just worn out.. hopefully, & a bit of beach

not so long ago when I was competing and doing high training volumes and lots of high intensity stuff.. intervals, time-trials, sprints and the like becoming chronically overtrained was a very real danger but because that awareness was foremost in my mind as I followed my training schedule and monitored my performances the risk of actually finding myself in that state was relatively low.. although I was never very good at taking it easy. With ‘training’ no longer a feature of my life however, instead having been replaced with “just riding”, sea kayak days out and surf kayak sessions I stopped paying attention to how my body was feeling. I got used to feeling tired while riding through the Andes, understandably I think…. and used to feeling tired when I transitioned from doing that to guiding 7 days per week on the water in the Hebrides last year.. got so used to in fact it just became normal. On it’s own I think it wouldn’t have been too much of a problem to recover over the winter but throw in a little of the emotional stress from setting out on a completely different career path, some sleepless nights and “bam!” Overtired. At least that’s my analysis. I’ve been in denial the last month or so as I felt increasingly rough.. couldn’t resist a good surf session or heading out on the bike. Tired in the mornings..? Yeah, that’s what coffee is for.. See I never felt like I’ve been doing much riding, only around 100 miles/week – relatively little.. but throw in a couple of good surf sessions each week – the intensity of which can be akin to a 2-hour long interval session on a bike and looking back it’s easy to see where I went wrong. So the last 2 weeks I’ve successfully stayed away from paddles and pedals.. almost, the exception being leisurely spins down to the beach. Recovery will take a bit longer with those spins but I can’t live without it. Trade-off. Anyway, that’s my version of events as to why the photo heavy posts of late and precious little re riding and kayaking. With lymph nodes approaching the size of golfballs I’m hoping the medical tests will all point towards the same conclusion :-)

I was down at the beach this morning with friends, had my surf boat with me in case the waves were unmissable.. but luckily they weren’t so while the others hit the surf I just wandered in the early morning sun. I had my Holga lens in my pocket.

I have always been fascinated by the deep pools hollowed in the sand by wave action around the rocks. Deep, clear and green. As a child I always felt the need to float a model boat on the liquid crystal. Still do I think but in the absence of a model boat I instead appreciate the painterly tones in the sand and water.. rendered quite nicely by a Holga lens.

some nice patterns in the sand too..

and a bit of colour from the lifeguard flags

it’s not about the camera…. much..

I feel as if I am at something of a photographic crossroads… it’s been on the horizon for some time now but my arrival at this point was recently hastened.. well, if the end of 2011 is still recent, by the seemingly unrelated act of upgrading my Mac to OS 10.7 Lion.When I upgraded I found the driver software for my Nikon film scanner would no longer work. Nikon stopped making and supporting their range of film scanners years ago – which is a shame as they were really good, and not inexpensive, bits of kit. The simple fact of being faced with forking out for a third party scanner driver such as Silverfast or Vuescan is making me re-evaluate my whole ethos towards shooting film.

whenever I think about the reasons I like film this is one of the images that springs to mind most often.. the garbage men in Bogotá (cropped here). It's not a particularly remarkable or colourful image, and thus perhaps that is why the subtleties become more apparent. When viewed full size there is an organic quality to it that is hard to define.. it's partly a combination of a subtle graininess combined with the particular rendition of the pastel tones - due both to the film and Leica glass I think. Some folk would say that you can do that digitally.. but I don't think you can, not in the same way.

Lance Armstrong said “It’s not about the bike”.. but I think it is.. a little bit.. especially in my case. It’s the same with me and cameras.. it’s not all about the camera and it’s not all about the film  but it is about a bit of both. With regards to film I like the colour palettes and the more “organic” quality of a film rendering as opposed to a digital rendering, and I like that it is a truly genuine way of recording a moment in that there is no little preview on a screen to tempt me to re-evaluate a shot on the spot. But I wouldn’t shoot film on any old camera.. lets say my camera of choice was a standard film-based SLR like a Nikon F5 or F6. I wouldn’t hesitate to get rid of it and get a digital SLR. I don’t use SLRs however, I don’t enjoy using an SLR in the way I enjoy using a rangefinder. It’s not all about the camera but the right camera inspires me to get out and take pictures.. For years I’ve used Leica rangefinders.. first an M6, and then an M7 which with it’s aperture priority auto-exposure mode missed the point for me so I replaced it with the ultimately basic MP.. and that’s how I’ve been ever since. The MP is a wonderful tool to use so it inspires me to use it. Except I haven’t been of late.. the cost of film and processing means I shoot less and less.. I have a digital camera but it’s not an inspiring tool to use so the bottom line is that when I am at home I just don’t shoot. Much.

