Cycling Related

Iris wrote: ↑

4 years ago

Now home, thankfully!

We'd hatched a cunning plan for the weekend - my best beloved would drive over to Cambridge on Friday afternoon and check in to the Travelodge, I'd join her by train, we'd put the bike together, have a leisurely evening resting, ride out to Kings Lynn, back to Cambridge for a snooze, she'd come back by train on the Saturday (Sunday morning being the first sung service after a summer break) and I'd have a restful night in the Travelodge before driving back. With the car she was able to take her solo bike in case I felt so ragged after the week at work that I didn't feel able to ride.

Somehow the rear mech gear cable became jammed inside the shifter, so there was a lot of frustration trying to unjam it. Eventually it came free, and it became obvious that it needed to be fully extracted and couldn't just be reseated. Trying to thread a frayed Bowden cable through a small hole is an exercise in futility, so we put out a call for assistance, and fortunately the genersou Rob H offered a replacement, and to turn up early to the station so that we could refit it. Which turned out to be a much easier exercise than I'd feared.

Apart from the mechanicals already noted (which were again very easy to fix - I must be learning something about bikes) the ride was pretty uneventful - and as reported elsewhere @adrian as TEC had a very quiet ride on the bike-fixing front. Wetherspoons breakfast duly consumed we caught up with the usual suspects and, after seeing how many riders had already gone to the station decided to accept the very kind offer of a pint rather than head straight off. A fresh cask of Hobgoblin probably helped in that decision...

But one pint was plenty, and so we wandered across Kings Lynn past a one-man pro-EU demo (lots of police on hand) and with the connivance of the station staff loaded the tandem on the train (lots of pissed-up groups of young people on their way into Cambridge) and got back to the hotel.

And so after a very late lunch of a scotch egg and a bottle of low-alcohol Erdinger and an early dinner of a very good pizza from the shipping container just outside I was flaked out by 9pm.

Which meant that when the fire alarm went off around 4am I was reasonably well-rested - unlike most of the other hotel guests, who were variously hungover, still drunk or completely spaced out. That was a half-hour break, and I must have fallen asleep again when I was woken up by the alarm again, to be met when I got downstairs by a car in reception, swiftly followed by two fire engines and two ambulances. The ambulances didn't stay long, while the fire crew cleared up what remained of the glass doors before being called off to a fire. At some stage an unmarked police car drove off, presumably conveying a person to the station for full and frank discussions.

Piecing together events from overheard gossip and what the hotel staff were saying, a hotel guest had become abusive and set off the fire alarm - he'd probably been drinking all day. He'd been chucked out, had driven off in his car, "borrowed" his brothers car, driven back to the hotel and rammed it into reception. As I came down for breakfast his room and the corridor outside was being guarded by a cop ("I have a nasty feeling I've been asked to guard some poo"), so I suspect there was some damage there as well.

It wasn't the actions of someone entirely of sound mind. And I've seen cars in hotel receptions before, but normally extremely expensive ones in very upmarket hotels as a marketing exercise.

IMG_20190901_090559676.jpg

Rutabaga wrote: ↑

4 years ago

I've not heard that one. Someone told me once that if parsley grows well in a garden it means the woman of the house is in charge

Iris wrote: ↑

4 years ago

Now home, thankfully!

We'd hatched a cunning plan for the weekend - my best beloved would drive over to Cambridge on Friday afternoon and check in to the Travelodge, I'd join her by train, we'd put the bike together, have a leisurely evening resting, ride out to Kings Lynn, back to Cambridge for a snooze, she'd come back by train on the Saturday (Sunday morning being the first sung service after a summer break) and I'd have a restful night in the Travelodge before driving back. With the car she was able to take her solo bike in case I felt so ragged after the week at work that I didn't feel able to ride.

Somehow the rear mech gear cable became jammed inside the shifter, so there was a lot of frustration trying to unjam it. Eventually it came free, and it became obvious that it needed to be fully extracted and couldn't just be reseated. Trying to thread a frayed Bowden cable through a small hole is an exercise in futility, so we put out a call for assistance, and fortunately the genersou Rob H offered a replacement, and to turn up early to the station so that we could refit it. Which turned out to be a much easier exercise than I'd feared.

Apart from the mechanicals already noted (which were again very easy to fix - I must be learning something about bikes) the ride was pretty uneventful - and as reported elsewhere @adrian as TEC had a very quiet ride on the bike-fixing front. Wetherspoons breakfast duly consumed we caught up with the usual suspects and, after seeing how many riders had already gone to the station decided to accept the very kind offer of a pint rather than head straight off. A fresh cask of Hobgoblin probably helped in that decision...

But one pint was plenty, and so we wandered across Kings Lynn past a one-man pro-EU demo (lots of police on hand) and with the connivance of the station staff loaded the tandem on the train (lots of pissed-up groups of young people on their way into Cambridge) and got back to the hotel.

And so after a very late lunch of a scotch egg and a bottle of low-alcohol Erdinger and an early dinner of a very good pizza from the shipping container just outside I was flaked out by 9pm.

Which meant that when the fire alarm went off around 4am I was reasonably well-rested - unlike most of the other hotel guests, who were variously hungover, still drunk or completely spaced out. That was a half-hour break, and I must have fallen asleep again when I was woken up by the alarm again, to be met when I got downstairs by a car in reception, swiftly followed by two fire engines and two ambulances. The ambulances didn't stay long, while the fire crew cleared up what remained of the glass doors before being called off to a fire. At some stage an unmarked police car drove off, presumably conveying a person to the station for full and frank discussions.

Piecing together events from overheard gossip and what the hotel staff were saying, a hotel guest had become abusive and set off the fire alarm - he'd probably been drinking all day. He'd been chucked out, had driven off in his car, "borrowed" his brothers car, driven back to the hotel and rammed it into reception. As I came down for breakfast his room and the corridor outside was being guarded by a cop ("I have a nasty feeling I've been asked to guard some poo"), so I suspect there was some damage there as well.

It wasn't the actions of someone entirely of sound mind. And I've seen cars in hotel receptions before, but normally extremely expensive ones in very upmarket hotels as a marketing exercise.

IMG_20190901_090559676.jpg

JohnToo wrote: ↑

4 years ago

In my university town there was an alley that was the perfect width to fit a Mini end-ways - wide enough to carry in but not wide enough to extract by any number of three point turns.

The Real Ravenhurst wrote: ↑

4 years ago

In my first year at university I once came downstairs to find my own car in almost exactly that position, without the attendant destruction. Turns out a Fiat 126 can be easily lifted by four burly Welsh Agricultural College blokes.

Regulator wrote: ↑

4 years ago

I’m walking the 15 miles home.

Rutabaga wrote: ↑

4 years ago

It needs a spoiler cover - I think one of us is spider-phobic?