running a high wire September 24, 2005  

House sale going slowly. Don't ask about it.

New things in the material world about which I'm actually quite excited:

• Surly are about to start shipping an offroad unicycle frame (well, fork). I'd like to have a crack at unicycling, and this looks like a good solid way to get going. Unicycle commuting - there's got to be something in that.
• The Edinburgh Bicycle Co-Op have started making their own brand cycle trailer. If we were staying in the UK, I'd be saving up for one of these to do the supermarket shopping with. Edinburgh Bicycle produce a lot of good own-brand kit (I own their bike rack and rate it) at reasonable prices, and I quite fancy a bike trailer - it'll be great for cycling holidays with Rebecca when she's a bit older (how else are we going to schlepp a tent around Nelson, eh?).
• Aldi are about to start stocking their winter cycling kit range. £20 for a pair of cycle shoes? 'Ave it!

I'm not obsessive, I'm focussed. Did I mention that my souvenir of choice from Switzerland was a pair of Assos socks? You can't visit Switzerland and not buy Assos - but their reputation for excellent quality is matched by their reputation for silly, silly prices (for example, £75 for a pair of shorts). So I got some socks. They're really, really comfortable. Only time will tell as to their durability, though.

slight cultural disconnect September 21, 2005  

Six hours ago, I was in Geneva. An hour ago, I was queuing in our local corner shop. Funny old world.

Switzerland: nice. Very neat. And everything stops for 2 hours at mid-day, which I wasn't expecting. Excellent holiday, with the exception of Rebecca managing to inflict a 2cm cut just above her right eye (as in, between the eyelid and eyebrow) from a bedstead. Thankfully, it didn't cause any serious damage, but we were bloody worried for a while there. Rebecca enjoyed Switzerland otherwise, and seems to have been sorry to leave. Or at least, screamed for 30 minutes on the plane on the way back.

Oh halleluiah, the telly's just blown up. Timing - it's the essence of comedy. Did I mention that we've booked our tickets back?

a touchingly earnest attempt to capture a moment of sheer joy in poetry September 10, 2005  

I've seen happiness
in the hum of simple machinery
whirring beneath me
as I labour up a hill.

I hit the top;
the lanes, hills and byways
wander off ahead of me
in warm autumn sun.

The simple physical joy
of a slope climbed
with the sun on my back
and the wind to my side.

A quiet moment of movement
that draws me in.

Rolling back home.

I'm not normally much of a one for poetry, but sometimes you've got to. Mind you, I did end up riding home today through 20cm of water (well over the bottom bracket on the bike), due to serious flooding around the neighbourhood, so I'm not sure quite how apropos it is. Good fun riding through the water, though; I shudder to think what it's done to my bottom bracket. Grin factor.

Actually, I went through a bit of a phase in university of writing haiku. Mostly they weren't that crash hot, but it was inspired by my writing one haiku during a lecture. Appropriately, I wrote the haiku in one very short burst of inspiration, and never topped it. Strictly, it's not a proper haiku, because it doesn't mention seasons, but here it is (reproduced in its entirety):

The philosopher
keenly grows his facial hair.
A dog is hungry.

You can see why I couldn't top that.

I span the genres. They call me the genre-spanner.

roll on the democratic people's republic September 09, 2005  

We completed our democratic duty earlier this week, and submitted our postal ballots. From here on in, we can only watch in wry amusement as the various parties engage in lolly-scramble economics. Is it just me, or are there a heck of a lot of totally insignificant parties on the ballots? I didn't find the party of "The Party of Me And Trev And To Be Honest I'm Not Too Sure About Trev", but it wasn't far off. You can tell the really silly wee parties: they all have to end their names with -nz. Libertarianz, ProgressiveNZ, etc.

Oh, and is it ironic or what that the 99 MP Party has two candidates on the list?

And while I'm on the subject - what's with the Exclusive Brethren erecting campaign billboards for National? What's Brash promised them? Compulsory headscarves for all?

I was in the local bakery the other day with Rebecca. Rebecca was merrily running around, being cute and/or destructive. I ended up picking her up and holding her in my arms while I got the bread. As I was standing there, a rather raddled woman in late middle age came up and started to make a fuss of Rebecca. "Oooh, you're a beautiful little girl," she crooned, "aren't you? Aren't you? Are you going to grow up to be a beautiful little blond-haired girl?" "Well," I said, "My hair was that colour when I was her age." The old lady looked up at me, then looked back down at Rebecca and said "Never mind, dear."

On the headphones: a fair bit of Mylo, and a fair bit of Hayseed Dixie. Their version of Gin and Juice is definitive. As is their version of I Believe in a Thing Called Love.

a further rant about relative lifespan of kit September 06, 2005  

And socks. Don't get me started about socks. I go through socks like butter, man. The average lifespan of a pair of socks is about six months before they get the first hole, and then about another six months until I reckon they're too stuffed to use. I walk a lot, and I've got big feet - I'm hard on socks. I've tried normal socks, business socks, and fancy highly engineered socks. So far, the winners have been good old Kiwi "Gold Top" socks (very solid), and the DeFeet Air-E-Ator - which are probably my all-time favorite socks. Comfortable, cool, and stupid tough. Cheap socks aren't usually worth the time (a sock I put a hole in in a month is a waste of money no matter how cheap it was). Additional engineering is often nice (I find X-socks kit very comfortable...) but durability is also important (...and lasts just as long as every other brand). The absolute loser in terms of price/performance has got to be the pair of Icebreaker merino socks I got last time I was home - hole in the toe within a fortnight. For $30, I wasn't too impressed.