Leica MP... a simply wonderful thing

The digital camera is a Panasonic GF1.. it’s handling and form is somewhat similar to a rangefinder and the prime lenses are very good so as an inexpensive tool to take on expeditions, and that I don’t mind breaking,  it’s perfect (I wrote about it here). It is very definitely not an inspiring piece of kit but it doesn’t need to be because when I’m on the road I’m inspired anyway and will shoot no matter what camera I have. It’s a bit like having a beautiful Japanese knife to use in the kitchen at home and a capable but merely functional folding stainless knife to use when camping.. the end result is the same but the process is somehow so much less satisfying.  Prior to the GF1 I had a Zeiss Ikon rangefinder to take on the bike.. a much less expensive thing than the Leica MP but retaining many of the attributes, though not all, that make the M-series cameras such a pleasure to use.

Zeiss Ikon.. quite nice but not in the same league...

So now here I am looking at the cost of third party scanning software.. Silverfast (£400-ish for Silverfast 8) or a mere £50-approx for Vuescan. Each has it’s own pros and cons and relatively speaking Vuescan is a very cheap way of keeping my Nikon scanner in service.. with income low at the moment however I am thinking carefully about the ££ I spend so I could not help but consider alternatives that would get me shooting more at home… i.e with regards to film do I give up, sell up and move on and likely shoot more or stick with it for the time being. The Nikon scanner is worth a fair wedge on the secondhand market at the moment, being a sought-after bit of kit… the Zeiss Ikon would fetch some useful £££ .. and the MP would fetch “quite a lot of £££”.. especially as I have a rare Summicron-M 35mm in matching black paint finish.. the significance of which you would have to be something of a Leica nerd to appreciate. The problem comes in finding something digital to replace it with that is as pleasurable and inspiring to use. The obvious choice is a Leica M9.. but at £5K+ for the body that is out of the question right now and at that price I think I’d be reluctant to stick it in my panniers on rough-stuff bike trips… Next in line would probably have to be the new Fuji X-Pro 1… It gets good reviews but does not appear to be fully sorted in terms of its handling.. and it is a lot of wedge to fork out for something that ultimately could annoy the hell out of me… and somehow it isn’t going to have the soul of the MP.. so I’m stuck. I don’t know what else there is. It’s quite possible I have created my own private camera-flavoured holy grail in my mind that doesn’t exist… the ‘experience’ or the ‘soul’ of an MP, with the image quality of an M9 at an affordable price….

Nikon LS4000.. boring but very useful bit of kit, nearly 10 years old now and near as dammit irreplaceable. By way of an aside the background is a large flag I 'borrowed' from the finish line of the 1995 Sydney-Hobart yacht race.. good party that was :-)

Part of my problem is that the MP is such a lovely thing to use, such a beautiful piece of engineering I think I might regret selling it.. so say I keep it even if I rarely use it.. I would have to keep the Nikon scanner to be able to do anything useful with my processed films (I prefer color slide so I don’t bother with a traditional darkroom).. so all of a sudden the only thing left to sell to fund a digital camera is the Zeiss Ikon… and that probably won’t go far at all towards something else that is going to inspire me to shoot. Back to square one. The Ikon might just stretch to funding a Fuji x100.. the fixed lens predecessor to X-Pro 1.. it has a fast lens at a focal length equivalent to 35mm, my most used length.. an optical finder and has the right look and feel. Fujinon lenses have always been excellent too. It might make a good replacement for the GF1 also if I decide I can live with just one focal length (instead of 2..) on my bike trips…

So after all that thinking out loud I still don’t know what I’m going to do… all I know is that the pressure is building to do something…. stay tuned!

some stuff on offer.. surf kayak and a useful book

feeling mellow after a lovely morning of spring time surf in the sun and easing myself into an afternoon and evening of being productive…. Firstly however a couple of things on behalf of friends that may be of interest… in no particular order of importance:

First is a Mega Boost xtec surf kayak for sale, belongs to a surfing buddy. In really nice condition this is the top end spec – foam-cored vac-bagged carbon kevlar – very light and very stiff. It has the usual minor scuffs you’d expect from normal use but has no damage, and has never sustained any. The white flecks you can see around the cockpit rim are surf wax rather than scrapes to the gelcoat… it improves grip on the paddle shaft but sticks to everything like the proverbial to a blanket. A terrific high performance boat with a new value of £1400. Asking price is £650 (no fins), and you might get the sponge included if you ask nicely – it is a very good sponge, I borrowed it today having forgotten my own and was sorely tempted to not give it back ;-) The boat, and sponge, are  located in west Cornwall but courier can be arranged, and is not as expensive as you might imagine at £35-£40 to mainland UK. If you’re interested drop me a line via the comments field and I’ll put you in touch.

