Especially for Carl: the archive problem with the new gearblog (which meant that on any of the Singularity archive pages the entire post for that entry would come up in the gearblog box) has now been fixed. I don’t know whether it’s a reasonable solution, but I’m not a geek. I just muddle through the best I can. If it produces the desired result that’s good enough for me where this stuff is concerned. I’m no Apache architect — but I can build my own wheels and I could design a sewage works if you wanted me to.

I was over at the sanctified haven that is HubJub, soothing my fevered brow with thoughts of chain whips, when I came across these:

I didn’t even look at the price (although I wish I had). I had to have them.

Don’t bother trying to copy me, dahlings, those were the last ones. And I got the chain whip.

Wasn’t there a post just here just now?

Well, yes there was. But I moved it.

Never mind the inflatable pineal worm, it looks like Frood’s Fairy Death page upset someone enough for them to start a blog.

What a shame folk like that demonstrate remarkable lack of follow through. They could really have made something of that.

Yes, I am aware of how hypocritical it is of me to say that given the date of the last entry on Fairydeath. However I blame Blogger for going through so many blasted changes that it’s hard enough to keep my site functional, never mind get Frood’s working as well.

Frinstance: the new gear test blog over there? I was going to do cunning things with the archives, as I do with the Singularity blog (this one, dumbass). Click on the link over on the top right there and the index pops up. Only Blogger are disabling that feature because it’s ‘so easy’ to include the index list on the main page now. Which is fine if your blog is your main page. This page is built using Server Side Includes to insert the blogs into the main page, rather than adding in the rest of the material to the blog template.

The fact that I don’t want a massive list of archive links in my sidebar is apparently neither here nor there. Bastards. And I still can’t get the comments working properly.

One of the things that we have always lacked, Frood and I, is art. We actually have a lot of art, mostly mine, collected over the years, but mostly it’s of theRodney Matthews and fantasy Neo-Pagan style because that’s what I liked when I was about 18. Recently I’ve developed a thing for Gabriele Dell’Otto but it’s damn difficult to get hold of the stuff he does that I like (it’s a flash site: click on the navigation link at the bottom, hit ‘comics’ and click on the ‘next’ arrow 10 times where you will see a picture of Wolverine walking along the street in the rain — the first time I saw that picture I was stunned).

Last weekend I was reading a Sunday Times Magazine article about Modigliani and suddenly discovered a painter other than Turner I like. Normally I’m bowled over by use of light — that’s why Dell’Otto makes me go weak at the knees. It’s not so much what he paints but the shapes he implies with the light.

Modigliani is not my usual artistic bent. He can’t do faces. All his models look the same. But his use of texture on paintings such as this Reclining Nude and this one is exquisite. It makes me want to reach out and touch the skin.

I’m not good with faces at the best of times, and I don’t really like representations of people. Dell’Otto is so good because he just happens to be painting people I feel I recognise from Elsewhere, and so I stop trying to work out what the person should look like because I feel I know already and I can get on with enjoying the picture. Modigliani’s faces are so crude that they don’t look like people. They look like women wearing masks. Such attention has been paid to the flesh and the skin and every other aspect of their beauty, but their faces are sketched. It’s realism from the neck down.

The colours are beautiful as well. They delight my synaesthetic palette.

Hmmm. Looking through the catalogue on that poster shop it would appear that it is the reclining nudes that interest me. I don’t really like his portraits. Other than this one, which plays the same tricks with space using representations of light and colour.

Funny, really, how sometimes it seems as if, for me, sight and smell and sound are just there to create doorways into internal three-dimensional representation. Even a two dimensional piece of art ends up as an internal space that I experience by crawling around inside it and exploring its shapes and curves.

I haven’t been able to see in 3D since I was 15 months old.

For those of you sad and geeky enough to wonder why these days I am linking to Munky‘s LJ page rather than his RF one: it’s because he actually updates his LJ page, even if it’s generally triathlon oriented and delves into entirely too much information about back, sack and crack defoliation for my liking. I seem to recall… aye. His ‘word of the week’ has been jaycruising for about two years now.

So. Evidence of updating on RF and we shall return the Munky link to its original home. For now everyone can go read the LJ ramblings and contemplate the philosophical conundrum that is: does he look better in his LJ avatar or in his big gay hat?

Avatar?

Hat?

So. I arrived at the top of Cleish Hill. Pingu had already been there for 5 minutes and a queue was starting to form at the Irn Bru-liveried ice cream van. It occurred to me, as I stood there dripping sweat, that there was a reason that no one else was doing the ride on fixed.

Hi. My name’s Sam and I ride fixed.

It started, you know, with just a suggestion and a nub of an idea that it might improve my spinning technique. Before I knew it I’d built up this Raleigh Sun Solo with contemporary Cinnelli bars. Then I bought some Campag Record Aero levers for it over the now-defunct C+ classified section. Then came the Goldtech chainring and the new headset.

