This morning's commute and other commuting stories

Some people just can’t do it. They can’t handle driving 10 or even 5 mph slower than they would have otherwise, even for 30 seconds.

I had a colleague once who, when they were rolling out the 20mph zones in Bristol, tried to explain how it’s actually difficult to drive that slowly. I think he thought he was being quite reasonable, as if he’d dearly love to stick to the speed limit if only it wasn’t somehow a difficult thing to do.

Sometimes you can ride along a dead straight road and you can hear from the engine note that they've lost their shit. They're driving along happy and normal, see a cyclist, fall apart.

you can hear from the engine note that they've lost their shit.

Ah yes, leaving it in 2nd gear even though the engine is screaming at them, just so they can nail the throttle at the earliest opportunity.

Embarrassingly did this in yorkshire once to an entire club run because i was afraid my banger filled with skinny climbers might stall on the hill...

Still ashamed to this day.

I used to drive a car with no synchromesh between 1st and 2nd gear. Deciding at the bottom of the hill whether to leave it in 1st and go up at walking pace or to aim for 2nd and rally it up in order to keep the revs high enough to avoid stalling was always fun.

Engine note is such a indicator of how you are about to be overtaken, one of the reasons I don't get listening to music while cycling. The ones that accelerate desperate to get past you, only to brake when they catch up with slower traffic ahead or a red light.

Yesterday's commute actually - tubengering again (boooo!) and was standing next to John McDonnell, minding his own business on the Circle line from Paddington, clutching very tightly his copy of the Metro.

In recent weeks, that makes Michael Gove, Jeremy C*nt and him on the same stretch. An (ahem) interesting political triumvirate...

it rained all night and was still this morning, so was a miserable commute in, compounded by the cnut who, because he was stuck behind me on a 200 yard narrow road with parked cars either side, seemed to think he has the right to honk repeatedly at me and try to force me across by trying to squeeze past me.

I did not budge and gave him the finger and some choice words considering the conditions. Utter wanker.

Squeeky bum moment pull up to some lights where my front disc pads completely went on the ride in this morning, and not a single shop in Chiswick had the right set to replace (there are quite a few!). Guess I'll swap over the back ones this afternoon and try my luck on the way to West drinks this eve.

Amazon prime has its uses...

Decathlon in the Ealing shopping centre might have a choice.

You know when you get a flat and you can’t find it to patch it? Didn’t have that problem this morning

Went through the tyre, tube both sides and the rim tape

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Cycling to work under the smoke of a burning food storage

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-50426861

yum yum. Luckily it was only a part of my cycle, some of my colleagues had to hold their noses driving down the M2, it was that bad.

Getting the underground in today and there’s some annoying thing at kings cross where they’ve decided to not bother with normal platform announcements and instead play a recording that has the opening to London’s Calling and then have some energetic Londoners shouting ‘this is london calling...’ followed by some ‘stand on the right, walk on the left’ instruction or similar. It was off putting the first time if played, the three more times in the space of the minute I was waiting were even more unnecessary

Technical issue on the fixed gear yesterday, so was using the good old gears today. Fuck me it felt weird. Genuinely makes me wonder whether I actually want to build up that other bike I thought I wanted to build up.

A big thank you to Winston at SE20 Cycles for repairing my rear wheel that had gone well and truly out of true on Weds. Got me back on the road for this morning. Not a pleasant ride in though due to yakking up twice. Pretty shaky ride home. Why do I always get ill on weekends?

close pass me on a corner and then jump a red light, will you? you better believe that's a roadsafing.

also, remember gears are a conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.

I'm convinced.

Though, to be fair, the old and kind of crap tyres might have added a lot to the dead feeling of the ride.

Is this not the normal experience of riding any bike? That every time you take it out of the house, it might be the ride in which the catastrophic failure of any part of it may occur, and you have been silently anticipating but ignoring it until you can afford / absolutely need to buy a new one.
No? Just me?

Rode my self built frame for the first time today to work and back. Quite a cool feeling riding a frame you built yourself. Feels quick too

Oh man, I can imagine! Sadly I think the feeling of riding a bike ive just built up myself is the closest I’ll get.

"what's that click in the BB, I tightened all screws and bolts already, meh it'll be fine, I'll get a new one"

Oh dang BB threads busted. Yep that was me...

(Still don't quite understand how, but square taper BB, old frame...)

I did a mid-ride tweak to what I thought was my high (smaller cog end of cassette?) limiter screw yesterday. Shifting down to the largest cog - going very slowly - my chain went off the cassette and I managed to take the weight off the pedal quick enough to not jam the chain. I’d opened up the wrong limiter screw! Sooooo glad that didn’t happen on the hill I was about to climb!

Awesome 👏

"Nice bike mate, where's it from?"
holds out hands