Astonishingly, we evaded the worst prognostications of the BBC weather forecast, as none of the forecast rain showers hit us during this time trial.  On the other hand the outward leg was rendered rather uncomfortable by a stiff headwind.  In recent weeks, our colleagues at TeamMK had faced hostility from residents in a nearby village - tonight we were visited at the start by a slightly grumpy resident of Stony Stratford, who objected to us starting a time trial there.  In discussions about the first incident, I'm afraid I was a bit didactic - but I feel pretty strongly about our rights as cyclists!Being polite time trial types, we delayed the start for a bit while a horse (and rider!) cleared the start area - I was off last on a pretty small start list of 11 riders, and was irritated by a display snarl-up on my bike computer an while this only distracted me for a short while, it did leave me uncertain as to my progress.  This course is far from being a favourite of mine, principally because of the combination of rough surfaces and the climb to the turn.  On this occasion, I really suffered, dropping to around 12mph at times (unless my blurred vision was deceiving me).Of course it was correspondingly good returning down hill, but as ever, it never fully compensates for the tough outward leg. I finished with 28:09, which was about right for the rubbish legs I had this evening.  In the bigger scheme of things, I began my build up for the Duo Normand a week or so ago - the Duo is on the 19th September.  This has involved significant turbo training, and with hindsight, perhaps 40 or so miles on the turbo the day before this event might not have been the wisest course of action.  However, in my own defence, I was treating tonight's time trial as part of that build-up.Anyway, results below.  Particular congratulations to Lindz Barral who pulled out the stops to finish less than half a minute behind Tony.

At the beginning of July, Rupert Murdoch's press empire moved to charge for access to The Times and The Sunday Times web sites. Up to now, this has been at a charge of £1 for a day's access, or £2 for a week's access.  Perhaps I'm just a cheapskate, but when I'm referred to these sites I decline to pay to read it, moving on to other sites.  I was interested to see that Media Week has some interesting statistics on the effect of the new paywall strategy (Times loses 1.2 million readers - Media news - Media Week). The numbers are quite startling:

News International launched its separate Thetimes.co.uk and Thesundaytimes.co.uk websites on 25 May. It made registration compulsory and began redirecting users from the old site on 15 June and started charging for access to both sites on 2 July.According to ComScore, the combined number of unique visitors to the two new sites has fallen to 1.61 milion in July, from 2.22 million in June, and 2.79 million in May.The average number of minutes each user spent on the site was 7.6 in May, 5.8 in June and 4 in July.Page views have dropped from 29 million in May to 20 million in June and 9 million in July.

After Wednesday's puncture, I inspected the rear tyre on Saturday evening, and decided to ditch it in favour of a new Velofex Record in view of the number of cuts I could see.  I popped in an equally unused Vittoria inner tube.  On Sunday morning I topped up the tyres with a bit more air, and noticed that I'd snapped off the threaded nut off the valve core.  Oh, well I thought - at least the air that's in will stay there.  Well, so I thought, but this was merely the prelude to a comedic series of minor disasters that afflicted my ride in today's '25'.The weather was OK, though a little autumnal with a light and lifting mist.  More annoying was the rising north wind that promised assistance on the southbound outward leg of the course, but would be correspondingly troublesome on the return leg.  Tony and I had travelled over, very conveniently our start times were only five minutes apart - I was #21, Tony #26.  Not too bad a start, reasonably warm as I lined up.  At the appointed moment I departed, quite briskly, off to the roundabout and slip road to join the A1 southbound from Tempsford.  I even negotiated the potholes at the little flyover roundabout.  The wind wasn't giving me as much help as I'd expected, as I proceeded south through Girtford and across the Sandy roundabout, where I unfortunately got slowed by traffic.On again, and safely and cleanly across the next roundabout.  I was feeling pretty good, and reeling in riders ahead of me when I became aware of the bumping so characteristic of a rear wheel puncture.  Groaning to myself, I pulled into the slip road of the BP garage just short of the Baldock roundabout turn (so about 12 miles from the race HQ).  Well, I thought, at least I brought a tube and gas inflater along with me (which had amused Tony no end back at Tempsford).  I removed the wheel, which is a pretty dirty business with the Cervelo due to the rear facing dropouts, and started effecting a repair.  I saw Tony come by, and he shouted that he'd come and pick me up in the car.Nevertheless, I decided to carry on with the repair, not least because is was something to do!  I got the tyre off and removed the tube.  Popped in the replacement tube and refitted the tyre.  Next I tried inflating the tyre with the single CO2 cylinder I had for the inflator.  This proved an unmitigated disaster - it was hard to use the inflater chuck on the trispoke (but this reflects cack-handedness rather than an inherent problem), and the inflater chuck had come apart in my seatpack.  Once all that was sorted, I proceeded to contribute to global warming by releasing the entire cylinder contents into the atmosphere.  At least Tony was coming to rescue me.Which he did, having ridden to a 56:28 result.  Back to the HQ to have a cup of tea and see what other riders had managed.  Matt Bottrill looked to be the clear winner with 50:52, an astonishing performance and indicative of good chances for a placing at the forthcoming British Time Trial Championship in three weeks' time.Postscript.  Back home I went to pump up the repaired rear tyre, only to find the tube was defective and wouldn't hold even a smidgen of air.  So the CO2 would have all dissipated even had I got the inflater attached correctly.

