Went for first ride in 3 weeks after making a few changes to the ferrous. Stuck a 90mm stem on instead of the 100 that I'd been using but although feels easier to loft the front and spritely it's a bit too lively and when climbing it feels too short, so going back to the 100 tomorrow. Also changed the ratio from 18 tooth to 16 at the back, makes it much more of a grunt and grimace affair uphill but it rips on anything flattish. Hard work but I'll persevere to try and get some leg strength for when I finally get up to the sierra. Apparently changes to cog size have a greater impact than chainring size?
Finally and most successfully I got my 2.4 mountain king tubeless on upfront. It rocks. Partly, I suspect, because it's tubeless but also because with the rigid fork a big volume tyre makes a hell of a difference especially on the hard packed ground round here. That's it really, only rode for couple hours as it was so hot and because I remembered halfway round that I'd left the front window open. D'oh.
Monday, 28 July 2008
Sunday, 27 July 2008
guantanamo soup
I arrived early doors in Segovia (town near Madrid) to get picked up and taken to village where the camp was because there aren't any buses to get there.....
Shoehorned into the back of a tiny car with a Spanish woman who was our boss, an Indonesian guy, a Scottish woman who has lived in Spain for 14 years and a guy who grew up in Spain, studied in UK has an Irish dad and an Indonesian mum we set off for Fuente Pelayo. As they all knew each other they were pretty relaxed but I was quite frankly asking what I'd let myself in for. Joanna, Scottish woman, and Nick, Spain/UK/Ireland/Indonesia, are both monitors at the camp; generally monitors need to be extroverted and happy to do pretty much anything and these guys are no exception. At the time I felt like I'd signed up to serve aboard the Black Pearl, they were screaming and laughing all the way to the camp and I was worried I wasn't going to fit in. As it was I needn't have been concerned, I soon discovered how friendly they were and that laughing as hard as you could was the best way to get through this camp - the alternative was crying.
It soon transpired that the money wasn't the only crap thing at this camp, the stories I heard about the food in the first hour of being there were making me very nervous. Andy, Indonesian guy, is Muslim so can't eat pork. Except that the only meat they serve in the camp, with the exception of 3 meals, is pork. So they make him a different meal. Sort of. In the first camp they'd done (remember a camp lasts 2 weeks) they refused to cook different meals and said the only thing they would make was fried eggs. The boss had told the kitchen staff to give him pork and tell him it was beef! So he ate a lot of eggs.
Thankfully in the camp I did they had bought more food and prepared him fish, chicken and other things, in fact a lot of the time his food was better than ours. For breakfast there were three 'meals' that were rotated in order: cola coa (hot chocolate) with concentrated juice and biscuits, cola coa with concentrated juice and fairy cakes, cola coa with concentrated juice and square shaped fairy cakes. Not the healthiest breakfast in the world but to be fair not that unusual for here, cereal isn't as big here and toast doesn't exist.
However, people in my experience at least normally have something mid morning or later to keep them going till lunchtime, which is about 2ish here and much more substantial than in the UK. Not at this camp though, the kids (and us) ate at 9 then didn't eat again till 1.45 by which time we were all fucking starving. I'm a big eater, I'll admit that but I am not by and large a fussy eater. Aside from tuna and hard boiled eggs I'll eat pretty much anything put in front of me yet even I struggled with some of the fodder on offer.
It's fair to say the food was basic, you'd expect that at any sort of camp but in 2 weeks we had salad twice, lentils once and vegetable soup three times. Aside from that I cannot remember eating any other vegetable aside from potatoes. There was rice with tomato frito (very basic tomato sauce) poured on top, spaghetti with tomato frito and chorizo, chicken noodle soup no less than 4 times (dubbed guantanamo soup), cold pork, pork 'steaks,' battered pork, pork omelette and a host of other dull carbohydrate rich meals. There was more than one occasion where we gave some of our own table's food to the kids and every single day without fail we had to race the flies to our meals. Last Monday the weekend kitchen staff had left out the watermelon (to be fair we did have fruit every other day) we'd had on Sunday night so come the morning the place was swarming with the buggers. It was slightly worse when the staff on Monday didn't bother to clean it away either and by lunchtime there were even more flies.
So the food was bad. The kids were, thankfully, great. A hundred times better than the class I'd had at the last camp I was genuinely sad to see them go. It was a small camp, only 50 kids compared to most camps which are 200 or more and that meant after 2 weeks I could name pretty much everyone which was nice. I'm not sure they learnt all that much but they seemed to have a blast and after a few days coercion, debate and finally submission they even sang Bohemian Rhapsody for the final day talent show.
