The Club Do

"Count Bobulescu will take wine with the ambassador of Transylvania."

"The ambassador of Transylvania will take wine with Count Bobulescu."

[repeat until both are sloshed, as neither wishes to break protocol]

This is a rough excerpt of a sketch called something like The Toastmaster, which often gets quoted in our family. I was reminded of it several times at our Club Dinner in Chippenham, as there was a competition for who could make the best toast. The winner got a dragon's tongue trophy, which was pretty cool.

There must have been two dozen toasts, many from the Bath CC/Bristol South contingent, who had obviously had experience of this sort of thing. But the winner was Mark Wareham, whose story of what happened on our club ride two weeks ago was rather amusing.

That was the day where I'd turned off with Chris Tweedie and a couple of others to navigate the floods around Wiltshire. The others also encountered flooded bits, but had the good fortune to be offered a lift by a bus driver! Which they took, of course.

Except for one rider, who didn't realise that the bus had picked the rest of them up and soldiered on by himself through various torrents, only to be rejoined at the end by drier members.

We were also entertained by Geoff Thomas, ex-England footballer wot got leukaemia, survived and decided to ride the Tour de France with a few of his mates. Twice.

He did the first one on six months' training, right after finishing his treatment. Impressive effort, that! And he raised quite a lot for cancer charities.

In the trophy stakes, Chippenham has approximately a million different competitions throughout the year, based on doing certain events on the calendar. I was sitting with Chris Tweedie and Ben Anstie, and they were the trophy kings (Ben, mostly).

I managed to accumulate approximately zero trophies, save for a large pile of pint glasses that may have once had beverages in them. Now Chris is a big fan of volume over intensity when it comes to drinking (the opposite of his training program) and I had no choice but to go along with that, albeit with stronger beers. Well I did have a choice but it wasn't a sane one.

Six pints of Peroni/Grolsch/Guinness later, I thought it might be a good idea to get the last train home. Somehow - and I really don't know how this happened because my judgment was completely sound - I left my new BC racing licence behind. Luckily someone whose judgment was even better than mine spotted it and picked it up (thanks Andy and Jacqui).

I've been downgraded to second category on account of the fact that I didn't race last year (time trials are run by a different mob than British Cycling). You need a certain number of points each year to keep your category, and more to move up. It doesn't bother me this year because cat. 2 is essentially the same as cat. 1 - typically they run races as E/1/2, but hardly ever E/1 or just 1. And you actually have more race options as a cat. 2.

Anyway, maybe I'll pull my finger out and do a road race this year. But I have some time trial ambitions...

Seeing as the Club Do was on a Saturday, it left the whole of Sunday to do a 120km Mendips ride with RCoomber. It's finally stopped raining although it was a tad breezy as we navigated four decent climbs and lots of little ones, plus a few cool lanes that are new to me. 2000m of climbing and sore legs at the end.

The training is going in the right direction: more or less forward and slightly to the left and I'm now back to March 2007 form, as opposed to being behind January 2007 form. My Cheddar Gorge times have come down: 10'50 -> 10'06 -> 9'44, and Burrington has gone from 12'15 -> 10'40, although we didn't do it today. Probably would have been 10'20ish but I conned convinced poor Robin into doing the one up from Blagdon Lake instead (8.5% for 2.5km), followed by Wookey Hole (2.7km @ 7.2%, which at least has a couple of flat spots).

The aim is to get April form by March and May form by April, then I'll probably get sick. So I'm ahead on that front.

Song du jour: Energy 52 (Café del Mar).

Humidity

I seem to recall January 2007 was somewhat moist, vis-à-vis the climate. Due to the cyclical nature of things, it is so again this year. It has rained almost every day since I got back and there appears to be no end in sight.

Flooding has ensued, which means Tewksbury in Gloucestershire is buggered again. The Avon is rather higher than it should be, as you can see from the MBUK blog. The bike path where I usually ride is OK, but it has a 100m long puddle on it now.

Last weekend, a few of us tried to cross the Avon between Trowbridge and Bradford. Negatory. About 250m of road was submerged by the river, and there was a car abandoned halfway across. We ended up going across at Lacock, and even that required riding through 1.5 feet of water. Of course, we could have gone on the pedestrian footbridge but that would have been wimping out.

My bottom bracket is making odd noises.

I've been trying new waterproofing tricks to keep myself on the dryish side. For my feet, which always get cold, I've been using a thin pair of Castelli waterproof booties with my old neoprene Pro booties over the top. I tried it on a four hour ride last weekend, and it worked brilliantly. With my hands, I've been using disposable latex gloves underneath my winter gloves. This is not as good, because your hands end up like clammy prunes, but at least they don't get cold.

