FBROTY FAIL! & beer me

chris and i met up in comrie & parked just N of the diel's cauldron for a FBROTY. plan was to cross the hills over to loch tay and return a wee bit further east.

rode for a while on tarmac with a kind tailwind. climbed up and over towards the loch lednock. before hitting the snow and boiler plate ice at the 350m mark.

i fucking hate snow and ice. might be fine in parts of the country where it falls and fucks off sharpish. but snow + freeze/thaw sucks. a hardy scottish hydro vehicle had been over the road since the last major dump and the road was mainly clear, but occassionally deep ice in the tyre tracks. the middle of the road was either clear or 4 inches of snow brake.

made it to the wee-est power station i've can think of, then a burn crossing and a humph up a hillside. to see if we could find the path.

there was no path. i called it and we headed back. into a headwind. and the same ice and snow as before. the big descent was chilly. almost AndyW's face at Irvine chilly. brrr!

car. dry socks. heater.

headed back to crieff to have a couple of coffees and enjoy the underfloor heating at chez morris.

been consoling myself with some SNPA and some Williams Bros Midnight Sun. i'm a take it or leave it type when it comes to porter, wee bit too hardcore for my palate, but this is a cracking example of the type. heavy, but not crushing. recommendo. and a rescue for a frustrating day in the hills.

damn you OS. damn you.

500...

...miles in january (so far).

150,000 crank turns.

just over 1 1/4 days on the bike.

ridden every working day since the 2nd and a few for fun too.

good. good. good.

colours

the respray for the new singlespeed has been narrowed down to one of two colors (sic):




or

head clearer

had originally been planning an east of a9 mtb jaunt today. then when i heard it'd snowed a bit, a trip to the west. when that didn't happen it was off on the fixie around loch leven.

quick detour round glassmount due to roadworks, through the grantzone and a right turn deep into redfife before heading up through scotlandwell and eventually milnathort. not many flyers out.

back via kinross, the grantzone and the quarry road back to the diversion. wee stinker of a climb (on 44x18 at least) to meet standing stanes road and a cruel headwind up to the top of the col de montquey. spinyourtitsoff back home again.

training tune of the day: red fang - prehistoric dog
(source: stevil)

oh. and well done to friend of hell-on-wheels finlay who is off to the sundance film festival with his (and co-director adrian's) film ma bar.

drop the scone

i was going to write about my adventures in drop scone making, but found out today that i have a fair chance of being made redundant along with up to 125 of my colleagues (out of 600 in my division) in a restructure.

fricken a!

you'll have to imagine the drop scone fun for now. i'm having a beer or two.

airbrushed out of history

Received a copy of Visit Scotland's new Scottish Mountain Bike Guide in the post this morning. Flicked through to the Carron Valley page and noticed with some amusement the change shown below (2008 version on left, 2009 on right).

Carron Valley Development Group might no longer exist and they might have been a thorn in the side of Forestry Commission Scotland by standing up to them, but they were still responsible for designing, fund raising and building these trails. No Carron Valley Development Group, no trails at Carron Valley Forest.



The photo might just have been airbrushed, but this pettiness is repeated on the ground. The Carron Valley Development Group signs on the waymarkers (paid for by funds raised by the group) have either been removed or reversed.

Sigh...

bloody sam

start of a sam peckinpah season at the edinburgh filmhouse today. kicked off with bring me the head of alfredo garcia which was ace. very much looking forward to the wild bunch and cross of iron on the big screen.

mudguards

'bout a month ago, the sks mudguards on front of the fixie gave up the ghost. the rivets holding the stays onto the mudguard pulled through on the way home from work. quick bit of roadside wrestling and it was off and consigned to a waste bin alongside a multitude of metros, a broken golf umbrella and ginster wrappers left by the clinically underinformed, underdry and undernourished bus stop dwellers of edinburgh park

dropped into a couple of glasgow bike shops on the way back from a cx race and was forced (through lack of choice) to pick up some sks commuter mudguards. roughly similar to the classic thermoplastics, but the stay attached at one point only, down towards the bottom end.



what a pile of shite. awkward to install and rattly as fuck. definitely not recommendo.

now removed and a chromoplastic for me again. never get out of the boat.