In other less Crimewatch-worthy news,

Ash and I had a splendid little meal at the Tapas Tree the other night. As befits the current ascendancy of chorizo over bacon (sorry Josh) in my home cooking, we ordered a shitload of the stuff and I wolfed it down with abandon. It truly is the processed meat product of the gods. We sat outside in the waning sun, finished our meal and made our slightly wobbly way home. Hurray for al fresco dining coupled with mildly excessive boozing! I'd say "long may it continue", but the weather looks like it has firm ideas in the other direction. One scorching month book-ended by oppressing humidity and random showers does not a summer make.

On Sunday evening we drove over to my parent's place in Fife for a meal. It was all terribly cosy and familial (in a good way!) and after a placatory visit to my gran we ended heading home up on a slightly less main road than I'd intended. A flickering orange glow in the sky grew brighter and brighter as we headed towards Dunfermline and suddenly, as we crested a hill, we saw it was the flare from the Mossmorran ethylene plant. It was a fantastically dystopian sight: the sky was bright enough and coloured just so as to suggest a distinctly non-shepherd-friendly dawn.

Something made me feel conspiratorially glad to have seen it and it was sufficiently otherworldly and unreal to blow away the cobwebs of more earthly concerns. Like, you know, seeing one's stolen bike paraded up and down Leith Walk.

Well, almost.

Another bike post, I'm afraid,

but one made for an entirely irritating reason.

I was over on Leith Walk on Friday lunchtime, and as I unlocked my bike I happened to glance across the road. A guy, maybe thirty or so, was pushing two bikes along the pavement on the other side of the road. One of them was instantly familiar - it looked exactly like the bike that was stolen from the flat's stairwell in January.

I couldn't be sure it was the same bike, so I jumped on my own bike and rolled slowly down the other side of the stree and watched as he made his way along it. Eventually I was as certain as I could be. I crossed the road, jumped off my bike and said "Excuse me - that looks a lot like a bike of mine that was stolen a few months ago."

Instantly, with no shock or bafflement, he said "Swear to God mate, I got this from my cousin two years ago." How the hell do you reply by making an instant excuse if you know the bike is rightfully yours? I'd laugh openly in my accuser's face if he had the temerity to say something like that.

He stopped walking and told me he was on his way to pick up his daughter. In return I told him that I recognised the rear mudguard, held on as it was with an elastic band and as it had been when it was stolen; that the seat post was rusted in place as it had been when it was stolen and that the bar ends were familiar to me because I'd replaced them just before it had been stolen. The only different parts were the tyres and the saddle - interestingly, the only major perishable parts aside from the brake blocks.

The galling thing was that I had no way to prove to this brazen motherfucker that it was my bike, and without physically restraining him I couldn't stop him. Had I been a little less astounded at his barefacedness I'd have called the police and asked them how to handle it. In the event I muttered "Aye, right," to his claim that he was sorry my bike had been nicked, and let him go.

Unbelievable. The serial number of my current bike's frame is now noted down in a safe place, and should it ever be nicked and the thief has the misfortune to cross my path, I'll be a hell of a lot more pissed off than I was this time...

Commentary:

I started writing a couple of quick, throwaway responses to the comments on the last entry but I just couldn't help myself. Here are the full-blown, ill-thought-out and rambling replies.

Pirates of the Caribbean 2: okay, first thing here is the excess surrounding this film. It cost $255 million to make and to my tastes at least, wasn't anything special. It was dull. It lacked a coherent plot. It doesn't matter how good the CGI is - show me a pirate with a head like that of a Hammerhead Shark and I know it's CGI. I can see where the money went, and it's a crying shame some of it wasn't diverted to the script-writing engine room.

The thing that hacks me off most, though, wasn't the crappiness of the film. It was the blind consumption by the world and its dog (myself included) of said crappiness. I wandered along to a film that I knew already was never going to exceed mildly entertaining mediocrity. What happened to my critical faculties, and by extension to those of the several million other viewers taken for a (boring) ride? As I write this, $540,300,444 - over half a billion dollars - has been spent by people willingly going to see it.

