighter tailwind. I shopped in three villages before finishing off the last leg on the tri-bars, again, to maintain my speed straight into the wind. Well loaded today but still only 17 miles.

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23rd July 2015 A goodly wodge of miles.

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Thursday 23rd 63-68F, 17-20C, quite windy with lots of bright, sunny periods. Just a short walk around the village today to find the door was open to the village church. So I had my first glimpse inside in the nearly two decades of my invasion of Denmark. Had a chat with a roadside home owner about his outbreak of Japanese Knotweed. He was unaware of its name nor how difficult it was to eradicate. The young Coots are still doing well on several local ponds. Harvesting has just begun in earnest. There are lots of different grain crops in the fields this year. The land changes dramatically after harvesting. Lost views can reappear once the extra meter of vegetation has been removed from the low, undulating landscape.

Rode away after lunch buffeted by a strong crosswind in bright sunshine. Once I had finished shopping in the first village I headed across country to the next. Lots of mostly elderly, well laden cyclists going the opposite way. Presumably an organised tour which had caused them to get strung out over several miles. Some waved, others grinned or shouted a greeting. Two more villages later and I had to fight the wind to get home. Several buzzards were foraging in the newly harvested fields. They seemed quite  unperturbed by the racket and huge clouds of dust being made by the harvester and accompanying grain collecting tractors. Yet, the moment I passed on the nearby lanes they took off and circled. Tricyclists must get a bad press in bird of prey circles. Only 26 miles.

Friday 24th 63-69F, 17-21C, light winds with sunny periods. A good excuse for a ride. So I set off at about 10am suitably fortified with marmalade on toast and milky coffee. Going well to start with despite a crosswind. I was cruising at about 18-20mph and nipped up to 23-24mph to overtake another long gaggle of organised tourists. I kept the sun ahead on my right and just kept going until well above Fåborg. I passed a newly mown field with the hay still lying just as a whirlwind lifted handfuls of stuff high into the air. It slowly crossed the entire field, as I rode along. Much to the surprise of a buzzard which must have been standing in the field before being so rudely disturbed. It took off and mewed all the way to the nearest copse to recover its composure.

I continued on through the undulating forest and then, quite unintentionally, down towards Korinth. Where I was slowly picked up by a trio of club persons on a training ride going at about 18mph. They ignored my greeting as they passed so I tacked on the back for few effortless miles. They turned off early so I had to climb through Korinth unaided. So I did most of it out of the saddle just because I could.

Then on to Katterød, Pejrup  and Diernæs. [Not necessarily in that order.] I stopped at the first roadside bench of the day to enjoy a sandwich and banana in burning sunshine at Pejrup. Before taking a small road down to the wooded coast and through the impressive sanatorium buildings. After that I looped back up to the main road to Fåborg where I dropped down onto the tri-bars to speed the long descent into town. The white, lane-demarcation lines are breaking up badly so it was rather bumpy at times!

On the way to Horne, where there is a ferry to Germany, several black "Gestapo" cars went past. So rumours about Merkel dictating tewrms to Greece about may have been true after all. There were also quite a number of British motorcycles about during the day. Always a pleasure to hear their unique sounds amid flurries of memories of my teenage years. I paused at a very busy marina to enjoy my second, and last, mature cheddar sandwich and another box of pure apple juice. A red helicopter came inland [noisily] and landed in the grounds behind the posh restaurant.

The long climb up from Falsled to Jordløse was completely spoilt for me, yet again, by the ridiculously rough surface of the marked-off cycling assault "coarse." There are long stretches where somebody couldn't be arsed to grind the white lines away prior to a very thin resurfacing job. Then the new dashed lines were relaid over the top, but out of phase with the [Roman?] originals. The lack of adhesion over the former white dashed lines means that cyclists must employ a fully suspended mountain bike with 4" tyres to make any serious progress. It's fine when one can safely use the perfect [billiard table] tarmac of the traffic lanes but the roughness of the "cycle lanes" [and I do use the term loosely] would have hindered even Hannibal. I seriously doubt that his elephants would have been remotely impressed with this example of bronze-age, Danish roadworks either. Cyclists are the new black.

