The state of things

I love Reverend and the Makers. I love their lyrics. My favourite is 'The State of Things' which I listened to on my way home the other night, after I'd helped out on the Phoenix Bike Ride in Leicester (300 or so kids cycling in to the city centre from all over Leicester).

The thing about the 'State of things' is that you could listen to the lyrics and let it get you down if you wanted to:

Dad's shout at lads so they foul number seven
There's no need for fighting; they're only eleven
Mmm, a little introduction to the state of things
What of the woman, who stands by her fella,
Despite the bruises brought on by the Stella

But on this occasion, as I'm riding home from the Phoenix Ride, I am smiling, safe in the knowledge that the state of things are not that bad, as it's been a bloody brilliant day, and 300 kids from all different races and religions, have been neither shouting nor fighting, they have just been cycling. The Phoenix Ride is the kind of event where even the Daily Mail would be hard pushed to find a negative.

We have since of course had the Jubilee, and this time even the Guardian seemed positively Royalist about it all. Forget chicken soup - all you need is bunting and street parties for the soul. We have had a Jubilee boat parade thingy (Queen on a barge) and tonight we have a Jubilee concert thingy (Queen* on a roof).

Yesterday I led a Jubilee bike ride thingy for British Cycling. It started raining from about midnight the night before and didn't stop all day. It was 9 degrees (which I was reliably informed by my fellow Ride Leader was the exact same temperature as the actual Coronation 60 years ago). The difference being, the Queen was wearing ermine robes rather than mincing about on a Merida Glide in the pouring rain. Cue twitter jokes about 'reign' from fellow cyclists who were presumably on the sofa with a beer at this point.

A couple of people still braved the ride anyway, so at least we weren't completely reigned off.

So anyway - Jubilee = (to me at least) more proof that the state of things ain't that bad. This weather though (rain plus rain plus occasionally two day mini heat waves) has not been kind to my new white pedals.

If you remember, I had taken out a second mortgage to order some metallic pink pedals/ geary things. To my horror, they arrived and didn't fit my bike. I was persuaded to go for white instead, which I did, and am now riding around on the bike equivalent of the Orange Ford Focus they show at the breaks on Sky Sports News. I love my white pedals though...

...apart from the cleaning. After day 2 I sort of gave up. And I keep scraping them on kerbs and things, causing me to swear aloud and make old ladies 'tut'. Perhaps that's the state of things today, 35 year old women who should know better effing and blinding in public.

*Elton John, not the actual queen. Please note this is an Eltonphobic, rather than homophobic comment. I won't be watching this concert, in case I have Carrie like powers which I have not yet discovered and manage to telekinetically push Elton off the roof. Or maybe I will....

You can go your own way

April is kind of like the home straight for a year round cyclist. The shorts slip on, the legs come out, the gloves get put away. Unfortunately, in April it also rains a fair bit so the old waterproofs have been on and off faster than a stripper's knickers. I have also learnt a valuable lesson about cycling clothing this month: don't cycle in cords - a saddle shaped worn patch is neither desirable or attractive*. I have uploaded some new tunes to my phone, including 'Go your own way' the Mac song, sung by Lissie (one of my favourite artists in the last two years). So worn cords aside, I have been cycling home in slightly better weather, and it's been lighter longer, so big tick for April. The good news about cycling home when it's light is, you can see what's (literally) coming atcha. Not so long ago I was cycling home through one of Leicester's fab parks (I am not going to say which one because that might be counter productive and stop people cycling through there!) and some idiot lads kicked a basketball at me pretty hard as I manouvered my way thorugh them and had gone past by about 20 metres. Luckily (sort of) the ball hit me, not the bike else I probably would have come a cropper. I turned the bike round, cycling back towards them a few yards with the challenge 'What was that for?'. Their answer wasn't particularly polite so I buggered off fairly sharpish. If it had been light, would this have happened? Probably not, because the night time does give people a 'you can't see me' bravado. Take two, it's last week, it's alot lighter and I'm cycling through a large council estate. Some kids are playing a game which involves chucking a space hopper several metres into the air and cackling with delight as they avoid it on the way down. The kids see me, so I assume they have the same health and safety thoughts as me: 'Let's keep the space hopper on a level until the nice lady cycles by'. Not so. The hopper chucker (technical term) chucks the hopper, and I cycled onwards casually. Around the time that Isaac Newton's law of gravity kicks in, I am on course to be pretty much a direct hit. The space hopper leaves space, and I am forced to take my eyes off the road and fixate them breifly on the large, orange smiley face with devil like horns that is desending on me from the sky. As the space hopper's grinning features get nearer, I manage to pull off some stealthy moves that put me out of range. The kids laugh, I grin back space hopper like, and all is well in the world. Take the darkness, and the nasty intent out of the situation and it's a whole different ballgame. I'm not put off from cycling through the park I mentioned first. As Lissie and Fleetwood Mac like to remind us, we can go our own way, or we can be put off by a few cowards taking cover in the dark and trying to spoil a great cycling route. Tomorrow - an update on the pink pedals... *and cords don't dry very quickly, so if you don't have a worn patch you'll have a patch and look like cycling excites you a little too much.

