ARobComp et al,
DuckTape !
Always remember the DuckTape and WD40 Rulz !
*other sticky tapes and easing sprays are available - though not as well known nor, perhaps, as effective.
CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » Commuting
Confessions of a Cycle Commuter
(1669 posts)-
Posted 6 years ago #
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Hmm, I'd like to imagine manubrium is a sort of waxy substance. Or maybe a kind of terrestrial ambergris.
I had in mind The British Manubrium, a modest but intruiging series of exhibits of the Victorian gentlemen's sartorial eccentricities.
Posted 6 years ago # -
@Arellcat I'm adopting that explanation.
Confession: stopped at Scotmid after a pint on an empty stomach. Many groceries. Too many for pannier. No reusable bag. Reached payment screen before realising.
Reader, I stole a 5p plastic bag.
Posted 6 years ago # -
But did you cycle with it on the handlebars?
Posted 6 years ago # -
Why did you have to ask that? Full extent of sin revealed: there was a second pannier on the bike outside but I didn't want to leave shopping and fetch it. So my theft was doubly immoral. So much shame.
Posted 6 years ago # -
So much shame.
It was a triumph of the will.
Posted 6 years ago # -
TFW you get approached by someone on FB messenger with a name you recognise as a CCE real life(TM) name about a piece of cycling kit* you have and you say sure you can have it for free. When they come to pick it up it isn't the CCE'r but a random teenager**...
*It was the mk1 bike carrying trailer and I wanted rid of it anyway.
**might explain why his online bantz wasn't quite as expected and he didn't want the kiddy carrying stuff despite having just had a kid***
***anyone (including ARobComp) want any of the following well used kids stuff
1. Hamas childseat
2. Shuggly tag-along
3. TrailgatorWill need help getting the seat post attachment off towing bike for 2&3
Posted 6 years ago # -
@unhurt - Just pop in and repay the 5p. That makes it a case of Hire Payment instead of stealing.
Posted 6 years ago # -
I am now commuting to Colinton Road, the top bit. Route:- Roseburn Street up to Harrison Park along the canal to that titchy bridge after Meggetland (no ramp, natch). Bridge is one human wide, then narrow path with attendant desire lines in mud to cycle filtering section of Craiglockhart Road.
Then turn on to Craiglockhart Drive. After you cross horrid Craiglockhart Avenue a really pretty cycle along Craiglockhart Drive and Kaitsmill Road, which are very rural in feeling and have hardly any traffic. Then a steepish climb to my destination in Colinton Road.
So pleased with having a pleasant uphill cycle in the morning. 2 disadvantages:-
1. Heading south-westish i.e. right into prevailing wind.
2. The canal. I am going against most of the traffic, which is heading towards Fountainbridge. The traffic includes children going zig-zaggy, some cyclists going far too fast, and clumps of people and dogs on foot and cycle and in buggies. You become very aware of a body of water about two feet away.Also some mad woman passed between me and the canal on a strip of grass about 6 inches wide.
Pretty as it is, a canal towpath is not a two-way commuting route.
Posted 6 years ago # -
I confess that I am an unusually, excessively & exceptionally grumpy (not cycle today) commuter. I am in Orkney. It is sunny (if a bit chilly in the wind). It is GORGEOUS. I should be off having a sneaky pre-dinner dip in the sea at Scapa Pier. But Rule 2-ers Enterprise Car Hire have failed to pass on my hire car booking to a local firm - or, equally likely, have sent a car to Wick airport instead. Or Sumburgh. Or perhaps Inverness - they don't seem to have a map that shows Scotland north of about Aberdeen. I am very tired and therefore IRATE. Only the discovery that this hotel room has a silly skooshy wannabe-Jacuzzi bath is making things better. Chips. Wine. Submersion.
Posted 6 years ago # -
A different kind of confession...
I was cycling up the hill past Kirknowton airfield and saw that I was slowly catching up a couple of cyclists. I was moving just a bit faster than them, so I had time to obsserve that one was a bit faster than the other. I caught them up just after they got over the top of the hill whereupon the faster one disappeared off. I was trying to work out why I was assuming that the slower one was female - was there some visual clue? When I got close enough I could see that she had long hair.So then I set off to chase after the other cyclist. He wasn't hanging around and it took a while for me to catch him up. Got there in the end and said "Good afternoon". "Hi" came the reply. Oh. Another woman. That'll teach me to make assumptions...
Posted 6 years ago # -
Managed a first hipster fixie skid until I remembered that I didn't have a lockring in place. My fixed gear was briefly freewheeling as I'd managed to unscrew the cog. I'll not do that again without the necessary h/w support.
Posted 6 years ago # -
Downhill part of the commute felt odd and unpleasant, with cycle lurching sideways. Found that the rack was loose, so gingerly cycled the flat part of the commute to the cycle shop. Mechanic pointed out that not only was the rack loose, with a piece sheared off, the back wheel was almost off, as somehow the release lever had been pulled. Explained the wobbly ride – but why hadn’t I investigated the back wheel? First explanation always the sufficient one…
Posted 6 years ago # -
Found out that I can almost bonk when not on the bike: felt very peculiar and wobbly with shaky hands on gettng home from work travels. Diagnosed as a failure to lunch (getting in the sea won out over stopping for a toastie). A packet of mini cheddars and a free LoganAir Tunnock's Wafer apparently insufficient fuel. Cure: stuffing of face. Scientific discovery: you CAN binge on plain rice cakes..
