down the empty streets we'll disappear until the dawn

Sometimes an evening sat around a table just chatting is the best way to go.

We'd talked about watching a television show but instead our little group assembled around a circular table (the best kind) with a few glasses of jazz-backed wine and a fine home-made supper.

We pretty much talked from before a rainy sun had set until beyond the witching hour.

Sometimes it needs the time to let conversation develop like a stream becomes a river.

The bridge across the misty waters outside our door surely helped create the atmosphere.

looper

After the Dabba Wal Street Food Kitchen, we headed to the cinema to see the new Bruce Willis movie called Looper.

We even sat near the front.

I won't say too much about the plot line for fear of spoilers, but the general idea is about near future assassins who deal with time travelled mobster hits.

There's the expected twists - er - loops in the story and also a chance to start to invent some along the way.

Bruce also gets some great one liners - along the lines "we could spend the rest of the morning describing time travel and use all the drinking straws in this diner making models, or we could just accept it" and another part where the map just has an 'X' to explain a location. The script tips its hat to the audience who have already seen all this stuff and don't need the fancy GPS explanations.

The storyline also does some things you don't see so often. I won't say what but it's not the stuff of many action-sci-fi-noir movies.

The near future Kansas is also a fairly dusty and run down looking city, with beaten up cars adapted for solar charging and a plethora of cardboard cities. There's a few seconds also in a manga-like Singapore all high tech and gleaming.

And it's not giving anything away to say that the time machine really looks as if it was invented by H.G. Wells, complete with its almost steam-punk dials and valves.

Our post-viewing consensus - it was definitely worth seeing. Was it as good as the adverts on the buses said - 'The next Matrix/Bladerunner' ? - I think the jury would remain out on that one.

Perhaps stuck in a loop.

And take it from me - China is going to be big.

trouble in't village

They said there'd be trouble today. First news was of 'railway trouble' but later the tram conductor said I should watch out for protests in the village.

Sure enough, the railway station was all but deserted, although the buses were still running. Then I heard the sound of raised voices.

It sounded like a rally and I could see placards being waved at the band-stand.

I crossed the cobbled street just as the leading protestors from the NUWSS turned the corner.

Yes, I'd travelled a mere eight miles distance but back in time just over a hundred years, to the small village of Beamish. It still runs on pounds, shillings and pence and proudly portrays the turn from the nineteenth and into the very early twentieth century.

sitting on a beach, or is it art?

Things might be a bit out of sequence at the moment.

The last few days have tumbled by with all manner of things from rats in the alleyways of Chinatown to divine burlesque, mixed with American brunches and even an all-day business workshop for good measure.

Right now I'm sitting on a beach watching a small piece of the world go by. I feel as if I'm in an art installation actually, but I'm sure it's one of those moments when the body needs to catch up with the mind.

Or maybe it's the other way around.

Morden Tower

We'd arrived after the start. In fairness we'd also been in Manchester earlier in the day and the last part had become gently rushed.

There had been a couple of detours on the walk to the spot. One to get some Montepulciano and another when we'd walked along the front of the fortified walls instead of their inside in order to reach the entrance.

We could have known something about structures having an inside and an outside.

We could have used logic. You don't put a door into the outside of a castle except where there's the drawbridge. Sure enough we could see the little slit windows suitable for firing arrows at marauders.

Our objective was to reach Morden Tower for the poetry reading. Up some clattery centuries-old stairs towards a door jammed tightly shut.

We mused about how to gain attention "knock quietly, perhaps". I don't think the siege in 1644 would have seen the outsiders knocking quietly.

Then we were inside to hear 2012's North Eastern poets in the tiny venue where Ginsberg, Corso, Ferlinghetti and many others have honed their words.

Camera and iPhone-less, the picture is from Morden Tower's own archive.

splish splashing around

I've been driving around the UK to various meetings and staying in a mixture of hotels over the last few days. I'm wondering if the wet weather has been following me around the country.

Last Thursday and Friday I was away and a couple of days later the place I stayed was in the news because of the torrential rain, a river burst its bank and part of the area was flooded.

