The Tour of Britain was completed today. Does anyone know who won? The homepage tells you badly, the BEEB tells you nowt. The Grauniad in its inimitable way actually sums up Team Skys week in its own blx comentary. The headlines from the worlds worst speller say,

Henderson wins Tour of Britain

When revealed in a sentence (remember those, Grauniad subbies?) What the world gets is,

Henderson wins Tour of Britain points jersey in near miss for Team Sky. A whole world of difference.

It's cheering to know that the grauniad managed to publish a reasonable amount of BLX with little effort. Henderson didn't come close to winning owt but the points jersey and Sky came close to sod all.

It has been a great race. Even if at 0025 onSunday morning the results are still not published! Get a grip............

Six Degrees of Separation

I'm new to this blogging malarkey. For years I have been an opinionated individual in bars, work and elsewhere. Free speech is one of the joys of modern life. I would have said of the western world but I don't possess an iBan and Tal will get p***ed off. Back to the thread. Through the eater of time that is Google Reader I follow some work/cycling orientated blogs so I have a hope of keeping the company blog and facebook page reasonably current and interesting. Lockring Not Included has been a heart warming discovery. Simple pictures that say so much, with an understated heading. This entry is already one paragraph and a sentence too long.

On Wednesday this appeared. Nice picture, thought I, understated content. I commented online.

Friday night, Tom Waits territory, a three quarter moon slung in an obsidian sky. Meeting and old friend in an English ale house. There is a chalk board with tonight's ales, near the bottom, with no price swim some Dogfish Ales on draught. Customers ask the price. If you have to ask you can't afford it, £9 a pint. At 14% it's three times the strength of a session ale so three times the price to calm the nutters is fine. But there on the shelf, away from everything else on the shelf, in parenthesis, quotated, read the following words; Dogfish Head World Wide Stout. ABV 21%! We all avoided it. Well there is only the one bottle, as opposed to the kegs of other Dogfish in the cellar.

Fxdwhl. Did they fib? Or, did 21% just rumple your memory. However, please find attached a picture of three pumps in a twilight alehouse sporting all American fine ales. Thank ye kindly. (Poor piccie from a mobile phone)

Neil

Navigating Friday

Quiet day today so far. I've been riding in on the Tifosi this week in a vain attempt to return some strength to the legs after my struggles with gravity last weekend did the hilly route one morning but on the whole I have a serious appointment with my duvet pending. TGIF

Cruising the blogs and forums this morning my mind has turned to electronic navigation. Anyone who knows me will tell you of my antithesis to unnecessary electronic gadgetry. My last three phones have been tinterweb capable and I've never felt the need. I now own a smart phone thanks to a free upgrade and all the other options offering worse spec's on the items I use(Phone, text, camera). If I ever use 20% of it's functions I'll be amazed. However I was a little surprised by the tone of discussion on the usually sedate CTC message boards

You cannot use a smart phone on a bike you need two hands. It's electronic, not waterproof and unwanted handlebar clutter. To roll out a favourite old saw "Electronics: Inherently unreliable and prone to failure." Let's face it as useful as they are, smartphones are not designed for the outdoors. The screen is always unviewable through glare and in use they have the battery life of a hamster.

Garmin type nav systems have their uses if you are doing a fixed route for training and the like. For touring? In my mind, no. They show you so little of your surroundings so you rely on the programming skills of somebody in a darkened room in Silicone Valley. There is no flexibility for the, "What's down here?" turn. Without stopping, fagging about with a pointer by which time you've lost the urge and go back to being told where to go. You also need to keep charging the damn thing. Use it constantly in navigation mode and it will be flat before your days ride is finished.

You can charge on the go from a hub dynamo with a Busch and Muller e-werk or the Tout Terrain Plug. Apple products appear to need a very smooth power supply so a buffer battery has been supplied for the e-werk so you charge the battery and it supplies a smooth charge for your i-phone.

Smart phones are not ruggadised in any way, so rain or a sweaty shirt pocket isn't going to do them any good and in the unfortunate situation of dropping the bike they're toast. The navigator/heart rate monitor types are waterproof and I presume ruggadised to some extent.