As I noted previously, training in January is miserable. Last Sunday, I did a 115km loop through the Mendips and clocked myself up my two favourite climbs there: slowest times ever. I wasn't going flat out for sure, but I only managed 10'50 for Cheddar (did 7'38 in the national HC) and 12'15 for Burrington (8'07 in the HC there). It was a horribly windy day, which didn't help, but at the pace I was going I would be a couple of minutes quicker when fit. I was at this time last year because I'd been riding since the start of November instead of since Christmas.

I think I'll catch up OK, because I've already noticed a big increase in speed this week. Roughly five minutes faster over my various 45km loops, so no need to panic. I skipped today because of the non-stop rain and a day off won't hurt. Stupid bloody weather.

Social calendar: strangely busy. I even had an English ale this week that didn't taste like dishwater. It's called Gem and is meant to be one of the best Bath ales. To my complete shock I was able to drink three pints of it.

As you were.

The here and now

It's that time of year. January, in fact. When the cold gets to one's brain unless one is in the sunny Antipodes. Which one is not. Curse.

Since returning to the Empire, I have been reacquainting myself with the measurement system used here. It's mostly metric, but miles, feet, yards, inches, pounds, stone, fluid ounces, pints (lots of them) are all commonly used. Temperature seems to be Celsius, but to avoid confusion I'm going to adopt the Réaumur scale. I like it. It's simple, it relates to real life measurements (fingers, toes, number of bacteria) and was named after a French scientist.

For example, today it was 3.2°Ré, which in real world terms converts to 'fairly bloody cold'. Now in Celsius that would have been 4°C, which is far less intuitive, non? I could always use Rankine, but that's a bit old fashioned.

Riding at the moment means that one not only gets cold, one gets wet as well. Into the bargain, so to speak. It's a supercool me two for the price of one real raw deal meal. Fortunately it's heating up, as you can see from the BBC's forecast over the next half a day or so:

Weather forecast for Bath. Balmy, innit? Better not overdress.

After missing a couple of weeks training in Oz due to a certain lurgy, I'm struggling with the twin burdens of regaining what little fitness I had at the time as well as coping with the cold, which slows one down anyway. This morning, for example, I was 15 minutes slower than my best time over one of my usual 45km training loops, for roughly the same pace. I know it will all come back over the next few months, but it's still soul destroying.

I wasn't the only one who got sick over Xmas. Pretty much everyone in the office did, and even now I'm working in the middle of four sick boys. I hope my immune system has worked out how to stop another dose of the dreaded lurgy. The spon cure, perhaps.

I've been fortunate enough to make the acquaintance of more Bath types, without visiting the Pump Room. They're part of a Bath Publishing Front and seem to enjoy pints and the occasional strudel. This, I strongly approve of. Three of us visited the only strudel house in Bath, a ye olde Swisse-German underground place not far from the Royal Crescent. Talk about when worlds collide. But we didn't talk about it. Strudel: v. good. Vanilla dusted cappuccino: not sure about that one...

Starbucks have opened another shoppe in Bath. That's three, including our canteen. They must be stopped. We will frequent Oxalis on a regular basis this year, I foresee.

Speaking of Starbucks (well, I was), I've been following the US election with an almost keen interest. I wonder if it will be anything like the '72 election that Hunter S. Thompson wrote so fondly about? Anyway, at least I now have an inkling of an understanding of how the whole circus works.

Research

A university controlled study has shown that repeatedly watching this clip (youtube.com/watch?v=jZsHNkAJBDU) followed by the rather dark Sin City, which was on late on BBC2 on Sunday, results in particularly gruesome dreams. I could have watched the first of the new series of Foyle's War, which is excellent (ma and pa, rejoice!), but I didn't.

Down Under randomness

It's annoying when you go on holidays for three weeks and the first two weeks is spent sick and/or at the mercy of a certain international airline.

I've managed to do fun things like see my accountant and go to the dentist. The latter informed me of how things once were at the NHS, relating the experiences of a colleague of hers. Apparently with kids dentistry they got paid a flat rate of £35 a go, so instead of filling teeth they were told by the boss to pull them out because it was quicker. This dentist could pull a tooth in 30 seconds whereas it would take 4 minutes to fill it. So they could see more patients and get paid more if they just pulled out teeth. I don't think this would be an ideal solution.

I don't know how long ago this was, but apparently things have improved within the NHS. It ain't a patch on the Aussie system though.

I also learned that eating often may be good for your energy levels but it can be detrimental for your teeth and your wallet. Thus, mine need quite a bit of patching up. Especially my wallet, which no longer has $1500 burning a hole in it. I'll have to have a rethink about my dietary plan throughout the day. The trick is to drink water with every snack in order to lower the pH in your mouth, and brush a couple of times a day.

Random thought: I reckon Anton Ego in Ratatouille is modelled on English writer/critic Will Self, not just the French blone mentioned in Wikipedia.

During my convalescence I've managed to do more indoor stuff than normal. On the piano front, I've almost got a grip on Clair de Lune plus the usual Chopin/Rachmaninov/Bach/Satie toons. Always noice to tinkle the ivories.