The second thing is a book and a useful one at that. I have a friend with many years in the health and wellbeing business. She’s a prolific author and really knows what she is talking about.. and at only £0.98 for the Kindle download version this one really has to be worth a look if you’re looking to lose a few pounds. I like the way it is presented as a series of useful tips, small differences that over time can result in a big change – which is by far the best way to do it rather than embark on a crazy diet. It doesn’t matter if you don’t have a Kindle, you can get free emulation software as a download from Amazon that runs as a kindle on your mac or PC. Click the image below to go the relevant Amazon page.

There, obligations and promises for the day fulfilled :-)

bicycle induced musings on entrepreneurship.. or something

My sister gave me a copy of Steve Jobs’ biography for my birthday (yep, one happened recently, shame on you if you forgot…). I wondered if she was trying to tell me something… perhaps along the lines of “become a multi-millionaire entrepreneur so you can buy me a house“. Or something. No matter what you might think of mister Jobs you have to admire what he achieved. I don’t think I’m much of an entrepreneur, if I was I’d probably at least have a yacht by now ;-) I frequently wonder if being successful in business is compatible with a love of riding bikes and paddling kayaks. I tell myself that I’m not a wildly successful entrepreneur because my priorities are riding bikes and paddling kayaks rather than making money.. But perhaps that’s bollocks, after all one only has to look at Mike Sinyard, founder of Specialized Bicycle Company, to realise that riding bikes and being successful in business are not necessarily mutually exclusive. No, rather I think sometimes my problem is simply one of discipline and prioritisation.. and of course  ”not being a natural entrepreneur” is always a handy excuse to have in one’s back pocket. Case in point yesterday, Monday, dawned beautifully sunny.. a cheeky Monday morning session in the surf turned into a cheeky late lunch of a Cornish pasty sitting in the sun with a friend on the harbour wall in Hayle which turned into “oh gosh is that the time..! Hardly worth starting anything now“. Then again I worked on the weekend.. well, some of it, and I’ve swapped the steady security of an employed career for the hard work, uncertainty and much reduced income of setting out alone so one may as well take advantage of the non-material benefits that brings. Of course I have confidence in myself in that I’ve always been disciplined and prioritised correctly when it really mattered, I wouldn’t have the freedom I have now I suspect if I hadn’t. There it is, confidence in myself.. that’s what this is about I think, confidence in my ability to be successful at whatever I do.  Why am I writing all this.. errm, well it’s just something I was thinking about on my bike this morning, while riding home from a small business workshop I’ll have you know.. So not a ride for pleasure but rather for business -although I did very much enjoy the 60km round trip through the early springtime Cornish countryside.

Speaking of riding, despite the lack of words on the topic I’m doing plenty. Interestingly with the change in lifestyle much more of my riding is “utility” riding. My Nomad is getting more use than my regular road bikes thanks to it’s ability to carry stuff. This is no bad thing, I fitted a new Brooks saddle and it needs some serious breaking in before the next adventure.

That leads nicely into something else I was reflecting on while riding this morning… how life has scaled down, in a nice way, since leaving the corporate career. Rather than having to travel to meetings around the UK, France, Italy, Montréal etc, all of sudden I have time to make essential journeys, travel to meetings and workshops and so on all by bicycle. So much less “glamorous” but so much more satisfying. Granted I’m likely going to have to find a way to make a living well into my 70′s but “retirement” is not a concept that particularly appeals to my personality.. so long as I am doing something I enjoy. I’ll certainly have time to work as I grow older.. I’m not going to be able to sustain the same volume & intensity of cycling, kayaking, hiking etc when I’m 70 as I do now so I may as well have something else constructive and enjoyable to do. Well, that’s what I tell myself when I’m out in the surf on a Monday morning… :-)

mikesimagination goes pro…

Regular readers will know that I’ve been contracting my software skills to Design Room Cornwall by way of expanding that business. It has been, and continues to be an enjoyable, worthwhile enterprise. Not being employed directly however meant that I also needed to take control of my own future, hence my involvement with Outset Cornwall as mentioned a couple of posts ago. With that in mind I have created  my own site promoting my development skills with the obvious aim of building my own client base. The plan is to continue to work in partnership with Design Room for all their development and also where clients are looking for a full-on graphic design package (branding, brochures that kind of thing), while I concentrate on the online/application design.

I’m enjoying myself. It might sound a bit weird but writing code is a creative pursuit.. it takes me back to my early roots as an aeronautical engineer writing fluid dynamics (aerodynamics) software, taking satisfaction from creating something that does something.. and does it well. There is a pride in not just creating something but creating something that is as good as it can be. Without being deliberately immodest (!) I have a talent for both visual and technical design so I feel lucky now to be in a position where I can indulge both of those, and to be able to bring some significant engineering discipline and experience to the mix.