So there I was, on my own with plans to get out on the bike somewhat thwarted by heavy rain showers, and very much at a loose end.  So I took it upon myself to tidy up this website.I've checked over the menu links, which now all seem to be properly functional.  I deleted some that were merely hangovers from a prior incarnation.  A few new menu items were added.In the Main Menu:

• Recently Played Music - now links to a page with information from my Last.FM page, in turn derived from audioscrobbling from my Squeezebox (so it doesn't include CDs and LPs that I play, not anything I listen to on the iPod
• Books from my Library - links to a widget from LibraryThing that scans through my library 25 books at a time, randomly selected.  This replaces a sidebar module that used to show books currently being read, but which was usually out of date.
• About flies&bikes - explains abit about the websites I maintain.

• Recent Publications - properly integrates a feed from an institutional publication repository.
• Why Study fruit flies? - link now works!

• Links tidied up to point to a new browser window/tab.
• Added link to the Team Grumpy website.

Here in the UK, there are few haematophagous arthropods which trouble me. While mosquitoes provide a minor irritation, the Scottish midge Culicoides impunctatus is massively annoying, principally because of the sheer number that typically assail one. For me the bite is more irritating as it occurs rather than an itching after-effect. Generally I come into contact with the Scottish midge while on cycling holiday, and swarms of the blighters can make even the most lovely campsite intolerable.  However the beast that irritates me more than any other is Neotrombicula autumnalis, commonly known as the harvest mite or berry bug. The common names reflect both the season in which N. autumnalis larvae become active and the activities which bring people into contact with them. This blog article was inspired by a pair of bites I picked up this week.[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="220" caption="Life cycle of trombiculid mites"][/caption]Most people who suffer from N. autumnalis first become aware of quite severed itching and raised reddened lumps that are typically found around clothing constrictions, typically underwear elastic. But by this time the little devils are usually long gone, leaving several days of irritation behind them. So what are harvest mites?The biology of trombiculid mitesHarvest mites are small arthropods, with a life cycle as shown in the figure (from Wikipedia). It's a typical mite life cycle: the offending stage is the 6 legged larval stage, of which more later: one phase of the nymph stage and the adults are active predators on other small arthropods.This life cycle diagram is a slight simplification.  The nymph stage is actually composed of three stages, the protonymph (an inactive stage entered after the larva has finished feeding and left its host), the deutonymph (the active nymph stage during which the animal feeds on other, presumably smaller, arthropods) and the tritonymph (a second inactive stage after which the adult emerges).[caption id="attachment_998" align="alignleft" width="150" caption="Larval trombiculid mite"][/caption]For this purpose, it's the larval stage that is of interest: this is the only stage in which the animal feeds on a vertebrate host (see image to left). These beasts lurk on the tips of grass and other leaves awaiting a passing animal.  When the animal brushes the leaf, the larval mite climbs aboard and crawls about, seeking a suitable attachment point.  For some animals this will be areas devoid of hair or thin skin, such as around the eyes or in the ears.  In the case of humans, this is frequently at points of clothing constriction - usually the last place you want to develop an itch!Larval trombiculid mites don't actually bite, or drink blood (so my depiction of them as haematophagous is rather stretching the point): rather they pierce the skin, injecting digestive juices and sucking up the resulting fluids.  This goes on for a few days after which the mite drops off the host and falls to the substrate.  This process causes a tube of hardened skin called the stylostome to form, and it's through this that the mite continues to feed.Apparently it's only after the mite has departed that the bite becomes noticeable, by which time the culprit is long gone.  Fortunately in temperate areas such as the UK, trombiculid mites only have one annual generation, with larvae being active in summer and early autumn (hence the association with berry picking, crop harvests and, in my case, mushroom collecting).  In tropical areas, trombiculids breed rather more frequently, with the life cycle being completed in around 40 days.Trombiculid mites and diseaseHere in the UK, harvest mites don't transmit disease, but this isn't the case elsewhere.  In south east Asia, trombiculid mites are knwon to transmit scrub typhus (also known as Tsutsugamushi), caused by the bacterium Rickettsia tsutsugamushi (aka R. orientalis) - rather than being a typhus, it's actually a Rickettsiosis.Treatment of harvest mite bitesSevere attacks may lead to dermatitis as the rashes and pustules merge.  I'm not personally aware of any particularly effective treatment for the "berry bug itch".  The Pied Piper pest control website has a section on harvest mites that recommends the following - both seem to be very sensible advice. If you've visited a site known for harvest mite infestation, wash your clothes in hot soapy water, and have a good hot shower.  The larval mites will be wandering around your body and clothes, the hot wash should kill them.  Unfortunately the realisation that one may have been in infested terrain may only surface once the mites have gone and you have the itch... Scratching can cause secondary infections: temporary relief may be provided by ointments of benzocaine, hydrocortisone, calamine lotion, or other things that may be recommended.  For what it's worth, I've tried calamine lotion, it works for a very short time!The pet health website PetWellBeing.com recommends (for dogs) the topical application of steroids to alleviate the severe itching.  Ultimately, my opinion is that the best treatment is probably to ensure you don't scratch the lesion!Further readingWikipedia entry TrombiculidaeLane & Crosskey "Medical Insects and Arachnids" Pub 1993 Chapman & Hall.Wikipedia entry TsutsugamushiNote: this article should not be considered medical advice

