My hotel has a complimentary cake and biscuit pantry. Big enough win thought I until I went in and discovered that, unbeknownst to me, Tunnocks make a XL wafer.

Boab wrote: ↑Fri Mar 15, 2024 7:44 pm Just about to go and shove 1KG of coffee beans through my new grinder. I'm like a kid with a new toy...

Bob. It's Friday evening, you should be drinking beer, not coffee!

Tunnocks make a XL wafer

Now you're talking

fatbikephil wrote: ↑Fri Mar 15, 2024 8:08 pm

Boab wrote: ↑Fri Mar 15, 2024 7:44 pm Just about to go and shove 1KG of coffee beans through my new grinder. I'm like a kid with a new toy...

Bob. It's Friday evening, you should be drinking beer, not coffee!

It was a kilo bag of the cheapest crap I could find, no way would I want to make anything with the resulting grounds. Will be used as compost, or slug deterrent...

Boab wrote: ↑Sat Mar 16, 2024 11:03 am

fatbikephil wrote: ↑Fri Mar 15, 2024 8:08 pm

Boab wrote: ↑Fri Mar 15, 2024 7:44 pm Just about to go and shove 1KG of coffee beans through my new grinder. I'm like a kid with a new toy...

Bob. It's Friday evening, you should be drinking beer, not coffee!

It was a kilo bag of the cheapest crap I could find, no way would I want to make anything with the resulting grounds. Will be used as compost, or slug deterrent...

Post 'em up here, I'll drink any kind of coffee

Only not off topic because it’s Cheery Friday, but…

I like words. I learnt a new one yesterday - Christofaschist. A lovely word. A lot of ‘em in USA apparently…

Also, a disappointing truth. I’ll explain…

Who’s heard of the song “Alouette, (gentille Alouette)”? I’d always thought it was about a boy singing about a girl. Not so . It’s an old voyageur’s (the fur trappers that paddled canoes full of furs across Canada) song. Helped them to keep to a paddling rhythm, so they say. Anyway Alouette is a bird - a lark - and “ je te plumerer” means “I’m going to pluck you”

I’m traumatised. What I’d always thought as as a nice little folk song (in French of course) is about torturing a little bird

I darent look to see what Frere Jaque’s about…

I was considerably more cheery on my ride today than the bloke I met asking me if I'd seen any car keys. He had ridden 20 miles before he realised they had fallen out of his pocket. I hope he found them but given that half the paths around here are gloop, I suspect that he might be a tad glum at the moment.

I learned a new word today - sapid.

Definitions from Oxford Languages
adjective
having a strong, pleasant taste.
"sapid nut bread"
(of talk or writing) pleasant or interesting.

Which was nice.

Forecast is for a sunny day but a strong westerly: a north east classic. So bagged a ticket on the 7.40 to Hexham, upwind for a couple of hours easy ride home, for the princely sum of £3.70

A couple of days late, but since the day in question was miserable, today feels like a good day to celebrate the passing of the equinox and the longer days to come

Just ordered a pinion Broken Road with a Gates belt drive. Hoping it's ready for the WRT.

Well, I'd gone about 12 miles when my mech hanger spontaneously snapped, threw the mech into my spokes and exploded. Fortunately I carry all the tools I need to shorten a chain, cable ties to fix stuff out of the way, and even an emergency mech hanger, in my tool bag. Unfortunately, today was also the day I left that bag in the garage, despite having swapped the correct size tube into it last night



I'd almost made it to the start of the main climb, which luckily left me with a couple of miles coast/scoot downhill to the nearest station. Train ticket back to Newcastle: £7.40

So, about these Pinions...

A whim purchase 2nd hand frame arrived. Cheap, and really bloody nice Gen 5 Cotic Soul in mercury silver. Going to run it 120mm mullet, hence the need for a 27.5 wheel. Going to be a pure fun/trail machine, and the Titus will be the XC/all rounder machine. Just want to get it built up and enjoy it, and harks back (in the right way) to my old Rock Lobster 853, but with more modern geometry.

thenorthwind wrote: ↑Fri Mar 22, 2024 11:30 am Unfortunately, today was also the day I left that bag in the garage

Of course it was . Bad luck 'Wind, what a palaver.

Cheery Friday indeed as I now have two weeks off

Unfortunately, today was also the day I left that bag in the garage

Think of all the charachter you just built.

