John O’Groats with (Sign)post…
For some strange reason I find this really inspiring!
Think I might try and do this in 2011. Touring bike and panniers here we come.
HGV near miss
This morning I was cycling down Kennington Road towards Waterloo. There was a large HGV in front indicating to turn left into Kennington Lane. I suddenly saw a cyclist riding down the inside. The lorry was going wide right to go left. I shouted at her just in time and fortunately she stopped in time to avoid being crushed by the lorry. My heart was literally in my mouth.
She came round the right hand side of the lorry and caught up with me at the lights. I apologised for shouting but explained why I had. She seemed a bit shocked. Anyway, better that way than under the wheels of it.
Edit: Some good diagrams showing the blind spots on HGVs via www.movingtargetzine.com.
Strip out
Our good friends Nick and Zoe bought a flat above theirs in Kentish Town recently. Unfortunately it needed a bit of work doing to it. They’re going to get some builders in but I suggested we do the strip out instead of paying builders for it.
So Nick hired a van and got his brother George down from Glasgow for the weekend. A fairly long task list but we go most of it done in one weekend rather than two! Result.
We got the following done:
- Kitchen stripped out, units, tiles, floor.
- Bathroom stripped out, tiles and sink.
- All built in furniture removed, the door to the living room removed.
- All carpets and underlays removed.
- All skirtings removed.
- Plenty of wall paper stripped.
- A fairly large hole made in the living room wall (my favourite bit) !
- An enormous hardwood deck in the garden which had rotten in most places.
Excuse the rubbish pictures.
Neil’s blog
My friend Neil now has a blog worth checking it out. Mainly cycling related. Another one to add to my RSS feeds.
Building Design FAIL
More and more magazines seem to be struggling with making revenue when there is so much seemingly real time information coming out on the web. One of those organisations is Building Design who are owned by UBM media. They’ve stopped free circulation of their weekly paper to architects due to falling ad revenue. They’ve even locked the website down so that only registered users can login, presumably so they can track users habits and provide greater insight for their advertisers. The trouble is that the login system has completely broken down today. So as well as no weekly paper, the website is completely inaccessible. Seems like one hell of a balls up, but then that’s computers for you.
So instead of seeing news stories, I’m seeing this.
a new route required
Whilst Peckham Rye is being dug up I found what I thought to be a little detour to avoid the road works and take me onto a quieter road. Unfortunately not. It seems to have placed me on the most dangerous roundabout I’ve ever had the misfortune to use. If you click on the map below it’ll take you to the street view version of it. You can clearly see the drivers going East not giving way correctly on the roundabout (the transit and grey 4×4). I take the route of the red car and have almost been hit a couple of times. When asking the driver if they saw me I’ve had some pretty shocking responses, one proceeded to ram me with her car and drive up on the kerb, one apologised for almost killing me and the other had their passenger get out and try and beat me up. I’d report them to the police but I’ve got little hope of them doing anything about it really. They’re just not interested in cycling related issues. They are interested in giving tickets out at red lights and raising revenue though.
A still image, but better
Found this little video on Tim Crocker’s site.
There’s something incredibly beautiful about it. Perfectly framed and composed architectural photography but with the movement of people within. Stunning and very inspirational!