A lucky break .. and I am not referring to the snooker world championships!

Well, I have been a little quiet the last week or so.  Falling off a bike onto hard concrete over Easter damaged my arm more than I initially thought.  It was probably not helped by my Kiwi cycling companion insisting I get back on the bike and continue to ride - yes, and this picture is how I felt ( dialogue went something like this - Kiwi fruit "get back on that bike now", poor Pomme A "but it hurts ....").  Oh, to have the support of your fellow cyclists ....

So, after a visit to A&E (some 4 days later, as I am very tough!) and the necessary x-rays, I was informed I had fractured the radius bone right by the elbow (now I know why I could not straighten my arm and why it hurt so much) and resting the arm in a sling was the only thing to do.

Yesterday I went to the fracture clinic at the Charing X hospital for a follow-up appointment – more x-rays – and was informed that I was very lucky with where the break was ('lucky' would not be the first word I would use ..)!  It had not displaced (despite me playing in a couple of gigs over the weekend!) and I no longer needed the sling.  Physio appointment was needed and moving the arm was now the thing to do. 

When I asked if I could do the ride ..the doctor say ‘No’ …so I insisted on a 2^nd opinion!  Finally his consultant (and boss) said I could ride, but I would have to keep popping the pain killers en route, try not to fall off again (as if that was on the top of my ‘to do’ list ..umm? No!) and stop if it got worse – as I could do more damage ..eeek!

So, the ride is back on for the Pomme Anglais .. yippee (I think!).  Just in major ‘catch-up’ mode as the fracture has scuppered my training plan and, unlike the Kiwi fruits, I have not cycled 90 miles so the ride on the 9^th May may well be my first ‘ test’ of a loooooong distance.

Lots more indoor riding and moaning – at least for the rest of this week – is on the agenda for me .. and – (a request for you, dear readers) .. please keep your fingers crossed for me to keep on mending so I make it to Paris sometime in May.. Thank you!

Bike Porn

The other day we couldn't access our blog, the message said it had been removed for unauthorised activity.  I rang Suzanne and she was on the verge of admitting that it must have been her that did something "accidentally and potentially illegal" , when bingo it came back - a little technical hitch at Blogger. Speaking on which no doubt everyone is acquainted with Google's new privacy and data protection policy ... now there's an oxymoron for you!

A while ago I went to see a Top Gear Live show in London. One of the segments in the show is called "car porn". They roll out the best in super luxury sports cars.  At the beginning you think "who would spend that much money on a car like that, and where are you ever going to be able to drive it to get to even half of it's top speed anyway?"  Then you find yourself going "actually that's rather nice, I like that, I could see myself in that, I wonder how much they are second hand".  Well ... given that the same thing is starting to happen to me when I go into bike shops (Condor in particular) I thought it was time we had a little porn of our own.

So here we go ... "bike porn".

They all have names of course .. cool names like Squadra, Leggero and Terra-x and frame descriptions to make you go weak at the knees - for example "Dedacciai Custom Nero Forza Monocoque" and "EM2 triple-butted Scandium tubing".

 I have no idea what any of it means, but since when did that matter when what you are looking at is soooo sexy (ok I can hear you now shaking your heads and going "tsk tsk").  well .. they are sexy machines.

These "cute" little machines on the left however, are not sexy machines. At the risk of raising ire amongst their supporters, I have to say I've not noticed any particularly sexy folks riding these little numbers either. If you are really trendy you wear street clothes and ride a single speed or a "fixee" ... think pre and post WWII and modern day France. Anyway .. I know folding bikes are functional but frankly so are the 3 speed London tanks known as "Boris Bikes", which I continue to ride to and fro around town, to the supermarket, the train station etc. Like you imagine for one moment  I would leave Lara locked up somewhere for 8 hours plus out of my sight, next to dusty and greasy undesirables .. I don't think so!!


Here's one more piece of bike porn to leave your drooling ... and no I am not going to tell you what it said on the price tag.  Ladies never ask the price ... and gentlemen never tell ....

Oh I almost forgot. A heart felt thanks to all of you who saw the last blog post about my injuries and asked me ... "is Lara was ok?" - she really appreciated it!!!

Falling off a bike .. now that’s very Bard

Had a wonderful ride in Richmond Park today, trying to get used to cleats for the first time.  And for some reason, I came over ‘all Shakespeare’.. being Anglais and all … enjoy .. (perchance) ..

To cleat, or not to cleat, that is the question:

Whether ‘tis Nobler in the mind to suffer

The Ridicule and Mockery of non-cleated cycling,

Or to take feet against a road of potholes,

And by cleating them: to panic, to fall

And to fall, and possibly dent my bike and pride

The heart-ache, and the thousand pieces of tarmac

That would imbed in my flesh?  ‘Tis a consummation

Devoutly not to be wished.  But to cleat, to look fabulous,

To fabulously ride faster in my Dreams; Ay, that saddle ..now

There’s the rub…  

        (But that is another story for another day in the Park…)

Is this an Eiffel Tower I see before me … or..?

Hello readers!  Firstly I have not been stewing in my own ‘pomme’ juices and forgetting about our wonderful blog, I started a new job this week so have been a little preoccupied. 

However, I have a little story I wanted to share with you all.  So, I hope you are sitting comfortably…?  Good, so I will begin..

I have spent this week being ‘induced’ .. well, going through the induction process with the new work.  I was with a group of disparate new hires and part of the course was the usual ‘tell us something interesting about yourself’ …

As the bike ride is so close to my heart I talked about this – the training programme, the new bike, the charity, my two Kiwi fruits that will be following me miles behind en route etc. etc. …

Over coffee we all ended up chatting about these new found interesting things about our colleagues and one of the guys – I shall call him ‘Pete’ to keep anonymity – shared with me that he too did the London to Paris charity ride a few years ago. 

