Laight As Usual

That Didn't Last Long

2011-07-31T19:51:00.000+01:00

After the excitement and happiness of the last post over the Marin's big repair, it's back to dry dock for the beast. A 10 mile ride was enough to annoy the rear derailleur again and it repeated its Cannock Chase trick of falling apart. While I was lucky at Cannock that the guide (upper) jockey wheel just about stayed attached to the bike, this time I wasn't so fortunate. My own internal jury is still out on whether to continue the hunt for a new 8 speed jockey wheel or to just get a shiny new derailleur seeing as this is a recurring problem... suggestions are welcome.

The photos below show the bike in serious 'limp-home' mode - I had to lower the saddle and scoot all the way home!

Conspicuous only by its absence

Moving on to something less annoying, I finally got developed photos I took at the 2011 British Grand Prix Qualifying at Silverstone earlier this month. A lot of the photos were slightly marred by the safety fence and even more were ruined by my ineptitude, but there are a few I'm happy with and I've put some of them below (there were some other photos apart from Quali too):

Please do click on them to see the full-size image (that applies to all the photos you see on this blog).

The Marin Lives On

2011-07-28T21:11:00.002+01:00

The exciting moment finally arrived when I got in on Wednesday evening - the last of the three packages I needed to repair my poor Marin had arrived! The problem, as I may have explained in a previous post, was that the lower front brake mount on the fork was stripped completely of its thread, causing the bolt to rattle loose and the brake to very insecurely mounted.

The first package to arrive was the least interesting - a pair of replacement 5 mm Allen head cap screws. The second was the most interesting, as it was the Helicoil set comprising 20 of the Helicoils themselves (they look just like small springs), an M6 tap, a 6.3 mm drill bit and tools for screwing in the coil and breaking off the 'tang' (a protrusion at the bottom of the Helicoil that stretches directly across the diameter and is used to screw it into the newly cut thread). The final package was simply a tap wrench.

As it turned out, repairing the thread was a pretty simple operation: First use the drill to open up the hole to the correct diameter and clean up the inner surface a bit. Next, use the tap to (carefully) cut a new thread into the hole, obviously larger than the original thread. Then comes the insertion of the Helicoil, which just screws in. The 'spring' extends so that its coils interlock with the fresh thread and also provide another thread, of the original diameter, just by being there - fantastically simple idea I think. Then all that remains is to de-tang it as I already mentioned and put the bike back together!

Here's a video which shows a little bit of the job (don't worry, it's not 10 minutes long like the last one!)

This video was a more time-consuming project than the work on the bike! Using iMovie to chop up the raw video and GarageBand to edit the music track was tricky, and not helped by the fact that neither piece of software is by any means all that great...! The quality looks pretty rubbish, for which I apologise - if anyone is really desperate to see it in better quality feel free to let me know and I can email it or something.

music credits: Open Your Eyes by Snow Patrol

Bodge

2011-07-24T10:31:00.003+01:00

As the weekend so far has been pretty eventless, I thought I'd talk a little bit about my latest photographic acquisition: a second hand Sunagor FD fit 75 - 300mm Telephoto Zoom lens. The eBay advert told me that it was in perfect working order and it was only a tenner! Bargain, I thought, until it turned up and it quickly became obvious that the aperture was completely stuck. Being someone who likes to fiddle with and try and fix things (a.k.a. a bit of a numpty), I decided not to send it back straight away but instead to get the watchmaker's screwdrivers out and rip it to pieces.

After several frustrating days of carefully learning where everything should go, I finally got the aperture blades cleaned and the mechanism linked up. I managed to lose a few pieces along the way, so the lens will only work in automatic aperture selection mode but I reckon that's better than nothing! I haven't seen any of the photos taken with it yet, so keep your fingers crossed that they're okay...

One thing I have done this weekend is download and install the new Apple operating system. It looks nice and I like the full screen idea, but it doesn't seem hugely different to the previous one. Then again, getting an entire operating system for just over £20 isn't unreasonable, so I'm not too concerned.

