Weekly Roundup 11/7/2010
Monday / Tues / Wed / Thurs – After the weekend away in the Lakes, managed to get everything tidy and squared away again. When we put up the tent at the weekend we noticed one of the sections of pole had started to split, and when we were taking it down it was obvious it had got much worse. The strong winds we had in the lakes probably weakened an already weak pole (should they last more than 12 months?). Anyway, I ordered a replacement pole for the tent from Vango’s parent company AMG (it says something that it’s not covered under warranty – they patently don’t hold much faith in their poles), and it came very quickly. Have been interestedly watching Sky Art’s Video Killed the Radio Star season going over the birth of the music video in the 80′s.
My O2 broadband has been playing up the last few weeks, but O2 support won’t talk to me as I apparently emailed them from the wrong email address (even though I passed them all the other correct security details). Great. The line has been syncing at stupid speeds (64k anyone?) I had 128k the other day along with 800k – a quick reboot gets me anywhere between 1.8Mbits/s and 2.5Mbits/s which is crap compared to the 3.5Mbits/s I’ve been getting up until recently. Then it drops again. I’ve checked the cabling and the line all the way through to the line box and even connected directly into the master socket with no improvement. I wonder if BT are arsing around with my cross connect or in the dp. Sky is offering me free broadband and Samknows tells me my exchange is LLU covered with Sky (I’m on LLU O2) so I might go across to Sky instead and save us some more cash.
Friday – Only a couple of weeks until I do the Coasts and Castles 170 mile ride for charity, so I did a bit of fettling on the mountain bike. Most surreal evening ever – just idly had twitter open whilst flicking channels on the TV to see that Charlie Brooker had tweeted about the fact that the police had surrounded Raoul Moat and it was on Sky News. Flicked over to Sky and had BBC on the laptop and watched the most surreal and disturbing (yet strangely compelling) 3 hours of TV I had ever seen. The BBC news reporter who was listening in on private mobile phone conversations to gain more information, and the whole weird rubber-neckedness of the broadcast. The only time I can ever remember watching something quite as weird was lying in bed on a sunday morning a few years ago when they invaded Iraq a few years ago and Sky News had a live broadcast from the gulf of the US military attacking a position and blowing it up with tanks. The use that day of live war as televisual entertainment, where people have lost their lives, will never leave me and will always disgust me that I watched it.
Saturday – Obviously the news this morning was strange. Went out on my mountain bike and rode through town to make sure it was OK. Did just short of 19 miles. It rode perfectly apart from the creaky crank which I’ll just have to live with as I don’t want to tweak the bike now before the long ride in two weeks. I’m doing it on the mountain bike rather than the road bike as there are more spares available, some of the route is off road, and it’ll be more comfortable.
The vegetable patch is coming on nicely. Michelle spent the day weeding, and the kids played out in the garden. Mid afternoon we hopped in the car and went to Bridlington for some fish and chips, and also a play on the 2p slot machines. The temperature change was unreal – in York we had 27C and humid, and at the seaside it was 19C and cool and more overcast. Came home and prepped the race bike for a ride tomorrow morning.
Sunday – Bit of a lazy morning today – I was meant to go out on the bike but the person I was meant to be riding with txted me early doors as he’s not feeling well. No probs. More time for chillout this morning 
Watched a few more of the Video Killed the Radio Star programmes, and then went out to get some bits and bobs and ended up getting a new set of SPD pedals. Why? Well, the mountain bike had started ‘creaking’. Every time I put pressure on the crank it would ‘creak’ alarmingly. I checked the crank arms and they were fine so the only thing I could think is the pedals or the main crankshaft.
When I got home, I took the 17 year old SPD pedals off the mountain bike, whipped the pedals off the road bike and put the new pedals (which were silver and went better) on the road bike with a tiny touch of copper grease on the threads.
Then using a crank extraction tool, I took both the crank arms off, and using a cloth covered in citrus degreaser, gently cleaned the crank arms (including the holes where they fit onto the crankshaft), the crankshaft itself, checked the bottom bracket (seems fine) and injected a little grease and teflon into it, cleaned up the front chainrings seeing as they were off the bike having taken off the crank arm, and then using a tiny amount of copper grease in key areas, refitted everything and put the newer SPD pedals on it (that had just come off the racing bike). A quick oil of the chain and a quick test ride and the creak has gone. Fab!
Cooked some tea (cranberry gammon joint) and then settled down to write all this! Can’t believe they’re showing the world cup on both BBC and ITV. I’ll be watching Top Gear anyway.