My core reason for disliking them is their sheer ruination of social interaction. Instead of engaging their brains people are poking around their electronic comfort blanket. A generation of people who can't navigate are on the way. You see them now, people on the school run/work commute clattering down tiny lanes because the journey is 0.75km shorter and will save them 30 seconds if they average 50mph. The fact that they will be stuck behind the tractor/combine/cyclist or squeezing past their fellows coming the other way and take longer and use more fuel than going on the main drag is beyond them.

GPS is a very useful tool, if I seriously walked or climbed I would not leave home without one. Lost in poor visibility with no navigation points they are a Godsend. Bolted to my handlebars I cant see the point. Off road, probably, but will they survive the toil? A map asks questions of you, tempts you down the road less travelled and most of all gives you an overview. Sans battery, sans pointer, sans app. People talk to you if you have a map. "Are you OK?" "Lost?" "Come far?" No one speaks to you when you're prodding about a hand held electronic device. Sat in the cafe/pub/bus shelter your journey and so much more is spread out in front of you on a map.

Now the burning question is, tomorrow morning? Duvet morning? Gentle ride out to breakfast or up early and go out with Farcycles? Ah decisions. Have a good weekend

A Saturday day ride with Wantage CTC organised by Jan. Advertised at 95km I was gungho in the week planning to ride to the start at the Benson Waterside Cafe (19miles) with the ride home this would give me a 95 mile (ish) ride. Luckily at 6:30 when my alarm rang it was raining so I chose to drive to the start.

The weather was clearing as I drove in and I felt a bit guilty, but hey ho, parked up and ordered the full English. Yes a fine healthy nutritionally balanced pre ride meal. Bit on the steep side but balanced with the river front decking with large covering umbrellas well worth it. A mate from my previous employ popped across the road from his new home of two days for a chat and fell for breakfast within five minutes. Skills Dino! Leaving the father in law sorting the kitchen while the wife takes the kids swimming for a coffee and full is priceless. The rest of the ride soon arrived had some brekkie and then we mounted up and left. A beautiful route past the Tudor manor at Ewelme and on through the Chiltern lanes to Princes Risborough.

It has to be admitted that I thought I was toast at one point this morning. We had just started descending a lovely tree covered sun dappled road. As speed built I thought I'll slip past the rider ahead and enjoy this. Allowing the bike its head I was in the act of passing when a Jag came up the hill in front of us. I will point out now that at no point was he in any way out of order or careless. The road is a car and a quarter wide we are approaching at speed. The rider I was about to overtake calls, "Car down" and legitimately brakes, as do I, however the closing speed is a little worrying. My back end takes a worrying shimmy as the back wheel locks, brake off, instant acceleration, we are now going for the gap between tree lined verge and Jag. My gap is now genuinely closed and I'm mentally choosing how to commune with Jag. I am half wheeled with the bike in front and very aware that when I hit the car she will get cannoned treewards, "Dont brake!" I scream and to my enduring relief Jan lets go of the brakes. I miss her by inches, the Jag by less. Scared myself fartless. I know it could have happened to anyone but I am genuinely rattled that I could have injured a friend. Descended badly all day.

Princes Risborough is a place that until tonight I thought the furthest place from the sea in the UK. Me, a victim of the advertising plots of 1980s public houses? Never! I forget the name of the pub but back then when we thought Maggie was sane and life went on forever it seemed logical. Very little research reveals it is actually in Derbyshire.

From Risborough we took the Phoenix Trail to Thame. This is an old haunt as my current employ was originally up the road in Long Crendon. Had a very pleasant lunch in a coffee shop in Thame and then on into Long Crendon and a wonderful rolling run to Brill. We went up Brill Hill the easier side but it's still a bitch to mortals like me. I was running well post lunch and knowing it to be fairly flat from Oakley onward relaxed a bit. We rolled across the eastern edge of Otmoor along the old A40 and once we crossed the M40 at Milton Common I was in demob mood. The headwind wasn't pleasant and not for the first time thanked the weather gods that I'd driven to the start. We bowled along through the Haseleys and Chalgrove then over the last drag of the day and through Berrick Salome past an old boss's old house and back to Benson and the cafe. Happy to see the car hadn't been clamped and necked coke and cake in trad recovery mode.