Worth it? Probably

And finally, all that's left to do is enjoy a Sunday afternoon full of motorsport - German F1 Grand Prix at 1pm and MotoGP in the USA late in the evening. Come on Simoncelli! And let's hope Cal sees the end of the race from behind his helmet visor this time out...

EDIT: After urging on Marco Simoncelli and Cal Crutchlow for the 2011 Laguna Seca MotoGP, guess who were the first two retirements of the race! Clearly, I have considerable jinxing powers...

music credits: Bad Things by Jace Everett, Shine A Light by Jacob Golden, Forever Lost by The Magic Numbers

A Long Day

2011-07-22T15:23:00.001+01:00

Right, Thursday's plan was to head into town at lunch time, pay in my returned house deposit cheque and walk back home in time to do the next of the planned training rides. This one was to be between 30 and 40 miles and had to include 5 one-mile stints at 'race pace' (whatever that is...)

BUT I got a call on the walk home asking if I could work almost immediately in a warehouse in Banbury, so no ride. After a couple of false starts due to forgetting various keys and bike locks, I set off on the Viking in search of Jugglers Close, where I was joined by nine other temporary workers. We set about masking up, polishing, buffing, re-polishing, re-buffing, polishing and buffing once more and finally re-lacing and packing, 100 pairs of combat boots for the British Army which had been shipped in the wrong finish/colour. Starting at 5pm, we finally stopped for the night at 2.30am. I then had to cycle home and, having forgotten my lights, the following is a fairly accurate representation of what I could see for the non-streetlit parts of the route...

...so that was a little bit terrifying! We returned at 8am this morning and finished just before midday. I missed a bike ride and my forefinger might not bend again for several hours, but £75 is heading my way, so all is good.

More on the bike front, very excited to report that a few bits and bobs to return the Marin to match-fitness are on their way. When they arrive I'm sure there will be a piece on here either expressing my happiness that it worked, or venting my frustration that I broke something again. Whichever way it goes, I'll get some photos up.

Sorry about the rambling nature of this post, hopefully didn't bore you too much! Fingers crossed for more excitement when more biking goes on!

Bike Fiddling and TTCTC

2011-07-20T16:20:00.001+01:00

First off, I've been looking at the stats and as well as the expected visitors from the UK, this blog has already had visitors from the United Arab Emirates, Germany, Sri Lanka, New Zealand and the USA! Going international in my own, very small way...

Daisy likes the camera

Now I can almost hear you not-really-caring what TTCTC is, but I'm going to explain in any case. I've always been one of those people who refuses tea and coffee whenever offered. For slightly hazy reasons, I decided the other day that I should start to train myself to like them both. Today was the first attempt at project Tom's Tea and Coffee Training Challenge, and it wasn't a resounding success - tea just seems to taste like hot water so far...

TTCTC

Enough pointless rubbish, time for some bike repair work!

something's missing...

About a year ago, I managed to strip the internal thread on one of the brake mounts on the bottom of the Marin's fork, causing the brake to rattle around most of the time. The recent trip to Cannock Chase finally vibrated the bolt completely loose (it's probably still on the trails somewhere - if you find it, consider it a gift!) and prompted me to finally do something about it. After some internet scouring, I reckon it can be fixed for about £10 using a clever gizmo called a Helicoil, so watch this space for details when I scrape enough together to get the parts!

Interval Training Begins Today

2011-07-19T17:56:00.004+01:00

After having nearly paid off the bus driver's mortgage for a return ticket into Banbury, I completed the morning's task of heading to a local recruitment agency in search of a temporary job for the summer. That done, the afternoon was free to lycra up and complete the first ride of my rigorous (for me) new road cycling interval training programme.

