The Most Economically Stimulating Time of the Year

How did that happen? Where did Christmas come from? Christmas is miles away isn't it?
What do you mean only four hours?

On Christmas eve, I avoided the sales floor for most of the day, and tried to stay tucked away in the tech room as much as possible. We close at 5pm, and the two closers decided to walk out the door at 5, leaving a cashier and me to do all the computer signage and attempt some boxing day prep.
It was incredibly quiet walking home. Not quiet because there was no one around - quite the opposite. There were cars everywhere, and people rushing into shops even though the clerks closing the doors were telling them that they'd closed at six. But walking down the street, the cars were making a "flowing" sound, sort of like a river. I couldn't hear any taking, any loud car radios, even the police car that came through an intersection with lights flashing didn't have the siren on. No horns, or enlarged exhaust sounds, I didn't even make eye contact with any other pedestrians on the way home.

I had Christmas day off, and the weather was really nice, so went for a ride up Tzouhalem. I didn't get on well with the bike, and I haven't been for the last couple on months. I can't ride stuff I could on my old bike. On flat-ish, straight-ish single track it's great - it floats over roots and rocks and pedals very well (in the middle or big ring, but feels weird in the granny). I just can't get up or down anything remotely technical - I just keep toppling over. I sometimes manage to fall off before I've got on (literally - getting off or on the bike is like getting in or out of a Range Rover). It was quite a frustrating ride in all. On the way up, I had a terrible time climbing the single track, on the chicken runs, I has a terrible time bouncing down the rocks and roots, and when I got to Fluid and Resurrection, I just felt clumsy. Even with the fork dropped and with the bars lower and a shorter stem (which have all helped to a degree), I can't make it go where I want. I can't make use of the new berms up there.

Boxing day was crap. A million demanding customers all looking to get 75% off everything, and expecting me to talk to each of them for an hour about what to buy.

Today I went for a ride with Ted. We ran into Gail and Linda on Why Be a Roadie, and rode with them up to Little Dipper, then down Cake Walk, the bottom of Middle T, Show Time, Three Musketeers, and Toxic Tea Cup and Resurrection. I would like to point out at this time that I was waiting at the bottom of Resurrection for several minutes for Ted to catch me up. Though he's apparently suffering from the Man Flu again.

Something Strange

...happened this morning.
I woke up at 8:74.
Not only had I slept in, but I'd woken up at a time that didn't exist.
Even more strangely, I didn't realize this until I'd showered, dressed and was making my breakfast/lunch.
Strange.

After this I went to Thrifty's to get some groceries.
Three strange things happened here. Firstly, I bought cheese, which I haven't done in a long time. I'm not sure what to do with it now.
Secondly, I bought some Hobnobs. That isn't strange, but near the Hobnobs I saw some "reduced fat" Oreos. This is also quite normal, of course, as every food now also comes in a low fat version. But on the front they said "30% less fat per two cookies". I realize that a large portion of the population are mathematically illiterate, but where did this come from? Surely, one cookie has 50% of the fat that the two have in total, therefore if two cookies have 30% less fat than two regular Oreos, then each will have 30% less fat than each regular one. Or does it mean that two "reduced fat" Oreos have 30% less fat than one full-fat Oreo, and each diet Oreo has 65% less fat than the regular one. But that sounds more impressive, so why wouldn't they just say that? Am I missing something?
Thirdly, I thought I'd get some Chrismassy tea. I picked up the herbal one, because I only get the caffeine-free stuff. It tastes (and smells) of mint. I never associated mint with Christmas. I associate mint with lamb and toothpaste (not together).

I just wrote a sentence about how nothing strange happened at work today, but had to backspace, because this in itself is stange. Not a day goes by that we don't have a crazy customer that has a go at us because we only stock two types of video cassettes or that we won't knock 50% off the price of their laptop. Today was very uneventful. I'm caught up to within 48 hours for the first time in 10 months. No one tried to argue that virus removal should be covered under warranty, or that they woke up in the morning and their screen was cracked. None of my customer's cats knocked apple juice into the CD drive of their owner's laptops. No one managed to spill an entire bottle of tabasco sauce on the keyboard of their laptop while using it as a recipe book. I found no rotten flesh in desktops. No hard drives spontaniously combusted.
Strange.

New Post

Yes, well, I guess it's been nearly three months since I made a post.

Since the last post:
Went to Mount Washington for a day with Roland, Katie, and Roland's brother and sister-in-law. Fell off a bit onto the camera in my pocket.

