Author Topic: Audax Uxbridge Dictionary  (Read 11980 times)

Audax Uxbridge Dictionary
« on: 10 August, 2010, 12:57:43 pm »
Submissions are invited for a randonneur's dictionary, offering alternative definitions for standard words and phrases. 

I'll kick off.

Arsenic – Brooks rivet that needs to be hammered back in.
Social Climber – someone who continues to witter on up a 15% climb when you can barely breathe.
Crank – someone who doesn’t ride a bike
Traquair – off-route and lost.
Colic – pertaining to a mountain pass
Cholera – someone challenging for the AAA championship
Route instr: ‘3rd exit RBT’ – approximately the 3rd exit
Diametric – Welsh system of distance measurement            
Evangelize – persuade others of the benefits of Welsh energy supplements
Evanescent –climbing a Welsh mountain in a sprightly way
Spa town – town with a Spar.
Countryside – killing Jeremy Clarkson, AA Gill and the like.
Epicycle – classic route
Recycle – re-trace route.
Tricycle – what to say to a crank
Permeable – the ease by which a calendar event can be turned into a non-calendar event
Deride – dismount   
Pacifist – someone who loves to DNF.
Nappy – prone to bus-shelter snoozing   
Sudocrem – the stuff you spray out of a can onto your apple pie
Control freak – someone who only rides Audaxes for the cakes and breakfasts.
Enlightenment – buying a Schmidt Dynohub   
Prophylactic – someone who prevents someone from riding a hilly ride by showing them an outline of the climbs and descents   
Millipedes – fixed riders on the steeper parts of the recent Welsh 1000.
Infomercial – info control in a shop   
Gastronomic – a huge plate of beans on toast      
Draftsmanship – the art of wheelsucking
Discontinued – the result of badly adjusted mountain bike brakes
Tardy – arriving late after being delayed by resurfacing work
Arriviste – a new member who gets their photo in the club magazine more frequently than you.


Re: Audax Uxbridge Dictionary
« Reply #1 on: 10 August, 2010, 03:06:57 pm »
No point in replying. You've done 'em all.

hulver

  • I am a mole and I live in a hole.
Re: Audax Uxbridge Dictionary
« Reply #2 on: 10 August, 2010, 03:11:44 pm »
Control freak made me laugh.

rottenhat

  • Audax Irlande
    • Audax Ireland
Re: Audax Uxbridge Dictionary
« Reply #3 on: 10 August, 2010, 03:45:32 pm »
Permeable – the ease by which a calendar event can be turned into a non-calendar event

Presumably those with info controls are only semi-permeable.

Weirdy Biker

Re: Audax Uxbridge Dictionary
« Reply #4 on: 10 August, 2010, 03:50:25 pm »
Far too erudite!  Let me bring down the tone:

Rimming - the act of overapplying brakes on descent
Blowjob - a helpful tail wind on the last leg that results in a happy finish
Fisting - giving a salutory curse to the passing motorist that cuts you up at a roundabout
fudgepacking - restoring sugar levels the day after a ride through excessive consumption of biscuits and cakes
teabagging - taking a restorative rest in a cafe control

Weirdy Biker

Re: Audax Uxbridge Dictionary
« Reply #5 on: 10 August, 2010, 03:54:39 pm »
PS: Can't believe you missed out "Scenic".  Probably the most well known audax homonym.

HTFB

  • The Monkey and the Plywood Violin
Re: Audax Uxbridge Dictionary
« Reply #6 on: 10 August, 2010, 04:07:40 pm »
Smilax -- a cheerful audaxer (rare, poss. obs);
Borax -- who doesn't know when to stop with the ride reports;
Coax -- long-distance stoker;
Battleax -- the William the Conkerer 200.
Not especially helpful or mature

hellymedic

  • Just do it!
Re: Audax Uxbridge Dictionary
« Reply #7 on: 10 August, 2010, 05:41:13 pm »
rhinoceros: ride over Wrynose pass

Rimnod

Re: Audax Uxbridge Dictionary
« Reply #8 on: 10 August, 2010, 07:11:35 pm »
Scottish glen - wind tunnel

Re: Audax Uxbridge Dictionary
« Reply #9 on: 10 August, 2010, 07:16:37 pm »
Routesheet - regretting having entered a ride.

Re: Audax Uxbridge Dictionary
« Reply #10 on: 10 August, 2010, 07:59:14 pm »
Grimpeur - miserable Audaxer

Panoramix

  • .--. .- -. --- .-. .- -- .. -..-
  • Suus cuique crepitus bene olet
    • Some routes
Re: Audax Uxbridge Dictionary
« Reply #11 on: 10 August, 2010, 08:04:03 pm »
Veteran - can locate on a map all Welsh bus shelters of interest
PBP - Transhumance
Chief cat entertainer.

