Category: Words

Later than planned due to unforeseen circumstances the new site is up. As Roots Manuva might say it’s bit brand new, second hand and there’s a few gaps, but on the whole the new site is on its way to completion. Two years on from the original launch there have certainly been some changes in all sorts of ways, but I’m looking at this relaunch as a blank canvas.

Perhaps suitably, tonight also marked a return to riding with a trip up to Hebden Bridge for the Singletrack Thursday night ride, for which people had come far and wide. None more so than Matt from Chelmer Cycles who is up this end of the country for some riding, before heading up even further north to Scotland. There was a fair mixing of snow, ice, crashes, hilarity, whiskey and beer.

More soon as I’ve e-mail to sort out and get working…

Just a quick update today as I’m working on the new site. Some of the staff from Harry Halls are off to Nannarch today for some downhill racing. Here’s Gavin Lee getting some practice in from a few weeks ago.

Here’s something political – Pure Silk. He’s particularly popular up North as recent events have demonstrated. Here’s a fairly good use of technology to protect and serve your interests and meanwhile there’s increasing convergence in terms of what technology is offering.

Here are some Bike Blogs links shamelessly ripped off the latest DirtRag Web Newsletter that are fairly interesting and may noty have been seen by those that don’t subscribe to the American mag:

http://www.jeffkerkove.blogspot.com/ (Endurance racer at the 24 Hours in the Old Pueblo–this weekend!)

http://www.gwadzilla.blogspot.com/ (Dismantling car culture)

http://athena.sas.upenn.edu/~david/weblog/ (Bicycles as a lifestyle)

http://fatguycycling.blogspot.com/ (Fat guy on a fixed gear)

Well I’m working towards getting version 3.0 of rothar.com live at the end of the month and I think it’s going to be a big improvement. I’m not saying the whole thing’s going to be as it was in terms of all the content from this site being there immediately, but I think there’ll be enough to keep things interesting.

There’s some racing coming up just north of the border. It’s tempting:

We’re having an early season warm up event at Drumlanrig on the 5th March to coincide with the british husky sled dog champs. It’ll be low key, fun-tastic singletrack frolicking rather than outn’out blast (1hour 45mins +lap), starting at 14:00ish with party after and onsite camping. Bike-Orienteering on the sunday at 2:00. The course is a really nice woodsy singletrack loop which really rewards skillfull riders without scaring off newbies. It’s almost all hand built bench cut trail by the Drumlanrig ranger service and myself.

Do you think you could round up a few bods from up/down your way to come down/up and boost the numbers. There are plenty other things onsite : spectacular dog sled racing, a bouncy castle as well as the real one, a craft fayre, live bands etc

see www.dogsportscotland.com for official site or www.drumlanrig.com

One of the things that struck me when I was jumping through hoops on my way to getting offered a commission in the Army was that they really do have a thing for acronyms. MIA, AWOL, MLRS, FUBAR, etc. Which lead me to suspect that this was written by someone with a background in or fixation with military things:

The Company is now fully registered with BIDS which is the Combating Terrorism Technology Support Office (CTTSO) Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) Information Delivery System (BIDS). The Technology Support Working Group
(TSWG) and Explosive Ordnance Disposal/Low Intensity Conflict (EOD/LIC) program use BIDS to disseminate BAA information and collect proposals. I check postings on this site on a regular basis so the Company can become an active participant in the rapid research, development and prototyping of technologies to combat terrorism. They have just issued the following news item.

Subject: News Item: The TSWG February APBI To Include JIEDDTF Requirements

The Technical Support Working Group (TSWG) is pleased to announce that,
during the upcoming Advanced Planning Briefing to Industry, we will be briefing requirements that support the Department of Defense Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Task Force (JIEDDTF).

The JIEDDTF is providing approximately $20M for current year contract awards
based on their requirements. These funds are in addition to those provided
by TSWG. MAY I URGE YOU TO VISIT THIS SITE https://www.bids.tswg.gov on a regular basis for funding opportunities which may be open to companies in the UK
who are registered to participate.

JIEDDTF? WTF? Just rolls of the tongue doesn’t it? Things are obviously going downhill because I’m even going to post this:

From: Katie
Subject: Frog Joke

A frog goes into a bank and approaches the teller. He can see from her nameplate that her name is Patricia Whack.

