Blogs

If you've got a BlackBerry great news Lance Armstrong is going to help save you from yourself.

Don't panic he's not going to come round to your house and make you ditch your favourite piece of convergent mobile technologies all wrapped up in one BlackBerry shaped package and instead making you actually talk to people … would that necessarily make you a better person anyway.

We took delivery of one of these a short while back and it sat in the box for a bit while we worked up the strength to lift its 42lb heft out, and remembered to bring some ols-skool spanners to put it together with. I've been riding it around the last couple of days and I'm fast falling in love with it, it's such fun. Things i particularly like include:

Commuter Diaries – Amazing Hedgerows, Celtic Crosses, Snt Austell Beer, Cream Teas and Fish ‘n’ Chips.

At the end of last year I had stepped on the scales and noticed I had put on a chunk of weight during 2008. Work had been very busy since the spring with limited riding during the week.

I joined the singletrackworld "fat club" with the intention of losing 12lbs in 12 weeks.

Last week was the final weigh in and I lost 11lbs. The day before I weighed myself and was bang on my target weight of 10st10 but a meal out on the last evening with two visiting Aunts put me over the limit. Over the weekend I was back down again.

Friday afternoon spent rummaging in storage harvested my spare dynohub wheel based around a polished Weinnman rim laced to Shimano’s venerable Nexus dynohub topped off with stout WTB dual purpose rubber. Enjoying repute for nocturnal riding, I reasoned were I to subject myself to increased levels of resistance (Nexus cannot be switched off in the same fashion as costlier units) it might as well provide my lighting. Now, I remain an ardent fan of Ni Cad and Li-On high power systems but there’s something very satisfying about generating your own illumination.

If you think you can’t live without your bikes then you should watch a film called Pedal! It’s about NYC couriers whose bikes are their lives.

Check out this picture, this is how close I came to going through a car door this evening!

It’s amazing how many people do not look when opening car doors. Is it possible to get Ben Hur like bar ends? Being tooled up for a ride is beginning to take on a new meaning.

To add insult to injury I also ran over a shard of glass which has shredded my front tyre (Bontrager X-lite AC in yellow – very fast), it looks like a Stella Sea Lion after a Great White Shark attack!

Sell your kit for free! Well, advertise it at least

We've added a new forum for private classified ads, free of charge to our users. so a few house rules to start:

• All ads should either be FS (For Sale) or WTD (wanted) ads
• All ads should include a price
• Private ads only: trade ads by prior arrangement, talk to us at info@road.cc

erm, that's it. have fun, y'all!

Okay, one Gold up to now.

It's all understandable - a young team has been taken to Poland, post-Olympic come down for some riders, other nations upping their game, our very best are absent. I personally haven't got an issue with the GB performance, if the second-stringers (in some events) can get a medal, that that bodes very well for the future and for the creme da la creme of GB track cycling upping their game further.

So, I'd like to pose a couple of questions regarding the BBC (that bastion of international cycling!) and their excellent coverage:

As you can imagine Lance Armstrong generates a vast amount of news and comment some of it quite bizarre. In the States everything he does is news to someone – including the people who build kitchens.