Why didn't several million people choose to see Hard Candy or Thank You for Smoking instead? Both of which, incidentally, are absolute gems. Flawed gems perhaps, but at least they get points for trying. Why has the world poured half a billion dollars into the coffers of an amoral ethical vacuum like Walt Disney? You can argue at least some of the 50 million or so people who've seen PotC2 must have enjoyed it, but did Disney really need to make a profit of $300 million dollars off the back of that? Of course not - it's a company driven by the market to make shitloads of money to keep its shareholders happy.

In summary, our expectations and willingness to pursue them have been worn smooth by an avalanche of gaudy mediocrity in the name of making a buck. That is what is wrong with the film.

Phew.

Optimus Prime - cocktail edition: ah, now this is the clever bit. Keef writes:

That name is not to be used lightly! It had better be a bloody good cocktail ;)

I was in the Wash the other day, idly reading their cocktail menu. The name "The Beamer" caught my eye, and I wondered what it was.

It's Jim Beam and coke. (Wow, I mistyped "coke" as "cock" there. My typed correspondence revolves around a particular type of joke - can you guess what it is yet?) I mean seriously, whisk(e)y and coke doesn't qualify as a cocktail. Cuba Libre is rum and coke, or Bacardi and Coca-Cola for the branding whores. Okay, okay, for me. You see, Optimus Prime could be something monumentally mundane and still get away with it. I propose...I dunno, Red Kola and gin. Winner!

I had the misfortune

to go and see Pirates of the Caribbean 2 on Saturday evening. The fine art of the summer blockbuster has recently been reconciled to me, after about a decade of continuous disappointments, by The Da Vinci Code and X-Men 3, and so I was anticipating said nautical antics with enthusiasm.

Boy, was I wrong about that. This is the most calculatedly evil film ever made. Had it had the decency to be outright bad I might have written it off as a poor choice of movie and immediately forgotten about it. No, this was a film which somehow, astonishingly, managed to burn $1.7 million per minute and yet be relentlessly, stupefyingly boring. 'Disjointed', 'incoherent' and 'terminally dull' are terms which would adequately describe this film only if accompanied by repeated blows with a baseball bat to the head of the listener.

"It's dis-" <thwack> "-join-" <thwack> "-ted!"
"Ah, I understand now."

Pirates of the Caribbean 2 is nothing less than a perfectly encapsulated explanation of all that is wrong with the western world. It presents irrefutable proof that there is no God. In short, this film is a horrifying cultural singularity the likes from which civilisation is unlikely to recover.

Ach, what the hell. I'll give it 3/5.

In other news, Jeff and Devon are back from the States; post-viva, Jeff is now a PhD (excellent stuff!), and during a thought-experiment this afternoon I invented a cocktail called "Optimus Prime". Good times!

[In lieu of a real post

(come back tomorrow for that), here's a bit of random musing/rambling about the très exciting subject of running.]

I have finally (i.e. four weeks later than planned) started running again in a weak imitation of training for the Water of Leith 10K (visit Sponsor ME on the sidebar to gain some karma points) in August. The run follows the river as closely as possible, and my usual training route is to head down to Stockbridge, up the same path as the run itself and head back from Roseburn along the main road. It's somewhere between 3 and 4 miles, and it's a nice enough route so that it doesn't feel too much like a chore.

On Tuesday I hit upon the cunning plan of doing this in the other direction. It was around 7 pm, and I'd just finished the sweaty cycle back up from work. The weather was muggy and warm but had cooled down to a pleasant level when I left the flat, and the moisture in the air made it almost a little chilly. Going in the other direction means that the first mile and a half or so is more or less flat, and it's a far better warm-up than thundering down the near-vertical St. Stephen's Street into Stockbridge.

The next section along the Water of Leith itself is probably the most picturesque mugger's paradise in Edinburgh. It's green, shady, pleasant, lined with excellent hiding places and populated exclusively by poncy middle-class joggers bearing iPods. (I make no bones about being the absolute apex/nadir of said pretentious muppets.) It really was an excellent night to be out: the little bit of moisture left meant I didn't overheat and the sun slanting down through the slightly dank undergrowth gave everything a terribly HP Lovecraftian aura.