Shoehorned into the back of a tiny car with a Spanish woman who was our boss, an Indonesian guy, a Scottish woman who has lived in Spain for 14 years and a guy who grew up in Spain, studied in UK has an Irish dad and an Indonesian mum we set off for Fuente Pelayo. As they all knew each other they were pretty relaxed but I was quite frankly asking what I'd let myself in for. Joanna, Scottish woman, and Nick, Spain/UK/Ireland/Indonesia, are both monitors at the camp; generally monitors need to be extroverted and happy to do pretty much anything and these guys are no exception. At the time I felt like I'd signed up to serve aboard the Black Pearl, they were screaming and laughing all the way to the camp and I was worried I wasn't going to fit in. As it was I needn't have been concerned, I soon discovered how friendly they were and that laughing as hard as you could was the best way to get through this camp - the alternative was crying.
It soon transpired that the money wasn't the only crap thing at this camp, the stories I heard about the food in the first hour of being there were making me very nervous. Andy, Indonesian guy, is Muslim so can't eat pork. Except that the only meat they serve in the camp, with the exception of 3 meals, is pork. So they make him a different meal. Sort of. In the first camp they'd done (remember a camp lasts 2 weeks) they refused to cook different meals and said the only thing they would make was fried eggs. The boss had told the kitchen staff to give him pork and tell him it was beef! So he ate a lot of eggs.
Thankfully in the camp I did they had bought more food and prepared him fish, chicken and other things, in fact a lot of the time his food was better than ours. For breakfast there were three 'meals' that were rotated in order: cola coa (hot chocolate) with concentrated juice and biscuits, cola coa with concentrated juice and fairy cakes, cola coa with concentrated juice and square shaped fairy cakes. Not the healthiest breakfast in the world but to be fair not that unusual for here, cereal isn't as big here and toast doesn't exist.
However, people in my experience at least normally have something mid morning or later to keep them going till lunchtime, which is about 2ish here and much more substantial than in the UK. Not at this camp though, the kids (and us) ate at 9 then didn't eat again till 1.45 by which time we were all fucking starving. I'm a big eater, I'll admit that but I am not by and large a fussy eater. Aside from tuna and hard boiled eggs I'll eat pretty much anything put in front of me yet even I struggled with some of the fodder on offer.
It's fair to say the food was basic, you'd expect that at any sort of camp but in 2 weeks we had salad twice, lentils once and vegetable soup three times. Aside from that I cannot remember eating any other vegetable aside from potatoes. There was rice with tomato frito (very basic tomato sauce) poured on top, spaghetti with tomato frito and chorizo, chicken noodle soup no less than 4 times (dubbed guantanamo soup), cold pork, pork 'steaks,' battered pork, pork omelette and a host of other dull carbohydrate rich meals. There was more than one occasion where we gave some of our own table's food to the kids and every single day without fail we had to race the flies to our meals. Last Monday the weekend kitchen staff had left out the watermelon (to be fair we did have fruit every other day) we'd had on Sunday night so come the morning the place was swarming with the buggers. It was slightly worse when the staff on Monday didn't bother to clean it away either and by lunchtime there were even more flies.
So the food was bad. The kids were, thankfully, great. A hundred times better than the class I'd had at the last camp I was genuinely sad to see them go. It was a small camp, only 50 kids compared to most camps which are 200 or more and that meant after 2 weeks I could name pretty much everyone which was nice. I'm not sure they learnt all that much but they seemed to have a blast and after a few days coercion, debate and finally submission they even sang Bohemian Rhapsody for the final day talent show.
skip to the end
ok let's fill in the blanks:
4th of July party was good, on a rooftop terrace thing with a barbeque and loads of food. Stumbled home (Carla was in London) and spent couple days enjoying silence after a week of noise teaching kids.
Saw out the second week which was pretty straightforward and went out again on the Friday, got home bit later than first time and managed to wake up Carla.
Chilled on the Sunday while got ready to go to my next Summer camp which was residential and in a wee town an hour or so away from Madrid. Wasn't sure what to expect, knew it was shit pay but felt bad bailing (got few other offers from camps with better money) so decided to head out anyway. It was certainly interesting.
4th of July party was good, on a rooftop terrace thing with a barbeque and loads of food. Stumbled home (Carla was in London) and spent couple days enjoying silence after a week of noise teaching kids.
