Sandy's Blog

Its this time of year where your resolve starts to get tested. Oh how it would be nice to stay inside and watch television or play computer games. But you also know that you will be a fat pie once the 6 months of bad weather has subsided.

So anyway, Friday morning. Nice day. Bike to work. Metcheck shows 0.1mm of rain for Edinburgh - ‘Aces I wont get pissed on’. Apart from a bit of a headwind the ride to work was pretty uneventful. 5pm same day. Rain battering on roof of office. Goddamit metcheck you did that deliberately! 6pm. Soaked through.

Saturday morning. After too many beers on Friday night I sleep in and miss a bike trip, so I head down to Glentress on my own. Rained on. Got round the red route in under 1hr:30mins, just because of the rain.

Sunday, drove to Ae Forest and met up with a few people. Rained on, again. Forgot my waterproof, so I borrowed someone elses.
Great trail, but not robust enough for winter really. Oh yeah, i managed to pinch puncture my front wheel which had a 2.25″ Panaracer Cinder tyre on. Thats what Ae is like - kinda like caddon bank except slightly smaller!

So now, im sitting in my room looking at the mountain bike:

I refuse to clean it, because it makes the road bike look clean! (and it isn’t either).

On Monday my new supar-cool Laseredge bike lights arrived through the post. Personally I would have called them something better, like xtreeem plus 9800 lights or wolf edge powerpc 360, but they are called Laseredge which is still kinda 1337 im sure you will agree. I purchased them from some shonky Ebay seller who had imported them from America, for about £100 all in. They have a Ni-Mh battery, with a 5W lamp and a 15W lamp (in laymans terms you can see more with the 15W one as its more powerful). The set also came with a helmet mount, which was a problem as I had originally asked for a handlebar mount.

Now in the past I have always considered helmet lights to be accessories of the rich (same people who have the fancy bikes + no skills), as they used to only be available on top end systems due to the requirement of being lightweight and low profile. By Wednesday evening I had gotten impatient and really wanted to give them a whirl, so I strapped the lights onto my helmet (no instructions here so i improvised) and took Sherry for a walk in the dark. The lights were really bright, and I mean really bright. With the 5W on I could do everything par very technical stuff where you need more depth perception.

Sherry Walk:

20 Mins @ 5W
10 Mins @ 20W

After arriving home with dogga + smiles all round, I grab some dinner and decide to get gear together for a longer ride up the Pentlands. I leave about 10pm and head up the Castlelaw track towards Fala Knowe. At this point i’m really paranoid about the lights failing on me as I have already used them for 30 mins, including full power. The route I was planning on doing takes me 45-50 minutes going all-out in good weather, which is about as long as my old lights lasted. And I hadn’t charged these new lights at all since getting them, and the weather was poor so I was taking a risk.

After I had caned it to the top of the hill I took a left along the side of Capelaw hill, and saw some ‘eyes’ in the distance. It turns out the eyes belonged to sheep but I was bricking it when I first saw them. The path was very muddy and progress was very hard. To go at walking pace required concentration and real effort because of the strong headwind and slippy conditions.

Downhill through Phantoms Cleugh, I have a tumble due to an unseen, grassed over rut. Unscathed I pick myself up and continue on. It wasn’t much fun due to the weather and waterlogged trail, but there was the novelty factor of riding at night! I was (unintentionally) skidding round corners in the mud too which was kinda cool.

I arrived home covered in mud. I guess I was probably out for about an hour and 15 mins.

Night Ride:

40 Mins @ 5W
35 Mins @ 20W

I then left the lights on for a while last night and again this morning, roughly 25 minutes at full power and then another 45 minutes at 5W. I wanted to put a full power cycle on the battery to break it in properly. They haven’t dimmed yet!

Attempt to discharge:

45 Mins @ 5W
25 Mins @ 20W

This leaves a grand total of:

20+40+45Mins = 105Mins @ 5W
10+35+25Mins = 70Mins @ 20W

…with no sign of dimming. More than adequate for any night rides ill be wanting to do, thats for sure.

Awesome!

Rave party in my hallway

There was a ERC planned bike ride at Drumlanrig on Sunday. I was starting to get used to waking up and looking out of the window and seeing rain. Today was no exception. I sucked it up and decided to go. 90 minutes driving plus a million and one diversions later I finially arrive at Drumlanrig Castle.

After a quick change and apology for being 20 minutes late, we set off on the trails. The plan was to do all of the black stuff and pretty much all of the red route too. So we start on the black.

Now ‘Lozza’ had already made me super nervous by his odd behaviour in the carpark:

You havent been here before?
silence
laughs

I have heard rumours about Drumlanrig being very ‘rooty’ and today it was very very very wet. It was singletrack from the word go, with tight corners and wet roots a plenty. The black sections passed without incident although they were very very tricky in the wet, I had to walk a few bits that I would have probably rode in the dry.

Where did the trail go?

The red route was pretty much the same as the black really, there was a fair amount of fun and trickery to be had here. Bombholes, bus stops, skinnies (black features that I didn’t ride) and generally a fair amount of slippy-leafy wet trails. Great stuff. My chain also broke so some of the other guys went off to ride ‘Riks Ridge of Death’ while I fixed it. Fortunately noone actually died while riding it but some sketchiness was had by all I think.

Wheeeee

The alternative bus route

Pictures courtesy of Stuart Nicholson

Around this time last week a letter came floating through my letterbox, and inside was a cheque for just over £800. Now last time I checked I shouldn’t be getting cheques through the post randomly, and it turns out this one was because I sold some shares that I obtained for nothing.

Ace. After then spending the next 24 hours trying very hard not to buy a Dell 2405FPW, I chucked the money into a smile ISA.

The week continued by, pretty uneventfully, until Friday when James got a new contract mobile phone and gave me his old one! wtf? yay? Thanks James!

It has a shonky battery and no charger, but I got new replacements from ebay for under £10 so that is win. However I got rained on cycling the 10 miles home from work, so lose.

I also slept in a bit too much today, and had 30 minutes to get ready and leave for a race down in Newcastleton. After deciding I couldn’t get showered, make and eat porridge, wake up, eat more carbs, get tools and clothes sorted for race, sort out energy drinks, walk the dog, throw bike and everything else in the car, and top up oil in 30 minutes, I decided to not go. Boooo. It sounded a really interesting format too, 2 laps of the red trail during the day, a further 2 laps of the red trail in the evening (dark), and then a timed section of the trail the next day. I’ll hear about it through the grapevine im sure but im gutted that I missed it.