I had to walk 4 mikes receny due to no multitool..... Beginers mistake and the problem with having multiple bikes ( and disliking camelbaks)

Lazarus wrote: ↑Fri Mar 22, 2024 2:29 pm the problem with having multiple bikes

True. About 6 miles for me, including the 4 home from the station, though some of it I was able to coast. I was chatting to the guy cleaning the platform while waiting for my train home (my bike attracted quite a lot of attention, not for the mangled derailleur and chain hanging off it, but for the spectacular accumulation of mud from a previous ride - which didn't contribute to the mechanical, I hasten to add: the drivetrain was clean) who related a conversation he'd had with his riding buddy who has ten bikes:
Is that your winter bike?
No, it's my midwinter bike?

Trying to salvage some cheeriness from the day... While riding (on my commuter) to the shopping centre (where I'd cunningly left a lock on my way to the station this morning in anticipation of picking up a couple of things on the way home, in the space of 5 minutes, I was passed by a lad on an all-black flat bar single speed who told me my bike is "cool as f*** mate" and had an older lady on a mobility scooter tell me it's "a bonny bike" Truly the bike for all people. (IGH as well!)

macinblack wrote: ↑Fri Mar 22, 2024 11:12 am Just ordered a pinion Broken Road with a Gates belt drive. Hoping it's ready for the WRT.

Nice


- - -


Saw a Honda NSX today out on the roads, don’t see many of those about.

Also, got a free pass on Sunday - so just trying to work out either a mountain day walking or heading to Anglesey beach cruising

No, it's my midwinter bike?

My mate (not on here) has 160, 140, 120 and a 100 mm rear travel suspension bike( and 3 hardtails) but even he wod not have a mid winter bike

I just bought an earlt 80s drop bar as its almoat the same as my fir st proper road bike. Handles terribly so glass houses. My excuse was it was cheap (£80)

Bad luck Dave - mebbes should expand my crash thread to crashes, mechanicals and other bike related misfortune which don't necessarily cause major damage or cost but are a PIA.

No cycling for me this weekend as down at Mum and Dads - Dad is still in care after a knee replacement opp so helping Mum stay sane and providing unskilled labour in the garden. Actually took the motorbike down on some quiet, bendy but wet roads through the borders and Northumberland so that was cheery.

5 days off

A cheery end to an almost month's long angst with a lesson learned: don't touch what you don't understand.

Early in February I looked to spend an afternoon playing with and learning some machine learning/natural language processing nonsense. I found a demo tutorial using a service that had a free trial so signed up and set it to make use of my AWS account, an account I use for a bit of online storage and nothing else at $6/month. I didn't want to spend that much on this so used AWS 'Budgets' to set a max spend of $30 which seemed reasonable for an hour or so's messing about.

I started things running and near-immediately my budget was reached so laughed and my ignorance on cost of 'AI', stopped things, and went for a ride instead. Or rather I thought I'd stopped things … 

Come the end of the month my bank get in touch having declined a payment as it looked dodgy: £2200 to AWS. In looking, I hadn't stopped things at all and was being charged $115 a day. The bank blocked the payment and I set about disputing things with Amazon. While I was waiting on a response, Amazon tried to take the payment again and it went through: I've just spent £2200 on an aborted 20 minute experiment. Plus another £300 already incurred for March.

I went back to AWS support and with a bit of to and fro, got every running service properly stopped so as not to waste anymore money, then spent the next 3 weeks going over and over with them what had happened, repeating the same story every few days when they asked the same questions.

Finally yesterday, almost 4 weeks after this started, I checked my bank account and there's a credit from Amazon. I check my AWS account and there's a credit on my account to cover this month's bill. Thank feck!
I think the fact I set a budget, albeit one that was so ridiculously inadequate, and had at least stopped some services running when I saw what had happened had them take pity on me. Phew.

Anyway, Happy Easter, Ramadan Mubarak, and hope you can enjoy the long weekend. I will.

Cheery Friday here as I’m about to ride my bike on Mull

I was considering insuring my bike and perhaps having a brief pootle but given that we woke to snow yesterday, I decided against bothering. Instead I will busy myself with the seemingly never ending list of tasks which require attention while I watch the droopy daffs and lambs head-butt each other. That may not sound especially cheery but it's the kind of day that makes me content.

Reg will be pleased to know that I’ve finally finished the wall I was building when we had our ride around the South Lakes. Not that I have been working on it every day - the weather this winter has seen to that (I only managed two days in December for instance)

Just another several kilometres to go