Sat in the sun with some fellow riders with a beautiful ride behind us is one of the things that makes touring worthwhile for me. No stat comparisons, no "ha ha dropped you" I bimbled home with the Italian air conditioning* on. Could have rushed back through to the cider shop at Upton but couldn't be fagged and would be incapable of typing by now. Back home I listened to the end of todays play in the test match had a bath then out to the Co-op for some supper. Some slimming club had left a knackered sit up an beg with some badly attached posters outside the Co-op, couldn't resist sliding one of our workshop flyers under the cables on the top tube. Poor old bike needs some TLC.

*Italian Air Conditioning: Wind drivers window down, don sunglasses, drape arm in short sleeved shirt down the door drive in this position allowing airflow to cool blood in exposed arm and rest of body by exchange method.

Route: http://bikeroutetoaster.com/Course.aspx?course=158887

So Jon Snow has been pinged by the Daily Wail for a collection of alleged offences. While no supporter of RLJs (red light jumpers) the photos of him "turning left into a line of traffic" show him turning into a road closed for roadworks. Riding on the pavement, show him mounting and dismounting. One red light jumped shows him the right side of the lights turning on to a cycle path. The thing that bothers me is he appears to have no lights while riding at night! I have been guilty of using the phone on the bike but the receipt of a smart phone has ended that as you just cant use them one handed. It now resides in the saddle bag.

Nice of the no doubt squeaky clean Mr Simpson to do his civic duty, re this man he purports to have seen break the law, and inform the authorities. To be fair he was probably corroborating his facts such as "cyclists can be fined £1000 in court". Ah, the death of the subby.

To nicer things. The overnight drizzle had released the lovely smell of wet countryside on the ride in today, though the oil foam in most of the puddles was less endearing. A weekend away has finally allowed an ever shy female flower to appear on the pumpkin plants. Hopefully the little winged beasties have done their thing but I feel some frottage with a cotton bud coming off just to be sure.

The Naming of Parts

Audax:

The man that is Gods fourth hand, (citation needed) Sheldon Brown, said of Audax,

Audax is a highly-structured style of club riding popular in parts of Europe. Audax clubs ride in precise formation, usually a double pace line at a fixed average speed -- 20, 22.5 or 25 km/h,, with a set schedule of rest stops "by the clock." Riders do not take turns "pulling" as with normal pace lines, but a pair of designated, very strong riders is permanently stationed at the front of the peleton

This seems more like my idea of the classic Sunday club run enjoyed by racing clubs since Pontius was a navigator. Audax UK describe it thus,

They are NOT races. People ride them more in the spirit of an event like the London Marathon, everyone riding to their own limitations with the primary objective to just 'get round'. These events suit everyone, clubmen, time-trialists, recreational riders, cycletourists, 'born again' cyclists, young and old, male and female. And you'll see all sorts of machines - bikes, tandems, trikes, recumbents, and occasionally even stranger things ...
Size of entry varies greatly but is typically around 100 starters. Small local events may have just a handful of riders while a few popular events attract 200 starters or more.
The routes typically feature a few fast main roads and a lot of quiet, scenic lanes. Many events are quite hilly, some are extremely hilly, and even the flatter ones usually have one or two challenging climbs. Some events are noted for the quality of home-cooked food and tender loving care supplied along the way. But most are not - self-sufficiency is a highly-regarded quality in AUK.
On the same theme, 'support' - for example a following car - is very much frowned upon. There are maximum and minimum time limits, which are designed to suit everyone from the fittest of recreational riders, to more occasional riders who have plenty of determination. Each rider carries a 'brevet card' which is stamped at intermediate checkpoints and at the finish, and which is later returned to the rider as a certificate of their achievement.
The success rate on these events is very high - probably only about 10% fail to finish.

Two almost opposite views of the same thing. I've ridden a few Audax and even a Cyclotouriste, mostly I've enjoyed them. Enjoy is an odd term for the wringer I put myself through on a 400k jaunt from Market Raisen to Robin Hoods Bay and back, on a seriously hot day, with a serious amount of under preparation. Generally all good fun with plenty of cake and other well known recovery foods.

And to-morrow morning,
We shall have what to do after firing