Saw out the second week which was pretty straightforward and went out again on the Friday, got home bit later than first time and managed to wake up Carla.
Chilled on the Sunday while got ready to go to my next Summer camp which was residential and in a wee town an hour or so away from Madrid. Wasn't sure what to expect, knew it was shit pay but felt bad bailing (got few other offers from camps with better money) so decided to head out anyway. It was certainly interesting.
Saturday, 5 July 2008
that was the week that was
Where to start? The beginning I guess.
Last weekend Matt the Spaz flew out for a 24 hour race in Madrid. He'd only contacted me a couple days before but it worked out ok as I was off for the week anyway and was able to give him a hand getting his bike from the airport. I was slightly worried as the heat had been cranking up for a while - Carla and I were walking home one night and were talking about how it felt much cooler and as the bus stops here have the time and temp. on them we checked our current standing. 28 degrees. At 11pm.
I had a meeting on the Friday so told the boy to call us when he was free but for whatever reason we didn't hear from him. Race day came and our mates who were going to give us a lift had some worrying news about a relative so it got put on hold until the Sunday. Arriving for the finish we found him strolling about the pits, turns out he'd blown up after 6 hours and ended up in the hospital tent with dehydration. Not that surprising given it was almost 40 degrees at the race site and he didn't have a pitbitch (I'd offered but he never got in touch...)
On the up side Mr.Bontrager was there and for all his shite Matt does know him quite well. Sound bloke who was always happy to have his picture taken and sign things for people he even got a round of beers in for all of us. We headed home having made arrangements to go and see the Euro Championship final with Matt but he never got in touch and didn't answer his hotel phone. The important thing is that Spain won; their first title in over 40 years it's fair to say they were pretty pleased and the celebrations went on for quite a while.
God my writing is dull today. Was at 2 for 1 cocktail place then ended up at someone's flat for a 4th of July party. I'm still tired.
Last weekend Matt the Spaz flew out for a 24 hour race in Madrid. He'd only contacted me a couple days before but it worked out ok as I was off for the week anyway and was able to give him a hand getting his bike from the airport. I was slightly worried as the heat had been cranking up for a while - Carla and I were walking home one night and were talking about how it felt much cooler and as the bus stops here have the time and temp. on them we checked our current standing. 28 degrees. At 11pm.
I had a meeting on the Friday so told the boy to call us when he was free but for whatever reason we didn't hear from him. Race day came and our mates who were going to give us a lift had some worrying news about a relative so it got put on hold until the Sunday. Arriving for the finish we found him strolling about the pits, turns out he'd blown up after 6 hours and ended up in the hospital tent with dehydration. Not that surprising given it was almost 40 degrees at the race site and he didn't have a pitbitch (I'd offered but he never got in touch...)
On the up side Mr.Bontrager was there and for all his shite Matt does know him quite well. Sound bloke who was always happy to have his picture taken and sign things for people he even got a round of beers in for all of us. We headed home having made arrangements to go and see the Euro Championship final with Matt but he never got in touch and didn't answer his hotel phone. The important thing is that Spain won; their first title in over 40 years it's fair to say they were pretty pleased and the celebrations went on for quite a while.
God my writing is dull today. Was at 2 for 1 cocktail place then ended up at someone's flat for a 4th of July party. I'm still tired.
Sunday, 29 June 2008
24 doce
Will post more when have time but it's the Euro 2008 final tonight and the city is hoaching with fans, I start a new job at 8am tomorrow and we've just spent the morning at a 24 hour race course in the 35 degree heat drinking beer bought by Mr. Bontrager. So not all bad ;)
There's a worse photo on my flickr (hard to believe)
Matt shows Alex his fooked forks
Sandra makes Keith laugh
There's a worse photo on my flickr (hard to believe)
Matt shows Alex his fooked forks
Sandra makes Keith laugh
Tuesday, 24 June 2008
Jones
Seems like since Merlin came on board with Jeff Jones his bikes have become far more prolific (which was the point obviously) and you're much more likely to bump into someone riding one. Although maybe that's the illusion of the interweb, even if there are a thousand Jones bikes out there then it's still a longshot you'd see one. I do know there's a Jones owner who lives near Barcelona (and NZ the rest of the time!) I was in touch with and I've seen a few in the flesh now and they don't seem nearly as weird as when I first saw one but why the hell do they, almost, all have those WTB saddles! They look terrible, though maybe that's to distract from the frame. Good to see truss forks can double as bottle holders...
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