R O T H A R . C O M

I managed to do lots of work on the website yesterday. I have finished the bikes section and have also done some more bits and pieces elsewhere within the site. I’ll continue doing more as I get time.

I’ve decided that guestbooks are a pain in the arse, but i’ve even managed to get one up and working again. It’s about as good as the last one….

This is for Jed and anyone else doing long commutes. It saves lots of money on batteries.

Yesterdays ride didn’t get off to a particularly good start. I spent the morning getting the full susser going again, which as I thought had a bent rear derailleur hanger that needed swapping out and after a quick scan of the National Rail times, I thought everything would be good to go by 12.45. Rock up at the station to dicover no train to Sheffield, it just says ‘Bus’. A bit more investigation shows that there is a train going on the Trans Pennine service leaving at 12.45, but it’s only going as far as Chinley. I decide that’s better than nothing and board it and start planning route alternatives.

It’s not the first time this has happened when I’ve wanted to get to Edale, but today I decide that I don’t fancy the Sett Valley trail from New Mills to Hayfield and then tackling the ascent and descent of Jacob’s ladder, so I stick on the train as far as it goes and get off at Chinley and then climb up through Wash to join the old Sheffield road as it climbs up the spine of Rushup Edge.

Somewhere along this climb there is a comedy moment as my baggies snag on the STI lever and there is a low speed sideways dismount. Dented pride, some road rash and its time to get climbing again. By the time I reach the turning down into Perry Dale the sunlight that had made the slog up through Wash a bit uncomfortable has turned to overcast grey clouds and snow is threatening.

There is so much snow in the sheltered trackways behind Eldon Hill Quarry that in some places riding is just not an option. Fortunately by the time I reach the head of Cave Dale things are ridable in a mudfest kind of way. Despite having been up in Manchester for a long time now, I’ve never ridden Cave Dale and recently it’s moved to the top of the ‘to do’ list and the descent is so good I decide that a revisit in drier conditions is due later in the year.

From Cave Dale it’s familiar territory. The ascent of the Roman Road to Hope Cross, down to Edale via Nether Moor and the finally ugly hike and bike climb out of the valley via Chapel Gate. There’s at least four feet of snow in places. Rushup Edge has a fair covering too and large parts up on the moor just isn’t ridable. The stepped descent is ridable in places and as the offroad finishes there is just enough fading light to drop back down to Chinley in safety. Photos from the ride are up here.

The Armstrong close down of Simeoni in last years Tour was one of the most notable events, but it seems the Italians are too happy about it and Hein Verbruggen has now stated that the Simeoni event is stopping Armstrong riding the Giro. Maybe they should just have a proper fight and sort it out – Fisticuffs at dawn, gentlemen.

Finally Independent Fabrication’s Full Suspension Tungsten Electrode is based on the DW Link technology that is also licensed to Iron Horse. Originally this was only available on the XC orientated Hollowpoint, but now they have released something a bit burlier. Here’s the 7point7.

Finally there has been some research carried out to investigate why the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer.

The road season is starting and Armstrong is already getting grilled by the press. Will he make it seven tours this year? I don’t know, but it’s unlikely that he’ll give up the chance of the title without a fight. I mentioned this a while back, but here’s an update on the ProTour.

After months of planning and political shenanigans, the jewel of the UCI’s cycling reform, the ProTour, kicked off in Issy-les-Moulineaux with the four kilometre prologue that opened this year’s Paris-Nice. Despite the fact that Paris-Nice organisers ASO are still at odds with the UCI over some aspects of the ProTour, there were no obstacles put in the way of the first day of competition…

Mountain Bike Action Magazine tested an 18.5lb Full Suspension Extralight a few months ago and they’ve still not broken it, despite ignoring the owners manual instructions for suitable use. Here’s the running report.

This isn’t about bikes, directly but if the government gets it’s way lots of people will have less money to spend on bikes if they own a computer:

Computer tax set to replace TV licence fee

THE BBC licence fee should be replaced by a tax on the ownership of a
personal computer instead of a television, ministers said yesterday.

Tessa Jowell told the BBC that the licence fee would be retained for at
least another ten years until 2017 in return for abolishing the Board of
Governors. But the Culture Secretary conceded that technological
advances would mean that a fee based on “television ownership could
become redundant”. More…

Tonight I recatalogued the cd collection. I wish I hadn’t started, but at least now it shouldn’t take five minutes to find things. The day kicked off with news that Renault have won the seasons Formula One opener and was followed by a three hour ride out along the Mersey towards the hills.

After getting frostbite on Thursday night, I now have some winter boots to keep my feet warm and they seem to do the job. Toasty toes even at the end of the ride. Saturday was a day for some new shiny kit courtesy of Tim Johnson now all I’m waiting for is some spokes to get them built up from my favourite bike shop:

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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.

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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.