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Hansterbubble

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Posts posted by Hansterbubble

  1. Posted

    Most cycling jerseys have three pockets at the back, where you can stack goodies, phone, arm warmers, even a rain jacket at a push. I used to put my phone in a small freezer bag to stop it getting sweaty but these days have a little zip up pouch that takes phone keys, and a bit of money.

    If like me, you find some of the mainstream cycling kit a bit tight around the tum, try Fat Lad At The Back. Their kit is really good quality, and actually fits properly. It’s not cheap but it lasts really well. I cycle to work every day and it copes well with regular use and washing, unlike my club kit, which costs about the same, fits poorly and falls to bits after three washes.

    Decathlon make some very reasonably priced stuff. I have an autumn jacket which was £30 and is brilliant and use their winter gloves which cost about a tenner, but some of their stuff can be a bit cheap and flimsy.

    Wiggle are good for online cycling stuff. Evans Cycles used to be good but are now owned by Mike Ashley and don’t seem to have the range that they once has. Ribble are interesting, but seem to be focussed on bike sales rather than kit these days, and SJS Cycles are great for any difficult to get spares. 

    One final thought, if you haven’t already, get a saddle pack and pop in a set of tyre levers, a spare inner tube and a mini pump. 10 miles is an awful long way to walk if you puncture! 

  2. Posted

    Definitely plus one for jelly babies. I was quite fond of a fig roll biscuit as well. The gel energy pouches do the trick, but are very sickly and have the same consistency as the mucus you get with a heavy cold. 

    Running out of energy is referred to in cycling circles as bonking 🤭😬 Getting the bonk is quite unpleasant so some sugary goodness is usually in most cyclists back pockets for emergencies. 🍫🍬🍭 

    Sounds like your doing well so far FTW, both with the rides and fund raising.  The weather looks good for the next couple of weeks which will help, although any day that you can get out on the bike is a good day in my opinion. 😁👍

     

    • Like 1

  3. Posted

    That sounds a great way to support a good cause so I have left a little contribution.

    I’ve been a club cyclist for most of my adult life and the thing that I have found with long rides and tours is that it is always your contact points that need looking after. So get good cycling shorts and some sudocreme or Vaseline in case of any chafes. But look after your feet and hands too as sore wrists or feet can really be a nuisance. Some cycling mitts might be useful and make sure your shoes fit well. Oh and don’t forget the sun block! 
     

    I am sure you’ll have a great time and there are some beautiful roads in the county to explore. Bon route 🙂👍
     

     

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  6. Posted

    Hi Nutty,

    First of all huge thanks to everyone for all the excellent selections. I certainly feel like I’ve travelled far and wide looking at these and been to some leagues and places that I didn’t even know existed! 

    Nutty, for my pick I am going for 25 New York City v New York Red Bulls.


    After some careful thought 😉 these are the ones that I’d like to pick:

    3 - IFK Gothenburg v Norrkoping
    7 -  Varbergs v Djurgaarden
    18 - Chicago Fire v New England
    22- LA Galaxy v Minnesota Utd
    25 -     New York City v New York Red Bulls
    26 - Orlando Fire v Portland T
    31- FC Voluntari v Chindia Targoviste
    32 - Dinamo Bucharest v FC Viitorul
    33 - Hermannstadt v CSM Iasi
    35 - Brage v Degerfors
    44 - Chapecoense AF v Guarani 

    Thanks to everyone for their suggestions, good luck everyone 🤞👍

     

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  11. Posted

    Reading away around late 2005 early 2006 I think. We lost 4-0 it was absolutely freezing and I’d left the car somewhere near the Majedski and after the game I couldn’t remember where I’d left it. Took me an hour to find it. 

    Grimsby Town away in the cup in the early nineties. We lost 3-1, or possibly 3-0, the weather was awful, windy, cold with snow being blown in horizontally from the North Sea. I’d gone up with my mate who is a Grimsby Town fan so spent a long car ride back to London with him in his clapped out Nissan Micra trying to coax some heat out of the heater and trying not to kill him as he spent the whole journey telling me how great they were and how awful we were, the problem being that he had a point!

    I think it was the season where we lost to Fulham in that awful last game. In that year I did 7 or possibly 8 away games in London and the South Of England. I think we lost all of them and I seem to recall the aggregate score was something like 35-4. I’ll  have to see if I can work that out properly.

  15. Posted

    Double deckers are a bit strange but in a good way. I think it’s the contrast of textures. I do like a Crunchie now and again or hokie pokie as my mum calls them. She lived in New Zealand for a while and I think that is what they call the honeycomb stuff. But if I am stood at the vending machine at 3-30pm on a long dull Wednesday then my treat of choice would be a Snickers. Not as good as a Marathon used to be, but still very nice in a nutty, chocolatey way. 😋

    • Like 1

  19. Posted

    I had two brushes with celebrity at Holborn tube station albeit some years apart.

    Holborn tube sits on the corner of Kingsway and High Holborn. It’s quite a blind corner and can be a bit difficult to navigate when it’s busy. On this particular day I came bowling around the corner and ran slap bang into this fella. I bounced off him and after giving him the once over said, “You’re Phil Jupitas” he just gave me that smile he does that says “and you are a ****head”. I immediate confirmed this by saying “gosh, you’re a lot taller than I expected”. Oh dear!

    The second was on the east bound platform of the central line at mid afternoon. When I got on the platform there was just me and this other bloke. I wanted to be where he was standing so I was near the entrance at my next stop. It’s a bit weird to go and stand right next to some stranger, so in an early form of social distancing I moved to about two metres away from him. It was Bradley Walsh. I looked at him and said “Alright?” and he looked awkwardly back and said “Yeah, you?”. I nodded and we then looked at our shoes for a couple of awkward minutes until the tube train arrived.

