Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear!
A chilly morning greeted me as I left to ride over to Pitstone for the Icknield RC hilly 30k time trial. This is a regular feature on my early season, which I enter either solo (as this year) or as a 2-up event with my
Team Grumpy partner. No problems riding over to the race HQ: I chose to ride along the new Stoke Hammond bypass, a nicely surfaced dual carriageway. Having left in good time in case of incident (punctures spring to mind!), I arrived at the hall in plenty of time. Well, actually, a bit too much time.After a spot of conversation, I trundled off to the start line. By this time I was feeling rather chilly, and I noticed that all the riders lined up at the start were shivering, so I wasn't alone there.
Eventually, my start time came, and off I went. The course leads past a recreation ground and through Ivinghoe. The recreation ground is a bit of a problem, with parents in large 4x4s stopping to deliver children to Sunday football matches. As has happened before, I got stalled quite badly by one such monster vehicle. Shortly after Ivinghoe, the course turns left and climbs up the shoulder of Ivinghoe Beacon. At this point, I knew I was in for a tough ride: I really struggled over the top, and indeed got caught for a minute on the way down the other side (only about 10 minutes into the race!).
At the bottom of the descent it's a sharp left to join the road out to Billington. This was characterised by some pretty bad potholes, and then the sharp climb that is Billington Hill. This year I decided against muscling a big gear and slipped the chain into the small plate. Nevertheless, I crested the hill in an embarrassingly small gear. Fortunately the speed picked up as I descended to the roundabout where I joined the Leighton Buzzard bypass. from there it was reasonably quick, past a couple of roundabouts and up to Wing. During this stretch, I was passed by #78, and was caught by the scratch rider (Steve Golla, #80) in Wing. The roads continued to be of really poor quality* as I descended from Wing. Dodging the potholes and traffic, I eventually reached the turn to Wingrave. Up the slight hill and through Wingrave - turned left at the duckpond (has to be one of the more quaint course descriptions), where my right tri-bar pad decided to leap off into the abyss**. Ignoring the abrasive possibilities of riding on the remaining velcro patches, I pressed on to Mentmore crossroads and turned right towards Mentmore and the final climb. Not too bad, though #79 caught me shortly after cresting the hill - now I was the last rider on the road! The descent could have been fast, but I found myself inhibited by the big red signs exhorting road users to go slowly: "Failed Road Surface" was the hazard*. Dodging huge potholes and associated gravel, the descent past the Mentmore country club was quite quick. One last sprint and I crossed the line to finish in 50:41.
This wasn't a particularly triumphant performance, but hopefully will contribute to returning form as I return from the injury and illness of recent weeks.
*I rode a total of about 1o9km today, including riding too and from the event, and I can say that I was appalled by the state of the roads I was on: they would embarrass a third world country, and this must be one of the wealthiest counties in England. Shame on the local councils! Last winter has absolutely trashed them. It made riding the event rather unpleasant at times.
**I chose to ride home via Wingrave and retrieved the tri-bar pad, which will henceforth be secured with a rubber band.
This was a gloriously sunny morning: chilly when I set out to ride over to Stony Stratford, but warm for the race and even warmer for the ride home. This event was the last of the early season morning time trials - the next event being on Wednesday evening.
This isn't my favourite course - I dislike the climb to Nash, which doesn't really suit an overweight time triallist, and the road surface is pretty poor in places after two harsh winters. I arrived very early and hung around for about 40 minutes or so before I started. Once off, I felt pretty good for the first few miles, despite having to dodge some new potholes a dead rabbit and a live pheasant. I still felt OK when I started the Nash climb, though I intentionally selected a lower gear than I normally would (this generally slows my ride overall). I got to the turn in reasonably good shape, and could see that Richard, who'd started a minute before me was on a good ride (he did a PB, I later found).
The return leg from the turn was fairly straightforward - I'd noted some of the worst potholes and road surfaces on the way out so I expected the really dreadful section just after passing through Beachampton (why can't those responsible for the roads repair the blasted potholes?). Unfortunately I felt the time on my computer just slipping away as I made a last effort before the line to finish in 28:52.
All in all, a really good morning - lovely weather, very sociable - I had an enjoyable ride home with Richard.
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The image shows a view of the new Unity desktop. A panel of application and admin icons runs down the left of the screen. This is fine as far as it goes, but accessing less frequently used applications becomes a bit more of a chore - you need to click the icon with a magnifying glass and a plus symbol to see further applications, but to reach one you may need three or four clicks of the mouse.
The application panel autohides - you bring it back by mousing over the top left corner of the screen. I imagine you can tweak these settings, but I've no idea how yet!
To switch desktops, you click the desktop icon and choose the desktop you want to move to. Again, this is clunkier that my previous Gnome incarnation, where I could just click on the workspace switcher in the task bar to do this. If any reader knows how to add applets (such as a workspace switcher) to the Unity taskbar, please tell me!
The taskbar is a bit like that on Apple's OS X - when applications are maximised, it takes on that application's toolbar menu items - unlike OS X, when the application isn't maximised, these revert to the window title bar. This seems an excellent compromise, especially where screen real estate is at a premium.
I'm less happy with compiz )the compositing engine for fancy desktop effects) on this notebook: it won't run. This may be having an impact on some of the fluidity of the application panel and desktop workspace navigation. The non-functionality of compiz is not to do with Unity per se: it's not working if I start Ubuntu in old-style Gnome (via the Ubuntu Classic option at the log in screen). Still, I dare say I'll work on that. It would be nice to switch workspaces by mousing to the edge of the screen and rotating a desktop cube. Interestingly, at one point in my monkeying around in Unity, I persuaded Docky to run, so maybe compiz isn't completely broken.