After a working day that mostly consisted of a very long meeting, with little food and drink, I was concerned how fuelled up I was for our penultimate evening event of the 2010 season.  Actually, I didn't even get half a mile from my office en route to the race before I suffered my mishap - a rear wheel puncture!  Although I suspect my apparent desire to ride that tyre to death and bare canvas contributed, I was a bit put out, particularly as work colleagues kept stopping to comment on what a nice bike it was, as I got a bit oily and cross.  I also discovered the limitations of small pocket-sized pumps (in this case a small Topeak carbon).  Of course partly that was down to the time I had available to keep pumping, but in the end I got the tyre up to a rideable inflation (expecting to get the use of someone's track pump later).By the time I reached the start point of the race, they were just lining up the first rider to start.  I hurried over and got a number.  Good job I'm not superstitious, as I ended up as #13.  Unfortunately there wasn't an opportunity to further inflate my rear tyre, and I thought that having another go might just result in letting air out rather than getting it in, so just lined up to start.It was immediately clear that the outward leg to Chicheley was going to be tough, with a headwind. I thought I'd just take it a bit easy in a headwind, as I have done in recent races.  By Chicheley, my legs felt strangely ineffective, with twitches which were rather reminiscent of times I'd had cramp when racing - fortunately I didn't start cramping.Cornering at Chicheley, it was good to get a bit of tailwind, and by North Crawley, I could see #12 ahead of me.  Or at least a rider I "thought" was #12!  Onwards and past the spot where I took a high speed tumble the other week and down the hill to the bottom of the finishing climb, all the while gaining on #12.  One final effort and up the climb to finish in 23:58, with #11 and #12 crossing the line just a bit before me.A mixed result: I really didn't feel on top of the form I've had this season, but on the other hand 23:58 isn't too bad for me on this course, judging from recent rides.Looking forward to upcoming open events, I'm riding a '25' on the F1B/25 on Sunday, and I plan to ride a '50' on 5th September.  After that, I have what will probably be my final event of 2010, the Duo Normand, on 19th September.  Look out for the preview of the 2010 Duo Normand, and the report after the event.

It was with some trepidation that I set off for the Finsbury Park CC '25'.  For one thing, I'd not been on a bike for a week preceding the event, as I'd been working at a residential school (and to make matters worse, the week's diet was less than satisfactory).  For another thing, i was relatively late in the start field, and I'm never so keen on starting so late, partly because of traffic levels, and partly because any wind seems to get stronger as the morning warms up.  One other factor was the number of events I've ridden along this stretch of road recently - I've getting a bit bored of it!On the morning, the weather was kind.  Except for the northerly wind, as it turned out.  Lining up at the start it was clear I was in for a lonely ride, as half a dozen riders in front of me didn't start.  The exception was Sam Barker (110), and I was never going to see him during the race!  A bit of banter ensued with the time keepers and pusher off, wherein it transpired that my enthusiastic arrival with 6 minutes to spare wasn't going to be rewarded in any material form!Anyway, off I went southbound, dodging the potholes (which resemble archaeological excavations rather than road defects) at the Tempsford flyover before joining the A1.  This was rather nice, as the aforementioned wind was providing quite a bit of assistance.  Unfortunately this state of affairs only lasted as far as the frst 3 miles or so, where the course turns north at the Sandy roundabout.  As expected the northbound leg to Buckden was rather tough.  Rather than muscling it, I chose to down gear slightly, which seemed to do the trick.  Once round the Buckden roundabout, things got markedly easier as the tailwind assisted me.This has to have been the first time trial in ages where I didn't see anyone - either by catching them or by being caught.  I finished in 57:28, which I was quite pleased with given the circumstances of the past week.