the bike project

wow, its been a while... i have been to and come back from south africa, pretty much finished a thesis and started a new bike project! in amsterdam there are far too many uncool bikes (yes yes thats my opinion) and i have owned a few of them, so now its time to make an uber-cool bike, as only those who ride bikes all day can do, its time for the messenger bike! or rather, cos i may never be hard/cool enough to be a messenger, its time for the fake-enger bike! only a few rules, low budget, low number of gears (preferably just one), low chance of injury (so it will have brakes)... after scouring the online marketplaces i found just the bike, it was a half hour train ride away, the right size and not very expensive... i bet you dont know what 1985 shimano 600 looks like, i give u a hint, 5 gears, i think ornate is the word



so its gonna be a 4 maybe 5 phase process, these photos are at the end of phase 1, ie i had pumped up the new tires and straightened the saddle etc... just wait for it, oooh its going to be shweet!

writing on the wall

any ideas what it means? saw it on a wall opposite from a great curry in cambridge




choc chip banana muffins anyone? mmm good...

racing again, at last

so i think i have a little theory about fitness... its got to do with there being a difference between being 'in shape' and being 'out of shape', ja ja i know thats pretty obvious, but especially obvious to me now that i have finally raced a bike again! i think being out of shape is like having an engine limiter, u got plenty of power but ur never gonna be able to use it all. well at least thats how i felt when i had to sit down and swallow half way up a few hills during the race... hmmm humbling! but fun! so i rocked up thinking i would be the only guy who knew which way to wear a helmet at the amateur section of the benelux (belgium netherlands luxembourg ie international) championships only to find 160 other guys on flash bikes with sponsored kit all looking really fast (and some of them werent only fast in the parking lot), amateur my ass... so i got thumped, but i still beat a good few of them so its all good, the best part about it was that my knee held out fine so... its time to get out of my 'out of shape' state, into an 'in shape' state so i can train properly and get fast, oh ja that was the rest of my theory.

barcelona

wow that was a sneaky holiday! whats the best part about your girlfriend getting a new job? when she books you tickets to barcelona to celebrate! even the bus driver was cool, im almost ashamed to say id never heard of 'cat power' before, but it made for the most mellow bus ride from an airport into a major city i ever had, and then the bus driver busted our some kruder and dorfmeister for good measure, nice... after that it was a blur of sun, tapas, spanish beer, gaudi and remarkable short spanish people! or is that just cos the dutch are remarkably tall... there was a great system of bikes that you could drop off and pick up where ever there were stands (www.bicing.com) only it was all in spanish so i had no idea how it worked other than that. what a cool city!

bye bye bicycle

thanks for all the comments on my last post, im looking forward to seeing and riding (not racing) with you all again soon too! is it something in what i say that makes everyone want to race me? or am i just so over-competitive that i am hyper-sensitive to any kind of challenge..? hmmm i bet i can still eat more pancakes than u! hehe
well they say you havent lived in amsterdam until your bike has been stolen, ok... so now that i have lived, can i have my bike back please? no no dont worry, it was just my crusty city bike (sniff sniff and ill miss the rusty ol bugga) that has been recycled... maybe there is a limit to the number of bicycles one can have imposed by the universe, cos no sooner had i built the sycip again and poof there goes my crusty bike... oh well back to walking!

a well spent monday night

after the complaints about the lack of racing on my racing blog and in response to the cocky emails about how strong i will need to be when i come back to south africa, i thought i would post a few photos to show you what i think of all that... jip, those are very light rims, crazy light spokes, xtr hubs and there is a drop of lube in each alu nipple: just for you dobinson! he he bring it on fatboy, yes... im still hungry :-)

making candy

my job is giving candy to strangers... cool huh?

maart roert zijn staart

iiiits snowing!





last week it was almost summer, but in retrospect it was a bit early for that summer haircut... (the title means: march wags its tail - i think the ducth have a joke about the bad weather for every month actually)

2 quick things

(1)i just read something on the MIT OpenCourseWare site (http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Science--Technology--and-Society/index.htm - if you enjoy the site youre also a nerd!) regarding sociology of knowledge... you see now iv been wondering just how is knowledge created - more specifically: how are objects of knowledge formed? - and it was put so simply that i feel a bit stupid for wondering: by experiments, by theories and framing questions and by ethical presuppositions...
(2)but back on earth iv also been thinking about how to wash my bike living on the 6th floor of a building without a garden... just how angry can a landlord get if he catches you washing your bike in the shower (or a girlfriend for that matter)? at least the grease seems to leave a slightly sticky layer on the floor rather than a slippery one... anyone got a good recipe for bike wash from common household cleaning products?

why stress?

in all my stressing about writing a masters thesis i have forgotten to write anything here about it, which is stupid cos seeing your own words on a subject most of the time allows you to think about it more clearly, or realise that you are completely stuffed and need to start again, what ever the case, write it down, it really helps... i have been thinking off adding guest writers to this blog, anyone keen, just post a comment and ill contact you. So the one thing I have realised while stressing about thesis writing (you see i decided to force myself to finish by the middle of july by buying a flight back to SA) is that interesting topics are not hard to come by, there are plenty of controversies in science and loads of inconsistent policies in the political and scientific arena, but how (the big H word) on earth does one approach it from a science dynamics or sociology of science point of view? ok ok i can almost see all the engineers cringing at the use of the 's' word (sociology) but its not all up in the air here, there is some wild hugely computer intesive quantitative research going on even in the realms of the sociology department, i could recommend a paper (have u read it yet dave?) but im not sure ud read it... back to the plan: i have meetings with two potential supervisors today and im not going to leave their offices until i have 3 examples of great methodologies that will work for a 4 month thesis projects in my hand! oh an i maxed out the credit card and bought lots of xtr too...