Also a spot of reading. Over the past three weeks, I've completed the following:

The Light Fantastic, Pyramids, Moving Pictures, Night Watch, all by Terry Pratchett - good comfort reading by a very funny and satirical writer.

Amongst the Dead by Robert Gott - a dark spoof about an Australian private investigator and the wilds of the north, not bad but the ending didn't quite work.

The Peculiar Memories of Thomas Penman by Bruce Robinson - well written, although it was hard to relate to the characters, who were mostly loathsome.

The Captain and the Enemy by Graham Greene - An excellent novel by a brilliant writer. The first three parts are written by the protagonist, who is a journalist but doesn't consider himself much of a writer. The last part tells the rest of the story after the novel is thrown in the bin. All of the characters are interesting and at least slightly mysterious, and none of them can be considered good guys.

Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen - set mostly in Bath at the start of the 19th century. It's interesting to see the similarities between then and now. The done thing then was to hang around the Pump Room and attend balls in the hope of making acquaintances and finding a partner. It's not quite like that nowadays.

The heroine is Catherine Morland, who early on falls for Henry Tinley, but spends the first half of the book avoiding the advances of the oafish John Thorpe, the brother of her new acquaintance Isabella. The second half is set in Northanger Abbey itself, and is a bit of a spoof of the Gothic novels that were partly the rage back then. Ann Radcliffe is referred to a lot, so it would help to have read some of her novels to give this more context.

The two main themes (Bath life and Gothic novels) are a little odd when put together, but who's going to argue with a classic?

There are some funny quotes:

"Not keep a journal! How are your absent cousins to understand the tenour of your life in Bath without one?" - Henry Tinley to Catherine Morland

Outside the Pump Room: "Crowds of people were every moment passing in and out, up the steps and down; people whom nobody cared about, and nobody wanted to see; and he [Mr Tinley] only was absent. 'What a delightful place Bath is,' said Mrs. Allen, as they sat down near the great clock, after parading the room till they were tired; 'and how pleasant it would be if we had any acquaintance here.'

I then saw The Jane Austen Book Club on the (mostly) incident-free flight back to Londres. It was scary stuff.

Blind Faith by Ben Elton - A modern and somewhat more comical version of 1984. Privacy is heresy in a climate changed world. If you're not talking about yourself on your blog, sharing all your information on Face Space and cyberstalking others, you risk falling foul of God and the Love. More scary stuff.

His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman - three books, the first of which has been made into a movie called The Golden Compass. The writing isn't brilliant but the story does hook you in eventually and it contains some challenging ideas. Unfortunately, for reasons only known to Hollywood, the film deliberately ignores the pivotal theme of the books: the bad guys are the Church and God. That's a great pity, I think. I read an interview with Pullman where he's clearly not happy with this, but doesn't want to say too much because he's afraid he'll jeopardise the other two films. That's basically selling out.

There has been a strong religious backlash against the books in the USA. Fair enough - freedom of religion and all that. People (probably Catholics) are afraid that their kids will be corrupted to the dark side if they read the books. I think that's utter bollocks, 'cos I remember when, as a child, I read the Narnia septology, which was very pro-Christian. I was aware of this message when I read the books (many times) and simply ignored it. They were good yarns. Ditto when I read the Dreadstar comics in my teens. The bad guys there were the Church and Lord Papal, which I thought was cool. Neither of these stories had a significant effect on my decision to be an atheist and face the void.

Speaking of facing the void, I read that Fred Nile of the Christian Democratic Front is opposing the building of an Islamic school out at Camden because Islam opposed Christianity. I could be wrong, but I was under the impression that Australia had freedom of religion as well. Sigh. As someone said, "I don't think he realises the Crusades were over long ago."

Whatever creed you follow, I hope youse had a happy Christmas + good new year's bash.

The family Christmas album

Christmas at the Joneses in Kiribilli House
© Jeff Jones
Piers cuts a chunk of ham as cousin Harry looks on
© Jeff Jones
Serious business
© Jeff Jones
Nina was content with bread crusts
© Jeff Jones
Strewth! This was followed by stollen and immobility
© Jeff Jones
All four of the Jones cousins
© Jeff Jones
Jim, Joan, Margaret and Ma at the Nelson Bay residence
© Jeff Jones
Cousin Jus and Nic's 'new' place. Note handy urban vehicle in backyard
© Jeff Jones
Cousin Zoe is happy at being three
© Jeff Jones
Cousins Jus and Zoe sort out candles and whatnot
© Jeff Jones
Ma and pa at our last supper
© Jeff Jones

Flight 714 to Sydney

You can tell how the money is distributed
© Jeff Jones

It is said that disasters come in threes. I believe I've successfully proved this theory wrong although it wasn't all bad.

