Worst DD conditions ever I heard. Started raining lightly at 9pm, just after leaving, a nice gentle rain I thought, 'like cycling with air-conditioning' I said, then it got progressively heavier and heavier. Never torrential, but heavy, and it didn't stop till about 4am.

I hooked up with a guy on a touring bike, he had a GPS with no map, while I had ViewRanger on my phone, with an OS map of the route, but no GPS. 3 or 4 times on the route this combo was really helpful, since he could read out the OS coordinates, and I could say - yep, we're on the wrong road!

I was amazed at how easy it was until about 10 miles from the 'half way' point. There's a part of the ride through gentle inclines and declines in total darkness with only headlights of bikes and rear blinkers and you look ahead and see a trail of red lights, and I remember it going on for ages last time I rode the DD, but this time it was over in a few minutes. And I was actually overtaking the odd rider, although groups of riders past me frequently. LOL.

By the time I got to Sudbury though I was exhausted, wet and cold. Worst, my hands were numb and tingling, and my foam handlebar grips had lost adhesion and moved about, letting water get into the shifter and (I reckon) affecting my shifts (all was fine once the rain stopped). My hands shouldn't have been numb, but when I got to the end I realised that when I had adjusted the damping on the front suspension before the ride, I had accidently locked it solid. D'oh!

We got to the stop, seemingly miles after Sudbury and pschologically too far, and we got there in the throng of it this time, lots of food and drink available. The Pasta-veggie mix looked tasty, but remembering the last ride, I had prepared for an empty kitchen and so had packed a sandwich.

I ate tracker bars en-route, I thought I had bought chocolate chip ones, but it turned out to be very tasty peanut. I also had chocolate brunch bars and 4 bananas. Yes, a tasty mixture.

We stayed for well over an hour. We didn't leave till the rain had stopped, and the sun was just starting to turn the sky dark blue rather than blank. I heard that a lot of riders gave up at this point. Again the riding seemed fairly OK but approaching Framlingham the road started rising and falling, and with each rise, although I tried to accelerate down so to reduce the distance up, I lost energy.

But my co-rider, Bill, brought out his emergency chocolate bar, which gave a few joules of energy to keep us going. I only walked a few meters up one hill, before realising I could actually cycle up it slowly in 1st gear, so on all other hills I would cycle as fast as I could in 7th gear, then swapped straight down to 1st for the rest (a benefit of hub gears)!

Approaching the coast, yet more hills, argh. I was going mad by this point with the hills, but I remembered I had 1 last banana. Bananas are amazing, I got a very fast boost that kept me going till the end, where we had a fried breakfast. And at Dunwich the weather was perfect sunshine, so a great end.

Although we got in a 9am, I think the journey time was a couple of hours shorter than last time. 120-something miles. Woo!

The Rear wheel on the TSR packed up. Grr. Got it re-built and a new Shimano Un-54 Bottom Bracket fitted. Worked a treat, but I had two weeks of bus travel to suffer for it.

Tags: Moulton

I woke up early. I had to re-adjust my Sturmey hub which was slightly out of alignment from Friday. On Friday I suddenly lost gears 3-7, just next to Waterloo station. So I waited a full hour till 7pm and took the train home.

So, Saturday, I thought I did it right, re-adjusted the hub, it's not a simple thing, I have to unscrew cables and other things un-fitting for a £1000 bike , went out and tested it. Fine.

Now all I need is to get the map for my destination. I'm helping a work mate trace his cycle route into work. I need to leave soon, and the TFL route is 8 pages of PDF. Hmm, I don't want to print that but OK, I've got two PDA's here, a Palm TX and a Nokia N70. Well the Palm has a nice big screen, and I've already got Adobe Reader, so I'll just bluetooth the file over.

Um, nope. Didn't work, after a few attempts. OK, I'll send it over using Missing Sync....um, nope. OK, I'll put the damn file direct on the SD card. No no no, can't write to it. Pile of pants. OK, I'm already late now...

Plan B, smart phone, yep so I'll just google for Adobe Reader for S60 and wtf? 6680???*

So, how about printing it then, urgh, too fine to read on the road. Cancel the print job. Ack! Aha, GoogleMaps then. Ah, but that's roads, big roads only. Well, no choice. What to use, again Palm TX is obvious, but that needs Wifi, and I can't be arsed to fiddle with Bluetooth now, so it's got the be the phone on it's own.

Google Maps, well, fiddling bloody stupid T9 input, damn I need and friggin iPhone! Anyway, it's a completely different route to the one TFL gave. But, no choice, off I go.

I get 10 meters down the road and I lose all gears again. Aaaaaaargh! I stop and look. When I left the gears were perfectly adjusted, now they are about 2 cm out. 2CM!!!!??? I really don't want to ride the APB today, something is wrong with the front brake and it's squeaking. I've ridden it so much (the TSR has been so unreliable) that it needs another service! But I've no choice, so off I go.

I get lost twice and end up heading toward Forest Hill rather than Crystal Palace (destination Thornton Heath). But I see a cycle route (LCN 26) to Crystal Palace. Nothing to lose now, so off I go. Biggest bloody hill I have ever ridden up. I mean, it went on and on, and the up and up some more and more. And then I was in Crystal Palace. Back to the Phone what now? Down and down and down, biggest down hill ever. And then I'm in Thornton Heath. A half-hour late, but at least the ABP made it, although it's making ever louder knocking noises when I brake.

It takes nearly 2 hours to ride into central London, but the route is fairly reasonably straightforward, and not too taxing. All my mate needs is a bike that is the right size for him, his bike is shockingly small (knees nearly touching hands), and the gear range, fairly slow.

Then over to Russ for lunch and mail re-direction. All good. Then back over to Hyde Park to watch the Prologue to the Tour de France. At which point I regret not having my portable DAB radio, but the batteries are (still) charging in the back room. So I had no idea of who was winning or anything. I was at the far corner of the road near Exhibition Road, but it was hot (sunshine), so I moved near to the time check display, and then moved again into shade at the end. Um, bikes, racing. Whoo! Well, lots of people wooing and clapping. Most for the British riders. It was fairly entertaining at least, and fantastic weather the whole day.

But just before I got to Russ for lunch, I noticed what the knocking noise was with the front brakes. My front rim had split. Expensive icing on the cake.

*Turned out that I should have googled for Adobe Reader N70 instead. And it works well, if slowly. Too late now though!

Tags: Sturmey, Nokia