I am one of the few people I know who gets genuinely excited about a good pair of socks. I walk a lot, and comfortable feet are very important to me. I have to explicitly tell family members that socks are not a "can't think what else to get him" Christmas present, they're something I actually like and need.

Plus, old socks make very good polishing rags. I'm currently using a navy blue gold top that finally gave up the ghost to buff up my Brooks.

Oooh - Planet X have a new cyclocross frame out. Very nice.

Having serious problems getting the insurance company to spring for repair cash. Feh.

less nausea, more knee pain September 05, 2005  

Rode the After the Harvest 210k audax yesterday. At 7am, when I left home, there was a fog down - it was like driving through a ping-pong ball. By 8am, when the ride started, the sun was burning the fog off. By 8:30, it was crystal clear and blue skies as far as you could see. By 10:30 it was 28 degrees, with 25kph winds. That meant that we spent most of the day riding in blistering sunshine, into a headwind. Ah well. After my last experience on a 200, I made sure to drink lots and to eat as much as I could manage. But on a day like that, it wasn't a question of whether you'd dehydrate, it was a question of how much by. Towards the end, I was seriously feeling it: the last 50k were an absolute bastard. Aided by the cunning deployment of a bag of jelly babies - plus a dose or two of my favorite ergogenic substance, V - I made it back in 11'25" - or five minutes less than my last time for a 200. I wonder what sort of times I could post without the heat exhaustion?

Slightly shamefully, the biggest psychological boost I had all day was 20k from the end - I was doing my "grim death I'm finishing this if it kills me etc" routine, grovelling up slight inclines and generally not having fun. I saw another rider on the run sitting by the side of the road - I slowed up to see if he had a puncture or anything. "New shoes," came the reply, pointing at his (presumably sore) feet. "Righto, see you at the end!" I replied, and cycled nonchalantly on - and as soon as I was out of sight, started to cane it. Up until that point, I'd been assuming I was the last rider on the road, so to find out that I wasn't - it's not pretty, but by gum did it give me a boost. Of course, the bugger passed me 2k from the finish, but I finished only about a minute behind him - and only about ten minutes behind three other riders. And there were still two more to come when I signed out (from a field of 28). So I was quite happy with that, really.

Today, my knees are killing me and I'm very tired. I'm also stupidly hungry; this is the fun part of things, being able to eat rather a lot of food and not worry too much about it. Apart from that, it's all good. I've taken the day off to recover and look after Rebecca. It's good fun.

And big respect to Kanye West, for saying some things that the rest of us were thinking on a live TV broadcast. Nice one.

the breaks September 02, 2005  

I'm quite hard on kit. I tend to use things until they break, get them fixed, and then use them until they break again. My acquisition of new clothes is more driven by my having worn through substantial areas of my current wardrobe than by fashion. I tend to get about a year's use out of an office chair before it's too stuffed to use: my habit of sitting with one leg crossed under the other, for instance, means that I wear holes in the seat covering.

This line of thought was spurred by the progress of my insurance claim for the damage to my MTB after falling off a bike rack. There was fortunately no damage to the frame itself (confirmed yesterday). However, the rear wheel, rear mech and saddle were write-offs, and there was a fair bit of other minor cosmetic damage. Having had the extent of the damage confirmed yesterday by Townsends, I'm now looking at replacing the broken stuff. Which got me thinking - I've had this bike for around four years now, but how much of the bike is original? I've replaced a fair few bits over the years as they've worn out, broken, or been stolen - it's in danger of becoming like the proverbial knife that's had the blade replaced three times and the handle replaced seven.

So precisely how much of my mountain bike is original?

Original	Replaced
Front wheel Shift/brake levers Stem Frame Bottom bracket Crankset and chainrings Seatpost	Tyres Headset Bars and grips Forks Cables Pedals Saddle Front mech Rear mech Rear wheel Cassette Chain Brakes

So that's the frame, the front wheel, and some change. Blimey. Everything else has been broken, worn out, or stolen at some point in the last four years. In some cases, multiple times (I'm averaging a chain a year). I hadn't quite realised that it'd gone that far (well, it hadn't until the accident). Unfortunately, my propensity for breaking things or having them stolen means that I'm not quite at the stage where I can practically assemble a bike from the spare bits in my garage. But, y'know, I'll be interested to see how much longer the front wheel and frame last.

Yesterday, when I got home, I had to take a ball-point pen off Rebecca. She promptly started crying and bit me. We put her in her playpen for five minutes to cool down, and then let her out. As soon as she came out, she came over and spontaneously gave me a kiss. Then she kissed her teddy bear. I reckon we're ahead on points.