The “mikesimagination” brand has been around for a long time so it made sense to stick with that, a lot of people know me either as a result of this blog or my photography. For the next 12 months or so I’ll be operating on a sole-trader basis as I will be taking time out this summer to return to the Outer Hebrides as a sea kayak guide, continuing to work with Design Room of course, and I want to see how things go in general. In the future if the business grows I can shorten “mikesimagination” to “MI” or “MI-Studio” or something without changing my look or logo which is handy – may as well be positive and plan for growth.. or I may end up becoming a permanent part of Design Room Cornwall. Either way it is all rather exciting.

My photo portfolio is down temporarily while I redesign it and integrate it with the more professional mikesimagination now residing at the existing mikesimagination.net domain. Clicking on the screenshot above will take you there. Spread the word… please! In the meantime it is time for me to knuckle down to something which does not come naturally… marketing planning and execution :-|

Trial Balance Consulting

Reblogged from the Design Room journal:

• 
• 

Although it may seem like it but here at Design Room we don’t just swan around eating cake and hobnobbing at wedding fayres, we actually work too! Back in November we teamed up with web developer Mike Hayes who worked with us on a redesign of our own website. It’s added a new dimension to Design Room and expanded the range of work we are able to take on.

Read more… 222 more words

click the link above that begins "reblogged.." to read more. I was going to write about this myself, and perhaps I still will but in the meantime Sal at Design Room did a lot of the hard work for me. This was an enjoyable project to work on as I got to play around with some stuff I'd not done before such as Ajax for certain asynchronous elements as well as work with a brilliant client who gave us a fantastically positive testimonial. A good start to 2012 I think :-) By the way, they do eat a lot of cake at DR, especially when I'm not around but despite that I'm feeling very positive for the future growth of this side of the business. I remain self-employed however so exploring all sorts of possibilities for putting my skills to good use as I continue this adventure outside of the career world... stay tuned as always!

a cimmerian new look..

this site was way overdue for a refresh so in honour of all the dark things that I like such as coffee, cerveza Salta Negra and rubber… lets say, rubber as in bicycle tyres ok..  I’ve gone all a bit cimmerian, now there’s a good word <sneezes from the dust and cobwebs billowing out of the pages of the thesaurus*..>. The dictionary definition of the adjective form is “dark” but interestingly Cimmeria was also the fictional homeland of a race of barbarians, quite appropriate really if you think about it.. that well known wiki site says of the Cimmerians “.. a people forged by those very harsh conditions of their land… hardiness…  many other impressive skills. They can climb seemingly unscalable cliffs, track humans and animals with ease, and stalk their prey without making a sound. They are tall, dark with light colored eyes, and exceptionally strong..“  Yup, that’ll do. The most well known cimmerian is Conan the Barbarian, relative to whom one hopes that one is somewhat more articulate despite, or perhaps because of, one’s lack of a rabbit skin jockstrap.

I just need one of these now…

Anyway, I digress… It was about time I tidied up, or rather trashed, some of the old static page content, the remaining static pages I have yet to decide what to do with. I want to keep them around in some form as they get a lot of traffic.. so folk clearly are finding them useful. I haven’t finished twiddling around with it yet so further changes are likely to creep in but in the meantime I hope you like it. The header image, by the way, is from cycling across the Salar de Uyuni last year..

hasta pronto!

* when I was 11 years old my english teacher said to me “buy yourself a copy of Roget’s Thesaurus, it ill be one of the most useful books you ever own.” So I did, and she was right, it is a terrific thing to have on the shelf, full of the richness of the English language..

a couple of surf kayaks for sale

** both of these are now sold **

a good friend of mine is selling a couple of surf boats to make room in the garage for.. another surf boat.. more truthfully I think it’s wifey that is selling the boats as most of us know that these things make very good garage decorations ;-) Pictures below.. I’m sorely disappointed I cannot make any sly remarks about weeds in the paving or the poor state of the lawn although I am wondering about those brown patches… anyway I digress.. The stealthy looking black one is a Mega Maverick in ‘x-tech’ full foam cored carbon/kevlar construction. Usual scratches but good condition, great boat, light and very fast with a tiny radar cross-section…. £350 including standard Mega fins (though of course you’d be well advised to buy an additional set of my own carbon fins to make it go even faster and harder ;-). The rather more colourful boat is a Mega Jester IC boat in standard glass construction. A complete steal at £100 .. worth it even if you don’t surf and want something more original than an old bathtub in which to plant some daisies or something..

