BSO- bicycle shaped object

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.

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

cracked rim, originally uploaded by mike1727.

Today's design flip-flop

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

Mark Cavendish wins Milano San Remo

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

P1000088, originally uploaded by ANNYIA.

Making a Beach Cairn

Making a Beach Cairn
Originally uploaded by escher1

'How to' video.

19/02/2009 Then and now

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

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

Woolworths Christmas Eve 2008, originally uploaded by mike1727.

Bike recycling

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

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

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

"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)

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

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

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

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!!!

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

First gold- cycling!

BBC coverage here

Trees on the horizon

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.