Of course, running up the near-vertical St. Stephen's Street is infinitely worse than charging down it. Not exactly an ideal warm-down.

[Normal service will be resumed tomorrow.]

Work, rest and playing away:

having driven around 50% of the company into the ground over a six month period, the management thought it'd be a splendid idea to cart their hollow-eyed remnants, plus those of the lucky escapees, to a nearby beach and provide them with a barbeque by way of compensation. Compare and contrast: six months of working late nights and weekends to meet a schedule written off as impossible before it had even begun, versus a burger in the sun. It pisses me off royally, and I wasn't even one of the 50%.

Most annoyingly, it was a really good day. Along with a few of the other hardier types, your intrepid correspondent went for an entertaining surfing lesson while for the less eXtreme there was some sedate horse riding. Boules, frisbee, football and rounders were played; the porta-bar was cleaned out of beer and the barbeque was a tasty affair indeed. As the sun started to dip and the breeze took on just a hint of a chill, the bus arrived exactly on cue and conveyed us back to the city, replete with food, booze and sneaking suspicions that in work terms, we'd been had.

The rat race is an odd place, really.

On Saturday, Moritz and I (where are ye, self-professed mountain bikers? Well dost thou shrink from my entreaties when the trails beckon!) burned up the trails in Glentress with a vengeance: no longer for us the tepid charms of the red route but instead the rocky (and surprisingly straightforward) black run. We rode about a quarter of the V-trail - V is the new X, I can only assume - to add a bit of variation to the normal route and it was well worth the detour. The scenery transported me back to childhood holidays in the north of Scotland and the rocky descents brought me back with a jolt, although truth be told their visual bark was worse than their physical bite.

In the evening Ash and I wandered along to La Partenope in Dalry for Giancarlo's birthday meal. It was an excellent evening: one of those rare occasions where everything falls into place and yet there's nothing out of the ordinary to wax lyrical about. The chat was good; the food plentiful and mostly enjoyable; the coffees tiny and the surroundings suitably cosmopolitan. We trooped over to the Pear Tree for a few postprandial pints in the fading warmth of the evening and called it a very pleasant night.

Sunday was taken up with some Trøll-related mechanical fumblings and a quiet barbeque in the concrete oasis behind Jez's flat. What an great week...!

More money, fewer gears redux:

The art of single-speed cycling as desecrated by a first-time bike builder:

• Part 1: it begins
  
• Part 2: the build
  
• Part 3: the build continues
  
• Part 4: (anti)climax
  
• Part 5: pictorial evidence
  

"At last!"

the cry goes up, "this two-parter is finally complete."

After caning back from Culross, we split up to wipe the mud/grins off our faces and reassembled in Pancho Villa's. A leisurely carnival of tortillas, burritos (fortunately, I'm now rehabilitated enough to gaze upon said Mexican snack without an involuntary shudder. Turns out it takes a year to be free of Burrito Night Sweats^TM) and alcoholic coffees of varied international provenance took the wind out of our sails a bit. A couple of slow pints in Bannerman's didn't help and so the only thing for it was to hit Opium and discard our protective clothing of dignity.

We had a couple more pints. Smells Like Teen Spirit came on. We jumped around like knobs. \m/

Eventually staggering back from John's at about 5am, we crossed the Meadows amid the gathering dawn and I pronounced it to have been a very good night indeed. I can't wait for the wedding!

P.S: Dan has some more photos of the evening's shenanigans.

"At last!"

the relieved cry goes up from the triumvirate RF readership, "a post that doesn't go into tedious detail about bike chain widths".

Dom is getting married in August, and as such we were legally obliged to engage in typically male activities such as driving too fast and drinking too much. (The '60s favourite - driving too fast while drinking too much - has sadly been eclipsed by less lethal stag diversions.)

After crawling through the treacly flow of T in the Park traffic, Dave and I finally met up with the rest of the herd in Culross for some superior pub grub around 1 pm. Fed and watered, we charged heedlessly off into the Fife countryside, eventually finding the day's entertainment through a combination of dogged persistence and blind luck.

