Crosby, Stills & Nash

For Jayne's birthday, we got tickets for Crosby, Stills and Nash in Manchester.  I was a little apprehensive for a number of reasons.  The venue, the MEN Arena, is a big  impersonal hall, not ideal for an intimate gig.  I had also mixed feelings after seeing the TV coverage of Glasto, they were a bit ragged in bits.

The first song didn't have the sound balance right, and someone was a bit flat.  Steven Stills couldn't hear himself properly judging by the gesticulations he was making.  I was a bit nervous that they wouldn't get it together.  But by the third song, they had it nailed and were brilliant from then on.

Highlight was Guinevere.  Three encores.  Steven Stills played some fantastic guitar solos.  He did have to go and sit down occasionally. 

All in all, a great night

Cheers

Tim

New Bag

I ordered a new bag from Wiggle a few weeks ago.  Then I got a message saying they were out of stock, back in at the end on June.  Then I got another saying they were due early July, then another saying mid July.  I did a trawl around the internet and practically everyone was sold out.

Except the excellent guys at Bike Plus, who had lots in stock apparently.  So I cancelled my Wiggle order and went with them.  Two days later the postman brought the package, but was too impatient to wait for Jamie to unlock the front door and so I had to pick it up on Thursday from the post office.

I fitted it immediately and was ready for the Thursday night ride.

Its a Carradice Barley.  It has a capacity of about 7 litres.  The side pockets are quite small.  I also have a couple on Nelson Longflap's which are easily twice the size, that I have been using for 20 years.  The Barley is much much smaller, and the side pockets are also correspondingly smaller.  On the Nelson's I have a small light, musette style bag and a lock in one pocket, and a tube, tools and puncture kit in the other.

The Barley side pockets are a bit smaller, I can just about get the lock in one pocket and the tube and tools in the other.  The main section will take trousers, pants and a shirt easily, or two rain jackets and a fleece like it did tonight, without being overly full.  I don't think it will fit my buttie box, change of clothes and laptop, but that is not why I bought it.  It is a good sized day bag.  I can easily fit a rain jacket, fleece, food and my usual tools etc in it easily.

And it is pretty!

Cheers

Tim

Beer Tasting

For a few years now Jayne and I have run a beer tasting evening.  Yesterday was our latest effort.  The format is always the same, six beers of increasing strength, some notes on each before we try them, pizza and garlic bread and foolishness.

The six beers this time round were:

Edelstoff Augustiner - 5.8%

Jupiler - 5.2%

Kwak - 8.4%

Delerium Tremens - 8.5%

Chimay Blue - 9%

Westmalle Tripel - 9.5%

We had got everything setup in the garden and the guys started arriving at about 7:30.  Then the skies darkened and it absolutely tipped it down for about 20 mins.  We did not think it would clear, but as quickly as it started, the skies cleared, the sun came out and it was a very pleasant evening.  We got the chiminea fired up and the beers flowed.  Some of the guys started to struggle at the 4th or 5th beer, not so much because of what I'd given them, as the 3 or 4 "warm up" pints in the Taps before coming over!

All in all a great evening.  The Westmalle was voted the best, Jupiler the least favourite.

Cheers

Tim

Fantasy Tour

Join our fantasy tour mini league

www.velogames.com

League Name: AXA

League Code: 01094036

Neil Young

I am a massive Neil Young fan.  Not obsessive, I don't have all of his albums on all media!  But I do have most on either LP, CD or both and I do have about 40 bootlegs.

My last Neil experience was to boycott along with my friend Mal, his last tour.  Ticket prices were just too high, £75-80 per head depending on where you could get them.  We just said no!

This latest tour was a bit more reasonably priced, £50 per head.  Choices were Nottingham or Aberdeen.  We chose Nottingham.  Tuesday lunchtime, Ian, Mal and I drove down the 150 miles on the hottest day of the year so far, with my air con broken.  We arrived in plenty of time to drive round Nottingham's one way system, totally lost.  Then spent an hour talking my sister in, as she was lost as well.

We missed the support act.  Got a good spot for Neil.

What a show!  Probably the best NY show ever.  Opened with Hey Hey My My, Everybody Knows this is Nowhere, Mansion on the Hill, Cinnamon Girl.  Then On the Way Home, a very early song, followed by Burned.  There was a fantastic Down by the River and the final song Rockin in the Free World.  He started to wind now, seeming to get in sync with the drummer to finish, then jumped back centre stage for another chorus, then back to the drummer, then another chorus, and so on for about 6 times.  The crowd went mad.  Brilliant.

The band came back on to do a cover of the Beatles A Day in the Life.  It was fantastic, raucous, wild, probably the best ever Beatles cover.  The song finished with Neil ripping the strings from his guitar, propping it against his amp, feeding back wildly, then whipping the pickups with the ends of the broken strings! 

Absolutely awesome.

Tim

Happy Father's Day

I have had a very pleasant Father's day.  After sleeping in til 10, I got up and rode out to the shops to get some croissants for breakfast.  Number two son had gone to work but left me a present of a new Sigma BC5000 computer for my new bike.

I really like the Sigma stuff.  This is a fairly basic one, speed, trip distance, trip time, total distance and clock.  That's all I need.  In fact my favourite computer, which doesn't seem to be available anymore was another Sigma that just did speed, trip distance, total distance and clock.  No buttons, auto scroll through the functions, auto reset of trip distance after being still for 4 hours.  Cheap, easy!

I spent an hour or so fitting it this morning.  A nice feature of the design is that you can undo the mounting and turn it through 90 degrees for mounting on the stem rather than the bars.

This afternoon we went for a brief spin, just eight miles with a stop at the pub.  Very nice.

Number One Son got we a Wiggle voucher which I have put towards the new saddlebag.

84 miles total this week, not bad but half of last week's.

Cheers

Tim

New Mudguards

The Pompino was rattling something rotten the last week or so.  I thought it might be the Bagman saddlebag support at first as that has come loose a couple of times, but after a thorough check over, ie rattling everything by hand and bouncing the bike up and down a bit, the source of the noise was narrowed down to the rear mudguard.  These weren’t new mudguards, they came of my Ribble, where they had done generous duty for about 6 years.  With three years on the Pompino, I think they had earned their money and decided to get a new set.

A pair of SKS Chromoplastic guards were duly ordered from Wiggle at the beginning of the week and arrived Thursday.  So after lunch today, I set about fitting them.

Three hours later they are on!  It shouldn’t have taken me that long, but after following the instructions it became clear that the stays needed to be cut down.  This meant undoing everything, including the special little stay caps that poke through the mudguard fitting, which were a bugger to get off.  The reassemble everything without the stay caps and mark with a hacksaw.  Then take everything off again and fit the stay caps again.  Then put everything back on. 

Looks good now though, and no rattles.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

No mega-miles this week.  Heavy rain, wind and boys late for exams on Wednesday.  On Thursday, I had to take the tandem wheel and disc brake mechanism to the bike shop so they could get the measurements right for the mounting bracket.  It is an early Hope mechanical disc brake and doesn’t match any modern mountings.  This does mean that they are getting on with the rebuild.

Cheers

Tim