PlanetMike

Weeds

2011-04-18T01:07:00.001+01:00

We didn't make it to the allotment last weekend, and as a result the plot was covered in weeds again, so I spent half an hour weeding while the kids played with water.

Having emptied the trug'o'weeds into the compost heap and dug out some more couch grass I got on with planting out the broad beans which were too small last time. The beans that are in seems to have been nibbled by insects, nothing too drastic and looking around neighbouring plots have the same problem.

A few fairly leggy Broccoli plants went in too, in the area where I'd planted parsnips which didn't germinate. These will probably be replaced by some of the better ones growing in the greenhouse, I'm not sure what made me plant them other than not wanting to waste seedlings...

Leeks are up now, really tiny compared to the seedlings I have growing in the greenhouse. Planting seeds too early was not such a good idea. I should just get away with the Borlotti beams and sweetcorn in the greenhouse, but next year I need to set up a planting calendar.

No showing from the spuds yet. Hopefully I didn't under-chit them.

Just before leaving I weedkilled pretty much all the non-cultivated parts of the plot to keep weeds down and prepare for digging in a week or so when I'm on holiday.

At home, sowing loads of seeds-mainly flowers. I'm using up old packs that are past their plant-by date, putting several seeds into each pot to see if I get any results.

Seeds

2011-04-07T20:08:00.001+01:00

Planted courgettes and pumpkins in the greenhouse.

First spuds are in

2011-04-04T22:27:00.001+01:00

The early spuds went in on Saturday, along with some broad beans. The bed they went into was double dug and manured about a month ago, then covered in plastic while the spuds chitted. I was expecting it to be pretty dry, but the earth was very damp so I forked over the row before planting and didn't bother raking. Three kilos of Rocket earlies did two and a half rows spuds about a foot apart, just dropped into a troweled hole about six inches deep.

Broad beans carried on at the end of the half row. I don't know if beans should share a bed with potatoes but planting is driven by availability of space so this year it'll all go where there is space avaiable when seedlings are ready to come out of the greenhouse. There are another dozen or so plants almost ready.

There were a few bits of couch grass growing from inch-long bits of root which I hadn't picked out while digging/forking. The allotment won't be seeing a rotovator until it's been hand dug to get the couch grass out!

The weedkiller has effective, leaving a swathe of death which marks the next bed to be dug. I'll nip down one evening and windmill some more; once the weeds are red the newly weedkilled bit can go under plastic till it gets dug.

Seeded the onion bed-need to hoe it next time. Dug some very deep rooted weeds out of the seedbed where my early sowings are not doing much.

Plenty of seedlings in the greenhouse: Borlotti beans and sweetcorn will need beds digging next month.

Next job:dig!

Slash and burn

2011-03-12T18:13:00.001Z

A couple of short stings on the plot. Friday was an inset day for the kids, so I took the day off and we went to the allotment in the morning. I dug out the small patch of raspberry canes while the kids dug holes and went to talk to Brian's chickens. After lunch Jess and I planted Borlotti beans, broccoli, marigolds, more tomatoes and chillis.
Back at the allotment today Jake and I burnt the raspberry canes.
Garlic leaves are slightly yellowing,
Some of the white onions are ok, not much sign of growth from the red onions or shallots. No signs of germination from the leeks or parsnips yet.

Forking ell

2011-03-07T00:45:00.001Z

Another afternoon spent digging couch grass out of the bed, though I now have a fully dug bed warming up under black polythene, waiting for beans later on. The garlic is growing well and the onions seem ok but they haven't really done too much. The leeks and parsnips which went in a fortnight ago haven't shown at all yet so I hope they didn't go in too early. The cloche over the leeks is pretty crap, it's sagged with the rain, I need to buy some proper cloches from ebay. The parsnip seeds are now tucked up under some fleece.

I am not an organic gardener. Roundup went on the remaining uncultivated bits at the top of the plot, including the path down the middle. This is my next bit to dig, hopefully starting on Friday unless I dig up the raspberries, much will depend on delivery of muck.

Other people's plots are really well dug over. This is not good when mine is still 75% weedscape. What will the neighbours think?

Tomatoes are germinating on the windowsill, no sign of chillis or broad beans yet. Rhubarb is doing really well.

The kids enjoyed themselves digging holes today, they'll be gutted when their 'craters' need to be filled in with muck for planting pumpkins.

Next jobs: score more free muck, dig,weed,dig, plant

First seeds in the ground

2011-02-20T19:59:00.001Z

It's probably a touch too early but today I finished off the seed bed and planted the first few rows of seeds. There are leeks under the cloches and a few rows of parsnip at the front of the bed. The kids had a go with their new child-sized fork and spade, Jess weeded her plot a little and raked it down, Jake dug holes. Little else was done, the second bed needs double digging to finish and forking over to remove couch grass roots and the parsnips could do with covering with a bit of fleece as it's still pretty cold. We met Martin from the plot next door, his large pile of muck was 60 quid delivered so I think I will be picking more up in Jon's trailer as that's a shedload of money for shite...

At home we planted a tray of tomatoes-yellow tumbling toms, red Sweet Millions (cherry), Moneymakers and Super Marmelades (beefsteaks), mainly for the greenhouse. I planted a tray of chillis too, so the invasion of the windowsills has finally begun. In the greenhouse Jake and I planted 50 odd broad beans for the allotment as the bed they're going into isn't ready yet.

Next job..digging. Must get the second bed ready for the broad beans within the next three weeks.

Another hard day at the allotment

2011-02-09T16:29:00.002Z

Double dug about half of the second bed, stripped out a few raspberries amd leveled the end of the first bed to become a seed bed.

I dug in all the compost we picked up last weekend so we're going to need another load, ideally delivered unless I can get hold of a larger trailer.
The garlic is coming up quite well and a few onions are sprouting too, first signs of new crops, exciting. We will be planting leeks in the new seed bed this weekend once we've been to Norcuts to buy the kids some child-size tools.

Last week's visit

2011-02-04T12:36:00.002Z

Jees and I went down on Saturday afternoon, planting red onions and shallots to fill the first bed. I also knocked up a very dubious compost heap out of three pallets. The heap is pretty badly constructed and will need rebuilding.

We were only there for an hour and a half, not really long enough to do much.

Allotment plans

2011-01-26T12:55:00.003Z

First stage- weed and dig over existing beds.

Not straying too far, just sorting out what is already there ready for planting.

Build compost bin from pallets.

Next stage- second bed at the front of the plot. Lots of weeds but some has been covered in polythene so should be ok. Want to have this done by the end of February, incorporating the leaf mould I already have at home.

Next- kids' plot- clear of weeds, prepare areas to plant some of Jake's tomatoes and some pumpkins. Kids can then sow flowers around pumpkins for a nice looking plot- try to choose companion flowers for the rest of the crops.

Weed strawberries, buy straw.

Clear area between kids' plot and blackberries for tomatoes.

Next- clear area between compost heap and raspberries for sweet corn this will become the soft fruit area next year.

By this time all the existing beds should be clear.

Plant next lot of crops
First bed- last 1/4 Not sure yet. Likely to be some potatoes but it hasn't been maured. Could also do some climbing beans put it's at the SE corner of the plot so they will shade other crops.

Second bed- Peas and broad beans, beans to dry.

Kids Bed- pumpkins and some tomatoes

Gap between raspberries and compost- sweetcorn.

Greenhouse
Tomato seedlings- start some now to raise in the greenhouse, more in late February/early March for outdoors. Also get some beef tomato seeds to grow in greenhouse, raised bed and allotment to see where works best.

Pumpkin seedlings

Peas in gutters.

Dried bean sedlings

Sweet pea
Marigolds

Chillis for greenhouse patio and raised beds.

Next allotment project
Remove the raspberry canes, gaining a bed.

Double digging is doubleplus hardwork

2011-01-23T22:39:00.002Z

Finished digging the first bed, first plantings, originally uploaded by mike1727.

I cheated by (deeply) forking over the first bit of the bed. That seemed to be ok at fishing out weeds but couch grass appeared like exploding spaghetti in the rest so deep digging was called for. Dig, fish out handful of roots, turn soil, pick out the bits you didn't see first time. Repeat till end of row.Fork bottom of trench.goto 10. One dustbin and two trugs of weeds, carpet amd crap later the top quarter of the bed is done. It's a bit higher than the rest but needs leveling so it will come out roughly flat.

I'm concerned that I've left some fragments of couch grass in there. Time will tell, I'll spot weed with fork or roundup later in the year if weeds come up.

Garlic and white onions in, reds and shallots to go in next weekend, leaving about one row for leeks later in the spring

Not sure about the rest of the bed yet. Too square for the amount of broad beans or peas I want to plant.

Down the plot

2011-01-23T22:22:00.001Z

first bed 3/4 done., originally uploaded by mike1727.

After two years on the waiting list I finally got am allotment. It's in a bit of a state, beds needs serious weeding and digging because I don't think it has been properly worked for a while. There are two raspberry thickets which need to come out cos they're in the way and pretty crap canes.
Apart from that it seems fine, soil ok but a bit stony so will need manure, probably in the autumn now.

I need a shed....

http://www.bikebiz.com/news/32796/Giant-store-opens-in-Radlett?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+bikebiz%2FiOZl+%28Bicycle+business+news+with+BikeBiz%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

2010-09-06T12:42:00.001+01:00

It ain't what you do

2010-05-17T12:18:00.003+01:00

I did the longest ride in a few years yesterday- 40 miles on the St Albans Rotary Charity ride, riding north from St Albans towards Hitchin. It wasn't a huge distance compared to what most club cyclists do every weekend but for someone more used to a 5 mile commute and a few 20 mile rides it was plenty! The ride went well, even though my average speed was a bit lower than what I was expecting. There were a couple of steep hils- I walked one just outside Preston but scraped up the other steep climbs, including a 1 in 10 just outside Kimpton which I was quite happy with. There were a few good downhills too, clocking 36.9 mph freewheeling down one of them. My power-to-weight (or more like my weight to power) ratio isn't exactly optimal for hills...The weather was kind - the forecast rain held off until after I'd finished, though it could have been a bit warmer.

There were plenty of people riding too, though most were doing the 10 or 20 mile version. Plenty of kids out there too, including one boy riding with his dad wearing Welwyn Wheelers kit- chapeux to the youg fella as he was keeping well ahead of me for the entire circuit. It would be nice to get my kids up to that level, I'll have to work on that one over the next few years.

It was good training for Ride for a Reason next month. You are sponsoring me on that, aren't you?...

Sponsor me

2010-05-14T12:59:00.003+01:00

Sponsor me, originally uploaded by mike1727.

In January 2008 I had a stroke.

Unlike the 2/3 of stroke sufferers who die or are left permanently disabled I recovered fully from the symptoms very quickly, regaining speech, movement and what passes for my normal mental functions within a few days and leaving hospital within a week.

Two years later I'm going to ride the Ride for a reason charity bike ride to rise money for the Stroke Association, a charity which provides funding for research into strokes and support for survivors and their carers.

Sponsor me. You know it makes sense- someday the person having a stroke could be you, or a close friend/relative.

Click on this link, give what you can. It's not (just) about the bike.
www.justgiving.com/fatty-on-a-bike

New bike coming

2010-05-02T12:17:00.001+01:00

Nice Hurdle, originally uploaded by OregonVelo.

Like a kid before Christmas

The insurance still hasn't some since my MTB was hit at the end of February- no apparent progress from anyone yet so I'm left in a situation where I have no 'proper' off road bike. The pub bike is just about off road capable but gears are limited and it's really heavy. Off-road lights are required too since my Vistalite batteries failed some time ago. To top it all I'm getting sick of using my road bike in the wet since the detachable mudguards are a bit of a pain in the ass and I want the expensive groupset to stay working for a long time.

All these things at a time when the bike to work benefit window is opening. Oh dear...So, a brief battle with conscience and I'm on the max voucher.

Bikery ensues. I don't want a mountain bike since there should be one (or a rebuild) coming sometime this summer when the insurance is sorted out. I want to be able to ride it on easy off-road, mostly when I'm with the kids- the farmer's track up to Heartwood forest and local hardpacked bridleways through Symmondshyde are really the sort of riding I'm thinking about. It needs decent full-length mudguards mounted on real eyelets and a rack. It has to be reasonably fast on the road. That makes it Hybrid vs Cyclocross...

Hybrids....hmm, there are a few around but most of the lighter ones like the Boardman look less than off-road capable.

'Crosser then!

A quick look around at my budget point (pretty much as low as possible given the fact I want to buy decent lights) reveals the Specialised Tricross triple as the bike for me. Nothing top-spec but it will take guards and racks- essential for the bike's winter commuting role.