Rebecca is also showing a gratifying proclivity to eating fresh food. She's discovered that the plum tree in the garden is a ready source of ripe greengage plums, and has started picking and eating them when she's out in the garden. The other day, while we were walking back from a barbecue, I scrumped a couple of apples from a roadside tree and gave Rebecca one to play with (she was saying "abble? abble?" in a quizzical tone) - by the time we got home, she'd eaten half of it. And last night, for dinner, I boiled half a fresh cob of sweetcorn and gave it to her. I cut the cob into 1cm segments - so the net effect is a flat round thing with sweetcorn around the side, which Rebecca could pick up and bite the corn off. She loved it. Now we just need to get her to eat salad - this is proving more of a challenge.

Just under seven years ago, I was walking around Wellington thinking to myself "Man, I really like this place - I'm going to be sad to leave." You get a bit misty-eyed, treading streets that you know you won't be seeing again in a hurry. You get used to a place, get to know it, get an affection for it. And then it comes time to leave, and you get a bit sad. I've been doing that a bit recently, albeit on a bike - I did the climb up Chapel Hill for what's probably the last time the other week. I paused at the top, got off, stood in the sunshine, took a leak behind a hedge, and surveyed the view across Cambridgeshire. It is a lovely place. I am going to miss it a lot.

And then I thought the same thought from seven years ago: "C'mon, it's not as if the place is going to be towed away. It'll still be here later."

And I rode home happy.

refreshing but not fattening September 01, 2005  

August in the UK is like February in NZ: often the best time of year for weather. The really harsh midsummer is over, it's mellowing out a little, but still nice and toasty warm. We've had a run of excellent weather here over the last few days; average temperature has been knocking around the high 20s, and today went over 30. Nice, if a little hard on the system after a while.

With the upcoming election back home, we're gearing up for our postal votes. Hey, it's not as dodgy as the last couple of times we voted - Wellington Central, we sing to thee! Despite us not having lived back home in NZ for seven years! But this time we've got a credible stake, as we're aiming to be back on turf by the start of November. And it is important to vote in this election. A recent - and rightly derided - poll in the Sunday Star-Times declared that morality is terribly important to a lot of New Zealanders. I'd add myself to that (statistically invalid) number: I consider morality to be quite an important factor in my voting choice (certainly more so than the squalid penny-dangling that both Labour and National [uk equiv: New Labour and the Tories, respectively] are currently engaging in). And so I'm voting in order to try and stuff over a political movement that I regard as actively evil (well, immoral, anyway) - the uprise of conservative Christian fundamentalism in New Zealand, as represented by the Destiny Church (have they got around to setting up that political party yet) and, more pertinently (as they've got some MPs), United Future. I believe quite firmly that the "morality" that these turkeys are touting is little more than crass prejudice, cynically rabble-roused by a mealy-mouthed pack of (intermittantly kiddy-fiddling) pharisees. I want my daughter to grow up in a tolerant, diverse country, where sexuality has no impact on someone's legal rights and opportunities. My family is quite strong enough without some pack of idiots arguing that denying other people the chance to get married will shore it up futher, thanks. Sod them.

And that is why I'm going to be submitting a postal vote for the election. Due to our proportional representation system, if they get more than 5% of the votes cast in the election, they'll get representation in Parliament. Annoyingly, UF are almost certainly going to get in, as Peter Dunne is unlikely to suddenly fail to be elected (he's been in parliament ever since I can remember), but it's worth it to stuff the Destiny Party. If you're a New Zealander, and you've been in an NZ port within the last three years, you're eligible to vote: get out and get jiggy with it. Full details on voting available from the elections.org.nz site.

Gil Scott-Heron once argued that Reagan's America was harking to a simplistic, B-movie mentality. United Future's New Zealand is more like a 50's educational filmstrip about public hygiene.

Took my bike into Townsends Cycles today, to get it checked out after the crash and to get an estimate for the cost of the repairs. They took it in for the day, did a quote including all costs, charged me a tenner for the quote (redeemable against the cost of the repairs when I bring it in), and then cheerfully advised me that the quote used their own list prices and that I could undoubtedly find the stuff cheaper online. "We're quite happy to fit it for you," the mechanic said, "but we can't compete the the online shops on price, so you might as well go there." Refreshing honesty, I'll say that. On the plus side, they confirmed that the frame is OK - the rear wheel, rear mech, and saddle are all write-offs. So it's off goes happy Mr Fax to the insurance company, and we'll see what happens.

Words fail me. Against a background of narcotics tracking, rampant corruption of public officials, heavy illegal immigration and that good old bugbear terrorism, the top concern of the new appointment as head of the Department of Justice in the US is pornography. Not, y'know, kiddie porn or owt like that - just your run of the mill, people shagging in living technicolour, consenting adults who've all signed legal disclaimers porn. You might have thought that scarce resources could be better spent on, y'know, actual bad stuff. You might have thought that taking people off working on cases of child endangerment to prosecute the retailing of consensual porn was not merely stupid but in itself immoral. I'd agree. And, in the only bloody hopeful thing in this whole morass, so would some of the DoJ's prosecutors, who have been assigned these cases over their objections. Little glimpses of sanity in among the hardwired fools.

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