Re: Audax Uxbridge Dictionary
« Reply #12 on: 10 August, 2010, 08:06:16 pm »
Tearjerker - Organiser who's route instructions are so obtuse and open to misinterpretation as to lead any grown audaxer to cry.
Postal Finish - Last few kilometers that are a sign of an organisers mad attempts to find the true shortest route to the end control.
Free Parking - Any ride done between Octber and March
Recumbent - Rider who whinged bitterly all the way around the route last year signing on again and likely to do the same.
Fast Food - Food ordered at a control during that is of a disappoint portion size.

Re: Audax Uxbridge Dictionary
« Reply #13 on: 10 August, 2010, 08:17:56 pm »
Scenic - Route likely to cause 'scenes' at the finish.

Basil

  • Um....err......oh bugger!
  • Help me!
Re: Audax Uxbridge Dictionary
« Reply #14 on: 10 August, 2010, 08:22:09 pm »
Explain --  After 20 miles of flat the route begins to get lumpy again

Rancors --  Forgot bike

Beetroot --  After a DNF last time, a success this year.
Admission.  I'm actually not that fussed about cake.

Re: Audax Uxbridge Dictionary
« Reply #15 on: 10 August, 2010, 08:32:04 pm »
Energy Gel - The lady rider who turns up with a touring bike, mudguards, rack and full panniers and proceeds to ride half the skinny whippets into the ground.
Energy Bar - A trip to the pub 50k from the finish for a pint of Sharpes Isotonic Doom Bar
Pit Stop - A crash caused by a very obvious and easily avoidable pothole.
Pot Hole - A dodgy looking greasy spoon that serves a dubious cup of tea used by an organiser as a control who unfathomably lauds it's character.
Character - Rider who leaves the last control after you and arrives at the next before you.
Control - The illusion that you will be able to make an optimistic finish time.

Re: Audax Uxbridge Dictionary
« Reply #16 on: 10 August, 2010, 11:13:06 pm »
Bicycle - Mode of transport for people who like to swing both ways.
Bulwark Community Centre - Meeting place of several footpaths for male cows.
Menai - Yes, the riders are male.
Velocipede - Insect with many legs riding a bike.
Ambidexterous - Emergency vehicle carrying energy tablets.
Inner tube - On the Underground.
Tourmalet - Incest on the Grande Boucle.
Prologue - Racing cyclist's... No, forget it.
Coq au Vin  - Inconsiderate Transit driver
Hormone - Gasp of despair at a beyond-classification climb.
Pannier - Even more like a saucepan.






Re: Audax Uxbridge Dictionary
« Reply #17 on: 11 August, 2010, 01:27:21 am »
ROFL at Social Climber and also Coq Au Vin  :thumbsup:

ludwig

  • never eat a cyclists gloves
    • grown in wales
Re: Audax Uxbridge Dictionary
« Reply #18 on: 11 August, 2010, 07:36:52 am »
 A road. What  randonneurs ride on
 B road. Where randonneurs get stung
 Grimace.  A randonneur that is excellent on hilly rides
 Cakehole. A control with a poor reputation.
 Scenic. What you used to do at the start of the poor student



Chris N

Re: Audax Uxbridge Dictionary
« Reply #19 on: 11 August, 2010, 08:25:57 am »
A less audax specific set here:
Cycling Glossary « EX-MESSENGER OF DOOM. Bastard bicyclist's blog's a big bag of bollocks.

Although garbloading is particularly appropriate.

robgul

  • Cycle:End-to-End webmaster
  • cyclist, Cytech accredited mechanic & woodworker
    • Cycle:End-to-End
Re: Audax Uxbridge Dictionary
« Reply #20 on: 11 August, 2010, 08:28:48 am »
Country park .... instruction for a BMW driver

Rob

thing1

  • aka Joth
    • TandemThings
Re: Audax Uxbridge Dictionary
« Reply #21 on: 11 August, 2010, 02:18:23 pm »
To Garage pasty it.   The means by which a "Character" can avoid queuing at a control whilst still refueling
Alfrescourt.              A meal eaten outdoors, usually on a garage forecourt. Often consists of pasty.
Pasties.                    A very dry and sticky mouth, often from too much wheezing or consuming sweet drinks.
Wheezing.               Oral activity that typically accompanies Grimping.
Wheeeeeezer.          A feller enjoying the descent after sustained grimping.
Patsy.                      A pasty that doesn't settle well, and gets blamed for a subsequent DNF.