Now..lights.. Hope springs eternal as a UK manufacturer with a good reputation and long-term spares support. The Hope vision 2 sits in my price band and will do just fine.

Halfords can source all of this for me, I just need to wait until the voucher arrives, should be within the next few weeks.

Result!

Went to see the bike at Rock and Road on Friday, looks excellent.

Please Mr Motorist Watch Out For Me

2010-03-08T12:41:00.002Z

Please Mr Motorist Watch Out For Me, originally uploaded by carltonreid.

I was hit by a van a couple of weeks ago. Riding home from work down Hatfield road, huge bang, sense of flying, ground impact. Shocked and bruised but otherwise ok- helmet cracked but the rucksack i was wearing protected me from road rash. Police and ambulance turned up, I went home in a police car. The police won't record the crash since I wasn't badly enough injured, despite the fact the driver overtook me in a no-overtaking area.

I'm ok now- though I was off work for 3 days with shock and bruising. Shock isn't a pleasant experience at all. The mountain bike is f*cked , the day after I spent time replacing the drivetrain to get it moving again...

The van's insurers have accepted liabilty and will pay, I'm going to claim for a personal injury too, but really I'd rather the whole thing hadn't happened.

BSO- bicycle shaped object

2009-11-05T21:22:00.002Z

Asda style bike assembly, originally uploaded by mike1727.

BBC TV consumer rights programme Watchdog has just run an article on assembling flatpack bikes bought from supermarkets for under £100. The article is fairly good, since the bikes are put together by normal, unbikeskilled people, just the sort of people who would mistakenly buy a cheap and nasty bike.

"All of our volunteers struggled with their instructions and the tools often seemed inadequate for the job. All five made crucial mistakes that left their bikes unsafe to ride..."Whether it was down to our cyclists and their assembly, or problems with the individual bikes we happened to buy, they all ended up with faults that only someone in the know would be able to put right."

There's a blog about BSOs here, here's a good article on the program in Bikeradar .

And here's the evidence in the wild- outside the Quadrant shops in Marshalswick.

2009-09-02T20:35:00.004+01:00

First, if there's one thing that pisses me off, it's shite riding of bikes around St Albans. The other day I was driving the kids into town, and as we drove up to the bridge next to the station this 20ish lad bimbles his way on to the road, riding between the yellow lines- ie in the gutter- but looking like he's going to peel off in any direction pretty soon. I clocked him, giving him a wide berth as I pass and join the queue at the traffic lights, keeping tabs in my mirrors. Sure enough he pulls out in front of another car then fires down the lane to jump the lights. Watching him as he goes up Victoria street he jumps the next set, then turns left down a one-way against the traffic.

People like this are the main reason reason bike riders get slagged off by drivers. This small(ish) group of stupid, risk taking, law breaking twats wind 'normal' people up so much that they see stupid roadsense as the average biker's skills. The result is that that those of us who do act as traffic get slagged off as roadscum by a large proportion of drivers and get agrro from the very aggressive few.

Next, retailing. This morning me and the kids went for a ride to meet my wife for lunch. I was riding the town bike since my mtb is still in bits and the townie needed air in the tubes especially the pancake front. I didn't have a pump on the bike and I didn't realise until we were on our way. No problem, plenty of time. We diverted, arriving at a garage to use their air line with limited success so we pushed on towards the triathlon shop on Hatfield road. They're bound to have a pump and probably have some HRMs for me to look at since my Polar has failed and I'm looking for a replacement some nice bikes to look at too, I definitely need some new shorts and I bet they've got some funky accessories to look at too. I have my card, I've just been paid. I'm impluse-buying retail fodder.

"Can I borrow your pump for a second please? I'm out on a ride with the kids and I don't have a pump"
"We don't have one to lend to people. We can sell you one"
Me- fx- looks flabbergasted
"People come in all the time to borrow a pump"
Me- fx- remains flabbergasted. Mutters about duty to the community, could charge people £1 for charity to use a pump. Leaves shop. Rides carefully for the rest of the day before topping up at home.

Doesn't this shop realise the value of good customer relations? A quick go on a track pump isn't really much of a hassle, after all. You could buy one for buttons and chain it to a wall inside if you think it will get nicked. Yes, I appreciate that you're a business and you'd like to sell pumps and being a triathlon shop you probably don't give a crap about a fat guy on a £300 hybrid with his kids or a scruffy teens from a few streets down or anyone else who just wants to put some air in a tyre. I would've spent £40+ pretty much without any sales talk. That kid you turn away could grow up into someone who would buy a bike from you in five years time, that older person could recommend you to a grandchild.

Fuck you, Triathlon Zone. Enjoy your karma.

cracked rim

2009-07-08T17:00:00.001+01:00

cracked rim, originally uploaded by mike1727.

Today's design flip-flop

2009-03-25T13:02:00.001Z

Today's design flip-flop, originally uploaded by mike1727.

Mark Cavendish wins Milano San Remo

2009-03-23T13:19:00.001Z

Mark Cavendish, originally uploaded by pedale.forchetta.

All hail the new Mario Cippollini. Hopefull Mario 2 will carry on winning classics, even those which require some climbing.

Talent, and attitude:

At 23 he is the youngest winner of Milan-San Remo since the legendary Eddie Merckx. "It's the best day of my life," Cavendish said. "When you win a great one-day race like Milan-San Remo you've proved you're a great rider."

It was another amazing performance by the Brit who had said last week that he was only going to Italy to learn about the race. But when the lead group failed to split over the last two climbs his thoughts must have turned to victory.

Cavendish's win is the second ever for a Brit in Milan-San Remo after Tom Simpson won in 1964. It is Cavendish's 34th professional win of his career.

Despite spats with the track team, he's racing in the Madison at the worlds next week.

At home, not all is rosy. The Bikeline Two day event was stopped for 'white line crossing'- ie racers moving onto the other side of the road, as is pretty much demanded at that level of racing.

If we're going to come up with winners on the road as well as the track we need to start to pull together more road racing at home- this means investing in rolling closing roads for bike races.

Let's hope the increase in track/tt talent isn't at the expense of road, this was the way of much division in the past, also driven by at least a fear of police action.

because, just because

2009-01-29T13:50:00.001Z

P1000088, originally uploaded by ANNYIA.

Making a Beach Cairn

2009-01-26T13:35:00.001Z

Making a Beach Cairn
Originally uploaded by escher1

'How to' video.

19/02/2009 Then and now

2009-01-19T14:44:00.001Z

19/02/2009 Prescribed, originally uploaded by mike1727.

Imagine the feeling of suddenly getting heavier, falling to the floor, looking up at your family, unable to speak or make yourself understood. That's a stroke. That was me, a year ago.

Luckily, it was a small stroke and there are no lasting effects- a day later I was talking again, a year later I'm fine. My recovery is something which I am very, very grateful for. That and the streadfast support of my immediate family, notably my wife who went through a huge strain in the first few days.

So folks, don't smoke, excercise regularly, drink responsibly and keep an eye on your diet. All these things reduce the risk of strokes considerably.

That's all.

And, when you have a little money to spare, put it here

What's on my new phone^H^H^H G1

2009-01-16T12:26:00.015Z

The mental synchromesh has more or less stopped working in the transition from N95 to G1. It's quite a change in OS, display and form factor and a jump from a fairly well established phone to a new 'device'which still has some teething trouble.

Here's a few thoughts based on my first week of use:

The G1 is a great web device. Browsing is excellent: it's easy to browse more 'full' web pages instead of PDA/smartphone versions now that page navigation and display is much easier. There are a few pages which don't really work but most of what I see is fine. Missing, however, are most of the add-ins like flash. Hopefully these will turn up pretty soon either as applications or as add-ins to the OS.

Google apps work well- I was using mail, reader and iGoogle on the N95, but now I also use contacts and I'm going to look at calendar. Relying on a single vendor for all my personal stuff is a little dubious but the disadvantages are outweighed by the convenience of having everything available via phone or pc. Maps is excellent too, I'm just waiting for google to launch streetview in the UK.

Beyond the browser, there's a market full of apps to download, currently for free. Some are good, some don't work or are really crap. Time and evolution will tell which survive but the combination of cheap, easily accessibly applications should drive usage.

I'm currently running:

Meebo- looks a good IM client but seems to have difficulties and crashes when moving between 2g and 3g. I'll try it out once I've sorted out wifi at home.

Weather channel weather report. Seems ok, can pick up location using GPS. It will be interesting to see how this compares with a shortcut to the BBC weather forecast in the browser which I would usually use. Accuweather looks good too- same sort of content.

Twidroid- Twitter client, includes location awareness. Seems to work well, new twitter indications appear in the status bar. Other twitter clients are available too.

Sky Map- map of the sky showing positions of stars, constellations. Location aware and links with the position sensors so that you see the star layour in the direction you're pointing the phone. I like this app, having been looking for an easy to use star map for a while.

StreamFurious- Good streamer for shoutcast. A bit short of other radio stations though.

last FM- a good looking client which doesn't work very well. Nice idea, hope the client gets sorted out soon as I'll use it lots.

Lunar phases: moon calendar showing phases of the moon, because I want to take photos of the moon.

Pixelpipe- uploader for Flickr, blogs etc. Still working to get this installed and working properly but it looks good.

Toggle GPS/WiFi/Bluetooth- simple on/off switches for bettery-eating applications.

Waiting in the wings to see if they're any good:

Mymaps editor- edits google maps

Cellfinder- shows map of your location and the cell you're connected to. Usful for cellular geeks.

Photostream/PicPush - uploader for Flickr.

Wheeler- bike ride trip recorder. Not as good as Nokia's sportstracker.

On the down-side:

Battery life is awful

g1 doesn't receive quite as well as the N95.

Browser and app activity when shifting between 2G and 3G is variable.

Bluetoth support is pretty crap, I couldn't connect the G1 to my N95 or send files to/from the g1 to my laptop.

On the severe downside:

The g1's camera is, well, shite. 3MP, no zoom or flash. It's so bad that I'm currently not using it and am still carrying my N95 just to take pictures. Fail, fail, fail in design spec here, even low end nokia cameras are better than this.

Overall it's a good start for Android, shame about HTC's build of the phone but other manufacturers will do a better job.

The G1 isn't a phone for Flickr'ing, sadly. Now, if LG broughy out an Android Renoir, that would be a flickr phone.

Woolworths Christmas Eve 2008

2008-12-29T20:04:00.001Z

Woolworths Christmas Eve 2008, originally uploaded by mike1727.

Bike recycling

2008-11-25T16:43:00.001Z

Superposition, originally uploaded by annyia.

I'm looking for a hack bike for the winter since I don't have a bike which takes mudguards. I have little or no money to spend on this..

Ideally I'd like to build up or removate an old bike, preferably at a bike recycling scheme. Does anyone know if there are any in Hertfordshire?

Alternatively if you've got a small framed road bike to give away/sell very cheaply please get in touch.

St Albans Cycle Campaign public meeting

2008-11-25T13:28:00.001Z

stacc meeting flier, originally uploaded by mike1727.

Come along and see what's heppening in bike campaigning in St Albans. Mulled wine and mince pies usually end up being served.

You don't have to be a member to come, just turn up.

Sports tracker mobile interface: GPS

2008-11-18T12:50:00.003Z

Sports tracker mobile interface: GPS, originally uploaded by mike1727.

If you've got a Nokia N series phone with a GPS (or, I think, any S60 3rd edition phone with a GPS) you should give this a try. The app is free from Nokia.
The app calculates speed on the fly and maps it against distance travelled and workout time- it does the same for alititude too. You can then upload this data to the Nokia site where it's mapped, or export in a number of formats, including google earth. Which is nice, or will be when I get round to doing it. If you take photos you can upload them to the Nokia site too, and you can plot your progress to the site live if you want.

I map routes on GIS sometimes.

I've been using the app for a couple of months now and it's generally pretty good. It does miss a few data points- one commute route varies by up to half a mile sometimes, and speed and altitude sometime go titsup too.

Bicycling idioms: Pedalling in semolina

2008-10-31T12:30:00.001Z

"Pédaler dans la semoule." from Clocolate and zucchini:

The literal translation is "pedaling in semolina," and it means being entangled in a thorny situation, with the added notion that every effort made to get out of it is fruitless, or makes things worse. In short, being confused and overwhelmed, or being in over one's head.

Drunken cabbie guilty of killing cyclist (From St Albans & Harpenden Review)

2008-10-10T12:39:00.001+01:00

Justice, of a kind- if a seven year sentence, presumably reduced for parole, compensates for killing someone.

Drunken cabbie guilty of killing cyclist (From St Albans & Harpenden Review)

A DRUNKEN taxi driver who killed a cyclist two hours after telling a work colleague he was ‘totally smashed’ has been jailed for seven years.