Posted 6 years ago # -
Stripped and cleaned a Brompton M6R last week. The last couple of days felt wrong but I couldn't see an obvious problem.
Cleaning seems to have loosened lots of spokes on the back wheel. I'll tighten them up at the weekend. Different Brompton today.
Posted 6 years ago # -
On the way home there's a hipster dude with no brakes at all on his bike at all doing track stands of low quality. Actually touched my wheel with his thrashing about on Lothian Road. Bad lad.
Into Cameron Toll for messages, classic guy coming up Lady Road onto the roundabout looking straight through me. I slam on the anchors and we are eye to eye. He is apologetic but I mime a demonstration of my luminous green jacket and do the Meet the Fokkers 'I am watching you' mime for good measure.
Guy behind in a Volvo with an IAM badge starts honking his horn. I challenge him to get out and have a chat. He declines so I indicate the likely size of his manhood digitally.
Get home and quick once-over on Madame IWRATS' bleu-blanc-rouge-mobile for PoP. Lock rusted shut over winter. Cut it off. Three minutes with a junior hacksaw and a pair of brake cable cutters.
Jeezo.
Posted 6 years ago # -
The SPD on my left pedal is suffering the effects of winter and won't let me clip or unclip readily. The left is, of course, my "stopping in traffic" side so this is just setting me up for a cliptastrophe. Where did I put that WD40?!
Posted 6 years ago # -
Oops. Accidentally ate a whole packet of biscuits at work today
Posted 6 years ago # -
@amir, if that's a confession I'm going to need a whole thread just for biscuit consumption...
Posted 6 years ago # -
Maybe a thread for days that I don't eat a while packet of biscuits would be easier...
Posted 6 years ago # -
Re: everyone's favourite Schrödinger's biscuits - is it possible to open a sleeve of jaffa cakes and NOT consume them all in the next ten minutes? If so, please teach me your ways.
(This also applies to fake jaffas - those square lime ones from M&S are amazing.)
Posted 6 years ago # -
You should limit your consumption to one before you feel sick. This is the advice from the Jaffa Cake Helpline Official
Posted 6 years ago # -
Never use a tube with a patch.
Always check your pump on regular occasions so that when it comes to use them you don't find that the seal has burst and that it can't inflate your leaky tube much beyond squidgy.
Shows how long it has been since I got a puncture in the wild (and didn't have my CO2 inflater with me)
Posted 6 years ago # -
I was working in town today, and had a suburban appointment after work, that awkward sort of time of evening when there's not really enough time to ride home first for tea and then go back in (not that you really feel like riding 15 miles, and then a few more an hour or so later), and you also don't want to spend yet more money eating out, and it's too cold to spend half an hour sitting on a park bench in town with only your phone for company.
So I was five minutes out of the house when I had the nagging feeling I'd forgotten something, and twenty minutes out of the house when I realised what it was. My lock. No problem, I'll just borrow one from the front desk when I get there, which I did. It wasn't a muckle U-lock or anything like that; it would've been about as secure as a piece of string. But I made do.
I'm happily working away, happy with my plan to do a long day, finish late, and have a nice slow relaxing ride to suburbia, when I check my appointment time and realise that not only do I have 15 minutes' less time than I thought, I also have no lock with me.
It is blowing a gale in the wrong direction, I'm still wearing my work clothes, and I now have exactly one hour. Do I:
- ride home, grab lock and sprint back in?
- ride to Waverley, catch a Borders Railway train, ride home, grab lock and sprint back in?
- ride to The Cycle Service and buy yet another* emergency bike lock?
- phone up to cancel and feel bad about it for days?
- phone a friend†, in the hope that they know where their bicycle¥ lock is?
* This is why I have three spare padlocks now.
† Conveniently local-to-appointment parents.
¥ I'm pretty sure it has never been used for that particular purpose, or indeed any purpose at all.Posted 6 years ago # -
@arellcat, the suspense is killing me, did you ride to Cycle Service for third lock, I think that is the hint you give?
Posted 6 years ago # -
You should bury some of the spare ones at key points around the city for future emergencies.
Posted 6 years ago # -
Second hand D-lock from the Bike Station.
Posted 6 years ago # -
@gembo
You should limit your consumption to one before you feel sick.
Ah - the n+1 as long as it doesn't exceed the s-1 rule - further evidence of the unbreakable link between cake and bikes.
In a previous role, our software team maintained a database on whether confectionery items were cakes or biscuits. There were further categories of not a biscuit, not a cake as well.
It caused many complex discussions among the team, and Jaffa cakes were hotly debated.
IMO, as Jaffa cakes go hard when they mature, they are cakes.
Posted 6 years ago # -
"IMO, as Jaffa cakes go hard when they mature, they are cakes."
IMO as Jaffa cakes go hard when they mature they become biscuits
Posted 6 years ago # -
@paddyirish, yes this is the line the Jaffa Cake Helpline took when I phoned. I used to eat them quiote a lot. So much so colleagues bought me a three foot box of them (contained four boxes in a row). I prefer original. They remind me of childhood. My kids don't like them so don't have them in the house and I am in different coffee scheme now so haven't eaten one for several years.
Think the House of Commons ruled they were Cakes (just making this up). There is some better tax deal if they are cakes (again - source = made up). THe clue is also in the name.
N.B. Jaffa Cake Helpline (number was on the side of the boxes told me that they weren't really a helpline, just a bit of fun - I was like REALLY!?)
Posted 6 years ago #
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