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My life as an Urban Cyclista AKA How to clean your bicycle in a shower

Bicycle Shower, originally uploaded by Platform 3.

Being an Urban Hipster^® and living close to bars, restaurants, pubs, the canal, an arthouse cinema and the town centre has its advantages. However, residing in a block of flats/an apartment block does pose some challenges for the urban cyclista. For example, where to put your numerous bicyles to protect them from the elements?

Well in my flat, the entrance vestibule has been rechristened "The Bike Shed". At any one time there is at least one bike in there and most often two. One of them does usually stay in the outside, covered bike rack, but sometimes all three are inside. Repairs are often done in the living room, using a collapsible repair stand.

Another challenge is what to do when your trusty steed gets mucky. Our flats used to have a firehose in the courtyard but since they renovated the exterior of the block, the hose is no more. It's a shame, since after a rainy, muddy ride it was handy to be able to give the treadly a quick spray.

Gerard and I are trying to get our bike fitness back after a quite slack winter. We went out for a ride on Sunday and got rained on. As a result, Edward II my Avanti Corsa needed a wash. So, I resorted to a trick i've used before...Taking his front wheel off and putting him in the bath.

British showers are quite often "power showers". They give a boost to crappy water pressure and also guarantee that the water stays hot even in the face of crappy Economy 7 hot water heating.

From the Ed's Bicycle Beauty Salon brochure..."The shower head on our power shower provides a luxurious bike wash for any self-respecting bicycle. A bit of a spray, an old rag and if you're feeling really decadent, some soap will leave your paintwork and shiny bits looking and feeling like new"

Remove bike from the shower, give it a wipe down, making sure your give the chain a good dry. Then use your favourite chain lube to ward off the Evil Rust.

After you're done pampering your pride and joy, jump in the shower yourself with some Cif. You'll need it to clean the bath. Even though the mud and grit washes away readily, the grease and brake pad gunk do have a habit of sticking to the enamel.

Happy clean cycling.

Steve vs Bill

Spotted this on an Apple blog yesterday...I liked it.

"You're in the iWorld, Bill and I am a GOD here!" LOL

PC vs Mac humour, Japanese animation references, Star Wars, C64, a catchy song performed by an OS file management system, this has it all.

Road pricing

Tony Blair's Prime Minister website has a feature where the public can create online petitions. This feature hit the headlines today because of a large response to the petition, "We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to Scrap the planned vehicle tracking and road pricing policy."

You can read what the BBC had to say about it here.

I think that road pricing is a good idea, so I signed the counter petition "We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to Don't Scrap the planned vehicle tracking and road pricing policy."

Hopefully, I'm not alone and there will be many more names added...for as the site Cars-r-Coffins says....erm, um....oh yeah "Cars are coffins!"

Another Monday night...

...another arts patronizing evening.

Kate took the above photo of Joe Bennett at The Zodiac watching Goldrush, a band from Steventon in Oxfordshire.

Soon after we met, Kate intro'd me to the sounds of Goldrush and since then, I think we've seen them play maybe ten times, or maybe even more. They aren't my favourite of all time but they have their moments.

They are also the driving force behind Truck Festival and we had an enjoyable time there in 2003.

Goldrush have a new album coming out soon and the played many of them tonight. The song
Everyone of Us is embedded below and is freely available for download from the Goldrush download page



The other tracks on this record can be streamed from Goldrush's Releases page. Should you like their sound, watch out for the links on that page to download sites where you can buy their stuff.

Panaracer Pasela Club tyre snow performance report

Well I made it into work OK. I could have done with more chunky tread on my tires though. I'm on some Panaracer Pasela Clubs (see above) that I had lying round and they are nice on regular pavement...not so good on snow.

So a couple of slightly sketchy, foot down moments but not too bad! Props to my crazy bike handling skillz.

Travel Chaos!...The BBC's favourite phrase.