Simon Gatier, 41, of Salisbury Gardens, Welwyn Garden City, was found guilty of causing the death of Neil Smith by careless driving while under the influence of drink or drugs. St Albans Crown Court heard how on November 30 last year Gatier fled the accident scene, leaving three teenage boys to comfort the 43-year-old victim, who lived in Welwyn Garden City and worked at St Albans City Hospital.

Gatier, who has a previous conviction for drink-driving, lay low for three days before handing himself into police.

Judge John Plumstead said that by driving off Gatier had “behaved in a callous way and showed no remorse.”

<..>

“He was highly thought of at St Albans hospital and they have named a corner of a garden there after him. He was sober and was smashed into as he went along the yellow lines of the road - dressed as brightly as he could be with his lights on.”

The judge went on to describe Gatier as a "thoughtless, cowardly man who was driving too quickly" in the circumstances of a wet road at night.

First land access at Sandridge forest

2008-10-10T12:28:00.004+01:00

Good news about land access in the soon-to-be-planted foreast at Sandridge.

Now what's needed are some more rights of way to ride on, I'm assuming pedestrians can access all of the new area. It's about time someone talked to the Woodland Trust about MTB access...

Website

Turbo training season has begun

2008-10-07T20:32:00.001+01:00

Turbo training in front of the TV, originally uploaded by mike1727.

Autumn's here and with it the waning of the light, so evening rides are going out of the window, to be replaced by nights in front of the TV..

I'm aiming to increase my daily commute riding up to about 1 hour 30 3 days a week using the turbo for 50ish minutes in the evening, trying to find a beginner's training guide and stick to it.

Boredom is the issue on a turbo so I'm loading up my phone with podcasts- Podrunner is good music with podcasts at certain BPMs and intervals too. My own intervals can wait for a bit. Last night's training left me with tirde legs today.

citycycling .how to... build a useable bike path

2008-09-19T13:22:00.000+01:00

citycycling .how to... build a useable bike path

The first few paragraphs look normal, read the rest. An admirable look at designing bike lanes from the good peeps at ctycycling.

"In considering the requirements surrounding the installation of cycle paths and cyclane lanes this official guide has been produced as an aid to the process to ensure that best practice is used in all such installations. And when constructing such traffic safety measures it must always be kept in mind the over-riding principle involved: the impact on other road users and pedestrians must be considered and take priority.
The first thing to consider is whether a particular road requires the measures to be implemented. Where a road is very busy this clearly represents a danger to the cyclist and a dashed line to the side of the road will increase their safety level by a level of 56%. The width of the road must be looked at in determining the viability of this. If the road is very wide, and already accommodates cyclists, this shows that the route will be used by lots of cyclists and so the cycle lane is desirable."

coming to the winning line...Nicole Cooke takes GOLD!!!

2008-08-10T21:02:00.001+01:00

coming to the winning line...Nicole Cooke takes GOLD!!!, originally uploaded by FreyaB.

First gold- cycling!

BBC coverage here

Trees on the horizon

2008-07-29T13:00:00.002+01:00

tree, sunbeams, originally uploaded by mike1727.

The Woodland Trust is raising £8.5 million to plant and maintain Britain's largest first of native trees in Sandridge, just up the road from home. It's a great scheme- even if the appeal is a bit late- and will link up many areas of established woodland. I ride through the area pretty much every day, it'll be great to see it develop, and possibly get involved in some of the planting too- we've got an oak tree growing in the garden with nowhere else to go..

Access rights for the public are going to be essential. There are some of rights of way around but few linked up bridleways, so now's the chance to get in and try to get some good routes for all users.

Sky to sponsor British Cycling

2008-07-24T12:27:00.002+01:00

Despite Cavendish's headlinable sucess on the Tour (and shortly at the Olympics), along with medal winning from the British Cycling team at the worlds (and shortly at the Olympics..) cycling doesn't the mainstream press coverage it deserves in the UK. That's probably something do do with it being UK sportspeople competing in a non-football event.

As of today, Sky became the 'Principal Partner' for British cycling, from Olympics to the grass roots in all disiplines. Sky is also sponsoring the London "Freewheel' event on September 21st- a mass ride from 38,000 people on closed roads in the centre of London.

Media sponsorship is good news when seen against the wider scene of Sustrans connect2 scheme providing high profile cycing facilities, ongoing resurgence of the Tour of Britain (in London 7th September), infrstructure building in Cycle Demonstration Towns and a stack of other activities going on.

Britishcycling.org.uk says:

"Every level of the sport is set to benefit from the investment, from the Elite Team of World, Olympic and Paralympic cyclists to British Cycling’s talent development programmes and grass-roots initiatives in schools and local communities. The partnership will cover all forms of the competitive sport from BMX to track cycling and road racing, with the aim of bringing on the elite teams and accelerating the development of emerging talent.

The partnership also aims to build on Britain’s love of cycling with participation programmes in schools, youth clubs and the wider community to encourage everyone to get cycling. In addition to its financial investment, Sky will use its marketing expertise and relationships with one in three families across the UK to help British Cycling to encourage participation in cycling for sport and leisure among people of all ages and abilities. "

..he continues

2008-07-18T20:32:00.003+01:00

Cavendish takes stage 13.
Number 4.

It's uphill towards the Alps tomorrow, so a cav win is pretty unlikely. Will he hold on through the Alps in order to to go for the fifth win on the Champs Elysee?

WIll he ride the tour of Britain in September?

ALLEZ LE ROSBIF!

2008-07-17T20:03:00.001+01:00

TDF-2008-FRA-CYCLING-SPRINT, originally uploaded by mpmcgaughey.

Impossible to say anything else- go Cav go!

Allez!

2008-07-12T20:56:00.001+01:00

Mark Cavendish, originally uploaded by SPVW.

WTF?
A Brit with a second stage?

I didn't see it, and I missed watching the highlights, though I'll be watching then later.

But, wft? This isn't meant to happen. Not in road cycling.

GO CAV! (Allex le Rosbif!)

2008-07-10T12:32:00.002+01:00

Tour2008_Day5_18, originally uploaded by sean's jawns.

Atfer frustration in last year's Tour and near misses this year team Columbia propelled Mark Cavenish to the stage win. It was a classic sprint finish- all members of the team at the front of the peloton, dragging the breakaway back and launching Cav towards victory. It was a well-deserved win from a rider making his way up through the sprinterati, let's just hope he doesn't let it go to his head.

Team Columbia, ex High Road, ex T-Mobile. Shame we lost the sponsorship, otherwise today would be party time at work.

With three riders in the top 10, Bob Stapleton's prediction of a high performance team in January last year was just right.

Armchair tour de France

2008-07-09T12:46:00.002+01:00

Tour de France Land Art, originally uploaded by Anduze traveller.

ITV 4 is doing a good job with Tour de France coverage this year, and expanding into covering the Tours of Britain and Ireland in late summer/autumn. TDF coverage is the time-honoured 7pm-8pm highlights spot, combined with weekend live coverage. If you've got Sky or Virgin cable you can click through to live coverage using the red button.

Beyond race coverage, ITV are showing some cycling related material too. After the highlights program on the opening day they showed a documentary about a British competitor in the Race accross America, followed by The Science of Larnce Armstrong the other night and Chris Boardman's 'The Hour' coming an a week or so. A year's worth of normal terrestial TV cycling coverage in a month..

St. Albans Grand Prix - 2008

2008-07-07T13:12:00.001+01:00

St. Albans Grand Prix - 2008, originally uploaded by Jason Means.

That's St Albans, West Virginia.

I want to move.

Le tour on google maps

2008-07-05T23:13:00.000+01:00

Google Maps

Allez les rosbifs!

The curve of courtesy

2008-07-04T12:57:00.003+01:00

citycycling has a good piece this issue, writing about the differences in overtaking behaviour driven by traffic conditions/roadspeed and the blissful effect of dropping traffic volumes caused by school holidays, which are soon to be upon us.

In general, drivers lighten up a bit during summer holidays, giving cyclists and pedestrians a bit more space in urban areas, but put in the country lanes- or anywhere where traffic conditions are really light and there aren't many cyclists (some) drivers still drive like arseholes.

Read the article- and citycycling.

Back on the road

2008-07-04T12:40:00.005+01:00

I'm two weeks into my return to cycling. My legs are tired and I've covered maybe 60-70 miles this week with bugger all weight loss- though there may be signs that muscles are slowly firming. Oh well, things are going to take time I expect now I'm past 40- the age at which returning to fitness and losing weight see to take longer than previosly experienced.

Riding's ok; country lanes around here are good to ride, but the hills- such as they are- have me reaching for the lowest gears, especially the steepish hill out of Wheathampstead and the little steep bastard at Waterend (where I got a rest fixing a puncture last week) have me reaching for the granny gear. Still, at least this week I've started using the big chainring on the flat, having forsworn it last week in an attempt not to cripple myself. More of the same next week, 10-15 miles on the way home in just under an hour at a nice slow pace, then starting to throw in a few lunchtime rides the week after. Sadly my heart rate monitor is still knackered so no stats as yet.

iPhone in 'didn't fall apart' shocker

2008-07-03T12:44:00.000+01:00

IPhone: iPhone Keeps Cyclists' Leg Skin From Becoming Part of the Street

Next, laptops as body armour.

Variations on a theme

2008-06-27T12:25:00.003+01:00

The first from a comment on quickrelease.tv , the second from Sam's blog way way back. Melded together the'd work better. I'll get round to it sometime.

Ladies and gentleman, doing the commute of '08 : Ride a bicycle!

If I could offer you only one tip for the future; cycling would be it. The long term benefits of bikes have been proven by scientists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering rides.I will dispense this advice now...

Enjoy the power and beauty of your bike
Oh, never mind.
You'll not understand the power and beauty of your bike until you've stopped riding it, but trust me, in twenty years you'll look back at photos of yourself you'll recall in a way you can't grasp now how much fitter and how fabulous you really looked.

You were faster than you remember.

Worry about the future.
Worry, but know that just worrying is about as effective as trying to solve climate change by driving a 4x4 in town.

The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind.The kind that side swipes you at 5:30 on the homebound commute.

Do one thing every day that scares you.
Sing.

Don't be reckless at traffic lights and junctions.
Don't put up with drivers who are reckless with you.

Grease.

Don't waste your time on traffic jams: sometimes you're ahead, sometimes you're behind.
The ride is long and in the end its only with yourself.

Remember the compliments you receive; forget the Congestion Charge.
When you succeed in doing this, tell EVERYONE.

Patch your old inner tubes, recycle your old tires.

Stretch.

Don't feel guilty if you don't know what bike to ride, the most interesting people I know didn't know at 7am what they wanted to do with their commute. Some of the most interesting 40 year old's I know just get out and ride.

Take plenty to drink.

Be kind to your knees, you'll miss them when they're gone – so don't ride singlespeed.

Maybe you'll race, maybe you won't. Maybe you'll go touring, maybe you won't. Maybe you'll ride off road at 45, maybe you'll ride a velodrome 'Taster' on your Stag Night.

Whatever you do don't congratulate yourself too much or berate yourself either. Your safety is THE priority, so is everybody else's.

Enjoy your bike, use it every way you can. Don't be afraid of it or what other people think of it.It's the greatest instrument you'll ever own.

Turbo-train, even if you have nowhere to do it but your own living room.

Read the Sustrans directions, even if you don't follow them. Do not read cycling magazines, they will only make you go buy another bike.

Get to know your byways, you never know when they'll be gone for good.

Be nice to your brakes,they're your best friend on the road, and the item most likely to save you in the future.

Understand that friends come and go, but with practice they too could ride to work.

Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and cycling style.

The older you get the more you need gears and the lungs you had when you were young.

Ride in London once,but leave before it makes you hard. Ride in northern England once,but leave before it makes you live there.

Travel.

Accept certain inalienable truths: Prices will rise,tires will puncture.

You too will get old and when you do you'll fantasize that when you were young bicycle were reasonable, tires never punctured and it never rained on long rides.

Respect old Hillclimbers, don't expect anyone else to tow you.

Maybe you'll have a road bike.Maybe you'll have a hybrid.But you never know when either one might need maintenance.Don't mess too much with gear indexing or when you are due a chain, you'll need rings as well.

Be careful whose lube you buy,but be patient with those who supply it.

LBS's are a form of nostalgia dispensing things from an Aladdin's Cave- wiping off the muck & fixing the tired components.Ebay just recycles them for more than they are worth.

But trust me - on the riding!

Sam's:

Ladies and gentlemen of the community of cyclists... wear lycra.
If I could offer you only one tip for the future, lycra would be it. The long-term benefits of lycra have been proved by professional cyclists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience. I will dispense this advice now.

Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth. Oh, never mind. You will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they've faded. But trust me, in 20 years, you'll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can't grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked.

You are not as fat as you imagine.

Don't worry about converting the drivers. Or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by ingesting a packet of Gu. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind, the kind that blindside you at 4 p.m. on your Tuesday commute.

Do one thing every day that scares you.

Spin.

Don't be reckless with other people's bikes. Don't put up with people who are reckless with yours.

Lube.

Don't waste your time on stoplight sprints. Sometimes you're ahead, sometimes you're behind. The race is long and, in the end, it's only with yourself.

Remember compliments you receive. Forget the insults. If you succeed in doing this, tell me how.

Keep your old PowerLinks. Throw away your old PowerBars.

Stretch.

Don't feel guilty if you don't know where you want to go on your ride. The most interesting people I know didn't know at two miles where they wanted to go on their rides. Some of the most interesting 40 mile rides I know still don't go anywhere.

Get plenty of carbohydrates. Be kind to your knees. You'll miss them when they're gone.

Maybe you'll mountain bike, maybe you won't. Maybe you'll have a fixed gear, maybe you won't. Maybe you'll have to push a 39, maybe you'll dance the funky chicken on your your pedals like Lance Armstrong climbing L'Alpe D'Huez.

Whatever you do, don't congratulate yourself too much, or berate yourself either. Your choices are half chance. So are everybody else's.

Enjoy your bike. Use it every way you can. Don't be afraid of it or of what other people think of it. It's the greatest instrument ever invented.

Pedal.

Even if you have nowhere to do it but your living room.

Read the cue sheet, even if you don't follow them.

Do not read bicycling magazines. They will only give you upgrade fever.

Get to know your bike shops. You never know when they'll be gone for good. Be nice to your mechanics. They're your best link to a smooth drivetrain and the people most likely to fix it when it starts to grind.

Understand that riders come and go, but with a precious few you should hold on.

Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle, because the better you get, the more you need the people who knew you when you were a newbie.

Bike in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard.
Bike in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft.

Travel.

Accept certain inalienable truths: Hills will rise. Pacelines will splinter.

You, too, will get tired. And when you do, you'll fantasize that when you were fresh, hills were reasonable, pacelines stayed intact and cyclists respected their drafts.

Respect your drafts.

Don't expect anyone else to support you. Maybe you have a windless route. Maybe you'll have a friend willing to pull. But you never know when either one might run out.

Don't mess too much with your hair or by the time you take off your helmet it will look like you were a band member from the early 1980s.

Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia. Dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it's worth.

But trust me on the lycra

This is why I haven't posted for a while

2008-06-05T12:19:00.001+01:00

Profile., originally uploaded by mike1727.

I had a stroke on January 19th. Nothing too radical-I have no mental or physical consquences- but it was a hell of a shock.

I'm now back at work, so no harm done in the long term.

Don't you just hate it when

2008-06-05T08:17:00.003+01:00

Someone else does work that you got hauled off once you've made some useful pre-studies...

Mobile phones expose human habits
By Jonathan Fildes Science and technology reporter, BBC News

People's movements were not as random as predicted
The whereabouts of more than 100,000 mobile phone users have been tracked in an attempt to build a comprehensive picture of human movements.

BBC news story

"It would be wonderful if every [mobile] carrier could give universities access to their data because it's so rich," said Dr Marta Gonzalez of Northeastern University, Boston, US, and one of the authors of the paper.

From textually.org

The harvest.

2008-01-03T12:16:00.001Z

The harvest., originally uploaded by mike1727.

Christmas brought with it once again about a cubic meter's worth of assorted childrens' toys, which all needed to be found a home somewhere in the already-bulging cupboards. This year the 'finding space' activity (think of it as a storage space defrag) included a foray into a previously-untouched cupboard, viz my odds and ends repository. Lurink therin was a very old digicam (750kilopixels, wow)which I picked up years ago. It's too old to be worth using, so I pulled it apart for Pat's collection of laser optics.

A very satisfying job, it's not often I get the chance for some wanton destruction..

One of the 7.5 million

2007-11-28T12:55:00.001Z

Apologies are not enough., originally uploaded by mike1727.

If you live in the UK and missed this you must have been living in a remote cave on the Isle of Arran or something.

In a nutshell, the National Audit office needed some sample data to do a random audit of shild benefit, which is a state benefit to which all parents/guardians of under-16 year old children are entitled. Although all the NAO asked for was 100 name,national insurance number, child benefit number tuples. What they got was an extract the entire child benefit database showing the info they'd asked for along with address and bank account details. Actally, the NAO didn't get this because some staffer burnt the lot onto 2 discs and popped them in internal post, whereupon they were lost. But that's ok, isn't it, bacause the files were password protected. (But not encrypted)

I'm slightly less rantingly angry thatn I was a few days ago, but still...WTF is going on? What makes HMRC think internal post is a secure transport system? Why are HMRC moving data on disks. WHY WASN'T IT ENCRYPTED? Ultimately, why does a junior staffer dealing with this sort of data have access to a CD burner , or come to think of it the access rights to be able to copy this data onto aany removable media anyway? Doesn't someone have the common sense to install THE MOST OBVIOUS AND BASIC security measures? How many social engineering attacks are there on this patently shite security infrastructure?

It's inexcusable, and most likely criminal under the UK's data protection laws. Apologies are not enough- I want arrests and jail time for whoever's responsible for opening me, my wife and my children to identity theft either now or at some future stage.

And forget all about ID cards.

The Register has a good article on the debacle.

I'm going for a coffee to cool down.

Word of the day

2007-11-12T12:14:00.001Z

The cat sat on the mat. ., originally uploaded by mike1727.

There are transitions in every parent's life when a child does something for the first time. There were had two today: our son read his first few sentences, and then came out with a word which had me going back to first principles to work out its meaning.

Today's word is digraph: two letters which when written together make a single sound. He must have heard it from his teacher but his use of the word, in correct context and with explanation, just floored me.

The wonder of serendipity

2007-10-11T12:39:00.001+01:00

DOF experiment, originally uploaded by mike1727.

Sometimes things just, well, work out.

Yesterday we were scrabbling around looking for material for capes for a children's superhero party this weekend. Our car wouldn'r start so Tracey couldn't get to the market and I wandered down to the Galleria to see if there was a shop selling material. Returning empty-handed, I walked through reception to discover that Sony Ericsson were handing out..capes as part of a promotional giveaway.

Last night I was playing around with my new camera, experimenting with depth of field and high ISO black and white. Just a few minutes ago I got an email telling me I'd won 30 days of free coffee and pastries at our on-campus Starbuck concession.

Yes, I know it's just co-incidence, but it's nice.

Taking down the beanpoles and tidying up

2007-10-01T12:31:00.001+01:00

Taking down the beanpoles, originally uploaded by mike1727.

There's no denying Autumn has arrived; most of the veg have finished so it was time to pull up dead plants, weed any tidy up ready for the winter. The veg beds are bare now, bar a few cabbages and some curly kale, all of which are going very well. (The kale is shaping up nicely for Calda Verde or Kale and Bean soup later in the year.)

With few exceptions it's been a disappointing summer for the vegetable experiment, both in the beds and the greenhouse. I'll blame it on the weather..

Shallots 7/10. Grew well, not an incredible yield but they are tasty and very pungent- as I found out peeling some last night with streaming eyes. I'll grow more next year.
Garlic 2/10. Poor yield, died back early. Planting in spring won't have helped. A possible for planting again in the next few weeks, there are already a few shoots coming up from bulbs I missed when harvesting them.
Broad beans 5/10. Got off to a good start, minimal blackfly infestation once I'd nipped out the growing tips. The plants were battered by the rain at the end of May, then fell victim to some sort of rust-like infection. I'll plant again later in the Autumn at a slightly wider spacing and put in supports for next year.
Potatoes 3/10. Not a great harvest from either the beds or the bags. The bags had plenty of foliage but few spuds, the beds were very low yield. I'm unlikely to bother with them next year.
Runner beans 5/10. Not a huge crop, but OK- at least the poles stayed intact. When digging over the bed I noticed it was very dry where the means were growing, so they'll go in a different bed with more watering next year.
French beans 2/10. Low yield and no-one in the family likes them enough for them to be worth the hassle next year.
Courgette 3/10. Very disappointing, after being snowed under with fruit last year I'd expected a good yield, but many fruit rotted/mildewed at the tips before having time to develop. Need full sun for them next year.
Lettuce 7/10. Good results- not show-winners but enough to make fresh salads. Need to pay more attention to sucessional planting next year.
Carrot 5/10. Grew better than expected but were crowded out by other plants.
Raspberry 8/10. Only a few fruits in the first season, but very tasty. I'll put in some more canes and better supports for next year.
Peas 7/10. Reasonable yield and well liked by the family. Need to protect against pea moth and ensure sucessional planting next year- wider spacing would be a good idea.
Cabbage/Kale 6/10. Looking good so far.
Tomatoes. 3/10. Failed to control side shoots, resulting in lots of foliage but few fruit. What fruit there was tasted good. Need an earlier start next year, with fewer plants.
Aubergines. 0/10. Abject failure- few flowers but no fruit. May try again next year but needs planting earlier.
Chili 6/10. Produced fruit (still green)- no idea of the heat yet since they're still unharvested.
Basil 4/10. Grew OK but nothing spectacular due to overcrowding from other plants. Needs more space and full sun next year, I think.

2007-09-19T12:04:00.000+01:00

Last night's commute was great; a nice steady spin through the lanes, spotting the changing colour of the trees as Autumn entres stage left. The last bit of this particular route takes me home along what is locally known as the St Albans ringroad; it's not the most direct route from the lanes, just a little loop I add in to squeeze another mile or so into the ride.

Despite the name, the 'ring road' is not really that grand, just a set of normal streets which link to run round the north side of the city about two-thirds of the way out. Traffic can be busy, but it's not intimidating. Close to home there's a couple of mini roundabouts about 75 yards apart; at this stage in my commute I'm well warmed up, the road is flat to slightly downhill and I'm riding fairly quickly (about 18-20mph), maintaining a distance of about 4 feet from the kerb to set myself up to turn right at the second roundabout. My speed and the distance between the two roundabouts means that I'm not holding up the traffic to any real extent and traffic in the other direction usually prevents safe overtaking.

Anyway, last night I'm about 3 feet from the kerb approaching the first roundabout when a van starts to overtake (pretty stupid thing to do, but no problem, I have space to move into if needs be), then pulls in sharply to within 18" of me when it's half way past and almost up to the roundabout (big problem). I slap the side of the van, not hard, just enough to let the driver know I'm there, and shout 'give me room!'. The driver bakes, and I clear the roundabout ahead of him. This is red rag to a bull to the driver, who then sits on my back wheel tooting his horn and follows me as I turn, keeping up the agression and the horn. As we approach a parked car he's nearly parallel and it looks like he's going to box me in. I'm on a road bike, so hopping the
kerb isn't really an option and I stop before we get into a road duel which I'll only lose. Most of all, I don't want him to follow me home.

The usual enraged cager diatribe ensues; I tell him he was too close, he threatens to 'slap my face like I slapped his van' and follows up with the tired old 'you shouldn't be on the road, you don't pay road tax, don't have insurance, yadda, yadda yadda.' He's virtually foaming at the mouth, won't admit he pulled in on me at the roundabout, won't listen to me, so I just let him spew his bullshit and calm down a little before saying 'whatever' and riding off unfazed.

There's no solution to this sort of outburst which doesn't invite further agression, so there was no point in continuing the 'conversation'. In retrospect I'm slightly annoyed I forgot to pull my phone from my jersey poket and video the encounter to follow up with his employer, possibly "CV plumbing" or similar but I couldn't be sure- a plumbering/heating firm in any case.

This incodent isn't a big deal, I've commuted by bike for more than twenty years, I'm well used to this sort of thing and it doesn't happen often. What bothers me is the degree of ingorance and bigotry and the downright agression of a small minority of drivers.

We need a local road strategy which educates drivers about leaving adequate room for other road users, and infractructure design/signing to reinforce the message.

On the other side of the Atlantic, blogger Cycledog writes about simialar attitudes in the US and references analysis which refutes the 'freeloading cyclists don't pay for the roads' myth.

and . . . . relax.

2007-09-14T21:47:00.001+01:00

and . . . . relax., originally uploaded by mike1727.

It's the end of my second week of higher intensity bike riding, and for the first time so far I'm feeling tired. Tired, but at least not aching; with a couple of 'red mist' exceptions, I've been targeting lower intensity, longer rides in low gear rather than mashing big gears. I still can't climb worth a damn, but that'll come once I've got better basic fitness and shed a few pounds.