It wasn’t long before I started craving something more. Something less hack. Something that didn’t look like it was made of scaffolding poles and rust. That’s when I got in touch with Brant. A couple of months later and I had bought an Il Pompino. For a while I had to ride singlespeed, saving up for the money to convert to fixed. Then I did it. I bought the double fixed hub and rebuilt the rear wheel to ride 42×16 – 70″. Did my first medium distance ride carrying the C+ forum jersey.

I can’t get enough of it now. My other bikes are neglected. My Orbit Harrier is barely speaking to me – it’s now nearly July and he still has his winter hokey-spokes on. I just haven’t taken them off because I can’t stop riding fixed.

I guess… I guess maybe I have a problem.

Five minutes later Clare and Frood arrived. Frood had paused to scoff flapjacks just where I had stopped to catch my breath. He arrived growling about a need for the largest ice cream the world had ever seen. I bought a round of ice cream. While I was buying ice cream I spotted clouds of midges, but thought no more of it. We wouldn’t feel the effects of those until the next day.

After ice cream, more flapjacks and coffee it was time for the descent. Again I thought that maybe there was a reason people weren’t doing the ride on fixed. By the time I got to the bottom of the steep, twisty, narrow descent my hands were cramping and I was having serious concerns about rim failure or brakes catching on fire.

It seemed hardly any time at all before we reached Kinross and the lunch stop. For all you Dun Runners out there, this was like the Dun Run only better. I am not a big eater when riding, so I was content with a banana, but everyone else got their filled rolls in good order, and Mrs Pingu got her flippers on some millionaire’s shortbread. Well done to the Kinross Round Table for that.

Out of Kinross and round the back of Falkland Hill via Balgeddie to Freuchie. Some more long, gentle descents that, with the tailwind, ended up being almost as hard as the climbs. I discovered that being forced to ride at 140rpm for 15 minutes at a stretch is very good for improving spinning technique but doesn’t half bugger your knees.

Next stop tea and cake at Freuchie, with the ladies at the Church Hall. Again, the sort of spread of which the Women’s Institute could have been proud. It was welcomed and needed because the next obstacle was Cadger’s Brae — a 1 in 6 climb of narrow, twisty proportions that didn’t even have the decency to be on a smooth road surface.

I attacked, but really I was defeated before I made the attempt. The sight of the riders ahead, crawling into the sky at what seemed to be a 45° angle, had done for me while I was still on the slow slog to the foot of the climb proper. I managed about ¾ of the climb and had to decide to get off before my front wheel touched the steepest section and I stalled and fell off. Perhaps if I had been on a smaller gear or the road had been smoother, or there had been more room to tack — or perhaps if I had spent the first half of the year in serious hill training — I might have made it. As it was I had to walk approximately 100 yards before climbing back on and taking the last quarter mile of ascent en velo.

And that was pretty much the last point of interest. The rest of the ride was rolling, with a couple of surprise climbs — notably the one by Craigrothie. The signage in St Andrews was appalling, and quite a few folk got lost. But we got there in the end and collected our certificates.

By about 11pm that night I was aware that I had been badly sunburnt on my face and I could barely walk because my knees were so painful. I had a bruise on my left thigh the size of Manhattan and some serious lady-chafing, the latter of which I hope to solve before the Dun Run with a bit of judicious saddle beaking.

My knees were both better by Sunday, although not completely splendid, and we had also discovered the midge bites. I am covered in them. Any exposed skin has been subject to the ravages of Scotland’s top predator. Bizarrely, out of the blue the physio called me on my mobile on Sunday evening. I had failed to get back to them after my first speculative email because my knee seemed to be better. With the state it was in I had already resolved to phone today and make an appointment. The physio had gone one better — he had already made me one. It sounds as if he’s exactly the sort of physio I need.

I think I’ll be fit enough to manage this year’s Dun Run on fixed, assuming my knee issues are resolved. I would certainly recommend LEPRA as a good test bed to see if you have the legs and the machine for it. While it’s only half the distance, it’s a much tougher ride in terms of terrain.

For photos I’m going to have to be very nice to Mr and Mrs Pingu.

As I was saying to Munky yesterday on the phone, my current swimming goal for the half hour I can spare at lunchtime is 500m crawl, then 250m crawl wearing my Aquasphere gloves then another 500m crawl. That adds up to 1250m. In half an hour. Which yesterday sounded completely nuts.

Only I’ve just done it. OK, so it took me 32 minutes, not 30, but still.

I don’t know whether to be dead chuffed or miffed that I am obviously piss-poor at goal setting.

The more observant amongst you will have noticed that there is a new box on the right of the screen. Thirty second haiku reviews. We’ll see how it goes. There will be a maximum of three up at any one time, owing largely to space restriction, and until I can figure out how to get it to work properly there will be no comment option. They will be archived, however.

The LEPRA (click on the link if you want a Gmaps route) was quite good fun. Frood and I ended up doing a nice round 80 miles, which is not the century we had planned. It was still the longest ride he had ever done and it was certainly the longest and most challenging ride I had ever done on a 70″ fixed. I think I was the only fixie rider out of the 800 fair souls participating. This supposition was certainly supported by the habit of the whippet-thin roadies of riding past with the normal sideways scan of the bike, only to get about 3 lengths ahead, do a double take and drop back to say: “You’re on a fixed gear? You’re a nutter!”

