ACME Miscellany

[Lightning Phil]

Auk Board have announced perms and DIY up to 300km will be validated from $data, where $data = 29/03/21.  Data driven you see 🤔

[Tomsk]

Question for @Tomsk that a few might be interested in.

For the Essex SR, will perms still be permissible as last year, or will it be back to calendar rides plus ECE's, which I think was the case previously?

I'm hoping we'll see a number of the Essex calendar events appear soon ... I certainly need to be doing quite a number in order to be ready for another ACME Grand in September.

I'll be fairly relaxed about the Essex SR rules again for 2020-21, I guess! I think I've digested the implications for me of the current state of play: no Horsepower this year, but from 29th March perms up to 300km are ok. (Maybe ride the HP route anyway and at some point the permanent Horses For Courses 200km?) But The Woodman and Daughter in April should be ok, and longer distances in due course. Woodman will be X-Rated though, no cream teas at the finish I rode that route a week ago btw. Paslow Hall Farm is a mess, with the yard churned up due to the new barn construction.

[Tomsk]

Well it had to happen: Soupy has thoroughly trounced me for the first time on The Mighty North Hill (last weekend). He's actually done some training this winter! Of course as a 60kg whippet aged 27 he should really, compared to my 75kg of winter chub.

Yesterday we did a morning ride of about 45 miles up to Clare (and we rode with rob briefly, on the road up to Finchingfield) and on the rolling road home the boy certainly had plenty of zip by the end - endurance isn't normally his thing. I should say in my defence that I was lugging the saddlebag with the coffee flask, mugs, sugary stuff and cake though ...

[jiberjaber]

Sounds like a nice couple of rides out.  I've still got a search for my mojo though nice weather helped today...

[jiberjaber]

Handy road map to MEMWNS

https://onewayroadtobeer.com/

Groups of six in a field somewhere with some cans in 26 days?

[Tomsk]

Handy road map to MEMWNS

https://onewayroadtobeer.com/

Groups of six in a field somewhere with some cans in 26 days?

So that's Wednesday 31st March for an al fresco MEMWNS somewhere! I'll have had my first jab by then too.

[Oscar's dad]

Handy road map to MEMWNS

https://onewayroadtobeer.com/

Groups of six in a field somewhere with some cans in 26 days?

That's really good, thanks for sharing.  I've just lobbed them a couple of quid.

[tedshred]

More importantly, Boris has decided to open up beer gardens just in time for my and Huggy's birthdays.  Wednesday 14 April is even more of a red letter day this year.

In fact Boris was so worried about opening in time for those important events, he forgot to open up completely in time for his own birthday on the 19th June.

I doubt Huggy will make it, he is a lot older than me and must be feeling frail.  He may also want to spend his birthday with someone who is not us.

If we are going back to groups of six along geographical divides again, I would like to concentrate on the eastern pubs that looked after us so well in October when ECC, in its infinite wisdom, decided it knew better than HMG and put us into Tier 2 so that we could be in Tier 1 for Xmas  .

That would be:

The Alma (now with added car park marquee)
The Oddie (we will pick a mild night)
The Swan

When we open up a bit more we can all meet at the Cross Keys (scene of the last supper with 13 of us in September) and that place in Littley Green with the landlord who looks like Hagrid's grumpy brother.

I might even put something on the slightly dusty MEMWNS thread.

[Oscar's dad]

I always had you down as a grumpy bastard ted, all this upbeat looking to the future stuff is most refreshing and, from my perspective at least, seems to be massively out of character.  Are you really you or has your yacf account been hacked?  When we meet you again will you turn out to be someone other than the luxuriously proportioned Celt we have grown to love become accustomed to?

I must say I find this talk of cycling quite alarming.  Strava tells me the last time I threw a leg over anything with wheels was 25th November.  Since then my stable of machines have been buried under significant quantities of DIY materials and liberally covered in MDF dust, I sincerely hope that riding is a bike really is a skill you never forget.

Love to all 

[TimC]

I can assure you, OD, that while the basics may be retrievable with little notice, many of the skills of cycling are lost with disuse. Or maybe it's just age. I've managed to stay upright on my first few forays in 2021, but my lack of road time is definitely apparent!

[tedshred]

Lockdown changes a man OD.

Hopefully you will have progressed at least to amusing by now.

[Lightning Phil]

What OD may find is that the bikes being dormant so long may now mean a piece of MDF has put down roots. A small sapping is growing up around and through his wheels and frames.

[Oscar's dad]

What OD may find is that the bikes being dormant so long may now mean a piece of MDF has put down roots. A small sapping is growing up around and through his wheels and frames.

Flippin' heck, that's a concern, I shall check immediately!

I can assure you, OD, that while the basics may be retrievable with little notice, many of the skills of cycling are lost with disuse. Or maybe it's just age. I've managed to stay upright on my first few forays in 2021, but my lack of road time is definitely apparent!

I'm worried that my magnetic like attraction to ditches, grassy verges and large piles of tarmacadam has grown stronger!

Lockdown changes a man OD.

