Camping.

We're back in British summer time, it's getting warmer, there's a spring feel permeating the atmosphere full of promise, optimism and forward thinking. Camping season is almost upon us. It wont be long before were sitting by the fire getting drunk, singing bad songs and burning foodstuffs. I love the midge bites, animal attacks, eyes full of wood smoke, poor quality sleeping bags, swimming in jellyfish infested waters, eating wilted nettles, dehydrated hiking and endless moaning associated with camping. I love the sunsets, I love the sunrises, I love the creepy noises in the dark, I love getting soaked and shivering half the night away.
I've been in tents that caught fire, tents filled with sick and dead crickets, tents that have melted, tents that were underwater, freezing tents with no sleeping bag, tents that bent over to touch my face in gale force winds, festival tents, tents with no one around for 30 miles, tents with shady drunken girls using a tin of beans for a pillow, tents with unruly BMXers, tents with Mr Pants when he shit himself, tents with the scouts as a boy, tents in truck stops next to Gypsy encampments, tents on mountain passes, tents in the park, tents in German anarchist squats and tents on the hard shoulder of the M25.
Every time I've been camping I've come away from it thinking it was a positive experience. Even when I thought I would not survive the duration of the night it was even more amazing the next morning. Even the time it was torrential rain in Amsterdam and it felt like there was a river or quagmire under the tent and there was a constant drip drip dripping on my forehead like Chinese water torture, being unable to move sandwiched between Wally and Lewis all I could do was pull my waterproof jacket over my face and try to keep my sanity. Camping is character building, it's good free fun, it's an awesome reason to get friends together and it's associated with many of my best memories.

Here's some photos after the jump of an NSF camping trip to Scotland that went down last summer.

Heady days.

I snapped this sight when I was riding to the wasteland on Sunday. It was outside some student halls. The wig looked of fair quality, it has been ground presumably underfoot into the remnants of someone's kebab and chips. A modern day scalping. I can imagine the drunken night of debauchery leading to this point. Presumably a teary eyed and completely inebriated student lassie who I imagine was unable to stand due to having lost a heel from one of her shoes was dressing down her suitor for the evening (a similarly drunk male student). While listening to her unfair and possibly sexist rant about how boys can't understand the intricate emotional states of womankind, he realised that he'd had enough of the drunken trollop. He snapped. In a rush of drunken adrenalin he had wrestled the wig from the lassie's head in a messy and forgettable motion, flung it into his kebab tray and began stamping on it. Take that you drunken and disrespectful harlot. The following morning he was either dumped or in the dog house for a foreseeable future.

The Banjo.

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Job Application

Unemployment is up, education is failing to inspire.

We got this job application posted through the door at work last month. I know exactly where this guy's coming from. I was on New Deal once and the dole made me write off for the worst jobs imaginable. I had to get creative and make it look like I was really trying to get the job from the doles prospective but look like a worthless piece of unemployable shit from an employers prospective, not an easy thing to do. I particularly like all the 'Make it so' comments, Who does Mr. S think he is, Jean luc Picard?

Make it so number 1.

I'm not sure a solar anomaly could be powerful enough to destroy a paper C.V. and not set fire to your window sill and eventually your house in the process. Maybe if the C.V. was on a memory stick or other such digital storage device the electrically charged particles could interfere with the solid state storage. I think it unlikely. Mr. S comes off very demanding in his application, he's asked for an assistant manager post even after his self admission of having no recognised academic qualifications, he's requiring of a costly all zone bus pass, he expects a decent wage and is aged over 50. I fail to see what he has to offer the company other than regular displays of projectile vomiting and spontaneous human combustion. Which I might add I'm not prepared to clean up after. The application is genius though and will assure him another day of the life of kings residing as he does, on benefits.

Number 1.

I've been scared to start a blog. I also have an irrational fear of social networking in any of it's degrees or guises. A blog can be a good excuse to stroke and cajole your hideous ego, it can be a narcissistic voyage of self promotion and self flagellation, an ode to ones self and nothing more. Hopefully that isn't going to happen here. In order to keep myself in check I need to keep a healthy respect and underlying fear for my creation no matter how depraved, tormented and disgusting it becomes just like Dr. Frankenstein.