I booked with Royal Brunei Airlines because it was one of the cheapest options at this time of year. And Brunei, being one of the world's richest countries per capita, should have a decent national carrier, right?

I should have been concerned when they changed my schedule four times because they cancelled a whole stack of flights between Brunei and Sydney. So instead of leaving Heathrow on Saturday morning and getting into Sydney on Monday morning, it ended up being Tuesday morning with a 36 hour stopover in Brunei.

That wasn't so bad because I've never been to an Asian country before, and Brunei is not like most of them. It has a small population (370,000), has a GDP of $10billion, its residents don't pay tax and get free education and health care, plus quite a few other perks, it's 70% Muslim/30% Christian, has strong prohibition so everybody works two jobs instead of going out at night (helps if there are no pubs), and is under the strict control of the Sultan, who is the third richest man in the world behind Bill Gates and me. It's considered poor form to criticise the government in the media so it appears everything is hunky dory in this small country on the Malaysian island of Borneo.

Second thing to go wrong: Royal Brunei's computer system at Heathrow went down, leaving us waiting impatiently in a queue for a while. We took off a little late, but I didn't have to be anywhere in a hurry so I didn't mind.

I watched nearly six movies between London and Dubai, then Dubai and Bandar Seri Begawan. Stardust (quite funny in places and a very good cast), The Bourne Ultimatum (think I spotted a bit of Oxford in it), Ratatouille (good), The Darjeeling Limited (vaguely amusing but didn't really do much for me), Romeo and Juliet (the 1996 version, v. good) and the first part of It's a Wonderful Life.

The Brunei Hilton

We got to Brunei at about 11am Sunday morning and set about sorting out hotels. I was in the same one as three others from the flight - Amy, Olivier and Kristie - and it was agreed that we should Do Stuff together. Make the best of it, see the country, and so on.

The hotel was called the Traders Inn. It had beds but it wasn't quite up to six star standard. Grubby walls, mouldy bathroom and a stroppy manager who didn't let us check out late for our 11:30pm flight on Monday, despite it saying on our vouchers that we had two days and one night there. Oh well.

Thrown together by misfortune: me, Kristie, Olivier, Amy
© Jeff Jones

We headed back into the city in the late afternoon and decided on a boat tour of the floating village. This houses about 50,000 people (the rest of the city has another 50,000) and consists of a large number of wooden houses built on pillars. It's about 30 years old and I reckon it would be in trouble if a decent storm hit it.

Our guide was excellent and only wanted to charge us $20 (about 7 quid) for a one hour tour - we gave him another $10 at the end. He was also genuinely friendly, taking us to see his house and family of nine, of whom he was very proud. It was pretty cool for us and it wasn't something he did very often, he said. He showed us the workings of the floating village, which looks quite poor in comparison to the splendour of the city and its mosques. There are enough schools and everyone gets government subsidies but I got the feeling that most of the wealth ain't here.

We were invited into our guide's home for some frozen strawberry drink
© Jeff Jones
Nice columns
© Jeff Jones

After we got back we checked out one of the main mosques near the centre of town. We couldn't go inside because it was prayer time but it was, to coin a famous prophet, bloody impressive. I was loving the colonnaded outdoor pool, too.

As we were wondering what to do next, we fell into conversation with another local tourist guide. He was waiting for an American woman who didn't show up, so we climbed into his car and he took us to see the rest of the sights of Bandar Seri Begawan. The highlight was the city's most expensive mosque which was lavish in every way with gold plated minarets, massive amounts of marble, fountains and so on. It cost hundreds of millions of dollars to build and you get a pretty good idea of where the Sultan likes to spend his money. Something like this is amazing when you consider the size of the city and the country's population as a whole.

The most expensive mosque in South East Asia
© Jeff Jones

But wait, there's more. Not far away, the Sultan's palace has around 1100 rooms and houses a mosque that's even bigger than the one above. He opens his doors for three days a year to let the people in so that they can all meet and greet him. They're fed well and can take doggie bags home with them. Just like in a fairytale.

After cruising around some of the lesser palaces, the smallest of which was still enormous, we paid a visit to the night market. Here, you can buy any sort of food for a dollar, so four dollars (about £1.30) got me a large serving of noodles, some barbecue beef on a stick, a few cakes and a drink made from sugarcane. This place is popular with the locals, although there were a couple of other tourists there. The nice thing was that no-one was trying to flog us anything.

Night market
© Jeff Jones
It's all a dollar a serve
© Jeff Jones

A night in the Brunei Hilton followed, and after a less than inspiring English-style breakfast of cold baked beans, strange sausages and stale toast (how can toast be stale?) we headed back into town to take in the remaining tourist attractions. There weren't many. We started at the Regalia Museum, where we spent several hours in bare feet looking at all the presents that had been given to the Sultan at his coronation 40-odd years ago. The computers all looked as though they dated from the coronation too, as none of them were working. I did learn that Brunei had been part of a British protection racket in the 1800s. The Brits protected the Bruneians from piracy in exchange for one of their islands and the privilege to come and go as they choose. Brunei eventually gained independence in 1984, but Brits are still allowed to come here without a visa.