If you’re interested drop me a comment below – it won’t get published but it’ll give me your email and I’ll put you in touch.

wakeboarding 1927…

found this morning in the boatyard photo archives.. proof that the “extreme sport” of wakeboarding may in fact have been invented in Portmellon in 1927 ;-)

One suspects that aerial moves were not on the menu with this set-up…

making a carbon Greenland paddle.. part 1: the plug

I had planned to present this all in one go, but it’s quite involved and time consuming so I decided to break it down into stages instead… gives me something to write about :-)

This project is something I’ve been meaning to get around to for over a year, using my traditional wooden Greenland paddle with my carbon Greenland boat doesn’t feel quite right but the only commercially available carbon version I know of costs around US$500 plus the cost of shipping across the Atlantic… I was never going to fork out that much for something I could make myself.. I just needed the time…

There are a few basic ways of making such a thing.. the quickest and easiest is to carve a foam core and simply vacuum bag a carbon (or carbon/kevlar) ‘sock’ onto it.. perhaps with some additional unidirectional carbon under the skin to modify the stiffness characteristics Job done. A variation on that would be to cut a wooden stringer and laminate foam or balsa around that, carve it and vacuum bag as before.. this way would make it easier to carve a symmetrical paddle with the stringer acting as a guide. The third way which is also the most time consuming is to make a plug, take a mould from that and then use that to mould the blades in carbon. This last way makes for a very symmetrical paddle as each blade half comes from the same mould but the downside of that is that there are longituduinal seams in the final paddle that need reinforcement. There is a less obvious advantage I think in that the natural joint in the centre of the shaft opens up the possibility of making a two piece paddle quite easily. Of course once I have made the mould I can churn out multiple copies too… I may be able to sell a few.. but that is not my primary motivation. Yet.

I chose the third way.. not because I like making life hard for myself but because I gain a great deal of satisfaction from working with wood (to make the plug) and the design for a two piece Greenland paddle is something I definitely want to play about with once I’ve made myself a couple of one piece blades to use.

The basis for my paddle pattern is the West Greenland style described by Chuck Holst here. In my case I’m making an 86″ long paddle with a maximum width of 3.5″.

The plug is made from a slab of 4″ x 1″ x 60″ pine I found after some rummaging around at my local builders merchants for a piece free of knots.. this is important. I envisaged making two moulds, one for each half of a blade . or for each quarter of the paddle if you like. I could have done the job making just one mould for a half blade but in this case the plug would need to be perfectly symmetrical to guarantee a perfect join once each blade half is mated to its opposite number.. so rather than faff about with fraction of a millimetre accuracy I cut two blanks and spot glued them together for shaping. This way I could carve a complete blade/paddle half and then split the plug down the middle and create two moulds, one for each side of the blade.

The most tedious part of the fabrication is cutting the basic taper into the blanks, longitudinally with the grain.. it’s necessary to use a fine toothed saw to avoid tearing the wood and take care to keep the blade perpendicular through the blank.

cutting the longitudinal taper for one blade half

a small surform worked well for cleaning up the saw cut to a smooth taper

Once that was done for each blade half I glued them together and cut the basic blade plan-form, again using a fine tooth saw.

The basic blank was then marked up with guidelines for the various bevels and tapers before I set to with a spokeshave.. with a sharp blade this is possibly my favourite tool, I can feel the blade cutting the wood through my fingertips, feel the texture of the wood.. it is most satisfying to gently peel away the layers of timber to reveal the 3 dimensional shape of the paddle..

beginning to carve the 3-dimensional shape

Final finishing was done by eye with 60 grit and then 100 grit sandpaper.

coarse grit sandpaper wrapped around a long block for finishing the tapers

finished blade halves ready for an epoxy coating, polishing and then creating the moulds

The next stage is to glue each blank to a flat baseboard and lay on a coat of epoxy, cutting back for a perfect finish.. and then I’ll make my moulds. Stay tuned…

yes I know the grass needs a cut... nice log pile though eh?

some new Alpkit kit…

everyone I know who travels by bike, or kayak, or with a backpack relies on various little widget bags and stuff-sacks, zip loc bags and so on to stay organized. Surveying my gear recently with a view to pulling my kit together again for another expedition I realised what a sorry state some of mine was in after years of use… The stuff that arrived today from Alpkit falls firmly into the useful widget bucket rather than the “wow what a cool piece of gear” bucket… I paid for this stuff by the way.. but I don’t mind writing about Alpkit, they’re really good folk making really good gear, of which I am undoubtedly a fan, at a really good price. Yes, really.. I’ve written about some of my other Alpkit stuff, marginally more exciting too, before. Slow news day…

widget bags

So, in the pic above, on the left is a set of 4 widget bags with zips, there are going to be really handy for keeping organized in my panniers.. more durable than a zip-loc plastic bag and definitely prettier (!) they’re made out of a siliconised ripstop nylon that weighs bugger all yet should be reasonably durable.. The set is optimistically sold under the moniker  of “Mission Pack” for just £10. Recommended even if you’re not off on your travels, the nylon has a lovely silky feel to it that means, depending on what you’re in to, you could have hours of enjoyment fondling them even if you’ve nothing to put in ‘em.