Lassoed on the A50

It was supposed to be my day off today, but ended up having to work. And it was the sunniest of sunny days - gutted.

But what’s better than a day off on a sunny day? Easy – the feeling of leaving work after getting stuff done, when it’s still sunny and Friday’s in the air even though it’s Monday.

So I cycled up the cycle path alongside the A50 towards Leicester determined to do something, with my sunny day early release - even if that something involved just sitting in a pub with a pint. But my bike gears keep slipping, usually when I’m ‘standing up in the saddle’ and on the A50 they did so in spectacular fashion, causing me to almost leave the cycle path, cross the grass verge and career onto a busy dual carriageway. I was saved (and nearly killed) by my front brake, which stopped me VERY suddenly, caused the front wheel to propel me forward, bits of bike hitting bits of body. It felt a bit like whiplash and being lassoed at the same time. For the record, I have never been whipped or lassoed*.

The same whiplash/ lasso effect accident happened I cycled out of the Rally, and I had been getting a bit complacement on the cycle in, thinking ooh – gears haven’t slipped for a while. So the something that would’ve been a pint, fast became a ride into Leicester to get my bike looked at by Future Cycles in St Martin’s Square. The very helpful man in the shop explained that my gears were knackered, if fact there were barely any teeth left on ‘em. He priced up replacement parts for me.

But just lately I have been a tiny bit obsessed by buying anything that’s pink metallic to customise my bike (so far only a bottle holder, bell and dust caps – not that obsessed.) Anyway when all these new gears were priced up, I saw the window of opportunity that had opened up – I could get pink metallic stuff – hurrah! And I could pay twice the price for my vanity – double hurrah!

So that something that could have easily been a Yellow Card pint of Fosters in the Soar Point at £2.15 had rapidly become spending more on some fancy pink bits for my bike than a new bike would’ve cost. But I’m such a bike geek that I know it’s worth it.

I walked home from town – YES, WALKED. Earphones in, music on. And the first tune that played? Lasso by Phoenix. TUUUUUUUUNNNNE.

*Though I did work at a rodeo in 2001, probably the coolest job I’ve ever had.

Summer Girls

December and January - on paper it's all been very warm, but in reality there were one or two days that were colder than a witches t*t. I had at least one bike-slides-out-from-under-me-sideways-like-jane-torvill-gone-wrong incident. My route to work is quite hilly, and largely off road so there's not much gritting going on. I just kind of gave up on icy days, safety first and that.

Cycling in general has had something of an early spring, with the Cycling World Cup being held at the new velodrome in London. The velodrome looks fantastic. Still, I am more into watching the road racing myself, the velodrome looks dicier than the black ice I've been skating to work on over the brief winter.