I was so excited to meet someone that had done it and promptly started to ask him questions (how was it for him, did he stick to the training plan, what sort of bike did he have, did he use cleats or not, how was his bum (en route, not at the moment of course) … all of those ‘sad’ questions that have suddenly become so very important).  However Pete stopped me mid questioning and shared with me how it was for him.

Pete had cycled with his chums all the way to Dover, staying in some youth hostel where he told me there was a fight going on outside as they got there (but they were so tried it did not matter).  They crossed on the ferry in the morning and cycled (uphill) out of Calais.  He said the journey throughout France was great – pretty flat and interesting.  They entered into Paris on the final day and he and his friends cycled towards their final destination – the Eiffel Tower – with great great excitement.

He then said that the next memory he had was waking up in a French hospital.  Somehow along the final metres toward the Tour Eiffel he managed to fall off his bike and knock himself out.

He is now really envious about me doing the ride and wished me lots of luck. 

I guess the moral of the story is to keep pedalling – carefully – right to the end of the road.. I could not imagine doing 298.5 miles and falling on the last 0.5 mile, but talking to Pete, I now know this ‘could’ happen (especially if I do not get used to my cleats)!

    

Un Deux Trois… (Cat Sank…meow!)

OK OK .. it may be close to full moon but I can assure you Ms Pomme Anglaise has not gone totally looney tunes. 

Today I had a wee epiphany (if epiphanies can be small).  As my lovely Condor Italia RC (in beautiful Pearl E White) continued to give me a little grief in changing from (what I technically call) ‘little cog to big cog where the pedal thingies are at the front’ , I took her back to the shop to see if they could help.  The issue from my perspective was the movement I had to make with my left hand to shift the beautifully Italian crafted Campagnolo Veloce gear leaver to move from one cog to the other. .. in short, my little fingers did not seem to want to stretch the virtual 90 degree angle I needed to sweep the lever across to get to that big cog (and hence have the ability to speed off at those all-important traffic lights etc.).

So, off went ‘Pearl E’ to the mechanic and, very soon afterwards, Julian (my new best friend at Condor!) came back with an update for me.  As it transpires, the left hand lever did not have to be pushed the whole 90 degrees in one fell swoop, I could move to the big cog by clicking the lever not once, not twice, but three times in much smaller movements!  This was great news .. so I rode home this afternoon, with ‘un deux trois’ going through my head, the gears shifting easily, my little hands being happy that they are not being stretched to breaking point.  And hopefully the cat will not sink …   that’s all folks (well, for today anyway!)…

Farcical … is that really a long bicycle ride ..?

Today, after a whole days rain with zero let up, I decided to get my lovingly loaned Munoura ‘Hypermag’ set-up in the lounge (thank you Uncle John for the loan!).  For those of you not acquainted with the joys of cycle training devices, the Hypermag ‘has been developed as the most silent indoor bicycle trainer in the world with adopting Minoura’s special technical knowledge for over 12 years such as thicker plastic material, alloy die-casting outer case and high-level machined unique full-circle magnet’ (yes, this is lifted straight from the poorly translated instruction manual from Japan). 

Choosing a day when my partner was away (as the only place to install said machine was in the lounge by the dining table – hence making the dining experience in the house with more than 2 of us a little intimate (unless you have a ‘thing’ about bicycle trainers)), I decided to install my old Trek mountain bike on the trainer so I had something to train on on days like today when the weather was really too bad to go ‘proper’ road cycling (ie. 10% possibility of rain upwards ..) and leaving my beautiful ‘Pearly E White’ Condor Italia for those fair weathered rides…

What looked like a simple installation turned out to be very challenging, to put it mildly.    Despite my Master’s Degree (OK OK in computing .. which proved to be useless when it came to cycle trainers) and a detailed diagram of how to assemble the trainer, the combination of the M6 bolt, Knob bolt, flat washer, hub clamping handle, load level adjusting dial, drive roller, flywheel, U-leg etc etc ..got me very perplexed.  I got to a stage where I was questioning if I had the thing turned around the right way to start with, whether it should actually be attached to the front wheel and not the back and whether it should actually be hung from the ceiling.  After a few hours of deliberation I did manage to work 80% of it out (without phoning my Uncle which was going to be the last resort as I can hear him chuckle now!) and installed the bike on the training machine.  By this time my partner had arrived home and I assured her that this was ‘the most silent indoor bicycle trainer in the world’ (blah blah from the manual) and she would not even notice it was there.  To reassure her I sat on the bike and proceeded to peddle and the noise .. well, it made my very old washing machine sound like the hum of butterflies wings.   I think the neighbours started banging on the wall ..  I then realised that the machine was not adjusted properly. 

Now I have sorted it out, although we cannot invite anyone around to eat at the table, all is well.. and the hot dinner plates, now on our laps at night in lieu of the table, have – as I said to my partner – actually helped save us on our heating bills.  Every cloud and all that ….. 

The most important part of the challenge .. new bikes

We have all committed ourselves to the ride from London to Paris, and sealed the deal by spitting on our palms and shaking hands.  Well actually more like clinking our wine glasses together ... Then the thought occurs to us - we can't do this on our current bikes.  A trek mountain bike, a road bike whose twin must still be on the Ark (weren't there 2 of everything on the Ark) and a Boris bike/tank. New bikes were required, and soon!

It was surprising to find that the quoted cost of the bike was actually just the frame and the "finishing kit" included wheels, seat, gear sets, handle bars and peddles.  As the money mounted it up it was tempting to consider just carrying the frame to Paris.

After much looking we chose our steeds - 2 Condor Italias - one in All Black colours, one white in surrender colours, and a Giant in go fast colours. Here's a picture of one of the Condors with her first test riders on board.