The 'plan' (a very loose interpretation of the word) is to spend about a month more just getting miles in my legs before upping the intensity to the next level by working more on hill climbing. The daily commute is up to around 7 miles each way and I'm doing two or three lunchtime sessions of about 11-12 miles. It's not really enough for base training as none of the sessions are longer than 40 minutes, so I'll chuck a few hours a week on a turbo trainer into the mix in a couple of weeks' time.

Here's the stats for the first couple of weeks. Don't laugh, I'm starting from a very low base! Some of the data is a bit suspect since my HRM seems to randomly corrupt samples.

Week 1 week 2
Mileage 75.4 89.9
Rides 12 14
Calories 4135 4357

Av heart rate 147 147 (in the 'fat burning and re-energise glycogen' zone. Ha.)
Max heart rate 171 170 (approx 90% of estimated max)

av speed 15.9 16.7 (not my primary target but nice to see an increase)

The target for next week is 100 miles, which should be easily achievable if it doesn't rain too much.

Days until I'm 40: 23.
Age-related angst level: amber.

Tour of Britain returns, Cavendish wins prolog

2007-09-10T12:13:00.001+01:00

tour of Britain prologue v, originally uploaded by Brassica.

The Tour of Britain is back, we have a Brit in yellow and a load of promising other British riders.

The Daily Peloton has an overview of the event, and raises a good question: the race is scheduled for the first week of school term, starts in a fairly inaccessible area of London and has no city centre crit finish. After the great sucess and huge crowds of the our de France earlier this year, can we really expect to see the same interest in our home event?

Lack of remaining holiday and a race route which finishes in Glasgow means I won't be able to watch it live this year. Typically, terrestrial broadcast TV coverage is meagre compared to the Tour de France, so I'm looking out for alternatives.

Off-road, Brits did well in the Mountain Bike World Championships, taking four medals in the downhill, including gold in the mens juniors.

Slave to the rhythm

2007-09-07T23:34:00.001+01:00

40 approaches, and with it the customary angst payload. Baldness I can't cure, but I can (hopefully) regain some of the fitness I once had.
So, I've rediscovered my bike computer's zones feature, so my commute is punctuated by plaintive beeps as my computer snugly points out that either a. I'm slacking or b. I'm riding at an intensity which isn't optimal for burning my beer belly.
Spill, could be worse, at least I have on urge whatsoever to own a sports car-

This is a photograph I did not take

2007-09-06T12:40:00.000+01:00

of a group of mountain bikers crossing Nomansland Common the other evening, the car's headlights rendering their identical reflective jackets into a long dotted line as they ride west along the arrow-straight single-track lane, equally spaced with almost military efficiency. Unbunched, each rider in his/her own 10 yard bubble, they don't appear to be 'normal' cyclists.

With a tip of the hat to Unphotographable.

Move along, nothing to see here [test]

2007-08-31T09:06:00.001+01:00

Just checking that I can blog pictures directly from my new phone.

Symondshyde access track improved.

2007-08-30T12:38:00.001+01:00

Improved, originally uploaded by mike1727.

I've never been a fan of trail improvements done by non-cyclists. A fat design manual and a love of straight lines and smooth surfaces means these 'improved' trails lose the character they had, changing from interesting to bland, packed dirt to rolled crushed stone.

Farm tracks are another matter. They take tractors, for a start, and this means ruts and mud. This section used to be badly rutted and pretty swampy in winter; nothing impassible, but not a section you really want to ride at 8am on a wet January morning in the knowledge you'll have to wash the crud off the bike again that evening. It was a bit challenging to ride in the dark at times too.

Now it's looking weather (and tractor) proof, with a crushed stone surface which should stand up to the equestrian traffic too.

Thank you, trail pixies.

oybike

2007-08-08T15:42:00.001+01:00

oYBikes, near West Kensington Tube station, originally uploaded by mike1727.

Spotted these just round the corner from West Kensington tube station as I was en route to a meeting.
Oybikes are rental bikes, available at selected locations around the city, though unfortunately concentrated in certain districts. The bikes are locked to special stands until activated by a PIN sent to registered users via SMS. The bikes I saw were well suited to city use with light, basket, mudguards and shaft drive (to avoid those chain oil on suit leg moments), and these ones at least seemed to be in good working order.

Given the nightmareish tube journey I had yesterday (20 minutes became an hour due to problems on the line I wanted to take), I'd have been better off travelling from Kings Cross to West Ken by bike. There's an OYbike rank on Euston road, just down from King's Cross station where I'd usually arrive by train; not on the station as I'd expect, but down the road outside a hotel.

Commute riding in an unfamiliar city can be a bit of a challenge. As an out of towner who usually travels by tube, my mental map of central London doesn't really focus on above ground journeys longer than a mile or two, so navigating and dealing with heavy city centre traffic can be stressful. As a result I often take the easier option and look for bike route and backstreet options which are more roundabout but often much more interesting. I'm sure this is the case for many of oybike's customers, and it's in oybikes interest to extent usage beyond the 30 minute free period.

So, you'd expect a bike2.0 outfit like oybike to at least present a 'quiet streets' option on their website routefinder then? Nope. The google-powered mashup the oybike site uses routes you down the major streets between the two destinations, not the quieter backstreets, and there's no easy way to change the route criteria to suit a bike.

The Transport for London site gives a better route.

No More Heroes

2007-07-26T17:00:00.001+01:00

No More Heroes, originally uploaded by vlad259.

I can't adequately put into words the dissapointment I feel at this year's (alleged, at this stage) cheats, especailly Vinokourov, Rasumssen and Sinkewitz. Luckily my son isn't old enough to understand they're cheating, which is just as well since-up to now- Ive portrayed these riders as heroes and role models for him.

What were they thinking? Were they consider the team-mates their actions have affected? Did Vino think his epic recovery wouldn't be subject to scrutiny? Did Rusmussen think he be let off for lying about his whereabouts, or even that a missed tests wouldn't be seen as 'accidental' in a sport sensitised by scandal?

In the future how can we look at heoric efforts like those of Vino and Rasmussen without discarding them as drug-fueled?

Bah. Life bans for doping- get caught, end of career. No messing.

My symphathies are with Bradley Wiggins, withdrawn from the Tour along with the rest of the Cofidis team following team member Moreni's positive test earlier this week.

Tagged

2007-07-23T12:15:00.000+01:00

Stick your head too far above above the parapet, and this is what happens...I got tagged by Fritz at Cycleicious, so now I need to think up five facts about me that (most of) you don't know and aren't going to be too incriminating if they get dredged up later..(this last bit makes this more difficult than it would otherwise be)

OK, here we go:

I'm a talk radio listener. Not shock jocks, more 'broadsheet radio' - Radio 4, the World Service, random public serive broadcasters worldwide. Commercial radio winds me up- too many adverts and brain dead DJs. R4 primarily feeds my news/current affairs habit; Today for breakfast, PM when I get home, random stuff in the evening. They do air some crap stuff though- that's generally the cue for me to wander through the other digital stations. R4 or not, there's something in the style of a good spoken word program which I like; the rhythm of words, differences in accents add colour. Content too- I listen to stuff I'd rarely find otherwise.

Despite a degree in Mechanical Engineering and a lifetime of being around bikes, I have little or no mechanical aptitude. Never ask me to fix your bike unless you've got a lot of time to wait. Come to think of it, I'm pretty much death to silicon too, so don't let me near your pc.

On the third day of my first job I got a verbal warning about my coice of commuting transport. I was working at the Raleigh bikes factory in Nottingham at the time, and the engineering director was not impressed that I rode a Peugeot to work and locked it to the railings right outside the main office entrance.

I met my wife becuase of the film 'Hardware'. Having watched it a couple of times, I decided to weld a robot skeleton out of scrap tubes and other stuff I fished out of skips, but put my back out lifting the weld set back into the car. Surgery ensued, and I ended up renting loads of videos from her shop during recovery. The rest is history..

I'm an economic migrant. I used to do 'real' jobs in factories which made bikes, pumps and vehicles exhaust systems- like much of Britains manufacturing industry these firms went downhill fast in the face of Far Eastern competition and I jumped ship to telecoms. (A growing dislike of walking around factories in a white coat helped this decision significantly). These days I mine data for a living, panning for nuggets of insight in the datastream (more like data torrent) created by 14 millions Brits on 'phones. I 0wn your mobility data. Be afraid, be verrrry afraid.

I tag Tim, Sam, Robin, Grant and Megan. The'll not thank me for doing so, I'm sure..

Push it just a little bit harder

2007-06-26T12:37:00.001+01:00

Push it just a little bit harder, originally uploaded by mike1727.

1 km in 42.6 seconds. Good start, but I faded badly at around 750m. Still, a good way to get the blood pumping at lunchtime, enough to get me on the leader board for a bit and plenty good enough for some team schwag- a pair of shorts and a shirt.

2007-06-08T12:38:00.000+01:00

Via the STACC Blog:
Part of liftshare, BikeBudi aims to match up cyclists riding the same route. It's an excellent way to build up commuting groups (which was how critical mass got started) and for experienced riders to help new riders gain confidence on the roads. It's an excellent idea.

The compost heap's gone critical. .

2007-06-06T12:33:00.001+01:00

The compost heap's gone critical. ., originally uploaded by mike1727.

The compost heap is cooking away nicely- in fact it's steaming.

A quick probe registered temperatures around 62C in the centre of the pile- that's 143F, which is plenty hot enough to kill weed seeds and other nasties, and indicates that the carbon:nitrogen balance is about right.

Cornell university has a page on composting physics which describes the temperature characteristics of decomposition.

Material choice is key- the last load (which was around a 30cm layer over 1sq m so about 0.33 cubic metres) consisted of:

2 grass boxes grass clippings (form a recently-fed lawn so probably high in N)
1 shredder box (40cm*15cm=0.045 cubic metres) of shredded paper (bills, very satisfying)
approx 4 kg spent coffee grounds
approx 3kg kitchen waste (veg peelings, coffee grounds, teabags and paper kitchen towels)
1 large cup Garotta compost accelerator.

No leaves this time, unlike previous loads.

This was mixed together, on top of (but not mixed with) an already-composing layer of much the same material. No added water this time since the grass clippings were fairly moist.

Gardenblog- battered veg!

2007-05-31T12:38:00.001+01:00

Flattened, originally uploaded by mike1727.

The veg project was going well until the inevitable bank holiday downpour wreaked havoc. Beans were the main victims- broads flattened to the ground, runners and French were battered by the rain and hail, lost leaves and had a couple of broken growing tips. A bit of time with string and cane should've saved the broads, and with luck the runners and French will re-grow some more stems. I need to plant up a tepee of runner/s French for a second crop anyway The outdoor tomatoes took a hit too, but tied in they seem OK.

Elsewhere in the veg project, the lettuce is going well and is producing enough leaves for tasty salads. Spring onions are just about OK but not really growing as strongly as I'd hoped. There's another gutterfull germinating in the greenhouse waiting for planting out in a sunnier location, assuming I can find some space. The first sowing of spinach has been similarly disappointing so there's another gutter of that under way.

The courgette plants are in, and I planted a couple of spare cucumber plants in the bed to see how they fare- better than chucking them on the compost. Also crowding into the second bed are a couple of butternut squashes which I'm hoping to grow up stakes: the idea is to have courgettes and cucumbers rambling at ground level to block out weeds while the beans, squashes and tomatoes work vertically. I've a feeling this bed is too crowded, but only summer will tell.

In the greenhouse, I'm beginning to regret planting so many tomatoes..I've planted up the ones I want to grow and the remaining dozen or so plants are either being given away tomorrow or going on the compost. Chillis and aubergines are growing well and will be in growbags soon.

Spuds seem to be doing well, though I'm not sure they are meant to have such rampant foliage- possibly a result of growing them in compost?

Sowed recently: in the greenhouse; spring onion, spinach and cabbage in gutters. Outdoors- country cottage mixed flowers in gaps in the beds, (which have germinated OK) and cornflower (which haven't).

Planted out: 2 courgettes, 2 butternut squash, black Geranium, Cosmos, a Day Lilly-like plant which I can't remember the name of, loads of Nasturtiums.

St Albans local election results 2007

2007-05-04T12:09:00.000+01:00

I did my bit for local democracy yesterday, along with just under half of the eligible voters in the ward- one of the higher turnouts in the city. ID verification at elections always bothers me- I turned up on my bike on the way to work, only to find that I'd brought my wife's voting card instead of mine. 'No problem' they said, looked me up on the list and gave me my ballot paper- no id checks at all, even though I was wearing a bike helmet and wraparound mirrored sunglasses....

Anyway, the result was predictable- hardworking sitting LibDem retained his seat, followed by Conservatives, Green and Labour in last place. The Green vote was 1% higher than Labour, which is encouraging, and in the end the local LibDems are fairly green-tinted these days. Full results here, I must learn how to do tables in HTML.