Finally, we got on another boat to go and see the proboscis monkeys up the river. They weren't exactly close enough to take good pics but it was an interesting trip nonetheless. The price magically went up from $30 to $50 by the time we got back so we didn't bother tipping this time.

My wildlife photography skills are improving, as you can see. This is a shot of proboscis monkeys.
© Jeff Jones

The big wet

After unsuccessfully arguing with the hotel manager about a late checkout, we sat in the lobby of the Brunei Hilton and waited until 9pm until a shuttle bus would take us out to the airport. It started to rain at about 5pm and tipped it down for the next three hours. This was a proper tropical thunderstorm and as we found out soon enough, caused flash flooding.

It was chaos on the way to the airport. Parts of the road were a couple of feet deep in water and people were getting stuck. On the dual carriageway, there were cars coming back towards us once they realised they couldn't continue. We made it to an exit and found our way to the airport. Our drivers reckoned that it had never flooded like this along these roads.

It goes without saying that Royal Brunei's computer system was down when we went to check in. I think they eventually did it on paper but it took bloody ages. They charged half of us departure tax as well, even though that was included in the booking. Someone asked for a receipt and was given the money back.

There were problems with visas as well. Olivier and Kristie didn't realise that Olivier needed a visa to get into Oz. Oops. Somehow, they managed to get one very quickly, despite the fact that the Australian embassy was shut. Then there were a couple of lost English kids. One of them presented his passport only to be informed that he was in Australia and had been since 1998. He'd never been to Australia.

It was pretty amazing that after all this, our flight was only an hour or so late, and we left at around 12:30am.

Then things started to go properly durian-shaped.

Aviation safety week

I already had a bad feeling about this flight, and my fears were confirmed pretty quickly. During the 'blessing of the flight', the Japanese guy next to me started praying. Then he just got up and left his seat, taking his satchel with him. I assumed he'd gone to the toilet, but he didn't come back.

We started taxiing and I considered mentioning this to the flight crew, but they had other concerns. The 'lavatory occupied' sign was still on as we took off and I was hoping that our would-be-bomber was merely suffering the effects of a dodgy curry.

After half an hour of flying I was just getting to the part of It's a Wonderful Life where George is contemplating suicide when the in flight entertainment froze and an announcement came over.

"Would all crew please report to the flight deck."

Now I had a really bad feeling about this, especially as we suddenly dropped 2000m, lost about half our speed, all the cabin lights were dimmed, and we'd turned around. Then the displays all went blank. So much for It's a Wonderful Life.

A little while later: "Would all crew please remain in your positions."

Then: "This is the captain speaking. We've had a technical problem but it's something that we're trained to deal with. We will be returning to Bandar Seri Begawan and should be landing in about 10-15 minutes. If you see any emergency vehicles on the runway, do not be alarmed. We will be evacuating, sorry disembarking the aircraft in the normal way."

It all went very quiet. We glided along at low power for 10-15 minutes but we weren't anywhere near landing. I wondered where our probable hijacker was taking us. I hoped he wasn't going to detonate his bomb before we arrived and I was still rather annoyed with myself for not mentioning it to the crew.

Another very long 15 minutes passed before we saw lights again. We got lower and lower and I thought we were going to land in someone's backyard, but the runway finally appeared and we touched down. It took us a long while to slow down. Thankfully, we didn't run out of runway and eventually came to a halt. Everyone clapped and there was some degree of relief in the cabin. Even among an arrogant party of Chinese up the back.

We filed back into the airport, were given temporary boarding passes and waited for instructions. At about 3am, we were told "The flight has been rescheduled for tomorrow at 9am. You will now be taken to hotels" without giving us an idea of how this was to take place. A few of us worked out that by the time we got to the hotel, it would be after 4 and we'd have to be back in a few hours to get on the plane. Not worth it, so most of us stayed in the terminal.

In the meantime, I learned that we weren't hijacked, it was merely a fractured windscreen. Haven't they heard of insulation tape?

I got one and a half hours sleep before being woken by the light and some awful muzak. We were promised breakfast but I'm thankful that we went to an airport coffee lounge instead, pooling all of our cash to buy some real food. Amy had only had a few oat biscuits since lunchtime the previous day, so she was a little peckish. Half decent coffee, muffins, scrambled eggs, toast - it was all good. The brekky provided by Royal Brunei consisted of stale cheese, tomato and cucumber sandwiches, mediocre coffee and juice.

9am came and went and we were all sitting in the departure lounge, waiting. 9:30 and we get an announcement: "We're sorry for the delay, which is due to the lack of an operational crew."

Yes, you do need a pilot to fly a plane, and I don't blame last night's one for not coming back.