We took the 06:36 train from Cupar to Inverkeithing in the end. This meant getting up stupidly early, and I only had about three hours sleep the night before. There were already a couple of people on the train who had embarked at Leuchars and we had a nice chat with the guard. He told us how last year there had been a lot of people trying to get on the train and he had been about to try squeezing one guy on when the chap had said: “Don’t you give me any of that crap about not being able to fit the bike on!”

At which point the guard, quite rightly, decided he could stuff it. Always start off being polite. The guards are generally quite nice. They’re not all jobsworths.

We rode straight along the A90 dual carriageway on the way into Embra, meeting up with a few folk from South Queensferry after Cramond Brig. The closer we got to the start the more cyclists we gathered until there was quite a pack. After a brief stop at Waverley station to use the loo, during which time I had a fight with the rotary gate thing that left me with a black bruise the size of a hen’s egg on my thigh, we made it to the start where we met Mr and Mrs Pingu (Duncan and Clare) and Noggin. Chewa was there but we didn’t see him (he did see us though!)

The start was pretty chaotic. There was no police escort so there were 800 cyclists all trying to get out of Embra along the main central through route all at the same time. The organisers had impressed upon us that traffic lights applied to us too, but frankly it would have been less hassle to the rest of the traffic if we’d just massed it and got out of the way as quickly as possible. But we didn’t, so we had a slow exit from the city.

The directions through Rosyth were pretty shoddy, but I’d had the presence aforethought to sit down and go through the directions the night before and write out an audax-style route sheet, which spent the day folded neatly and slotted down inside my bra next to my sweaty bosom. Very handy, but do make sure you use waterproof ink if you’re going to try this.

It was all fairly easy until Crossgates, although I did start to regret sleeping on the train rather than stuffing my face with flapjacks. Then the topography woke up and started making itself known. I asked Pingu nicely not to talk to me for half an hour, assuming that half an hour would see me over the top of Cleish Hill, which I had been fretting about. Immediately after this some bloke on a road bike came up and hovered on my off side (guaranteed to irritate, as I’m blind on that side).

“That’s a fixed.”

“Uh-huh.”

“You’re really brave doing it on fixed.”

“Right.”

“It gets worse from here.”

“That’s nice.”

“I’ll be really interested to see how you get up the hill on that.”

“I did just ask to be left alone for half an hour.”

Pingu, by this point, had made a swift exit rather than getting between me and someone making me cross.

As it turned out I was soothed by a cheery conversation with a chap on a recumbent from Laid Back Bikes (on the left of that photo), just in time to get a Stinger down my neck before the serious climbing started.

I made it. I muscled that 70″ up to the top of Cleish Hill for ice cream and a quick gasper, although I did have to stop for a minute to let the lactic acid die down before hitting that last steepest section.

Oooh. Lunch time and it’s Monday and that means swimming. I’ll tell you all about the midges later.

I would like to give a big thumbs up for Swimstop, who had my order out to me the day after they received it, complete with a personal email to tell me it had been dispatched and say thank you for the order.

That’s the sort of customer service we like to see from internet shops.

The TYR Socket Rockets are weird. There is no separate seal around the goggles. Where I would expect to see a silicone seal or a sponge seal (as on the Speedo X-Frames and Speed Socket respectively — I own both of these and they have their pros and cons), the Socket Rockets have what appears to be a line of stuck-on silicone sealant of the sort one might use for gluing an aquarium together. The ‘universally adjustable bridge’ is another strip of strap material. They look, it has to be said, rather cheap. I’m not convinced by the leak-free claims.

However. That said, the orange-red metallic finish is exactly what the doctor ordered, and I have never tried a pair of goggles that give such fantastic peripheral vision. Trust me: when you have only the one eye, peripheral vision is something about which one becomes close to obsessive. It’s why I stopped using the X-Frames.

The Maru suit is hot. I tried it on and thought: “Christ, I’m fit.” I actually felt like I didn’t look dissimilar to the model in the picture — and that’s the sort of ego boost any girl could use.

My recent burst of shopping for sports kit has been a bit of an ego boost all round. I was in buying a new pair of running shorts a couple of days ago, as my old ancient ones have so many holes in them they would make a good pasta strainer. I grabbed my normal size from the railing and tried them on, and then had to take them back because they were too big. I stared at the label wondering if they had made a mistake. I remember being a size 12. When I went down to an 8 I have absolutely no idea.

And yet, bizarrely, despite this obvious evidence that I am not turning into a lardy wobbly fat bird as a result of not cycling to work any more, I don’t feel like I’ve dropped a dress size. I still have a complex about my arse and thighs. Despite being an intelligent, fairly rational (quit laughing at the back) woman who understands that the images portrayed in adverts and in Hollywood bear about as much resemblance to the real world as the special effects in The Abyss, I find myself looking at the perfectly normal, natural shape of my legs and buttocks, comparing them to the likes of Angelina Jolie and Rebecca Romijn, and finding them wanting.

Gods. Sometimes it pisses me off what we do to ourselves in the name of culture.