Votes cast, % Votes cast, % electorate

CHURCHARD, GEOFF LIBERAL DEMOCRAT 1200, 53.1%, 24.9%
FOSTER, JOHN CONSERVATIVE 744, 32.9%, 15.4%
PAUL, ROSALIND MARY GREEN PARTY 177, 7.8%, 3.7%
McCOURT, RUAIRI ANTHONY LABOUR 138, 6.1%, 2.9%

Votes cast 2259
Electorate: 4818
Turnout 47%

If you don't fall off you're not trying hard enough

2007-05-03T12:52:00.001+01:00

Ouch, originally uploaded by JasonRogers.

Jason and me went for a ride last night. I'd planned for an easy loop round St Albans, pootling round singletrack in Batchwood, Symondsyde and points between. We had a quick look at Beech Bottom Dyke on the way to Batchwood, me scaring myself silly at the size (30 feet approx) of the drop from the trail into the earthwork. Onwards and just about upwards to the woods at Batchwood for a quick blast on the singletrack before heading off towards Harpenden and the rest of the loop. As we headed though Childwickbury we were caught up by a group of 8ish riders from one of the local shops, so we tagged along for a while, finding a couple of new linking trails through Sandridge to Symondshyde. At Symondshyde the main group was heading up towards Codicote; feeling tired I made my excuses and we headed back through the woods. Pretty much the last stretch was down a track leading onto House Lane. It's fairly smooth (apart from the collapsed badger sett half way down) and I ride it at least twice a week on the way home, so I shouldn't have had any problems..not so. Approaching the junction with the road and braking fairly hard I had an earth/sky/earth/sky moment, ending up braking with my chin as the bike flew over me and landed three or four yards further down the hill. Winded, but bike OK and no bones broken I picked myself up and we headed back to my place via the off-licence.. Woke up this morning with a few random achy bits and bruising, no big deal.

So...what did I learn?

Commuting 20-30 mins each way every day does not give you the fitness required to keep up with the shop riders. More lard-burning miles required!
I brake far too much in corners and need to trust the bike and flow round more.
Don't touch the front brake on dusty fast bits!

We are traffic.

2007-05-02T13:57:00.000+01:00

Good article in yeasterday's Independent, pointing out the lack of coverage of cycling of any type- sports, untiliy, you name it on TV, and trying to equate this with UK society's attitude to cycling. The article makes some good points, but the argument would be stronger if it referenced similar studies from abroad.

It's high time television started to take cycling seriously... - Independent Online Edition > Features:

Pity the research team at Cycling England, the charity set up to promote
the activity. They've just spent four weeks watching Britain's leading soaps, in
an effort to track the way cycling is portrayed as part of normal life on television - or if it is portrayed at all. Their conclusions won't come as a great surprise to anyone who cycles regularly, since riders are used to being thought of as misfits who have taken up some weird obsession.

In four weeks of watching EastEnders, Coronation Street, Emmerdale and Hollyoaks, the Cycling England researchers identified 95 lead characters. Only two of them were shown to own bikes (Mickey from EastEnders and Amy from Coronation Street). Of the four times lead characters were shown with bikes, viewers were hardly given the most positive image of cycling - the most noticeable way in which a bike featured was when poor old Stacey from EastEnders was mowed down by a rogue rider.

Given that three of the four shows are set in city locations, where all the figures suggest that cycling is booming, the lack of two wheels on the streets of the shows seems odd. Emmerdale characters, given the hilly location of the show, might be forgiven for being less inclined to ride regularly.

Does the lack of cycling on television in general and the soaps in particular matter? Well, yes, if you believe that what people watch on television influences how they behave in their own lives. Soap operas are meant to feature characters with whom viewers can identify - if the characters never ride a bike, it's less likely people will think about this form of transport.

Phillip Darnton, chairman of Cycling England, certainly takes this view. It's no coincidence, he suggests, that 50 per cent fewer children cycle regularly compared with a generation ago - or that the UK has one of the lowest levels of cycle use in the European Union, in terms of the average mileage covered by bike by each citizen."The more cycling is portrayed as an everyday activity for normal people - on television and throughout the media - the more likely it is that the rest of us will feel more comfortable riding. If driving is always shown to be the default mode of ransport for Britons, it will continue to be so."

What to do when the shop only has thin canes...

2007-05-01T12:25:00.001+01:00

Bean supports, originally uploaded by mike1727.

Runner beans are heavy when they're fully grown- last year's bean teepee partially collapsed under the weight. The plan had been to use 1" poles this pear, but in the end all I had was these thin and whippy 6' poles. Delving into memories of long-past engineering lectures I made the joints out of wire for extra rigidity and added diagonal cross braces, resulting in a structure that is a lot stiffer than its components suggest. Time will tell if it's up to the job.

Compostblog

2007-04-27T13:10:00.001+01:00

I am compost geek, originally uploaded by mike1727.

Air temp 11C
Compost in bin 1 34C
Compost in bin 2 24C
Soil temp 13C

Composting

2007-04-26T12:58:00.001+01:00

Compost coffee, originally uploaded by mike1727.

Composting is a good thing (tm), pretty much all our veg waste, paper towels etc get chucked in a dustbin which I add to the heap once it's full. A couple of weeks ago we had a semi-annual purge of old paperwork which needed shredding and therefore wouldn't go in the recycling. Rashly, I put the lot in the compost- a good 2 bin bags full. This was rapidly followed by a load of kitchen waste and a lawn's worth of grass clippings to try to rebalance the green:brown ratio , in order to avoid a stinky mess of sludge at the bottom of the garden.

The Starbucks concessions at work give away their used coffee grounds for composing, so I picked up a couple of bags, mixing coffee into the pile in the hope of getting everything cooking nicely. The following day the compost felt warm to the touch, so I shoved the greenhouse thermometer into the middle of the pile to check...85 degrees F. Not bad. The pile was steaming when I added another six bags last night so I'm doing something right. There's still some way to go before I get to the 150F or so required to kill weed seeds, but it's a good start.

The Starbucks Coffee Compost Test- chemical analysis of soil nutrients in used coffee grounds.

Starbucks page on coffee composting

YouTube video (Which I've not watched yet, so don't blame me if it's crap

Bike training note- riding home with 8 kilos of coffee grounds in your rucksack is good training. Now I need to see if I can get away with storing tens of bags of coffee in my cupboard at work ready for a single trip with the bike trailer...

Suffer the little children

2007-04-24T12:26:00.000+01:00

This week is the UN Global Road Safety week. Here's some chilling stats about the global carnage which just seems to be seen as 'collateral damage':

Road deaths are now the leading cause of death worldwide for 10-25 year olds

1000 people under 25 die on the world's roads every day

Every minute of every day, a child under 15 is killed or seriously injured on the world's roads

96% of child road deaths occur in developing countries

70 children a week are killed or seriously injured on UK roads

Seventy children a week KSI in a highly-developed Western country? Imagine the outcry if this was caused by two or three minibus crashes, or a train wreck. Every week. Year in, year out. But no, most of those 70 children get killed or injured singly, their families grieving alone- no national outpouring of grief, no charity appeal, no public inquiry. Few headlines mark their passing.

It's a disgrace.

Tesco's double whammy on congestion

2007-04-19T13:03:00.000+01:00

The Herts Advertiser - Key workers priced out of housing And it's 'even worse' for others: "FORGET trying to buy a home in Harpenden or St Albans if you are a 'key' worker.Harpenden is among the top-10 least affordable places for key workers to buy their first home. Key workers are teachers, police officers, firefighters, nurses and paramedics.St Albans, in 34th spot, is also well out of the reach of such workers when their average salaries are compared to the average house prices in the district."In St Albans the average house price is now 11.1 times the average key worker salary compared to 9.4 times in 2002.St Albans District Councillor Roma Mills pointed out that the problem was even worse for other workers who had no Government help. She said: "Workers are being priced out of the area. The Government has put a lot into key worker schemes but ordinary workers like shop assistants cannot afford to live here and we can't keep expecting them to commute from other towns."

So, an expensive local housing market increases traffic loading as workers are forced to commute longer distances. A Tesco store drawing shopping traffic into the city and a occupying prime local housing land from where people working in the city could walk to work doesn't help either the local housing crisis or reduce congestion.

Protest and survive

Spring!

2007-04-18T12:29:00.001+01:00

originally uploaded by mike1727.

Spring has arrived, bringing with it our customary Easter period of sunshine. It's been unseasonably warm (10 degrees above average last Saturday) and the forecast is good until next weekend.

As a result, we've been busy. Easter weekend saw the arrival of the 'great anti child fence', partitioning the greenhouse and working area from the rest of the garden and screening the piles of bricks etc which remain from previous projects. It's a simple (ie cheap!) post and wire fence fronted with fern screening, probably not the most long lived material but it looks good.

Growing peas and lettuce in guttering has been a great success, with three gutters' worth of peas now transplanted into the beds along with a gutter shared between lettuce and spring onions. There's a further gutter of lettuce & spring onions growing now, but that's it for the moment as the beds are full or earmarked for the runner and French beans and courgettes which are germinating in pots in the greenhouse. I've sown catch crops of lettuce, carrots and spinach next to the courgette bit of the bed as they should be ready by the time the courgette grows big enough to shade them.

Shallots, garlic and broad beans are shooting up in the next bed, where the potatoes are also finally showing. I'd almost given up on the outdoor spuds- in contrast the bagged spuds in the greenhouse are way ahead and got their first earthing up. It's going to be a race for light between some of the beans and the spuds since they're quite close together.

I'll be dotting Marigolds into gaps in the veg beds to attract hoverflies, and I'm on the lookout for other companion plants to attract blackfly-eating insects to protect the beans.

The latest batch of tomatoes was potted out last weekend, adding to the tomato forest in the greenhouse. I grow tomatoes. You grow tomatoes. Everyone grows tomatoes, it seems.
The kitchen-window-ledge cucumber plant is safely in the greenhouse, and growing strongly- it'll need potting on into its final pot this week.

Planted recently:

Outdoor sowings of peas, lettuce, carrots, spinach.
Indoor sowings 1 doz each Chilli, Aubergines in propagators indoors.
3 more cucumbers in pots in the greenhouse propagator.
Hanging basket plants (inc Petunia, impatiens, Lobellia) in propagators indoors and in the greenhouse.
6 each of French and runner beans in pots in the greenhouse. (More to go in in 2-3weeks)

Carniverous V-Brakes ate my rim

2007-04-18T12:19:00.001+01:00

I don't think it's meant to do this, originally uploaded by mike1727.

Another rear rim falls prey to the ravages of winter road grit and year-round Hertfordshire mud (with added flint dust for extra abrasion).
Disc brakes are looking more and more like a good idea, but at a high price- fitting them would mean new brake levers and shifters on top of two new wheels.
The green travel legislation which underpins the company bike scheme won;t help- employees can't buy accessories without a bike, and I don't really need another bike. No, let me rephrase that, I obviously need more bikes /, I just can't justify the spend. It is possibleto buy a cheap'n'nasty £80 Halfords bike just to be able to save money on accessories though...hmm.

Give me a child until it's seven and I'll give you the cyclist

2007-04-13T12:30:00.000+01:00

We went to meet a bunch of the childrens' friends at a local park the other day. It was a warm, sunny afternoon so the park and play areas were swarming with kids, many of them riding bikes. There didn't seem to be the same penetration of bikes into the older groups of children.

This got me thinking-At what stage in a child's development does cycling start to become less frequent, and why? My sunny-day-at-the-park sample is fundamentally flawed, but bike usage seems much higher in early years (say 3-6) than it is later in childhood and adolescence. There seems to be a strong correlation between leisure activity and cycling in early years (Mum & Dad taking a child's bike to the park) which isn't strongly carried through into utility transport in later years. You don't see so many kids going to Saturday morning football/swim class etc on a bike, or cycling to school, and I'd bet that fewer families go for bike rides together than take their young children to the park with their bikes.

Factors like increased distance, changes in environment from park to road, perceptions of danger, fashion and increased complexity of journeys all play a part, but in the end what's lacking is the perception of bikes as a real, practical means of independent transport rather than a just another toy to compete with the playstation. This perception gap is key to getting more people on bikes- and it needs to be addressed early.

James Daley writes about the Cycling for London's Cycling Community and Emergency Services Awards in the Independent's cycling column:

Liz Bowgett, a teacher from Newham, for example, took it upon herself to get more children in her school on to two wheels. After announcing plans to launch a programme to give children some basic bike training, she found she was oversubscribed three times. Within a few months, she was managing a full-scale project: organising mass bike rides, building storage facilities for bikes at the school and buying a trailer to transport bikes for trips away, as well as buying second-hand bikes for those children who didn't have their own.