“Miss Whack, I’d like to get a $30,000 loan to take a holiday.” Patty looks at the frog in disbelief and asks his name. The frog says his name is Kermit Jagger, his dad is Mick Jagger, and that it’s okay, he knows the bank manager.

Patty explains that he will need to secure the loan with some collateral. The frog says, “Sure. I have this,” and produces a tiny porcelain elephant, about an inch tall, bright pink and perfectly formed. Very confused, Patty explains that she’ll have to consult with the bank manager and disappears into a back office.

She finds the manager and says, “There’s a frog called Kermit Jagger out there who claims to know you and wants to borrow $30,000, and he wants to use this as collateral.” She holds up the tiny pink elephant. “I mean, what in the world is this?”

The bank manager looks back at her and says…”It’s a knickknack, Patty Whack. Give the frog a loan. His old man’s a Rolling Stone.”

Mystery Kit. Bonus points of guessing what this is without clicking the thumbnails to see the larger pictures. It’s taken a while to get here and now I’m not sure I want to fit it.

_ _

So it’s been decision time recently. Freeparking.co.uk quite possibly has the worst IT customer support I have ever come across. Thanks to them being generally crap I wasn’t able to renew two of my domains and Northwave-design has now been retired.

I think I always had the inkling that I might want to do some paid web-design work after my research and the new job has met that ambition in spades without the need to go freelance. With that site gone and ifrider now with over three hundred bikes registered I’m thinking about where I want to go with rothar.com over the next few months.

As my current hosting runs out at the end of this month I’ve decided to move on over to Shaun Murray’s hosting over at aegisdesign. That’s where ifrider’s been since its humble beginning and the service has been great. That’s not to say I’m disappointed with 34SP, I just think it’s in keeping to have a mountain biking website hosted by another mountain biker. Mmm. In keeping = clique?

This is Kelvin’s website. It’s nice.

I am very impressed with the follwoing website and also like the way Andy Foulds has used his name as an influencing factor in the design. A throughly nice bit of design.

Specialized seem determined to keep at the top and have added another strong rider to their MTB XC team.

This link is for Jed. This is for people who like (bike) porn.

I’m thinking of snow and Switzerland.

Got a bike? Occasionally lock it up somewhere and think it’ll be safe? Watch this and think again. I think the angle grinder moment is particularly cool. Did Kryptonite test the New York Lock against that?

So starting as I mean to go on this year, the mountain bike season followed on from last weekend’s trip to the Peak District with a trip home to the east and the silky Singletrack of Thetford Forest. With a car full of bikes and gear and the Sexmidget in-tow, following a stop off at Chelmer Cycles for a pint with Matt and to unload Jon before heading up to Norfolk, all was set for meeting up on race day.

Sunday was a fantastic high pressure bluebird winter day (wallpaper here). Only problems was this resulted in about double the number of usual competitors turning up to compete. So after standing around in the cue to sign on for about an hour we didn’t have much time before the gun went and everyone set off.

Mental note: do not attempt to alter gearing just before the start of an event. Sure enough I managed to loose a chain ring bolt in the back of the car despite taking great care (eventually found in the lip seal of the boot) and in combination with (in my opinion) not giving people enough time to get ready after they’d finished signing on, as the gun went off I and several others were not at the start line.

So I reckon by the time I finished reassembling the bike, changed from alpine insulation into racing kit and basically managed to haul my arse into a ready to go state, I had a deficit of around 10 minutes on everyone else. Well that’s my excuse for the results.

The event was definitely improved by the presence of the semi mobile land anchor known as the Cheeky Sound System. A fairly impressive piece of kit being towed by some nutters from Chelmsford.

Anyway I rode consistently and despite feeling like I needed to retch in the last singletrack section and loosing two places, overall I managed to claw back enough places to at least feel respectable and look suitably slack from a singlespeed perspective. Roll up the next race. The new IF is without doubt the best bike I have ever ridden in the forest.

Now then I seem to be getting an ever increasing amount of crap e-mails these days whhich is mildy annoying and if it’s a sting that’s a banking or financial scam, I report them, but tell me please, what the fuck is the point of sending replies like the one below? I know it’s a con you muppets, that’s why I’ve e-mailed you.

Never under estimate the intelligence of animals and never over estimate the intelligence of people.