So I mentioned that there was some snow forecast...and they were correct, about 10cm I guess. Speaking of Canadians...they'd have a chuckle at the state that Brits get into the few times per winter that it snows. I have heard the phrase "travel chaos" on the radio and TV this morning about a dozen times. I guess this is because no one has winter tyres/tires on their cars and there some but not a lot of snow clearing vehicles

So, these factors and the fact that such seemingly innocuous things as "leaves on the line" stop trains in the autumn, means it's not surprising that "chaos happens".

Oh well, at at least the rolling news channels will have something to talk about that isn't to do with carnage in Baghdad. There hasn't been travel chaos since before Christmas, so we're overdue!

Metric gig, Canuckophilia and Canadian Music (AKA some Canadians I know)

I went to see Metric play at The Zodiac here in Oxford on Sunday night. It was a great show, capped off by an energetic stage-dive by Emily Haines, as can be seen in the pic above. I was just out of range from being jumped on, so I fished my camera from my pocket and was able to get this mainly in focus shot.

My friend Nick is a huge Metric fan. When I was in the gents, I spotted a discarded YYZ (Toronto)-LHR (London Heathrow), Air Canada baggage tag and gave it to him as a joke. I later found out that he got it signed by the band...lol.

Ever since I spent a great year in Canada, I've had a soft spot for most anything Canadian. My Canadian friend Anne-Marie even gave me a book called So, You Want to Be Canadian? I actually knew quite a lot of stuff that was in the book already such as:

• What Ogopogo is. (thanks to my time in the Okanagan)
  
• What a Beaver Tail is.
• The tune of and a good chunk of the words (in English) to Oh Canada.

At work I have a maple leaf coffee mug, when it's slow at work I sometimes listen to CBC Radio 1 via the Internet and my favourite outdoor store is the Mountain Equipment Co-op. I also once stayed up all night to watch the Calgary Flames play in a Stanley Cup game...although I admit that my love of hockey isn't such that I would hurry to do that again.

I admit it, I'm a Canuck-ophile.

I also listen to quite a bit of Canadian music. This all stemmed from my time in Vancouver when I met Mason, who now works at This Magazine in Toronto. Check out his blog, which looks great after a make-over. Mason first played me the music of The New Pornographers, amongst others. Their show at The Borderline in London was the best that I went to in 2006...well equal with Broken Social Scene at The Zodiac. They are also Canadian.

I met Anne-Marie after eavesdropping on a conversation about Calgary on the Oxford Tube bus. She used to play me Canadian music on the stereo of the Phoenix Cinema bar, where she used to work and tell me stories about working on Canadian indie movies, once dating the bass player from The Arcade Fire and working on a New Pornographers video shoot.

The last time I went to Canada was in 2005, when I visited Anne-Marie in Montreal. Before leaving, I emailed Mason and got him to send me a list of CDs I should check out. He doesn't know this but I ended up buying every CD I could find on his list, spending about $250 in one go.

His list actually duplicated many of the artists that I'd heard on the CBC Radio 3 podcast. I highly recommend this weekly podcast as they play a wide variety (not just indie rock) of great music. The host, Grant Lawrence has an enjoyable announcing style too, in my opinion. I don't always get a chance to listen every week, as the podcast is usually an hour long or there abouts. I do get iTunes to download it every week though and get to catch up on journeys to London or long train journeys to Scotland. There is really some fantastic music of all genres coming out of the Great White North.

Australia's radio equivalent, Triple J FM could really learn a thing or two from CBC Radio 3. Triple J have podcasts and now and again, I have a listen to popular scientist, Dr Karl Kruszelnicki, but there is nothing that I know of that showcases Australian bands as well as the CBC Radio 3 podcast does for Canadian artists. I liked Triple J a lot better before they sold out in 1990, anyway! Viva 3RRR-FM!!

Coincidentally Dr Karl's last name is the same as another British-based Canadian I know, Dallas Kruszelnicki. He's a musician, yoga instructor and former guitarist of The Dirtmitts.

Anyway, that's enough proselytizing about Canada for now. Time to ski Mt Mattress.

Tyre pressure

Looks like I'll be deflating my tyres for a little more traction on Thursday morning....