10am: "Your flight will be ready for boarding shortly. We're sorry for the delay, which is due to the lack of an operational crew. On behalf of Royal Brunei Airlines, we wish you a pleasant flight [giggles]"

I got the feeling that the level of training amongst the staff wasn't particularly high. You can't just throw it all together and expect it to work. You need some cohesion.

A rather disheveled and annoyed looking pilot did turn up and we finally got on the plane, an hour and a half later. As I got on board, I picked up a copy of the Brunei Times, where on page 2 they had a number of stories on Aviation Safety Week that was launched the previous day.

This time, I crossed my fingers when the in-flight blessing took place. We made it to Sydney, minus movies, and I was rather glad.

The next day I woke up with a stinker of a cold and the worst jetlag ever. I don't think I'll be flying Royal Brunei again.

Our first guide in Brunei
© Jeff Jones
This is wot keeps the village afloat
© Jeff Jones
Kiddies enjoying an afternoon swim
© Jeff Jones
Me and a mosque
© Jeff Jones
The Sultan prefers the escalator
© Jeff Jones
The boats run on Pepsi
© Jeff Jones
The family of our second river guide
© Jeff Jones
Two barges ready to take rocks upstream
© Jeff Jones
A slight detour on the way back
© Jeff Jones
Legend has it that this rock was a sunken boat
© Jeff Jones
Catching dinner
© Jeff Jones

Victory!

A full-on serious tea and coffee shoppe in Bath, at last!

Steve discovered it and took us there for one of our lunchtime tea stops. It's under the Oxalis tea shop in New Bond St and, for the time being, very inconspicuous. But when you go down into it, you realise it's something special. The walls are all painted white with locked cabinets containing various tea sets. It's like a museum!

The menu offers a massive range of teas and coffees. It looks pricey at first until you realise that each tea/coffee is for two people. I got a Brazilian Santos coffee, which has a delicious chocolatey flavour. It came in a plunger and I drank four and a half cups before it was empty. All for just £2.75. That's value, given that a medium black coffee from the Italian ice cream shop will cost £1.40 but you don't get the ambience. And I was very much awake in the afternoon.

I'm definitely going back and I hope it doesn't go broke before January next year. Because in the meantime, I will be in the land down under where women glow and men plunder. But I have to spend a day and a half in bloody Brunei because I got a cheap flight. Maybe I'll get to drive one of the sultan's 367 Ferraris.

It'll be nice to be in a county where the default weather isn't crap. That said, it did get up to 15° today - just like summer really. The problem was that it was raining at an angle that was close to horizontal. Quelle annoyance.

It was a good day to go out for a beer or five, which we of BikeRadar and WhatMTB and a bit of C+ did. The Bell, The Star, Lambrettas and almost The Huntsman but instead The Cellar were all patronised. It was just the thing to prepare for a three and a half day trip across the world.

Saturday bloody Saturday

Fortunately, it didn't end up too bloody here in the south west tropics of England. But it was an eventful day.

I'm talking, of course, about the Chippenham club run. Conditions: cold, windy, some rain and lots of puddles on the roads.

I was running a little late and the cemetery gates were deserted at 9:35. Another guy rolled up and said that we would never catch them, but I knew it couldn't have been more than a couple of minutes and I've had plenty of practice in doing that on the Schelde ride.

I felt fine, despite a slow leak in the back tyre and trying not to drop the other guy, and caught the group after about 10km. But a few minutes later, there was an accident as the bunch tried to get around two cars that were parked on a blind corner while another car was coming the other way. Ben S didn't see the second parked car and went through the back windscreen, Davis Phinney style. Fortunately it was a low speed crash and he and his bike were completely unscathed - one of the advantages of wearing so many clothes during winter. The people who had foolishly parked their cars there were of Eastern European origin and a bit confused about what had happened. It took some time to exchange details before we got under way again. Ben had to report it to the police afterwards.

5km later, I decided that my rear tyre wasn't going to make it another 60km and stopped to change the tube, telling the rest to keep going. Luckily it started to rain again at that moment, otherwise there was the danger of me going soft. While pumping up the tyre in what felt like sleet, I did receive an offer of a free cup of tea from a real estate agent who was setting up for an inspection, but I declined, pleading insanity.

I didn't fancy my chances of catching up 12 minutes so I was surprised when I rejoined the bunch 25km later. It turned out the guy who I'd started with had also punctured, and they waited for him. Club president Andy Cook was also there, following us in the Everyday Cycling car to give us a bit more security. Andy's coming back from a broken collarbone that he sustained on the club run a few weeks back. Be careful, folks!

It was a headwind all the way back and everyone was a bit shattered by the time we got to Corsham. I foolishly followed windscreen Ben when he went hard with 2km to go and although I had the legs, it cost me dearly later on. I rode back to Bath with another guy, Pete, who had blown and I had to go fairly slowly to avoid leaving him. But as we went down Kingsdown I felt my own reserves run completely dry and within a kilometre, I was history. Normally I would have eaten something but there were only 4km to go so I thought I'd wait.