    I just ignore anyone famous now as clearly I have nothing useful, clever or interesting to say to them!

    I once sat about 6 seats down in the Jarrold Stand from Darren Huckerby who was injured at the time and sitting with his wife. Luckily he was too far away for me to engage him with my sparkling wit and conversation and he disappeared at half time 😬😳

    • Like 1

  22. Posted

    My problem with the Government’s strategy is that it doesn’t seem to me to factor in the risks we face properly. Asking people nicely not to do something is fine where the consequences of them ignoring it are minor. But that’s not what we are facing, and that’s been clear for a while if you looked at the experiences of other countries. If the risks and consequences are large then it seems sensible to take actions which factor that in.

    Buying masks and test kits as early as possible and bringing in rules to ensure the disease can’t spread and enforcing them if you need to, seem to me to be fairly obvious and this has been the approach of many (but not all) other countries. We took a different path and as a result may have a different outcome; it may be better it may be worse, time will tell.

    So my question is why take that risk? Was preserving personal freedom and the economy for a bit longer worth the extra fatalities that may arise as a result? That does seem to me to be a political question. Like everything in politics there is no right or wrong answer to this, just different views which largely seem to depend upon on where you sit on those timeless questions around people v money and central government v individual freedoms. 

    Boris is obviously a risk taker, more so than his predecessor and that seemed to be one of the things that appealed to the voters so perhaps his approach should come as no surprise even when the stakes are so high.

     

  23. Posted

    3 hours ago, dylanisabaddog said:

    Hansterbubble if you enjoyed the Tim Moore one try French Revolutions which is his attempt at the Tour de France. 

    The best sports book I've read is Seabiscuit which won the Whitbread award. Also made into a good film but the book is better. I'm not a horse racing person but loved both. 

    If you like travel books all the Bill Bryson ones are excellent and I recently read The Shipping Forecast by Charlie Connolly which is a very amusing tour story

    I read that many years ago Dylan and it is brilliant especially if you are a cyclist. He has also done a similar one where he does the Giro on a vintage bike. The Mark Beaumont Man who cycled the .... books are really good and I saw him at a book tour and he is a genuinely nice bloke.

    14 minutes ago, Aggy said:

    Some good shouts  @Hansterbubble . Have you read Tombstone by CJ Sansom? I’ve read most of the other Matthew Shardlake (Dissolution) series but not the most recent . 

    I also just finished yesterday The Second Sleep by Robert Harris which was an interesting idea but not his best. His Cicero trilogy are some of my favourite books.

    If you’re into Bernard Cornwell, you might also want to watch The Last Kingdom (based on a Cornwell series but I haven’t read the books). I think it’s now on Netflix and the next series is out at the end of April. Similar to Rome and The Tudors, but marginally more “realistic” (although artistic liberties are still of course taken). A good watch though. 

    I’ve got Tomblands sitting on my bedside table. It is set in Norfolk so should be especially good! I’ve read some of Samson’s other nobels, Winter in Madrid and Dominion but they didn’t grab me in the same way as the Shardlake series.

    I will read Seabiscuit, it definitely fits my reading pattern although I know nothing about horse racing

    I’ve got the Last Kingdom series but haven’t read them yet. I saw some of the tv adaptation and as you say it was very good. Conn Igguldsen (spelling?) Emperor series about Julius Caesar we’re pretty good if you like those sort of reads.

    Indy mentioned James Herbert, I loved those when I was a teenager along with Stephen King and Dean Koontz. I saw they’d made a film of the Gunslinger/ DarkTower books (Stephen King) with Iris Elba. I’d recommend those although the first book, The Gunslinger, is a bit odd. Apparently King was trying to write a straight western, but it kept sliding off into the dark side. It’s only short and worth sticking with as the rest of the series is really good. 
     

    • Like 2

  24. Posted

    I guess that I must prefer a good read to a good film, as I can think of lots of books to recommend but have drawn a complete blank on the films. Here’s a few of my favourites books from the last year or two.

    Dissolution by CJ Sansom - it’s the first in a series of crime novels based in Tudor England. 
    Zoo Station by David Downing - again it’s the first of a series of novels based in war torn Berlin
    Fatherland by Robert Harris - set in a world where Hitler won the war
    Winter Men by Jesper Bugge Kold - explores the effect of WW2 on two German brothers. this one is a bit dark but really got under my skin
    Any of the Sharpe novels by Bernard Cornwell - I read these in my teens and have started re-reading them and can’t put them down
    Any of Iain M Banks Culture Sci-Fi novels. Not a genre that I like usually but these are excellent, Excession and Consider Phlebas are particularly good
    Headlong by Michael Frayn - hilarious farce about a long lost Bruegel painting, really made me laugh
    Holes by Louis Sachar - aimed at young adults and a bit strange but really drew me in and kept my attention from start to end 
    The Cyclist Who Went Out In The Cold by Tim Moore - Tim Moore is brilliantly funny and in this adventure he cycles from Finland to  the Black Sea on a small wheeled East German shopping bike. What could go wrong! Actually any of his books a worth a read
    A World Of My Own by Robin Knox Johnson - I was genuinely impressed by his account of his solo non stop circumnavigation
    Rough Ride by Paul Kimmage - an old favourite, warts and all tale of the professional cycling scene from the late 1980s
    The Jeeves and Wooster books and or Empress of Blandings by PG Wodehouse - not to be read on the train though as laughing out loud constantly gets you funny looks!
    The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood - the book club at work took this one on and I remembered reading it at college 30 odd years ago and it leaving quite an impression and it was definitely worth re-reading.

    Really interested to know what others have enjoyed.
     

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