The little black bags are of the same flavour but smaller with a neckstring. These will be where my passport and $$$ live this next trip. Called Orbiter Pouches, a fiver for two, mine ain’t going anywhere near orbit.. I’m not that quick on my bike, and I’m sure a zip-loc bag would have done just fine (again), I was on the site and thought “oh why not”. They’re neat.

The big red thing is just another dry-bag, this time one of the tougher flavoured ones Alpkit make.. It certainly feels tough and well made so I expect it will do exactly as it says on the proverbial tin. Brilliant.

Get any of these and a bunch of other useful stuff here : http://www.alpkit.com/shop/

I’m off to see about a retrospective comission..

a new adventure…

Over the last couple of weeks a lot of people have said “oh you lucky bugger” to me, mostly married folk with or without kids, hehe.. so I thought I might write a philosophical piece about how 99.9% of luck isn’t blind, what I learned about life when I was ill a few years ago, and about the brilliant people I worked with etc etc… but then I opened a bottle of wine and decided I couldn’t be bothered.. which is probably just as well. Instead I’m just going to mention the new adventure and then show you some pretty pictures. Much easier :-)

Something Mark Twain wrote has stuck with me for many years…

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”

Yeah, I’ve been doing pretty well over the years I think.. making the most of whatever opportunities arose.. and making opportunities for myself. To cut a long story short last week I left my position as an aeronautical engineer. I failed miserably to settle down on my return from South America so when the government defence spending review kicked off and the project I was leading was put on ice ’till probably the new year I decided that rather than transfer to another area of the business I’d take a flying leap into an unknown future instead. So that’s what I did. Sitting here right now I have absolutely no clue what the future holds for me which is rather exciting.. and on the basis that I am not stupid and not lazy I reckon the world is my proverbial oyster. In the short term I have some personal projects to work on that would never see the light of day otherwise.. they may or may not make a few ££, but that’s not the point… and then later on this year I’ll return to Patagonia with my bike. I did consider Central America instead but the Andes holds a special thrall for me… the far south.. on my bicycle :-) If I can sort the logistics there may.. hopefully.. be a kayak expedition in there too. . so do stay tuned but don’t expect to see me on Dragons Den anytime soon;-)

Anyway, enough of that.. time for some pretty pictures… We were blessed with a terrific southerly swell last week – coming up from the Bay of Biscay.. some quiet little breaks out on the Lizard were doing very well. I dragged out my camera - having forgotten it on most occasions recently. I captured one sequence of shots that made me laugh on my initial way out through the break.. and then the battery died ‘cos Einstein here had forgotten to charge the thing. A shame because some of the waves were superb… but never mind, here’s that sequence as I’m just in the wrong place when a rather large set arrives (check the scale of the surfer)… :-)

here it comes.. the super wide lens makes everything look smaller and further away than it actually is

just past vertical.. failed to punch through the lip, can't duck dive my kayak like a surfboard.. so a nice backward somersault instead...

the wet-side view once everything had gone quiet, see how nice and blue the sky is.. makes a change after a rather damp August ;-)

the camera does a fab job of capturing stuff I wouldn't normally see like that ribbon of water as I recover

right, I’m off to cook up some wild blackberries I picked earlier ;-)

that MAMIL thing…

It’s been a while since I indulged in any proper bike snobbery so… It started about 2 weeks ago I think, I first saw the article on the Telegraph Online documenting the phenomenon of the MAMIL.. Middle Aged Man In Lycra.. and then it appeared on the BBC and has since been recycled around the various cycling sites on the web.. all failing miserably to find some original content to report. The gist of it is that the modern man, rather than buying a Harley, seems to be dealing with his mid-life crisis by deciding to get fit by buying a carbon road bike and making some questionable choices when it comes to cycling fashion.. and it’s true, they’re everywhere – characterised by a pedalling action akin to mashing potato with bit (or a lot) of a gut squeezed into a trade-team jersey sat astride a middle-of-the road, unimaginative albeit sensible choice of bike from Giant, Specialized, Trek or whatever is available from that well known online retailer whose name sounds an awful lot like woggle, but that I wish sounded a lot like wanker. Oh well. Anyway, the whole point of me mentioning it is that if another one of my friends or colleagues sends me the link to the online article in its various forms trying to make the connection between me and the MAMIL I shall.. I shall.. well, mount a non-violent protest by giving it a stiff ignoring. Ignoring the rather shocking fact stated in the article that somehow middle age now begins at 35 (ya I know, shit isn’t it) you see I consider myself and my cycling ‘colleagues’ very distinct from the MAMIL. As a cyclist, and at times arrogant tw@t, I’m very much the finely tuned product of 38yrs of two-wheeled evolution rather than of a sudden loss of direction in life. In fact rumour has it I came out of my mother at high speed in the saddle – at the time however the story was suppressed so as to avoid censorship and scorn from the sensible cycling brigade due to my lack of a crash helmet. Anyway, from my point of view buying a bicycle and some dodgy looking kit seems a pretty weak reaction to a mid-life crisis.. in my case such a reaction I expect would be far more robust.. something along the lines of leaving my job and disappearing off to some far flung corner of the globe on my bicycle again…. oh, wait… ;-)

I started young with my trademark impeccable style ;-) Note lack of a helmet, I received my first cycling head injury at 5 yrs old when I went flying through the windscreen of an oncoming car.. didn't do me any harm at all... or did it..?