Weirdy Biker

Re: Audax Uxbridge Dictionary
« Reply #22 on: 11 August, 2010, 03:53:35 pm »
Carbohydrate - on consumption of jelly babies washed down with cola, the speed by which the sugar rush comes on and then fades away

Arrow - Bikes parked outside a control

Pedalling - a Dundonian asking his missus for a bridie or other pastry snack

Re: Audax Uxbridge Dictionary
« Reply #23 on: 10 October, 2013, 02:16:20 pm »
Toe clip - Hasty dismount occasioned by the interaction between one's foot and an sks front mudguard. Usually uphill.

PS. I find Sharpes isotonic Doom bar an excellent energy drink too.
are we nearly there yet?

Re: Audax Uxbridge Dictionary
« Reply #24 on: 10 October, 2013, 04:29:40 pm »
i did a short filler article for Arrivee about this subject in 2006, it's probably on here somewhere. Short quarter page articles can help fill awkward gaps.

Quote
New words for old feelings.
I
 have been re-connecting with some of my past of late, re-reading some of my inspirational books, Everest and the Arctic the main subjects. In Arctic Dreams by Barry Lopez I came across some Eskimo words which chimed a bit with how I felt at times, there was ilira ( nervous awe), kappia (apprehension) and nuannaarpoq (taking extravagant pleasure in being alive) In ‘The Climb’ by Anatoli Boukreev and G. Weston de Walt I found a Russian word, samochuvstvie (An impression of a person’s state of being, the combined and observable aspects of a person’s mental, physical and emotional state.)

This interested me as it is so often difficult to adequately describe the positive aspects of Audax riding. So much cycling slang refers to  suffering on the bike, as we bonk, we grovel and then we crack. We all know what it means to be ‘on song’ to be literally singing with joy, usually with the wind at our backs, but other shared experiences stay within our own hearts for want of an adequate vocabulary.

Peter Marshall gave us a glossary of French cycling slang in Arrivee before the last PBP. These summoned up much of the feeling of riding in a group and in a culture in which cycling isn’t so ‘far out’, but what can express the joy of keeping pace with a Barn Owl as it hunts along a main drain across the Fens in the light of an early summer dawn, or the misery of hard won time draining away into a headwind on an endless false flat.

The particular joy of Audax for me lies in the tangential experiences, the fact that things are happening at the edge of the main event. The world passes by as does in a train journey, inexorably, but the foreground is not the flickering blur we see through the carriage window, we smell the new-mown hay, we hear the deer crashing through the corn and hope they won’t dash across our path. But we don’t hang around,  our aim is not to be part of  the world we pass through, but to get right back to where we started from. What we need a vocabulary to share our Audax experience.

1) . Welcome-Broken: The mental state which enables one to sleep underneath a table in a motorway service station cafeteria lit by 5,000 watts of fluorescent tubes. From Welcome Break

2) . Smugliness: The proud look on your face when a waitress or shop assistant advertises your audacity to bystanders.

3) Contemptment:The feeling you get when a staggering drunk tells you to ‘get a life’.
 
4) Dumpling: The action of pulling away from another rider who is riding at a lower pace, also the name for that rider.

5) Yadmossia: A nervous apprehension that rabbits are about to run under your front wheel..

6) Schmidt-blindness: Loss of night vision caused by a bright light following immediately behind. ‘.

7)Viewphoria: Legs spinning with renewed vigour in areas of outstanding natural beauty, usually the cycling leg of a Triathlon, can also apply to scenery.

8)Bananausea: I don’t mind if I see another bendy yellow fruit of the genus Musa, no don’t say the name, oh no! it’s too late.

9)Amnausea. I feel queasy, I don’t know why, I’ve only had 12 Ibuprofen, 10 Gel thingy’s, 5 litres of PSP and 15 Nutri Grain bars in the last 250 miles, it’s not as if I haven’t done this before.

Looking back at my suggestions for new words to describe the joy of Audax, I seem to  have concentrated on  what might seem to be negative aspects. I am starting  to question my optimism, am I a glass half empty or glass half full kind of guy, the answer of course is that both glasses are full of  Coke and I’m now drinking the last 500mm out of the 2 litre bottle I bought because it cost £1.26 and 500mm would have cost £1.19. I must admit that I swing between trying to sum up the craziness of Audax and being scared that analysing any part of it might bring the whole thing crashing down like a house of cards. Only time, distance and of course the coming PBP season will tell.