The Google Street View image [above] from 2010 shows only a very short stretch of the near, 3 mile, long, snaking climb. The lower, and much rougher half of which, lies is in the forest has deteriorated rapidly since Google deigned to make the climb. Being the main, south coast road, the traffic is usually fairly continuous in both directions. Most drivers are completely ignoring the 60kph/40mph speed limit and rarely miss a chance to cut any corner. So the chance of cyclists escaping to the excellent traffic road surface is remote for most of the 75m -250' gain in altitude. Remind me not to use this stretch for any "Everesting" attempts! Not that I'd live long enough to ever finish the ride.

The Carradice Junior saddlebag proved that it has easily enough capacity, for a day out, but that the lid straps are stupidly short. The canvas lid is still safely covering the contents when the straps are several inches short of reaching their buckles. The usual nylon "sphincter" with tension cord keeps everything [large] safely contained but there is absolutely no way for the straps to meet. Nobody at Carradice has ever used a Junior in anger, apparently. Perhaps there is genuine Carradice bailing twine available, in a choice of luxury tan or traditional white. Just for those special moments when you need to hold the lid shut when the Junior is full to the brim, but still "two straps short of a buckle." There's a free, catchy logo for Carradice in there somewhere. ;ø]]

As can be seen in the image above I tried a crude, PVC plumbing pipe spacer with a toe-strap around the seat pillar for the first time today. [see image below] But the Junior still swung noisily to my cadence and the buckle wanted to wear out my shorts however it was "dressed". This arrangement really needs some further thought. Perhaps a zip tie with the "buckle" tight against the bag? Or longer fixing bolts for the minimalist rack and some extra spacers? I notice the holes in the bag material, made at the factory for the supporting straps, are badly frayed now. Which is very odd considering how little use the Junior has had. Strictly retained for fine weather and longer rides. Had Carradice downgraded their fabric for my Junior? I have a really ancient example which is still in remarkably fine nick.

My arms were quite red afterwards, from all the sunshine, despite the thick layer 50SPF gunk I plastered on before leaving. I did a fair bit of climbing out of the saddle today. Though not because I was saddle sore for a change. The Brooks B17 'Special' seems to be behaving itself at the moment. Though I resent the slightly tipped up nose angle purely for aesthetic reasons. Shame the Cambium was such complete, and utter crap, comfort wise. It just goes to show that width and Brooks rail springing aren't everything. Today I remained quite strong to the end for 67 miles total. Only consumed one completely emptied bottle of water plus two small boxes of apple. Not a single photograph taken all day, again. Tut-tut.

Meanwhile, in the t de f  [with deliberate use of the lower case to show due respect] the raving lunatics in the scum scrum still think it's all about them. Spitting and obscene gestures at Froome by these escaped lunatics? Whatever next? Real sportsmanship?  No chance. This is the t de france after all. Nibali attacked the moment he saw Froome had a serious mechanical problem. Then denied his complete lack of sportsmanship just to prove something, or other, to his sponsors, on the last climb. Poor eyesight, perhaps? The overhead cameras clearly showed him double-checking to ensure Froome was stopping for vital repairs when a stone jammed between his rear brake and the tire. No doubt a short-sighted attempt by the Sky wind tunnel boffins to reduce drag?

Froome actually climbed out of the saddle to prove he can ride a bike with great style as well as great speed. Perhaps something to look forward to next year? That, and a new, low drag, colour-coordinated, spit screen, complete with Sky logo? I suppose it would be too much to ask for all the riders to compulsorily wear knuckle dusters? Thought so. Contador could give Froome lessons in hitting lunatics while simultaneously climbing out of the saddle. Cycling mitts do offer some slight [and unintentional] protection for the knuckles. Though it would be a great shame if the riders injured themselves fending off yet more of the deranged scum scrum. I'd blame the parents. If they actually owned one...

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