Then I've been staying in another town at the beginning of the week. The hotel was also hosting an unrelated conference of some kind. I was in the coffee bar part of the hotel, blissfully unaware of the unfolding drama. The conference had been cancelled and several of the people in the hotel had been stranded because of other floods in the vicinity.

To be honest, I didn't quite believe what I was overhearing and started to google the local weather forecast and news, when I noticed the boot type footwear that some of the guests were wearing.

I still had a short walk to get to my meeting and realised that some of the area surrounding the hotel had been flooded too.

Fortunately my route was clear and also my subsequent journey home. I think we'd had a whole month's worth of rain in a day. Tomorrow I'm back on the road and after another day or two in the West Midlands I'll be heading to Manchester.

Hopefully, by then, Manchester won't be a source of more rain ;-)

tunnabora test on the trainerroad

The rain was blowing horizontal by the time I'd decided to go for a bike ride this morning. It gave me an excuse to further shake down the winter season bike.

I was out yesterday in comparative sunshine on my blue bike, although I did notice a slight cooling of the air. Today it was time to take out the semi-winterised orange one, which I'd set up a few days ago, but only just added a cadence sensor so that I can measure things properly. At the time my early prep seemed needlessly pessimistic, but what a difference a few days make.

I use that ANT+ protocol for my bike metrics. It's a bit like a very short distance wireless personal area network and I decided to standardise on it about a couple of years ago.

Interestingly, just adding the cadence sensor to the bike means I can also use it as a sort of power meter when it is connected to a PC or Mac. Power meters for bikes are generally quite expensive, but there's a software version that simulates the effect and can be used for a workout.

I'm using something called Trainerroad for this purpose - which is surprisingly good and simple to set up. It uses ANT+ to link the cadence sensor, speedo and a heart rate monitor to the PC and then takes readings. It doesn't even need a readout on the bike, although I do use my Garmin for that.

I can then play various trainerroad turbo trainer tests whilst it sets goals and monitors performance like a regular trainer would do. Its doesn't control the turbo (or rollers) but uses their calculated resistance (virtual power) to set the targets for the workout.

I'm only working through the so-called Intermediate scripts at the moment, which (no doubt for ego reasons) is basically the simplest set of workouts, designed to last over six elapsed weeks. The first time you use it, there's a test to analyse for the maximum personal output sustainable over an hour (Functional Threshold Power), using two 8 minute tests. This then calibrates the other scripts so that they are do-able. If I'm honest, I found the original FTP200 setting too high and had to wind it down a bit.

I've now worked out how to set up the individual session to run at the bottom of the PC screen, with a TV show playing above it (I'm watching Mad Men Series 2 at the moment). At some point I might take some pictures of the set-up, but for now, here's an example of one the outputs from a one hour ride.

To begin with I'm finding it difficult to track to the targeted output levels, although I suppose I'll get better with a bit more practice (& fitness).

golden spiralling - but not out of control

Before the picture of the sunflower scrolls out of the main pages on the blog, I thought I'd mention that it's a 34.

I don't do it with most plants, but sunflowers require that special extra moment to (a) estimate and sometimes (b) count the number of petals. Not if they are a complete field full of flowers, you understand, but if they are singular.

Some people are surprised that flowers have set numbers of petals when they grow, but I think I'm 'amazed'. I know it is all about Fibonacci series and phi and golden means, but for some reason the sunflower is the perfect type of flower to check that nature is still working properly.

The right number of petals for flowers are (1), 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89 and not really any other numbers (I know there's a few mutations, and so-called 'doubles' like on lilies, but let's stick with the main ones). The arithmetic is simply that the two previous numbers add up to the next available combination.

So my sunflower planted by the birds is a 34, and Pat's Michaelmas daisies are also 34s.

My picture of the complicated rose above is probably an 89, but it is a bit difficult to count the petals. I suppose that's the attraction of sunflowers for the purpose. They are easy to count.