After working in the bike shop on Saturday to keep my hand in on the wonderful world of bikes I made it out for my first ride of the year today. I did manage to set eyes on one of the new Enduro’s, an SX Trail and I have to say that I am impressed with the design and build. The bikes look a lot better in reality than they do in the photos I’ve seen. I think that’s raised my interest in a new full susser for this year and this looks like the favourite.

I also managed to pick up a few bits and pieces that I’ve been waiting for, like th missing top cap off my Z1 Freeride SLs that seemed to take forever to arrive as a spare part. I do have to say that all in all I have yet to be impressed by Windwave’s Marzocchi support, which is disappointing because the forks are all great.

So back to today – Holy Mary Mother of God! Not only have I managed to give myself a monster dead leg in a classic over the handlebars into a big peatbog puddle on todays ride in the Dark Peak, I’ve just stubbed my foot whilst doing the vacuuming and managed to rip off the big toenail on my left foot! It hurts like a bastard and there’s blood everywhere. Where’s the medicinal alchohol? I hope these things don’t occur in three’s because the pain level is escalating.

This is the new Trek Discovery Channel (former US Postal) team bike – looks good from here.

This is the radical new full suspension design that looks set to be developed for Yeti’s downhill rigs next year.

And next Sunday (23rd Jan 2005) will see XC racing returning to Thetford in the form of the second round of this year Marin Thetford Winter Series, the course this time has been extended to 16 Miles and rather than be in the form of last races 2 or 4 hour event, will be a 1 or 2 lap event. I’ll be there.

So it’s 2005. What does this year have in store? Last year started well with lots of riding and gradually tailed off, effectively ending in August. Bit of a bugger that, but then this year might well be the inverse unless I get my act together. So wit that in mind I’ve already started looking at what I want to be doing in terms of riding and racing and events.

This year I’m going to get some riding in stateside and make why over to Pennsylvania for the SSWC in State College. It might be an extended weekend trip, but I’m going make that race. Over here in the UK there are a few rides I’ve still got in mind and at least one of them is going to involve some overnighting and carrying of kit.

So what about bikes? Well there’s a shiny road bike to get built up and some miles to cover on the tarmac, but as to whether there’ll be any new additions to the bike collection I really don’t know. I suppose it’s something that can never be ruled out, because there’s a lot of riding ahead.

Lots of new kit starting to filetr through and Cyclingnews are keeping up well with the task of highlighting it here, here and here. This combination of expensive metals has produced quite possibly the lightest mountain bike suspension forks in the world – check out the Spinner Aeris. Seems to be a definite lack of technical info about them which is a bit worrying.

Petrolhead Jed found this on the t’internet: Fat ass motorbiking. I’m thinking about the fact the days are getting longer and the fact that Apple have just brought out a new iPod and a new Mac.

: H A P P Y : C H R I S T M A S :

News, post-christmas update and a summary of the year with the first update of 2005. In the mean time drink and carnage beckon.

You may have noticed that there hasn’t been much in the way of cycling news or info recently. Basically that’s because there hasn’t been a huge amount that I think is worth talking about. The UCI and the organisers of the three grand tours are currently embroiled in an argument over the implementation of a ProTour – effectively a cycling premiership of the top teams that is supposed (although not currently looking very likely) to be effective from the beginning of next year. Anyway you can catch up on events over at Cyclingnews.

IMBA have also released their annual report card which rates trails on a global basis based on the feedback from trail users. Scotland and Wales both achieved top marks with Scotland being ranked 5th in the world for good trails behind Utah, Idaho, British Columbia and Colorado. There is a summary article here and a more comprehensive report over on the IMBA site.

This week went quickly, but provided an opportunity to catch up with some friends. Thursday night was a trip up to Todmorden for a farewell nightride for Chris and was a further test for the new singlespeed. The forks definitely need a firmer spring in them, because at the moment getting full travel too easily and consequentially are a bit boingtastic.

I’m also beginning to wonder if the Stadium batteries are getting a bit long in the tooth. Don’t seem to be getting the burn time they should according to the battery life indicator. the question is what to replace them with. At the moment these are looking favourite: bikelights.com

Discussion about next years events has already started, but for some next year is dependent on this year being successfully completed first, probably to the accompaniment of barking. Macpupmeister is on a mission.

The movies on this website are all generated using a copy of Halo and a lot of patience. Take a look at Red vs Blue. The real life vs t’internet is how I came across the site, but that was from over at gprime.net. On which you can find some excellent games including this Boston-based snowplow one.