Roland's Bighit:

Katie's new Slayer:
There were some more cross races.
I rode to the one in Bowen Park, but didn't race.
It was raining for the ones ones in Victoria, and I didn't feel like riding down there in the rain and standing around freezing all day, so didn't go. Apparently though, the second one was dry (!).
I helped put up the course at Providence farm, and helped out with the barbecue on race day.
I completely forgot about the one in Shawnigan Lake and was out riding and saw the sign, so stopped by to watch the racing for a bit. This was the only dry day in November.


I got a lot of riding in in October. I managed to talk the bosses into changing my hours from 12-8:30pm, so I now have the mornings to go riding in. This was working well for me in October, and I was riding most days, clocking 300+ km a week.
But then it rained non-stop through November. Even when it wasn't raining full-on, just drizzling, I'd take my cross bike out and all the trails were flooded. Some houses down the road were flooded, and there were sandbags around my building for a week, but the water didn't really get close.
At the end of November the rain just stopped.
Last weekend I rode to the top of Maple Mountain on Saturday. I've never been to the top before. I didn't take into account that it starts getting dark at 4pm though, so didn't have time for any trails on the way down. (UPDATE - I think this was the week before, because Hilary's pottery sale was that day)
On Sunday I put the cross tires on the Lemon and rode the old railway bed to Lake Cowichan. I rode there on the south-most trail, and back on the one on the north of the river. It took me about 4 hours and ended up being 63km.
Yesterday (Saturday) I went on a road ride. It was bloody freezing! The frost on the ground that usually disappears when the sun come out stayed around all day. I started riding anti-clockwise around Shawnigan Lake, but decided to carry on and see where the road went. It's a great riding road, a bit like May's road, very momentum-y, with perfect corners and little hills, and smooth paving - that soon gave way to a gravel-less gravel road, if you know what I mean (used to be a gravel road, but not much gravel left on it, just hard ground). I carried on to Koksilah Park. I climbed around on the frosty rocks for a bit, with tread-less shoes. I tried riding around on some of the trails, but there were some pretty pointy rocks and frosty roots, and if I broke my bike there was no cell coverage and the only people around for miles were pot smokers on quad bikes. There's a yellow gate there, blocking a bridge over the river, that doesn't appear to have been opened in a very long time. I'm wondering if this is where the "Burnt Bridge" trials begin. (Apparently, Burnt Bridge was "thee" place to ride, but then it got logged, and trails were built on Tzouhalem. Another chunk of Tzouhalem just got sold off, and the houses keep getting further up the mountain, even since I've moved here. Apparently, ten years ago the trails began where the school now is, and there were no houses above there. So where do we go when Tzouhalem's gone? Maple? There seems to be a lot of potential for trail building there, but it's all a bit gnarly. And they're still logging it. Every time I group there there are fresh branches on the roads. Prevost is too steep for general trail riding. Cobble Hill is being looked after well, but it's quite a small area, and very "multi-use". There seem to be a lot of "regional" and provincial parks around, but they're usually quite remote, so no one goes there except the adore-mentioned potheads. And the odd cyclist that enjoys wandering around on backroads and getting lost. There are mountains everywhere, and I'm continually surprised by where I can get to on my cross bike without braking any rules. But the reason all these mountain are accessible is because of logging roads... I'm getting off topic again.) I headed back towards civilization, taking a detour along Glen Eagles Road, which looks to be another of them roads where rich people buy a plot of land in the middle of nowhere, spend millions building a house on it, and then complain that they had to pay for the gas to come "all the way" from the other side of Shawnigan Lake in to to town. They think their computer should be jumped to the front of the queue and be fixed while they wait so they don't have to come "all the way" into town another day. I'm sure they have to come into town every two or three days anyway for something-or-other. Don't these people work? Probably not. But my point is that they chose to live where they do, so shouldn't be complaining about it, and especially not expecting for special treatment because they paid more to live further away. They're like the Saltspring-ers that we get in work all the time. "Do you know how much it costs to take the ferry?" "I don't have a choice. There isn't a computer shop on Saltspring, y' know." Sounds like an excellent business opportunity to me - why don't one of these whiny Saltspringers start up a computer repair business? I had a guy in on Friday that wanted his computer fixing - while he waited. I told him that the queue was about three days long, and I don't work on weekends, but he called a manager over, and he won of course, because the managers are soft. So I put everything else aside to try and fix this guy's computer. He thought his CD drive wasn't working because of the upper/lower filters issue and tried to fix it in the registry, but deleted a whole load of stuff, and his mouse and keyboard stopped working. He was complaining it was taking so long, but the mouse and keyboard weren't working, CD drive wouldn't work, I didn't have an IDE CD drive I could use instead, and the BIOS was so old that it didn't support booting from USB! I had to take a DVD drive out of another customer's computer to use temporarily. I hate customer's like that - it wasn't even something that was our fault, or an issue with a defective computer he'd bought from us or anything, he screwed it up himself. Woooooow - check out the complete and utter off-topicness!
So I continued my ride around the lake. It was a very nice day - no clouds and very sunny, but by this time the sun was starting to set. I was plenty warm enough while riding, but once I got back to the highway the wind hit me and my skin was freezing. It's weird how you can be warn on the inside, but it feels like your outside has frozen solid (like an armadillo - soft on the inside, crunchy on the outside).
I did a total of 86 km (I also took a detour around Cobble Hill, and started off along Tzouhalem Road and came up onto the highway along Bench).