This is a great example of grass roots work on cycling, building and maintaining interest in cycling through enablers and involvement, linked into the school curriculum. It's the way forward if we want to build cycling locally, but this example clearly shows it won't happen by itself...this is where local cycle campaigns come in!

Read more about Liz's sucess in ceating New City Cycling club on the London Cycling Campaign website , at the safe routes to schools site here and at Newham Council's website.

What's on my phone/more adventures beyond the browser

2007-04-03T12:13:00.000+01:00

This post is a follow up to this entry on flickr, where I looked at the applications I was using most in November.

There's something about my N70 which means that over time the phone runs slower and slower, and strange behaviours start to creep in. The phone slowed to pretty much unusable levels when my memory card corrupted earlier this year, so I backed up my phonebook using zyb.com's free synchronisation service, downloaded the Nokia software installer and updated the phone's firmware. Some of the built-in applications seem to have changed with the move to the latest build- the music player is better, for example- but mostly it's neutral. My biggest annoyance, switching between browsing and bookmarks in Opera, is still very slow, taking between 1 and 30 seconds.

Armed with a half-gig memory card, I started re-loading applications:

Star players:

Lifeblogger. The best I can find for uploading photos to flickr, but the version I have now needs manual intervention to import new photos.

ZoneTag. Still out there and still in prototype, Yahoo's very own minimal-click flickr uploader which location-tags your photos. Re-installed to see if it's improved, but not getting much use as it's still not reliable enough for my phone, and only allows uploads immediately after the picture has been taken.

Google Mail. This wouldn't load last time round, but loaded fine and works a treat. There's no messing about with setting up the phone's built-in email client, most attachments are readable without a translator and you have virtually all the functionality gmail offers at your fingertips.

PulsePaper. Reloaded without second thoughts, PulsePaper continues update my wallpaper with a stream of 'interesting' photos from Flickr.

Fring. A 'know your enemy' experiment in understanding the mobile VoIP experience! Fring is a Nokia-only app which interworks with Skype, GoogleTalk and MSN messenger for VoIP and IM. VoIP seems to work pretty well, but I get more than enough minutes for free as part of my contract so I don't need VoIP for national calling. IM works well, but hasn't displaced texting either.

I'm rapidly approaching 40, and maybe I'm a little old to be part of the IM generation. It's hard to beat the usability of the phone system for voice and text- sure it has its shortcomings, but you can call or text anyone on a single number, in the knowledge that you'll get through. With its multitude of different networks and standards, VoIP/IM won't get a real foothold until everybody's mobile has a VOIP/IM aggregator to allow all combinations of VoIP/IM networks to be used on the same device.

Screenshot for Symbian 2.45. A freeware screenshot app for Symbian phones, works fine and saves to jpeg or png formats, trouble free and easy to use.

Left on the bench at kick-off:

Google maps. A previous favourite for route-finding and looking at satellite photos, just won't install for me this time round, giving 'not enough memory' errors when I try to install it on the memory card which still has loads of spare space.

Free transfer to the Sunday league:

Widsets. Nice interface, lacked click-through from headline titles to the feed's website so ultimately useless.

Wish list:

I haven't exhaustively searched for candidates to fill these needs, but I have found that there are many useful-looking symbian apps which won't work on my N70. I'm too tight-fisted to actually buy software without a long, free evaluation trial. In an ideal world, all these apps will autostart when I turn the phone on, and will be robust enough to cope with handovers between GSM and 3G during data transfer and in standby)

RSS reader. A real, fully functional RSS reader that allows me to easily add feeds, and preferably has an opera add-in. (Yes, I know mini-opera does this, but my phone chokes on mini opera)
Podcast receiver. Similar requierments to the RSS reader (in fact one app that does both functions would be good)
Better Flickr photo uploader- something with the tagging and location functionality of ZoneTag, but the ease of use and flexibility of LifeBlooger, coupled with automatic map placement on Flickr.
Fix for my Gmaps install problem.
A way of synchonising mine and my wife's diary and contacts info from 2 separate outlook accounts (one corporate, one on a home pc)
A new phone with a better camera, flash and macro.

Must . . .resist. . temptation.

2007-04-02T12:21:00.001+01:00

Must . . .resist. . temptation., originally uploaded by mike1727.

Our children are grateful recipients of hand-me-down toys from their cousins. This weekend it was skateboards, and they're really excited.

I haven't skated for 20 odd years. I also haven't been in hospital for a major spinal operation for about the same period. This is not a coincidence.

Bike quiz

2007-03-29T12:32:00.000+01:00

The BBC's magazine site has a bike quiz. It's fairly noddy, but there are a couple of tricky questions, so I didn't get full marks.

Misty morning commute

2007-03-27T12:11:00.001+01:00

Misty morning commute, originally uploaded by mike1727.

7:15- breakfast. "It's a lovely day, aren't you taking your road bike this morning Dad?" "No son, I'm riding the woods today"

The spring solstice has come and gone, leaving behind it daylight saving time as a reminder of the changing season. This morning is cool, still and fresh. A deep red sun glows through the mist as I wheel my bike out of the garage and coast down the hill with the children's shouted goodbyes ringing in my ears. Which route to take...road..trail..woods? Thirty seconds later I'm turning off the road into the first strip of suburban woodland, weaving through the trees, dropping in and out of small chalk pits and hopping over trunks of trees brought down by the winter gales. This section is short and easy, but coming so early in the ride it's always a good wake-up call.

Out of the trees, up the alley, lift the wheel for the step up onto the road, cross to the next section of bridleway which the kids and I walked the other day, counting squirrels and looking for treasure. Thirty seconds later cross another road, faster now on a smooth bridleway past another pit where the carcass of last year's pantomime cow decays gracefully, papier mache flesh falling away from its wooden skeleton. Cross the lane, carve a line past a sleepy schoolboy texting on his way to school. Keep the speed up, unweight and float the first drying-churned-mud bumpy section onto the footpath skirting a field of winter wheat. This was muddy drudge riding a month ago, but dry and worn smooth by tyres, paws and feet it rides fast today. Float more bumps past the mist shrouded pond where coots stand on the bank taking stock of the day, more narrow fast singletrack to another lane. Cross the road to the next bridleway, down to the middle ring for the hill because I'm still warming up and not in hero mode. Easy spin up, avoid the collapsed badger sett which is a real hazard on dark descents, crest the hill and ride along the ridge, past the clutch of cell towers in a corner of a farm compound full of well-used machinery.

Real countryside now, pause for a photo at the gate at the end of the ridge, cameraphone not doing justice to the view but good enough to record the moment. The first section of tarmac- change up and spin along a single track narrow unfenced lane through the fields. Looks like the farmer's planted wheat this year instead of last year's sickly-smelling rape, good. F*ck, I don't remember that pothole, deep, sharp-ended and wide it must've been caused by the winter frosts. Ten minutes in and the first car of the commute is behind me but hanging back nicely, just as well because it's too narrow to overtake and I'm not pulling in. T-junction coming, I pull in slightly to give it room to get past in recognition of its lack of aggression. It's Simon, he lives maybe half a mile from me and works in the building next door. Brief hellos though the open window- "Get a bike mate" before he's off down the lane. I follow, peeling left through a gate onto the next track. Another muddy rutted nightmare in the wet, it's drying now. Slightly downhill, picking a careful line between the soft bits and the ruts where I stacked last year though lack of concentration.

Right into Symondshyde Wood, smooth flat bridleway, 'improved' with a crushed stone surface last summer. Birdsong in the tree canopy above, bluebells pushing through the leaf litter and sticks below, a blue carpet waiting for late April. The bridleway is the boundary of a strip of beech, I'm riding though tall commercial pines now, muddy patches, narrowing. Shots in the distance, bird scarers perhaps- there are deer in this wood but I think it's closed season. Passing a couple of familiar landmarks- rusting machinery left over from planting the pines- turn left onto a forest ride. Less familiar, this wasn't the track I was planning to use but it's heading in the right direction judging by the position of the sunlight slanting through the trees. Easy ride down to the lane, left and right through the livery stables onto a long flat farm track through open fields recently ploughed and harrowed to a fine tilth ready for planting. Clock's ticking, short of time. Change up, pick up the pace, spinning fast on the smooth surface. Left and right around the corner of a field bounded by high earth banks awaiting sand quarrying. Looks like we'll get another few seasons before the quarry reaches here. That square green patch of grass on the right used to hide a ROC observation post; post cold war it's filled in and used by radio controlled fliers. 8:21 and I'm pushing pushing harder now, past the clanking conveyor, though the gate and over the road to a disused lane. Faster still, turn hard right over the berm, meandering track through the parkland next to new houses, gravel pinging off the downtube. Cycle lanes through the housing past the postman delivering to mews style townhouses. Ivy Walk, Cornflower walk, Campion road- echoes of countryside which came before the aircraft factory before the houses. Roundabout, first real traffic and last quarter mile sprint to work.

8:27, drop into the underground car park.

Another day, another dollar.

CycleDog

2007-03-22T19:53:00.000Z

Being a responsible kind of bloke I can't condone road rage, but having been a hairsbreadth away from casualty on a few occasions I can honestly say that sometimes my thoughts do turn to responses beyond a good shout and the single finger salute. Cycledog wants guns, I want a portable EMP device to disable car electronics..read the thread of comments on this post on an excellent bike blog.

CycleDog: "Everyone who uses the public way has both rights and responsibilities. That includes motorists, cyclists, pedestrians, and even horse back riders or horse-drawn vehicles. I'm getting fed up with motorists who think that their larger, heavier, more powerful vehicle gives them a greater right to use that public space, and I'm getting especially fed up with the pencil-necked geeks who use their vehicles as weapons. It's an annoying problem, and that problem has a solution.

Cyclists should carry guns."

Camden Cyclists googlemash bike map of London.

2007-03-22T19:30:00.001Z

Camden Cyclists googlemash bike map of London., originally uploaded by mike1727.

Camden Cyclists, an inner London cycle campaign group, have this excellent googlemaps mashup on their site which shows overlays of bike shops and routes. The combination of high resolution satellite imagery with vector overlays of routes in excellent since it adds a feel for the route which you can't get from a map alone- size of roads, complexity of junctions, shortcuts etc. They hope to add bike rack locations soon, though the ultimate mashup would combine this with a door to door routefinder- enter start and end locations and get a bike-friendly route map using quiet or less quiet roads according to your preferences.
Resources like this are a boon ror occasional London cyclists like me- I tend to go everywhere by tube when I'm in London, so it's difficult to relate to surface routes.

Car(e)-free shopping.

2007-03-19T12:55:00.001Z

I took the bike trailer into the city centre for the first time for the weekly food shop on Saturday, eager to see how it coped with a load of fruit and veg from the market and happy to be avoiding shopping at Tesco.

Riding in from my house is easy- a round trip of 3 1/2 miles or so on flat roads, following pretty much the same route as I would in a car. Speed is never going to be an issue when pulling a trailer, just trundle along in a lowish gear and take your time, watching out for the extra length on sharp corners. Traffic was light that morning, so I've not yet found out what it's like to progress through lines of stationary vehicles. Once in the city parking was easy, just unhitch the trailer and chain it to the bike rack with the bike- no messing around queuing for a car park and searching for an empty space. There was plenty of room for the trailer, but parking might be a bit more of an issue when the racks are busier- we still need more racks in the city centre to make up for the loss of the railings on St Peter's street. Next time I'll push the trailer round the market to load directly instead of carrying heavy bags- another thing you can't do in a car.

Overall impression- quicker and easier than I was expecting.

A quick comparison of car vs bike costs for the trip- I was amazed by the amount of CO2 a car produces on such a short trip- as much mass as a bunch of bananas!

In the green corner, a bike trailer.
Ride into town- 10ish minutes.
Park on St Peter's Street, just accross the road from the market.
Buy food.
Unlock bike, load trailer 2 minutes, ride home 10 minutes.

Cost- approx £0.25. (Trailer depreciated over 5000 miles, bike over 12,000 miles)
Additional CO2- nil.

In the dirty brown corner, a diesel car.
Drive into town-5ish minutes.
Find car park space, park, walk to market- 10 minutes.
Buy food.
Walk back to car, pay car park ticket, queue to leave car park 10ish minutes.
Drive home 5 minutes.

Cost- £2.74
fully allocated cost per mile (<10,000>

Emissions:
CO2 814g
CO 2.9g
Hydrocarbons and Nitrogen oxides 1.7g
Particulates 0.2g

If it's Thursday it must be puncture fix day

2007-03-15T22:05:00.001Z

If it's Thursday it must be puncture fix day, originally uploaded by mike1727.