19.61 miles: Bloxham to Chipping Norton to Bloxham

As you can see on the map, I picked a dead easy there-and-back route to start off the training; one which I already knew was almost entirely very smooth in terms of road surface. Today's entry on the training schedule wanted me to ride at a moderate to high intensity and sprint all out for 30 seconds seven times along the way. I'm pretty much thrilled to say I managed it and survived to write this! In fact, I got an average speed of 18.80 mph and I noticed 29.3 mph on the cycle computer during one of the sprints, which leads to a nice target of 30 mph for the next try.

Now, that's the second time I've mentioned a bike ride on this blog, so I think that means that it's time for me to do one of my favourite things and natter a bit about my bikes!

Solsbury Court, Block C, Flat 4, Room 1, a.k.a. Tom's workshop

First up is the hardtail mountain bike. It's a 2005 Marin B-17 with Hope Mono Mini brakes front and rear (along with Goodridge hosing), a beautifully smooth Cane Creek headset, beefy Crank Brothers bottom bracket and equally beefy N-17 cranks. Despite being a fantastic machine, it's not without its mechanical issues! Time spent with this bike is almost equally split between riding it and fixing it. There are prettier photos of it than the one here, but I like that one...

Next is my road bike, a 2010 Viking Roma. The photo shows it mid way through construction on the day it arrived. In the background you can see the house, which I'm pointing out because it weighs marginally less than the bike does! But a road bike with dropped handlbars, 23 mm tyres, Shimano integrated brakes/shifters and those awesome looking deep rims all for £250 - I can't really complain about a bit of extra weight. In total contrast to the Marin, this cheapo roadie has now done about 1000 miles with no more serious issues than a couple of punctures and the grip tape unravelling. And that is in spite of a two-day torture trip from Paris to Luxembourg (donations to the Prostate Cancer Charity are still very welcome) and me routinely bunny-hopping it like a bit of an idiot!

I've saved the sexiest for last: a 2011 Orange Five frame with a Fox Float RP23 rear shock, waiting (begging) to be built up into a brightly coloured trail monster. Expect to see more of this one as it gradually acquires components...

Tastier than any satsuma

First Post!

2011-07-19T00:51:00.002+01:00

So here we are at the first instalment of Laight As Usual, a collection of photos and thoughts from a first-time blogger. I'll do my best to keep you interested as I ramble about the goings-on of day-to-day life, ranging from (but not limited to) my efforts to improve as a cyclist, past my always growing interest in photography and through to my half-completed journey from Idiot to Engineer.

Here are some of the things that would have made it to this blog had it existed before today:

Saturday 9th July

JB roars through Copse corner on his way to 5th on the grid for Sunday's race

Managed to land myself a free pass (as a pretend 'contractor') to Silverstone for the Santander British Grand Prix Qualifying and all the accompanying fun that is involved, including performing a front-right tyre change on Button's old McLaren in 3.93 seconds with two of my favourite people - TT and KW, being left with bleeding ears and then seeing my dad's band (whose name nobody is quite sure of, even the man himself) play for the Marshalls at the end of the day.

Friday 15th July

The bikes taking a well-earned break. We didn't need one of course...

Posing at the head of the trails

Got up early, pulled on shorts and biking jersey, velcro'd myself into my cycling shoes and wheeled a very slightly ill Marin from the garage to go to Cannock Chase with TT! After a slightly confusing journey there, we set up the bikes and went on to have a full day of amazing riding. An exploding derailleur was the only mechanical failure of the day and despite many near misses, no injuries were sustained and we finished riding just in time to have an even more confusing drive home. We will definitely be returning there, assuming we can find it again!

Saturday 16th July

Innards of one of the Alternative Power Source cars. This one uses Hydrogen fuel cells to generate electricity

Another early start to head to Silverstone for the second Saturday in a row, this time to cheer on Team Bath Racing at the Formula Student competition. After getting utterly drenched while snooping around the garages and pits for the whole morning, we jumped at the opportunity given to us by a break in the clouds to sit on the old pit wall and pretend to be race engineers while watching Bath blast loudly to 3rd place in the sprint event. I wasn't the only one of us to be hugely excited to work on this team next year as a 3rd year Automotive Engineering student! So, fingers crossed...