Monday: Spinning class at the Oval. Last day of roofing, still lots to do and it looks like the kitchen has to come out so a new bike looks out of the question.
Tuesday: Work
Wednesday: Work
Thursday: Work
Friday: Work
Saturday: First day off and a wet trip to an empty Eureka, chatted to Lionel about 705 and routing. Lionel lent me his map for the 705 but the card reader must be damaged as it wouldn’t read it. Rode home to watch the final stage of the Giro. It’s been a great race this year with tough stages, pity I missed the stage where Steve Cummings was in the break.
Sunday: Stan’s Aquaduct Challenge day, weather has turned out nice for it. Maybe next year. The A55 was blocked so a trip out in the Mini with Paul and Jack got diverted. I had planned to go to the Panorama to add the cafe to FourSquare but ended up going to the Plassey instead. Headed out of Wales into Shropshire only to see the speed cameras set up just over the border. Welcome to Wales.
Monday: Ride day, Eureka open at 9, best bike weather again by the look of things.
Month: May 2010
Weekending 23 May 2010
There is a lot going on at the moment including chucking nearly 30 years of computer and amateur radio junk out of the loft.
This was to make way for roof to be felted as it is currently held together with lime mortar which has mostly fallen off over the years.
Going through all this gave me time to reflect on how thing have advanced in the last 30 odd years. I haven’t used my callsign for godknows how long now so all the copies of Radcom and all the group magazines I used to suscribe to had to go. Groups such as BARTG, Amsat, Datacom, UHF communications all lost to the paperbank.
I can’t see myself going back to doing home construction to any extent again and wouldn’t know if packet radio still exists or anyone uses RTTY anymore.
Anyway it’s gone now along with all the 8 and 16 bit computer junk. As Sony are to stop making floppy disks they went too. A couple of hundred of them at a £1 a pop in the good old days.
I’ve kept a Spectrum microdrive and ZX1 interface as it’s probably going to be rare.
Had a couple of spinning sessions with Tex and Becky at the Oval and a ride to the Eureka but thats about it ride wise.
Bought some Team Sky kit which is going to get it’s first outing when I’ve finished. I’ve missed a lot of good riding days but better to bite the bullet now and make up for it later. By later we could be looking at next year or the end of this one.
Off out on a ride in the Team Sky kit along with the rainbow stripped shoes breaking rules 9,10 and 11. Only thing missing is the team socks and bike. That should be another rule ” Thou shall not ride in a mix of team replica kit from two teams” . I’ve a couple more up my sleeve for later.
Saturday: Rode out to the Eureka on what was a scorcher of a day just missing the Northend heading out. The Mayor of the Eureka Cafe was there if your familiar with FourSquare. I didn’t twig on to Dave comment about buying the Mayor a tea until Sunday when I picked Paul up from Manchester and he said the Mayor would get free coffee in the likes of Starbucks. There was more debate about replica kit seeing as the comic touched on it again. I’d class Assos as team kit as you’ve got to be in the too much money club to wear it.
Later another chap rolls up in Team Sky kit, he’d jut come off his bike and had gravel rash on his leg luckily his new kit hadn’t been damaged on it’s second time out.
I’ll do a post about “The Rules” because unless your a club rider you’ll be breaking a few of them. Even my shoes break the no rainbow stripes rule.
Eventually I set out on a ride that had me calling in Eureka Cyclesports for a cadence sensor battery and BikeFactory to look at the £9499 Pinarello.
Picked up Route 56 that goes around the back of Chester Zoo and headed back to the Eureka and home via the Missing Link.
Sunday: Picked up a long sleeve Team Sky jersey and some socks from Evans in Manchester. It’s moving fast despite the price of it. £80 for the long sleeve jersey, £10 for the socks. Killed a bit of driving around Manchester calling at the Lowry and then getting lost following the Iphone satnav app that had been set to cycling to get to Manchester airport.
I thought the routing was a bid odd as I kept seeing cycle path signs everywhere.
Colnago Carbitubo
This was my first roadbike, offered to me by my brother as a triathlete was too stingy to come up with the goods and prefered to do the cycling on a mountainbike, I kid you not. £400 wetsuit no problem. Pushbike, no problem, I’ll do it on a mountainbike.
Just confirms my oppinion of a few Triathletes are totally nutz.
Not suggesting that all Triathletes are nutz but why on earth would you ride an MTB when even like something of the above is considered a leisure position. Now I broke my first Carbitubo. I didn’t realise what it was, the Ferrari of cycles at the time. Mine was a Khazahstan team bike in the Tour of Britain. It had seen good use but wasn’t up to a 19 stone pounding. Not over the roads I was riding.
This is my second and it feels very relaxed, probably because it a size too big for me. It has been fitted out with all my surplus gear so hasn’t cost me anything other than what it cost me on Ebay.
It is fitted out in my surplus Sora Groupset, much to many of you’s disgust. Now I love my Trek Madone and the Iceni is still worth riding but going out on a classic bike like this still gives you that buzz. It must be the two down tubes as there is nothing out there like it.