I was a shaking wreck by the time I got home. Significant quantities of food had to be ingested, followed by an hour and a half of quality time on the couch. To make matters worse, I then had to go shopping at Morrisons. But I made a curry, so it wasn't all bad.

Even better, I leave this rain sodden part of the world for a three week sojourn in Sunny Australia in a week. That'll be well good, innit.

Spektakel in Gent

© Jeff Jones

This blog is dedicated to De Witte. Now you can't say I don't mention you.

A week of holidays. What joy. And what better way to spend it than in sunny Belgium? I know the answer to that question and it is c) Australia. Not that I have anything against sunny Belgium, mind.

Getting there from UK-land is even quicker now on the Eurostar. 1hr50 from London St Pancreas (that's what it should be called) to Bruxelles Midi. And it cost less than 60 quid return, and the ticket will get you to any Belgian station. That's what I call value. Admittedly, living in the UK for a while degrades your standards.

I arrived chez Reinhard at 8pm, Gent time, and it wasn't even raining. 25 minutes later, we partook of a power yoga class at gym down the road. Gab rocked up, straight off the plane from Norway where beer is €10 a pop, and Reiny's associate Gwen joined us for the session and the all-important post-yoga beers. All four of us have some connection to the Commonwealth: the team lives on!

I think I'm reasonably flexible for a cyclist, but that doesn't mean much in the grand scheme of things. A third of the exercises were impossible for me to do without falling over or shaking violently. It does feel good using muscles you don't normally use and at least the teacher approved of my Tom Boonen t-shirt.

What felt better was Chimay in the plural form. Liquid ambrosia. Hell, I even appreciated the novelty of being in a packed, smoke-filled cafe again.

Reiny and Gwen hard at work. Well, one of them is.
© Jeff Jones

Voting

Being a citizen of the Grand Duchy of Australia, I was legally entitled to vote in the election. Not that it mattered, because I'm in the second safest Labor seat in the country, but it is always fun voting in the senate.

The difficulty is deciding what party to put last. When you have the choice of One Nation, Pauline, the Shooters Party, the Fred Nile group and parties like LDP that do not explain their acronyms on the ballot paper, it's hard. I know the votes this far down probably won't affect the composition of the senate, which only changes once every six years, but it's the principle of the thing that counts.

For the record, I put One Nation last.

The Zesdaagse

These guys were the hardest workers at the Ghent Six
© Jeff Jones

Amazingly in all the years I lived in Gent, I never saw the Six. I hadn't even seen the track, although I'd picked up accreditation for races like Het Volk from the building it was housed in. So this was a new experience, and a pretty cool one at that.

Gab, Reiny and I had tickets to the middenplein (the centre) and if we were lucky, we could get a seat in one section of the stands. The middenplein was fine: there were three or four stands selling beer, we could get dizzy watching the racing and over the course of the night we bumped into several acquaintances. Karl Becker (who could have witnessed my postal vote, 'cos he's an Aussie), Brecht from CN (who was shockingly drinking on the job), Henk Ballet (of classic fame, who I'd obtained a jersey for), Staf and Andre Boone (larger than life characters and both big wheels in the Gent cycling scene), and several hard core fans that I knew from racing.

Much spektakel at the Ghent Six
© Jeff Jones

Speaking of racing, there was some of it going on. Well, a bit.

Track racing is a brilliant spectator sport and six day riders are skillful masters of entertainment. The good thing about the first day is that they race reasonably hard to sort out the pecking order. The crowd favourites were Iljo Keisse and Robert Bartko and they'd get a huge cheer each time they did something like take a lap in the Madison or win a points race. They were good and Keisse was obviously drawing on all his experience from riding langs de Schelde. He's quick, that boy.

But there were others: world Madison champions Bruno Risi and Franco Marvulli, dynamic Dutch duo Robert Slippens and Danny Stam, Brits Brad Wiggins with his funky white wheels and Mark 'where am I?' Cavendish, and Ze Chermans Andreas Beikirch and Erik Mohs.

A dozen or so teams on a 166m track: it's amazing to watch as they sling each other in through gaps that suddenly appear between other teams. No-one crashed when we were there, but last year Spaniard Isaac Galvez died when he hit the metal barrier that runs around the top of the track. The barrier now has an inch of foam around it. I don't know if that will do any good in case of a similar accident but I'm not in charge of Health and Safety.

By the end of the night, we had consumed enough pils to satisfy our thirst, soaking some of it up with a fine bradwoorst. Gab went back for a second one because he recognised the girl selling them from last year. She recognised him, too. I'm not sure whether that was a good thing but none of us were in a position to judge.