The setup was that we were driving Rage buggies around a dusty, kinked oval track with a vertiginous climb and subsequent drop at one side, and a bumpy, twisty flat section on the other. We didn't directly race each other but instead had 3-lap practice heats to get the hang of things and then a timed 3-lap session to decide the final order.

While waiting to start, we watched the last few laps of the preceding group and grumbled about how slow it looked.

How wrong we were. The karts handled like a scaled-up version of your typical radio-controlled buggy: they skipped and bounced across the berms and kickers, and the suspension travel that looked comically over-compensatory at rest was about only thing that kept one's spine from compressing.

The crowning horror of the circuit was the downhill section on which the gradient kept increasing all the way to the bottom: the only way to tackle it was to point the kart in roughly the right direction, plant the throttle and hope. The suspension dropped as the kart steadily lightened and then compressed with a thump, smacking off the bump stops over the mini-jump about two thirds of the way down; with the kart squirming around underneath you (and while wondering in a dazed sort of way how it was that it hadn't shaken itself to pieces), you wrenched the wheel to the left and slithered around the sweeping left hander. Utter, exhilarating genius.

Dave and Steve have some photos of the day but the only one you really need to see is Dom's disappointment as I squirt my victory juice in his face :) See, some people would have let the stag win. I, on the other hand, am a closet sociopath. The voices tell me to win.

Next up: boozy mentalness in which we paint the town metal.

More money, fewer gears part 4: it is finished.

After a bit of pratting around last week with the Dicta sprocket and my Diamondback's 3/32" chain, it looked distinctly like the sprocket was determined to accept only a 1/8" BMX chain. The replacement sprocket, a 3/32"-friendly ACS Claw ("Da craw! Da craw!") turned up from UK Bike Store almost as soon as I'd even thought about it. Then, while on an otherwise pointless run - I'm hideously out of shape in running terms - I bought a 3/32" Shimano chain.

A couple of 3/32" half-links* arrived today at work from St. John's Street Cycles; I fitted the chain, tightened the tensioner and it was finished.

Needless to say, it was a massive anticlimax. I have built...a bike. It has wheels, pedals, handlebars and brakes. It appears to work pretty much in exactly the same way as every other bicycle built since 1880. I'd half expected a gaggle of passing couriers to stop by to congratulate me on my Herculean feat and praise the majestic angle of the seatpost or something equally stupendous. Unfortunately, it was 7 pm and the couriers had all gone home to rest their over-developed legs and, with their atrophied arms, to shovel high-carb dinners into their gullets like Atkins-hating velociraptors**.

I cycled home from work along the Water of Leith path, then up Broughton Street and Queen Street and finally up the short, sharp hill to St. Andrews Square. The geometry is a little strange compared to the Diamondback: the short stem and wide bars probably contribute most to that, although the frame really expects to be run with suspension forks and my £10 bargain bin specials are probably not helping matters. A pair of these bad boys (I've stopped even trying to be a non-geeky cyclist) will sort that out, I think.

The most striking thing is the combination of the absolute silence while pedalling - an absence of derailleur will do that - and the obnoxious clicking while freewheeling. I'd forgotten how much noise BMX freewheels make, and amplified by a big, bendy frame and larger wheels, it sounds like a football rattle in the hands of an ADHD child hopped up on Sunny D.

Mostly, then, I kept pedalling as fast as I could. The gearing seemed almost a little low; I made it up most hills with a minimum of fuss and effort (despite being fairly circumspect in applying pressure, in case an ill-fitted bolt or half link should decide to pop out) and I found myself spinning out fairly quickly on the flat. I'll see how I do on something more challenging like Dundas Street before changing sprockets, though.

So I now have a kingsized BMX-alike commuter bike, and I'm not afraid to use it. Only one thing remains: what should it be called?

* It's worth noting, if this hideously drawn out build diary hasn't made you nauseous to even catch a glimpse of a bicycle, that St. John's Street Cycles appear to be the only UK company that sell 3/32" half links. The side plates of the links are fractionally larger than those of the Shimano chain I'm using, but this hasn't caused any problems.
** My God, I think I just broke English with that sentence.