Another thing is the quality of the workmanship pantagraphed cloverleaf logo’s decorate all the lugs and it really does make the bike an eye catcher. This was before the likes of the superb paintwork styles of some of the later bikes.
Use of carbon fibre was in it’s infancy when this bike was released and Colnago went down the road to Ferrari to borrow some of their expertise. With my first one coming apart at the seams it opened my eyes up to how versatile carbonfibre is.
This bike now about 17 years old looks like a normal bike for the period. The chainstay where it first came apart looks like a normal aluminium or steel chainstay. The material is very very thin. It is about 2mm thick at max, more like 1.5mm and the more I read up on epoxies to fix it the more I was convinced what a wonder material carbonfibre was.
I didn’t know it was carbonfibre at the time when I bought it, just that it was a bike I had to have. The ride was electric when I tried it out, razor sharp, responding to every pedal input, even at 19 stone. It needed a new set of wheels as one was black and one was silver. So upgrade time it was, the ride to Wheelbase was an eyeopener I just couldn’t hack downtube shifters, I was all over the place. Dangerously so, so it was an upgrade to STI,s.
Now the general consensus is an Italian bike needs a Campag groupset but when you haven’t a clue about groupsets or STI’s pounds shillings and pence start to come into it. Sora it was as the upgrade was going to cost what I paid for the bike. For that I got a set of Mavic MA3 rims on 105 hubs, Shimano Sora 8 speed double shifters and a decent job on the bar tape. Setup was faultless. Clearly a case of using your local bike shop until you learn some core skills.
19 stone on a double is hard work at times when you have no concept of what fitness is. The ride home had me in 39×25 on a gentle climb and I mean gentle. Town Lane, Bebington, hardly a climb at all. Back to Wheelbase for the next upgrade.
A triple on a Colnago surely some mistake. But a triple it was, I’m still trying to get any cycling clothes to fit me at this stage. Mixing with other cyclists and sharing knowledge was not even a concept in my mind. What did I have to offer?
Now the Colnago name on the bike had me as a marked man, everybody and I mean everybody had me in their sights. There wasn’t a club or rider at one time that hadn’t passed me or dropped me. I’m sure the bike used to spur them on, ” I’ve just passed some fat bastard on a Colnago” used to readily spring to mind.
It all ended when I separated the chainstay from the dropout on a ride going over Montgomery Hill, Caldy. Picked up the mobile to Val and asked to be picked up. It was a bleak moment in my fledgling cycling career.
More later when I take some pictures of the detail that makes this a fine bike. 01 jun 08
More later when I start living the dream.
Hello world!
Test area for my original http://frank.kinlan.co.uk blog which at 4 years old is looking a bit tired.
Weekending 09 May 2010
Monday: Work.
Tuesday: Work, a complete shambles due to what happened the previous day.
Wednesday: First chance for a ride only to be met with a fine drizzle. So it was off to the Eureka for a breakfast.
Here I got a call from work wanting me in that night for a job so the ride was cut short to 18 miles.
I haven’t been posting much lately due to working on the house and the roof needing felting in 2 weeks.
The site still gets about 3,500 hits a month with Aldi Cycle offers and Garmin related comments still coming in.
I’ve finally resolved to update the site with a new theme from WordPress and rewrite some of the articles. The 705 is now 2 years old and I’m still on the first page of a Google search somehow so that will be one of the first to sort out. Links will be updated as a few are dead or dormant.
The search is on for a new theme, the content won’t be a problem.
bumped into Dave at the Cafe and again at Neston where his tyre had blown out.
Thursday: Morning spinning class at the Oval, followed by more work on the house. Chucked away tons of stuff and still got some way to go. Can’t see me using a 50MHz logic analyser ever again and there is not much call for floppy drives these days.
Aldi for a pair of cycling mitts at £2.99 and a top at £14.99
Friday: Tex’s spinning class at the Oval, been nearly 20 odd years since we last hooked up. A guy comes in to do his first class and lasts 10 minutes before walking out. Guess he’s going to stick to the weights.
More decluttering before the roof gets done. Pattern curtain hooks bought on the net for Swish curtain rail proving to be too tight.
Saturday: Took a trip to Formby Cycles and came out with nothing. There was a chap in there trying out clipless pedals on a Dolan on a turbo trainer. I should have videoed it an put it on Youtube. Couldn’t get his foot in then couldn’t get it out, didn’t know which foot to clip in first because he’s sat on the bike. Unclipped into the chainstay, it just went on and on.
You know it’s going to end in tears on his first ride, we all come off when first going clipless but you only do it once. Picked up the curtain hooks from Wilkinsons of all places with a trip to Smiths for ProCycling.
I noticed the magazines have gone from the Eureka so I can’t even give my pile away, so if anyone wants some let me know.
Back in time to watch Cav take the prologue in the Giro.
Sunday: Work.
I’ve set up a new theme on WordPress and once it is sorted I’ll be swapping over to it. Uses all the widjets for Flickr and Twitter and whatever else I want to include. The 705 is now 2 years old so that page is starting to look a bit dated but is still right up there in Google. The 705 Forum sounds like a good idea so I’ll look into that side too.
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