Gabke loves the bradwoorst
© Jeff Jones

Other antics

It is never advisable to drink on an empty stomach. Rochefort 8° does taste pretty good, but it accounted for Thursday evening and a good chunk of Friday. Reiny and Gab had gone spinning so Gwen and I got a small headstart. It ended up being a two hour headstart and it was possible to cover a lot of ground in that time before the cavalry (or were we in Calvary?) arrived. I blame myself as, unlike Gwen, I am old enough to know better. At least I didn't have to work the next day but I was so hungry on Friday morning that I couldn't sleep it off properly.

I wandered over to the Eddy Merckx Centrum at the Blaarmeersen on Friday evening to hook up with Guido, Philippe, Lucien, Jules and their better halves. There's a newish 250m board track there and it's open for anyone to train on at certain times. You can even hire bikes - fairly basic machines but they allow you to do the job. €15 got me a bike and up to two hours on the track.

I haven't ridden on a track for about 10 years and although it's easy to remember what to do (pedal and turn left), it's still mildly terrifying getting up on the steep bankings. It was a simple session: everyone just rode round in one of several bunches. It wasn't slow either, as we averaged over 42km/h for 1hr15min. The hardest part for me wasn't the speed, it was the uncomfortable position on the bike that was giving me numb hands and a sore hamstring. You can't really relax either, because then you'll find that the bike starts pedaling you and that is not a good thing.

The bike I used at the Blaarmeersen
© Jeff Jones
Riding the boards at the Eddy Merckx centrum in the Blaarmeersen
© Jeff Jones

De Karper, Iljo Keisse's support club cafe.
© Jeff Jones

It was a good way to get rid of the hangover, although we tried to rectify that by going to De Karper, Iljo Keisse's support club cafe, afterwards. The music was classic hits from the '70s, '80s and '90s: Summer of 69, China Girl, Living Doll to I Want to Break Free and so many more.

Jo joined us, fresh from his trip to Bolivia where he met the country's president twice and did a downhill mountain bike ride where he dropped 4000m! He also pledged on a beer coaster that he would ride in Berchem next year.

Guido and Philippe said they've both done around 15,000km this year. That ain't bad chaps - my count is 'only' 17,000 thus far. I'll get close to 19,000 by the end of the year but no more. A far cry from my record of 30,000 a few years ago.

The extra kilometres helped Philippe do five and a half hours for the Velomedian, a really good time for what sounds like a very tough sportive. Unfortunately Guido paid the price for 0.5km too many. On a training ride in June, he had 179.5km on the clock and wanted to make it 180, but was hit by a car just near his house. Fortunately he wasn't really seriously injured, but all the same he has a scar on his forehead that is much better than mine. Alas, the De Rosa is no more.

More on the injury front: Jules had the misfortune to break his hip, which put him out for three months. But Lucien escaped the year unscathed. He has a new Colnago and no scars.

Jules, Guido, Lucien, Philippe and ik at De Karper
© Jeff Jones

Coffee crawl

The best place for coffee that I've been to in Gent is Mokabon on the Donkersteeg. It's a proper old school coffee shop with old school clientele. The decor hasn't really changed since it opened in 1953, the theme being dark brown wood. Now, Belgians haven't yet mastered the cappuccino, but the coffee here is bloody good. It's all about the taste, not the caffeine. And it's not pricey either, with an espresso costing €1.80

Reiny and I visited it as part of a coffee crawl that started in Ledeberg and finished at the Marimain. It was an excellent way to kill a few hours and see how others spend their Sundays. We followed that with a home cooked Vlaamse stoverij (me), vanilla ice cream with Advocaat, chocolate sauce and strawberries (Gwen) and a few quiet ones (all of us). A noice way to end the week.

Gwen, me and Reiny about to sit down to a fine, home cooked repast
© Jeff Jones

By the way, I did spend a large amount of time not drinking and doing something constructive, like writing. But given that alcohol kills brain cells, I might have to do less drinking if I want to get the book finished. After this week, my brain is not half full, it's half empty.

It's time to ride the bike again, too.

More pics

Descending the muddy cobbles of the Kantienberg. I love it.
© Jeff Jones
Wet cobbles and tram tracks. Someone should get onto health & safety about this.
© Jeff Jones
Chocolates from Yuzu on Walpoortstraat. These are brilliant.
© Jeff Jones
Reiny and Gabke warming up before the Six
© Jeff Jones
The Middenplein is where it's at
© Jeff Jones
Gab, Reiny and Staf
© Jeff Jones
Gent
© Jeff Jones
Gent again
© Jeff Jones
Guido's Ridley. Note the incredibly relaxed head angle. What the?
© Jeff Jones
Jules, Lucien, the ladies, Philippe and Guido are thirsty
© Jeff Jones
Enjoying a Westmalle with Jo
© Jeff Jones
The markets in Ledeberg were pretty crap
© Jeff Jones
Sunday lunchtime in Ledeberg
© Jeff Jones