Speaking of evolution.. interesting article in New Scientist this week on the topic of how human evolution is inextricably driven by technology rather than the other way around. The bit that caught my eye was, I quote “…Evidence shows that over the last 30,000 years there has been an overall decrease in brain size and the trend seems to be continuing. That’s because we can outsource our intelligence. I don’t need to remember as much as a Neanderthal because I have a computer. I don’t need such a dangerous and expensive-to-maintain biology any more. I would argue that humans are going to continue to get less biologically intelligent...”

And it’s true, you don’t even need to visit Walmart any more to see it.. Personally I think we’re looking at species divergence in a few thousand (or possibly just a few hundred years).. those humans that can be bothered to think for themselves and those that can’t. The latter being characterised by a reduction in cranial capacity as a result of correspondingly smaller brains..homo-pinhead? Of late in fact I have seen one or two folk around with proportionally tiny heads, how they have anything more than basic motor functions is beyond me.. the vanguard of a new species or the product of some Cornish inbreeding? ;-)

Anyway, that’s enough political incorrectness for now.. see ya ;-)

Shelterbox: please sponsor me

<as a postscript/addition to my post below… up to 1500 people a week read this, if everyone just donated one £ to Shelterbox via my JustGiving page that would be huge, it’s less than the cost of a starbucks regular coffee after all… hopefully you can spare that much. You don’t need to live in the UK to donate and after all Shelterbox has global relevance :-)>

—-

If you’re not already familiar with them allow me to introduce Shelterbox (http://shelterbox.org). They are charity based locally to me here in Cornwall that provide rapid response disaster relief around the world, for example providing critical early assistance to victims of the Asian Tsunami and Pakistan Earthquake amongst others – both of those events impacted people I considered friends as a result of my travels so this charity is close to my heart. Rather than try and reproduce all the blurb here I’ll direct you to their website, http://shelterbox.org,  for a lot of interesting information about what a ‘shelterbox’ is and their concept of operations. Please take the time to have a look.

I have set up a Justgiving page here: http://www.justgiving.com/mikesimagination and I’d be very grateful if after reading this, and if you’ve enjoyed my blog, you are able to make a donation by way of sponsorship for my journey – it’s a secure site and you can use cards or paypal. In terms of bicycle journeys I don’t think it is outstandingly remarkable or even over-long, somewhere between 7000-8000 km but it will be difficult with a high percentage of dirt roads and riding at altitudes of up to, and maybe above , 5000 metres – all depends on how I make up my route as I go. If I have a target it is to raise one £ for every mile I pedal, even better would be one £ for every kilometre.. whether that is achievable or not it up to you reading this… <hint>. Just in case you’re wondering – my trip is entirely self funded…

That’s it, thanks for reading, I’ll be posting reminders as I pedal my way along the Andes…  :-)

Lizard Point…

fab views out along the Lizard Point this morning :-) First dry weekend without a gale of wind for a long time…..

Freeloader Pico… small solar stuff

Up until now I used first a Solio and then a Power Monkey solar charger for keeping my iPod and so on charged while travelling on my bike… both of those weighed about 150-200g which seemed rather a lot just to be able to keep myself musically entertained of an evening in the wilderness… This new widget from Solar Technology however is only 49g.. or 59g with the charging cable. Although on the website they say it’ll give an iPod 14hrs of power I’m assuming that’s for the full size iPod.. my Nano gets near enough a full charge from it.. and being nice and tiny it’s going to be easy to keep attached to my bike for charging while riding. A rather groovy little gadget.. and it’s only £17 :-) though the iPod tip is a fiver extra… annoyingly the connector for the tips is identical but mates in reverse to that on my powermonkey.. so I can’t use any of the powermonkey tips… probably a deliberate decision by Solar T. humph..!

more weather….

I’m lacking inspiration for writing this evening so instead a couple more pics… the weekend was characterised by deliciously stormy skies and a melancholy feel to the villages hereabouts… as it happens the week seems to be turning out the same way too, except now all I get to see of it are the raindrops slanting through the beam of the headlight on my bike and the feel of icy water finding it’s way through overshoes into my cycling shoes….