So there I was, up early(ish), kids dressed, bag packed and psyched for an off-road commute on the nicely drying trails through Symondshyde. Blue sky, warm, a beautiful spring morning. OPen the garage, unlock the bike, wave goodbye to the family (they always wave from the window and shout goodbye as I spin off down the road). Get on the bike and the front tyre's flatter then a very flat thing. Feck. Thornholio kicks my arse once more. At least the road bike was ok and I blasted down Hatfield Road fuelled by caffiene and raw pissed off temper because I'd been looking forward to this ride all week. And I got cut up by an aggressive wanker in a BMW who thought it was ok to leave a gap of nearly a whole foot as he passed me before turning left at the roundabout 10 yards ahead. Some days I think Spike Bike has a valid worldview, I tell you.

In a perfect world trails are always dry, horses wear snowshoes and hawthorns are afflicted by a GM virus which makes them bear marshmallows instead of thorns.

Gardenblog

2007-03-15T12:18:00.001Z

A busy weekend in the Spring sunshine, potting out, planting and sowing.

Existing plants are pushing their way through, Autumn plantings are doing nicely, with good colour from the hyancynths, crocus and primulas though they're a bit sparse and will need more planting this year. Tulips are still growing, though this isn't too surprising since most pf them were planted very late. First signs of shoots from lilies in containers (though not in the beds), hopefully they won't get munched by the Scarlet Lily beetles which decimated the container plants last year.

The pear and peach trees are budding. We had some problems with the peaches last year so they'll need wrapping with fleece this weekend since there's a frost forecast. I think I've left the pruning too late for most of the fruit trees, so they'll have to wait until June or July except where the branches are getting in the way. The furtinia is lookng a bit unhappy in its container so it will need planting out into the last gap in the main bed soon- this is good since it will give some winter interest as well as a bit of vertical definition.

There are signs of growth from both shallots and garlic, which is very encouraging given how wet the soil was when they were planted. No sign of activity from any of the spuds though.

Peas are doing well in the greenhouse, they'll be ready to harden off once the forecast frost has passed before transplanting in 10 days or so. Sweet peas are doing well, and the first few broad beans are coming through. The first batch of tomatoes are safely transplanted into pots and stashed on the new racking, which is filling up fast.

I need to get hold of some more guttering- freecycle seems the best idea.

Planted this week:

Another gutter of peas, planted nearer the centreline of the gutter this time to see if it makes a difference to root growth.
A gutter each of lettuce and sping onions.
Basil- a six pot tray under a propagator in the greenhouse and a girly pink 6" pot on the kitchen windowsill.
Cucumber- 4 in pots on windowsills.
Tomatoes- 8 each cherry/moneymaker/beef as before
Spinach- 2 rows
Spring onion- single row between the spinach to see if it works as a catch crop.

Speak up for bridleways

2007-03-12T12:05:00.000Z

I have a love/hate relationship with horseriders. When it's wet, horses' hooves act like rotavators, churning surfaces into thick mud. When the sun comes out hoofprints dry into "Home Counties pavé"- a sort of inverted cobble which gives a tooth-jarring, arm fading ride. On the plus side, the British Horse Society (the equestrian's CTC) are very effective campaigners for off-road access, so I've got a lot of time for them.
Phil Wadey runs the local BHS cadre (Hertfordshire) email distribution list, which carried this alert the other day:

BRIDLEWAYS (No. 2)27.02.2007
Hoyle, Lindsay That this House recognises the
importance of bridleways for horse-riders to exercise in safety and enjoy the countryside; notes that many bridleways are in poor condition or are abused by people using motorised vehicles; and calls on the Government actively to promote the use of bridleways, ensuring that those who use bridleways inappropriately are fined, to look to extend the number of bridleways across the country and to ensure that existing bridleways are kept open and are well-maintained for horse-riders.
Some MPs have tabled Early Day Motion number 1004 in support of bridleways.
Early Day Motions (EDMs) are often used to find out how much support different policy choices might attract, and to see whether proposed legislation might get through the Commons. This could be such a flyer. Even if not, it's important to show the Government that there is as much support for new paths this year as there was last time such an Early Day Motion was tabled.
If you would like to see the EDM supported, you need to write to your MP giving the number of the EDM (1004), and reasons why you think it needs support. It is always best to give your own personal experience relating to one or more of the aims of the EDM rather than to use a form letter.

This is well worth supporting if you ride off-road at all.

St Albans MP Anne Main is silent on bridleways both in parliament and on her own website, and hasn't yet signed up to the EDM. (She's equally silent on cycling generally)

Find out who your MP is here, and then write to them using this free and convenient site.

First batch of tomatoes growing well

2007-03-09T12:31:00.001Z

First batch growing well, originally uploaded by mike1727.

They're growing nicely, there were only a couple of seeds which didn't germinate. The weather's looking good for the weekend, sunny and temperatures in the mid teens C- so not too much of a shock for the seedlings moving from a warm house.
That leaves me room for another batch, which will give me a longer harvesting season and some spare plants to swap.

The top 10 unlikely partnerships

2007-03-06T13:10:00.000Z

The top 10 unlikely partnerships -Sport-More Sport-TimesOnline: "5 Cycling and EPO Last year’s Tour of California was sponsored by Amgen, the company that makes EPO (if taken when you shouldn’t, a naughty, illegal, performance-enhancing-type substance). After the race the organisers boasted that not a single rider had tested positive for banned substances. Not a single rider was tested for EPO "

The Herts Advertiser - Death-crash driver is 'unfit to plead'

2007-02-27T12:48:00.000Z

The Herts Advertiser - Death-crash driver is 'unfit to plead': "THE sister of a cyclist spoke of her anger and heartbreak this week after an elderly driver charged with causing his death was ruled unfit to stand trial.

John Broad, aged 89, of Shenley Hill, Radlett, had been due to make his plea at St Albans Crown Court on the charge of causing death by dangerous driving. However Judge John Plumstead closed the case because the defendant was suffering from Alzheimer's disease."

Goodbye and good riddance

2007-02-27T10:24:00.000Z

BBC SPORT Other Sport... Cycling Former Tour winner Ullrich quits: 'Today I'm ending my career as a professional cyclist,' said Ullrich. 'I never once cheated as a cyclist.'

Yeah, right.

Lock up the pies, Jan's on the loose.

Planting

2007-02-26T12:28:00.001Z

First sowing, originally uploaded by mike1727.

Spring's so close you can smell it; crocus and iris in flower, tulips pushing through quite well, even in the containers at the front (north facing). Daffodils out everywhere (except in our garden), hawthorn(?) and a few cherry blossoms on roadside trees but nothing on next door's cherry trees yet.

The resident frogs have been busy spawning again; first croaks heard last weekend, first spawn around Wednesday and more appearing daily. Randy little buggers. Looking back, I photographed spawn in mid March last year; I think it was a week or two old then which means the frogs are spawning maybe a week earlier this year. That's not really conclusive evidence of any underlying trend, but it has been very mild this winter.

Planted this week:

Early peas. Sown in guttering (2 x 1m rows) to get an early start and for easy transplanting once the seedlings are big enough to cope with pigeons and slugs.
Broad beans. Red and green, 10 each in 3" pots- should do just under 1/4 square metre.
Sweet peas. Mixed scented. Some in individual 3" pots, others 5 to a 5" pot. I'm not sure how well these will germinate in an unheated greenhouse, they probably need a propagator lid to get them going.
Carrots. Early globe. Broadcast into a 12" bulb pot since all the beds have been heavily manured this season.
Potatoes. First earlies. Some in heavy duty refuse bags filled with compost from last year(3 to a bag), 6 in one of the raised beds. The beds are still quite wet, hopefully not so wet as to cause rot.
Shallots. A couple of rows in the sunniest raised bed. Probably squirrel food, they need protecting.
Garlic. A couple of rows next to the shallots.

About half of last week's planting of tomato seeds have germinated; cherries first, followed by the beefs and Moneymakers. The biggest are about an inch tall and growing fast.

To do:

Fruit tree pruning. Before they blossom, possibly a spray too though no sign of reappearance of the canker(?) they had a couple of years ago.
Sowing. Another batch of tomatoes if I can find space for another propagator, half a gutter of lettuce, a few courgettes, sweet corn, cabbage (?), Marigold and a few other border annuals to fill in gaps.
Hanging baskets. Look for plants to raise from seed.
Slug traps. Drown the buggers in beer.
Gate, fencing.

A stencil is worth a thousand words.

2007-02-25T23:14:00.001Z

grosteque, originally uploaded by Walt Jabsco.

We made our last Tesco purchase last week.

I'd been getting very uncomfortable buying anything from Tesco given their plans for St Albans, but we needed an internet shop, our details were already set up and we had some money off vouchers to use; so as a last resort it didn't seem too bad an idea. Well, not until their customer service wouldn't give a reasonable response to a query and certainly not when some of the produce turned out to have a use-by date of the same day as the delivery.

So, screw 'em. Sainsburys/Asda/Morrisons can have our supermarket money, we'll buy more from the market and grow more of our own veg.

Pothole fishing

2007-02-23T16:28:00.001Z

Pothole fishing, originally uploaded by mike1727.

Herts Highways' vision of St Albans roads?

I've just added a blog entry on how to report potholes over at the St Albans cycle campaign blog. It's time to log 'em all and keep tabs on Herts Highways' performance against their target to fix dangerous potholes within 24 hours.

Spring stirs

2007-02-19T12:43:00.001Z

Fumigate, originally uploaded by mike1727.

Spring is just round the corner, or so it feels. Learning from last year's hurried planting we spent the weekend clearing children's toys, patio furniture etc out of the greenhouse, replacing glass broken by falling conkers, cleaning layers of green crap off the glass and finally fumigating the whole thing to get rid of any nasties left over from the diseased vine which used to grow in there. We planted a bay to fill a gap in a evergreen herb bed and did a load of tidying up.

I planted the first batch of tomatoes last night- including 'Big Boy' beefs, which will allegedly yield fruits weighing 500gr each. We'll see.

Tonight's batch of planting will be a few pots of sweet peas and a couple of dozen broad beans, red and white- then garlic and shallots this weekend. Spousal objections to seeds trays and pots on every windowsill have limited the available propagation space so I'll see how the beans get on in the greenhouse- it was 50F in there yesterday with the door open, so it should be warm enough to get them going.

Elsewhere: new grass is yellowing a little and needs feeding, fruit trees need pruning soon (to spray, or not to spray?...), first show of green from some of the bulbs planted last year, a couple eof crocusses and a solitary iris. Fig cutting still ominously dormant.

Stop Tesco in St Albans! Protest, because every little helps

2007-02-16T13:10:00.001Z

St Albans Market , originally uploaded by mike1727 .

St Albans is a small mediaval city, just North of London. If I was an American tourist I'd probably call it 'quaint'- there's a load of Roman remains, a nice cathedral, a vibrant market, loads of restaurants and pubs. The city is compact- you can ride from one side to the other in an easy 15 minutes- and surrounded by greenbelt.

Like all settlements in the South-East, St Albans is under intense housing pressure, and although not totally gridlocked just yet we've got traffic problems most of the time.

Megaretailer Tesco would like to build a superstore on a brownfield site just outside the city centre. Tesco have been buying up property around the site for some time as part of its landbank strategy and letting the houses and shops it owns on this main road into the city fall into disrepair in order to make redevelopment more attractive. Finally, they've made a planning application for a combined superstore and housing project- read more about it on their greenwash-spattered site here (if the massive spin doesn't make you dizzy), then read just some of the local reactions on the plan at the local protest group here and St Albans Green Party here.

Here's why I think Tesco shouldn't open another store in St Albans:

A superstore this close to town threatens local businesses including our 1,000 year old market.
The site can be better used: situated very close to the station and the city centre it's a prime spot for housing and shouldn't have so much area dedicated to retail.
Additional traffic generated by shoppers and deliveries will worsen queues and reduce safety for cyclists.

What can you do?

Boycott Tesco other supermarkets are available, or try the market for cheaper fruit and veg without excessive packaging and with less food miles.
Tell Tesco why they're not welcome here Use Tesco's 'contact us' page here , or if you're a Tesco shareholder try here.
Make your voice heard: Hertfordshire Advertiser St Albans Observer Your district councillor Your county councillor Anne Main MP
Grow your own veg....

It's just not funny any more.

2007-02-13T20:43:00.001Z

It's just not funny any more., originally uploaded by mike1727.

Four punctures in less than two weeks is frankly starting to take the piss. I picked this one up without even riding off road, and didn't find the cause, which is even more frustrating. At this rate I'll live with the extra rotating mass of anti-puncture bands just to escape the nightly tube fixing session.

If through some accidental transgression I have offended a trail deity I apologise unreservedly.
Really, I do.
Stop now, please.