The same thing happens with the spirally bit in the middle of a sunflower. The clockwise and the anticlockwise number of spirals are also in a similar ratio. It'll be something like 34 one way and 55 the other way.

Even pineapple bumps do it. Count the clockwise spirals and then the anti-clockwise ones. It'll be something like 13 one way and 21 the other.

There. I've managed to rationalise my flower petal counting. Now, back to the spreadsheets.

drive my car to penny lane

A bit of a helter skelter day tripper visit to Liverpool today, including a stop in a road with a famous name.

Altogether now, it was a magical mystery tour, during which I had to drive my car, following someone along a long and winding road.

I should have known better, but my ticket to ride didn't give me time to let it be. I suppose I was here, there and everywhere, before I had to follow the sun to get back.

a bat, an indifferent hedgehog and a sunflower

The bat that flitters around our garden at sunset is quite unphased if I'm outdoors and will usually swoop for a quick look before going on with its hunting for insects.

The midnight rambling hedgehog is similarly happy to continue about its fairly slow speed rummaging for earthworms. I have this theory about townie hedgehogs having a good turn of speed so that they can avoid cars, whilst country hedgehogs are more likely to roll up in balls which might not always be in their best interest.

The one in our garden treats me with indifference. And yes, I do know that song by Stackridge. And the one by the Incredible String Band.

Today's feature, though, is one of the sunflowers which have been donated by the birds. I spotted it a while ago, when it could have been mistaken for a fast growing weed. Fortunately I decided it was a plant in the right place, so it survived and today receives the iPhone photographic treatment.

pickin' me a bouquet of dogwood flowers

I took yesterday's bike picture with the camera set to 'automatic' and the flash-gun popped up. I couldn't help notice how it made the bike look quite shiny.

No such luck with these pictures of the bike's pedals. Most people seem to use either the original flat pedals that come with bikes, or get those road clipless pedals. For some reason I've always used the mountain bike type clips even with road bikes.

I'm sure there must be some down-side to using them on a road-bike, but I'm not sure that it makes all that much difference.

It also means that I can have the same pedal types everywhere and also that they have little flat pedal surfaces for cycling in other shoes.

The ones I use are called Candy and I notice I still have what would now be a collector's edition of an old type on one bike. The black ones are the long surviving originals, with special plastic inserts for different colour combinations - see my imaginative choice of grey.

The blue and the gold pedals supposedly signify different qualities, although I'd say the blue ones are by far the highest mileage.

And speaking of mileage, I see that I have now passed my 3,000 mile cycling target this year, which I think I decided would constitute a Silver Wagon Wheel award. My original target set back in January was 1,600 miles, so I think I'm doing quite well.

And I'll now see if I can achieve 4,000 miles by the end of the year to achieve a Gold Wagon Wheel. Construction and consumption of the wagon wheel (Silver at this stage) will follow in another post.

* title is a line from a banjo song... called Wagon Wheel.

steel frame and disk brakes being prepped for the upcoming season

This is going to sound sort of daft, what with it being sunny outside at the moment, but I thought I'd better check a different bike in preparation for the upcoming seasonal changes.

After my recent musing about the fixie, I've decided I'll go back to a retro steel frame and some wider tyres for the winter. I took it out for a preview spin to check that the various components were working. I know it's early, but I'd rather be adjusting things in the warm than later on when everything gets a bit more painful.

Truth be told, everything was in good nick, except that I discovered after the trip that the brakes were very slightly 'on' the whole time.

I'd initially put this down to just being on a heavier bike but after I'd finished I thought I'd just spin the wheels to see how they compared with my road bike.

Hmm. Quite a difference. The road bike's wheels will spin for quite a long time (many revolutions), whereas the steel bike was only 2-3 revolutions at most.

I initially wondered about oil and bearings and things like that, but then loosened the brakes just in case they were the culprits. Sure enough, there was a marked improvement. This winter steel bike has disk brakes, so I did that thing with the thin piece of card to get the clearances right and then retightened everything.

I think the next trip will be easier.

Next is to remember where I've put all the little lights and clip on mudguards.