Meanwhile, tunewise I was reminded by the Lyte Funkie Ones that summer is only a couple of seasons away. 'Summer Girls' is the only song I sknow by LFo as they are known. I was about to say that 'Summer Girls' has the worst lyrics of any song ever written, but then I just wikipediad them and found out that the lead singer/songwriter Rich Cronin died a year or so ago of leukaemia aged 36, which is pretty sad, bad lyrics or not. So with the hindsight of not speaking ill of the dead I'll say this - 'Summer Girls' was a tune. It did what it said on the tin, it was a song about Summer and Girls, and everytime I hear it (when I've finished tittering about the lyrics) I get transported back to the Summer of 1999. The lyrics unashamedly reference the 80s and 90s (Home Alone, Footloose, Larry Bird, Kevin Bacon, Abercrombie and Fitch) but it's the opening lines of the chorus which stick out most:

New Kids On The Block,had a bunch of hits
Chinese food makes me sick.

(This is not a song you can sing along to seriously, and Eminem even parodied it in 2000). So anyway, here's to the ice that's gone away thank god, here's to summer which is just around the corner, and most of all here's remembering the late Rich Cronin, who dared to be in a boy band that thought they were a hip hop band and most of all dared to write lyrics about the stuff he liked (and the food he didn't).

Sunshine on a rainy day

There was no sunshine at all today. Good news for vampires, Edward from Twilight would be able to wander around merrily without worrying about people noticing the bizarre diamondy stuff on his face. (Fact fans will find a whole discussion about this on Yahoo answers).

On the plus side, there was no rain either - however I cycled to work in a pea soup like fog that I could actually feel dripping on my head now and again. Still, not rain as we know it. So, the fact that Zoe's Sunshine on a Rainy Day came on really had no consequence weatherwise.

So why am I talking about the weather? Because today, is officially the start of the winter cycling season. This is based on two indicators, neither of which are verified by the Met Office:

1) The muffs are on. Yes, my '360'* Cincinatti Bengals ear muffs are on my head whilst cycling and are probably staying there for a while....

2) Speaking of ears, I have red wine coming out of mine. Red wine is to be drunk in winter, and I am in red wine squirreling mode.

Don't get me wrong, this is not something I'm moaning about. This is only my second winter of cycling, and I have a few tried and tested winter cycling 'secrets' now that I'll share shortly. My winter cycling tips have occured as a result of a scene resembling the Steel Magnolias Julia Roberts/ Orange Juice/ hairdresser incident. I came home, just about fainting, close to tears and had to be force fed orange juice Julia Roberts style by my other half, all because it was sooooooo cold.

So now I:

1) Wear gloves that were recommended on a Canadian ice cycling site.*
2) Keeps the muffs on. My muffs were from a nice lady in America from Ebay, but you can get them from Amazon.
3) Keep moving. Clearly you stop if you reach a junction or if an object twice your size appears in your path, but otherwise don't dawdle. Hills are your friends when it's cold, they keep the blood going.
4) Get whoever's waiting for you at home to have a nice cup of tea waiting. If no one's waiting fo you at home, just keep a glass of red wine by the door, so you can neck it when you fall into the house. One of the perks of living alone would be that this is deemed perfectly acceptable to the other non-existent members of your houshold.

Now you're warmed up, it's back to Zoe. Having just watched that youtube vid I can't believe how dated it looks. I have just rediscovered the song thanks to The Orb present impossible oddities 3 CD epic album. My favourite fact about this 1990 (dear god, I was 13!) song is that it was used on the advert for the Amiga 500.

*Clearly I mean '180s'. '360s' would be a headband.

**Wow what a great TV programme this would make. Ice Road Cyclists. I'm in.

Dancing Barefoot

Bad luck comes in threes.

Bad Luck Part 1:

Sunday and I am cycling home from Glenfield. At some point there is a high speed collision between my face and a wasps ass. The wasp gets stuck UNDER the strap of my cycle helmet and decided to sting me to let me know this. It hurt. As I am on the verge of tears, a very lost looking Somalian man decided to ask me which way the 'Downtown' area was. I explain through gritted teeth with wasp stung cheeks (this is not a good look like bee stung lips believe me) that he is about 3 miles away and it would be a 40 minute walk. He starts the walk, and I ride home cursing the wasp.