Jingas…. ultimate packable travel shoe

I’ve been meaning to write about these for ages… the ultimate off-bike travel shoe. Given my impending journey it’s kind of appropriate to write about them now. Jingas are a Brazilian shoe, incredibly light, incredibly bend incredibly comfy and rather cool… see I didn’t want to overdo use of “incredibly”, and after all cool factor is very much a matter of personal opinion but I like mine :-) My pair of “originals” packs flat and weighs just 300gr for the pair, in a size 45, so you can probably see the relevance to light weight bicycle travel… I prefer these days for bike tours to wear my stiff carbon-soled cycling shoes for better pedalling efficiency rather than an “all in one clipless walking shoe” that can weigh well over a kg/pair. Jingas come in two flavours – the feathery “originals” (green and gold in the pic below) and the slightly heavier “Cushties” which have a thicker sole. I’m taking my cushties with me on this next trip. My originals are well travelled already and possibly a little fragile for the altiplano…

I should write a bit more about Jinga – they’re a thoroughly ethical company with a chunk of profits going towards social projects in Brazil… as they say on their website…

We are a social enterprise. What this means is that where regular companies are driven first and foremost by finaicial goals and targets, our goals are social as well as financial. Our purpose is not just to run a successful business, but also to provide opportunities and social development to disadvantaged young people in Brazil…. <read more….>

They’re also a nice bunch of folk and kindly provided a pair for the raffle at the photo exhibition for the Julio Otoni Project my sister and I did last year. You can buy online here in a wide range of eye-watering colours… and some not so eye-watering colours too. Sizing can come up small so if you’re normally a 44 like me then a 45 may be a better fit, but the returns process works fine if you get it wrong first time anyway.

There is also a facebook page if you’re connected in that way….

I’m feeling a little battered this afternoon, the surf was really rather heavy ‘outside’ at Sennen this morning and it seems like I spent rather a lot of time vertical, flying through the air, upside down and every other which way rather than actually surfing in my kayak. All very exciting and fun if not a good surf session – with a strong onshore wind it was just rough in a big way. I’ve managed to slice my drysuit and arm somehow during one wipeout, one of those strange occurrences where you recover, roll upright and carry on as if nothing had happened and then look down to find blood running down your arm in a “well swipe me how the heck did that happen” kind of way…. Oh well, could be worse, I only have work for the next few days :-|

Sal at the Brick Lane Gallery

Just a little bit of a promotional post this morning for my sister Sal, she’s exhibiting at the Brick Lane Gallery, London from 4th to 18th March.. Of course I’m biased but I think her abstract canvases are brilliant… of course you may think they’re rubbish but her work must have some merit to have been invited to exhibit in the first place :o) Sooo if you’re in the area and have time on your hands pop in and have a look and help make it a success… especially if you’ve a wedge to spend on some original art, hehe! Preview below :o)

spring… (Kernowek: Gwenton)?

well, after the snow of a couple of weeks ago the weather here has been simply lovely… a definite breath of spring.. the daffodils (“Lili Korawys” in Cornish*) are flowering in the fields, the air, while still cool, has had a softness to it that hints of warmer weather to come. I love days like this with light winds and hazy sunshine… It’s fantastic to be out on the water at this time of year – the ocean is completely empty.. as are the beaches. Nothing but a few cormorants and the occasional seal for company…. My favourite beach cafe is still quiet too, time to savour coffee in the early spring sunshine without hordes of visitors and screaming kids :o)

*.. anyway, Cornish (or Kernowek)… there were an awful lot of very miffed folk hereabouts this week when the UN had the audacity to announce that the Cornish language was extinct… for sure it did sort of die out a while back but never completely and there are at least 300 fluent Cornish speakers with thousands more who have some knowledge of the language… while hearing about all this I was  wondering if Cornish pasties are on sale in the UN canteen… ‘cos pasty translated into Cornish is, errrm, pasti… which is close enough in my book… Anyway the outcry apparently has caused a little backtracking in UN with folk saying it’s a sleeping language rather than dead.

If you’re interested then the Cornish Language Fellowship, with dictionary, phrasebook and so on is here: http://www.cornish-language.org/English/Default.asp

Final thought for the day then… I had cause to wonder this morning as I write just how amazing it is that the act of sticking a slab of bread into a toaster transforms it completely into something wonderful, especially when combined with Marmite.. or marmalade… or peanut butter… or all three… I have crumbs on my keyboard now so if you’ll excuse me I need to go get a cloth.. :o)

in tears…

I have to share this, it’s quality… (apols if you’ve seen it already)

Eddie Izzard- Death Star Canteen

Hello Kitty packs a punch…

OK, I’ve seen it all now….. my sister would appreciate one of these I think for when a certain brother gets just too annoying for words, and all you ladies out there… well, if you’re looking for the ultimate accessory for a night out then check GlamGuns.com, here’s their Hello Kitty edition AK-47. Marvellous, just the job for a stylish romp through the badlands of Soho. Only thing missing is a frame mount for your pink fixie.