weasel down

Just heard Andy Cathcart died this week in South Africa. He'll be sorely missed by all who knew him. Boy had skills and the ability to break kit just by staring at it, legend has it the UK importers of Intense bikes kept a spare frame for when he broke his current one.

he also rides bikes

After a week when I contemplated selling my mountain bike for a camera* I went on my first 'marcha.' Essentially they're enduros, today's was relatively short (40km) and was without placings to encourage beginners and others to attend. There were still your willy waving baw jaws, sporting expensive bikes, little in the way of skill and tonnes of aggresion but Alex and I managed to get past most of them.

The only annoying thing was that at the feed station 15km everyone had to wait for everyone else to catch up. Given there were 400 or more riders that only took a while but was a pain in the arse when Billy Big Baws and his mates all scooted to the front of the queue despite rolling in well behind us. Cue Alex and I having to cut through the field again. Which would have been fine if any fucker had heeded me shouting at them when coming up hills, theres pretty much only one way to get a single speed up a decent incline and all the granny ringing and line wavering in front of me meant I got a lot of practice doing slow speed high torque stuff. Was quite funny get a few guys bigging up me with 1 gear (single speeding, 29ers and using rigid forks on mountain bikes are things punishable by death here)

A great ride and only now starting to feel the burn although more to do with trying to clean sand from my chain at 12.30 last night and getting up at 7.


*a very, very nice camera it has to be said.

so so so boring

I'm on holiday. The sun is out. And what am I doing? Trying to write a sodding letter to send to various charities and trusts to ask for money. How exactly do I word the following:

Well money is tight because a) I'm Scottish and don't get fees paid and b) I've been living in Madrid for over a year and c) saved sweet FA money.

It's gonna be a long evening.

feed me

This is my 200th post! Sweet, I've been yabbering crap for quite a while now.

Recently undertook the mission of acquiring more up to date music-living in Madrid has a lot of benefits but I haven't heard recent decent music in a while. So I'm downloading: The Rifles, Jakob Dylan, Eagles of Death Metal, Doves' new album and PJ Harvey's if I can find it. Any more for any more?

Also recently went into the first blowmeawaythisisbleedingawesome shop in Madrid (Only took a year) A camera shop Alexis recommended. Wow. This place is a-mazing. New and 2nd hand from the usual suspects BUT also new and 2nd hand Leica, Zeiss and Hasselblad! Spent almost an hour gawking and lusting, now I just need the skills to justify the bling.

pedalling along

Not too much to tell at this end. There isn't as much money available to Scottish medics studying in England as I thought, I'm probably going to end up with £7-8000 of debt solely from interest :0 and another £40-50 grand in loans. Plus previous loans from first degree.

However, as everyone keeps telling me, "Doctors earn loads!" I'm hoping I can pay it back. In fact I had a wee look to see what I could expect to earn (I'm really well prepared and informed as ever) and the base wage is about £21k. That's based on a 40 hour week but of course you won't be working 40 hours a week, you'll be working 56 ;) So it should be doable to pay it back. Eventually.

i like it, i like it a lot

I was really impressed when I first used Aperture and I still think it's a fun way to store photos but felt it was bit limited for editing. Then for my birthday the G funk sent me lightroom 2. Just played with it just now and I'm pretty blown away. The amount of control and ease of use is amazing, so much more intuitive than Photoshop (for me at any rate) and a few minutes of farting about I changed this (which I like)


to this



So much fun and so easy. *sigh* I'm a saddo aren't I?