Hopefully you will have progressed at least to amusing by now.

It was always the case that I was the only person who thought I was ever so funny and there are somethings even lockdown can't change!

[Nick]

Hello all,

Just thought I'd pop my head in to say hello, since I have been very quiet lately with household stuff, kids, work, etc. I love the idea of getting back together and I do thorougly miss you all! I'd be really keen on getting some multi day stuff in a bit later in the year, but this year has started off very slowly for me for any number of reasons, with very little time on the bike.

In other news, I nearly joined the on-call fire service out of Ongar Station, got my number and everything and I'd have been off for my training next week, but unaided eyesight let me down so I should perhaps have applied a few years earlier! I bought a drone and lost it, bought a more expensive drone and crashed it, bought a new (2019, that's new to me) motorcycle that was delivered this morning but I can't go out and play on it until my wife gets home from work. Someone ran over my back wheel last month as I was cycling home from work when I stopped them to tell them off for their awful driving and limited knowledge of the Highway Code, so I swapped it over with a spare one and then noticed my jockey wheels are moving sideways quite a lot, so I'll replace those today. Also, the chain was in need of replacement, so that will be done today, too. That said, I've been saying this for about a week. Need now to look at getting the old wheel trued up, if possible.

So, its been all fun and games. Oh, and I'm making a bird table, and I restored an old arbour bench that we bought for the garden, second-hand. And, also I installed Nextcloud on an old server that my brother gave me and Open Media Vault on two others; all now in a rack I built in the garage. No wonder I haven't been out on the bike!

Can't wait to see you all again!

Nick.

Motorcycle
Bench
Drone

[Oscar's dad]

Wah hey chap, good to hear from you! 

I'm starting to get a bit excited about this cycling malarkey!  I might have to venture into the other bit of the garage and see if I can find my bikes... 

BTW, none of your links seem to work or perhaps it's me!

[Oscar's dad]

Oh, they do now!  Good goat pron!

[Nick]

Wah hey chap, good to hear from you! 

I'm starting to get a bit excited about this cycling malarkey!  I might have to venture into the other bit of the garage and see if I can find my bikes... 

BTW, none of your links seem to work or perhaps it's me!

They must be there somewhere!

Oh, they do now!  Good goat pron!

What's a goat pron? Are you seeing something that I'm not?

[Oscar's dad]

Goat pron = naked goats etc, I'm kidding (geddit?) 

The drone shots are great, nice music too, your daughter?

[jiberjaber]

Good to see some activity going on, easing us gently in to opening back up... 

[BFC]

Need now to look at getting the old wheel trued up, if possible.

What wheel or parts? Boutique designs with low spoke counts are less serviceable than traditional designs.
Spoke and nipple type and condition? Stainless spokes wth J ends and brass nipples are the most likely to respond to attempts to turn them. Black spokes and nipples often lose their plating during tweaking - a cosmetic problem for posh wheels that can be fixed with a marker pen! Aluminium nipples don't respond well.
How damaged is the rim, and how worn is it? If you give the rim a thorough cleaning it should reveal any micro cracks - these often occur around the spoke holes, and show as starburst cracks. If possible take the tyre and rim tape off to inspect the inner surface for cracks around the spoke holes - twin wall rims with eyelets can suffer from this damage. Joint misalignment is another indicator of an unserviceable rim.

[psyclist]

Good to see some activity going on, easing us gently in to opening back up... 

An interesting option for a Fri / Sat or Sun if people are interested would be the Belgium Brewer, who have outdoor tables available from 12th April, and serve curries or other food if desired. I'm happy to arrange if there is interest. As those who came to my garden party a couple of years ago will testify, the beer is exquisite.

https://thebelgianbrewer.co.uk/

[jiberjaber]

Yep, that has potential, can you arrange for no rain this time?

[Oscar's dad]

Good to see some activity going on, easing us gently in to opening back up... 

An interesting option for a Fri / Sat or Sun if people are interested would be the Belgium Brewer, who have outdoor tables available from 12th April, and serve curries or other food if desired. I'm happy to arrange if there is interest. As those who came to my garden party a couple of years ago will testify, the beer is exquisite.

https://thebelgianbrewer.co.uk/

That looks ace!  I'd be thinking about some sort of stealth overnight / bivvy option as riding home to CM8 after a few Belgians might not be a good idea 

[Bernster]

An interesting option for a Fri / Sat or Sun if people are interested would be the Belgium Brewer, who have outdoor tables available from 12th April, and serve curries or other food if desired. I'm happy to arrange if there is interest. As those who came to my garden party a couple of years ago will testify, the beer is exquisite.

https://thebelgianbrewer.co.uk/

Just registering my interest in this, dates permitting, as I should be able to wobble back from Bishops Stortford 

[Carlosfandango]

This sounds like psyclist's best ever idea (a low bar obviously). It would be lovely to see the old boy and bernster too, I've been missing you guys, good excuse to push OD accidentally into a ditch on the way home too (he won't notice).

It's inspiration to see if I can still chuck a leg over the crossbar.

I'll commence training tomorrow.