My situation has changed a little, I have lived in Newcastle for a long time, coming up to somewhere near a decade but I've recently moved to the ass end of Whickham. I'm way out of Whickham town, my house is nestled right in the woods, my nearest neighbours are a decent walk in either direction. One neighbour or cluster of neighbours being a middle class housing estate where fastidious car washing and obsessive attending of floral window boxes is all that appears to happen. In the other direction there is a cow farmer who has real 'keep off my land' signs. I have no friends here as yet. I've been spending most of my time walking about in the extensive woods that surround the Derwent river.

When I first moved to Whickham it was the deepest winter, the snow was 2 feet thick, it was regularly minus 10 degrees and I had to find a way of travelling 7 miles to work everyday. I was reliably informed that it would cost about £7.50 a day to get the bus and it would take in excess of an hour and 15 minutes. I was quite prepared to ride to work but the snow was preventing me from using my track bike. My route to work was also of concern as Whickham is at the top of some serious hills no matter how you propose tackling them. I've tried to ride up both Dunston and Whickham banks on a single speed and failed spectacularly with knee and chest related explosive pain. These hills are just too steep for single speed. Whickham bank even has one of those escape lanes incase the brakes go out on your 18 wheeler like in the movies.

Felling Road Race

As an idea of how steep these hills are here's an image from 1950 of the Felling Road Race (photo courtesy of nordique). Whickham bank is a 12% climb and is a bit over half a mile long. Look at these dudes straining and gritting teeth on an unreasonable climb no doubt done at pace, they had it rough. I particularly like the bow armed stance of the guy in the middle. Those moustache bars he's rocking can't be good for aerodynamics although they do afford space to carry 2 water bottles. His stance is kinda reminiscent of BMX legend Taj Milhelich, although I doubt he could bosh downside whips out on that road bike. Taj however did jump a six foot spine ramp in the drops of his Giant roadbike.

Taj.

After a couple of attempts my feeble legs could not force my stupidly overgeared hipster cycle up the hill in fine weather let alone nightmare snowy conditions. A solution had to be found. The indignity of walking up a hill I fully knew I could climb on the right bike was all it took for a plan to hatch. Being fiercely adherent to a single speed bike for my entire life I was starting to embrace the idea of gears. Gears annoyed me from the get go, from the un-PC 'gears for queers' anodised pink everything MTB Vs chromed out, short top tube and standing platform BMX era. I have since probably unjustly hated on gears. A couple of my commuters had gears notably a Fuji Crosstown which I grew to despise after finding out the bizzies ride Fuji's in NYC. I only ever used 2 or three of the Fuji's gears because my commute used to be flat. The other massive reason I hate gears is that my day job is that of a cycle mechanic and has been for 10+ years at a variety of different bike shops but currently Hopkirk's Cycle Centre, Shields Road, Byker. When you spend 8 hours a day scraping crud, road film and sometimes animal lard from a vast array of disrespected groupsets the simplicity of a single speed is unreservedly appealing on your own set up.

My winter bike.

I found a Scott Timber 4130 chromoly mountain bike with no wheels on a piece of grass near the Tanners pub. It was a Sunday, I couldn't tell if the bike was abandoned or not. It wasn't locked. I thought it had a little potential but forgot about it. On the Monday I rode past the same spot and it was still there only now it was stood on a brick wall a few meters from where it had been the day before. I was sat doing nothing in Newcastle on the Tuesday and decided to see if it was still there. As I rounded the corner to where it was I was a little nervous, for some reason it felt like what I was doing was stealing. As I approached my heart sank it appeared the bike had gone. Upon closer inspection it had merely been thrown on to the grass and stamped upon repeatedly bending the bars. I picked it up and raced home fearful I would be accosted by either the bikes owner or the police sky high on a sugar derived doughnut rush.

Rebuilding the bike was easy. There was an abandoned Kona Steel frame mountain bike at work with a seized in and destroyed bottom bracket. It was a simple task of removing all the parts from the Kona including Project 2 forks (my favourite MTB fork of all time) and fitting them to the Scott frame, simple. I scored some massive 2.35 Maxxis tyres from El-Boosterino and I was set. Apart from the seized in and too low for me seatpost the Scott was done. I considered a few different ideas to remedy the seat post and settled upon cutting the micro adjust clamp off the Scott's existing 25.4 mm seat post and sliding a 30.8 mm seatpost over the top with a slot cut in it exactly like a frame cut and running two seat clamps it was a bit messy but it worked a treat. instant free winter bike that could roll through super deep snow and climb hills like a bitch. I could now ride all the way to and from work in any weather and get to the top of Dunston or Whickham bank with relative ease.