Bad luck part 2:

MOnday, and I cycle to Anstey then walked to Cropston with my family for a few jars and half price steak at the Bradgate Arms. I do not realise that we are taking the cross country route, and my flip flops do not really cut the mustard when walking over fields etc. On the way back I notice I have some bizarre toe pain thing, and my foot knackers the rest of the way. My steak is nice though, if you're after the silver lining.

Bad Luck Part 3.

It's Tuesday and I wake up with extreme toe pain. I cycle to work (cycling, thankfully involves no impact therefore provides releif from toe pain). My Blackberry and Patti Smith work together to make sure that 'Dancing Barefoot' is the first song that is shuffled at me as I ride. It's not even the Alison Moorer version which is an example of a cover superior*. The pain is so bad that when I get to work I cycle to my first meeting (in another office block at the large building where I work - 0.21 miles away accoring to my cyclometer). There's no way I can walk there. At lunchtime I go and see a Foot Specialist in Anstey (by bike of course). I am in such a bad mood now that I don't play music. The jury is still out as to whether the toe is sorted after this visit, as by now I have taken so many painkillers that I would dance barefoot if somebody asked me. At 5:30 I remember that Mr Sainsburys is deliverying our groceries between 6 and 7 so I leggit home. On my return I take a call from a very jolly sounding lady called Trish who tells me that Mr Sainsburys has broken down, and will not make it to us until 9pm.

Dinner is reduced drastically from the planned Seafood Gumbo, to frozen cod, chips and peas. The peas are currently residing on my toe to try and reduce the swelling.

*Cover superior - when a cover version of a song outshines the original. Doesn't happen very often but examples include Jeff Buckley's cover of Leonard Cohen's 'Hallelujiah' and (arguably) Eva Cassidy's cover of Fleetwood Mac's 'Songbird'. Incidentally, many people think that these versions are the originals, and don't realise they are covers.

After hours

I have been working late quite a lot lately. This means that in order to get home in time to cook tea, I need to whiz by a particular supermarket on a particular council estate on my way home (it's best not to name either the supermarket OR the council estate for fear of retribution). I have to do all this in record time. I cannot pass go. I cannot dawdle. I must know what I want and remove it swiftly form the shelves and into my basket and pay the nice lady on the till.

This particular evening (not overuse of word 'particular') I am cycling home on the work's Brompton (yes we have an office bike - all the jokes have been done, beleive me). The Brompton stands out somewhat in this neighborhood. Imagine a hog roast at a Bar Mitzvah and you have some idea. I leave the supermarket and head to the Brompton.

"Is that one of them folding bikes?" a man asks, both him and his Staffordshire Bull Terrier trying to make eye contact. "Yes it is," I reply, eyes firmly engaged on Kryptonite bike lock.

"Are you trying to get fit?" He asks.

"Something like that." I reply, with a lighten the mood girly laugh.

"Why - has someone told you that you're fat?".

I have one leg over the office bike. "No." (again a lighten the mood smile).

Staffie owner suddenly looks mad. "Have they?" he growls. "Has someone told you you are fat?". He looks very angry. He looks like he wants to defend me against the person that's called me fat, except no-one's called me fat and he doesn't even know me anyway.

I reassure this complete stranger nutjob that no-one has told me I'm fat, and scoot away on the Brompton. "Becuase you're not, you know!!" he shouts after me. I am relieved, not by nutjob's 'not fat' claim, but by the fact the Brompton and I have escaped. I ride home out of the council estate, through middle class suburbia,and out of the other side blending in as best someone who now feels slightly chubby and is on a very small bike can.

On the way I listen to 'After hours' by We are Scientists. It is 'After hours' and I'm late home again, but at least I've got a funny story to tell when I get there...