The wonder of serendipity

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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]

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

Symondshyde access track improved.

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

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

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

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:

1. 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.


2. 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.


3. 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.


4. 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..


5. 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

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.

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. .

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!

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

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

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.

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...

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.