I'm sure much more has gone on since September, but I'll wrte about that in March.

Beban Cross

The first cross race of the season was on Sunday.
I was going to ride up to Nanaimo and just hang around and take photos and stuff, and Hilary wanted to come too.
On Saturday I was planning on going mountain biking - I haven't been in about a month - but really wasn't motivated (still angry about missing the Whistler/North Shore trip?), so I dug to the bottom of the tire pile for the cross tires that Dale had given me, and a dented palm and broken nail later I was at the bike shop for a bigger cassette - but they didn't have one. The bike felt completely different with the big tires on. It felt like a mountain bike. I rode around town a bit, and had a scary moment when making a sharp right. The tires have side-to-side ridges down the center, but lengthwise knobs on the edges. When I rolled onto the knobs, I felt the bike squirm as the knobs moved, which is a bit scary when you're not expecting it. I rode with Hilary home from the market, then we went on a ride along the trail that goes to Lake Cowichan. We got as far as Tansor, then came back. After I left Hilary's I did the same trail but a bit faster. The faster you ride, the less you feel the bumps, and you realize that a cross bike will take a lot of stick.
The plan for Sunday changed and Hilary and I were going to drive up in her car, then she decided not to go. Katie and Roland had very kindly offered me a ride, so I rode up with them.
I got to the race to find that I couldn't shift through my gears - which Kurt fixed (temporarily?) with some lube on the shifter cables - thanks Kurt!I entered the "Open Women's" rather than the beginner class. There was 11 of us on the start line, and we were on the track with the Masters. The course was a good one for the start of the season: very flat - which I was glad about as I'd been in the bike shop to get a 12-27 cassette, but they didn't have a 9-speed, and I'd thought I had a 11-25, but it's a 11-23, and I've got a road double in the front. My lowest is 39-23, where most others seemed to have 36-27. The race organizers had taken out the run-up by the tennis courts, and replaced it with a sandpit followed by a log, which was the first dismount of the course (the other two being a set of stairs, and the barriers). The only place I would have liked a lower gear is the ramp up at the beginning of the BMX track, but I made it up each time.
I noticed at the start that my rear tire was very squishy - but it was too late to fix. I felt the rim hit the ground on every bump on the entire course. I've no idea how I didn't actually pinch flat. My back wheel was stepping out on the tight corners (were there any corners that weren't tight?), and it felt like the tire was rolling off on the off-camber bit before the bleachers.
And if there was an award for the slowest barriers, I'd be the champion.
My time was 59:11 according to the time sheet emailed out, but it didn't feel like an hour.
I spent the rest of the taking photos and videos of the other races. I'm really getting the hang of the video thing - and cyclocross races are great practise, because you can set up a shot and film one ride flying through the frame, play it back, and make changes, then film the next rider. I got some really good clips: I set the camera up on the ground on the outside of the corner where the gravel turns to grass on the intermediate first lap, where all the riders were bunched up, and got a clip of them all taking the corner, including Louis taking out half the cones and nearly the camera. I wrapped my GorillaPod around the railing on the bleachers and filmed the off-camber swoopy bit. I set the camera up in the flower bed by the little bridge, and got riders riding through the frame over the humped-back bridge, including reflection in the pond. I got the big banked corner on the BMX track. I got riders re-mounting after the barriers one after the other. I got the stairs. I got lots of good wheel shots. And loads of good photos too.
By the middle of the whirly-whirl time trial my first memory card was full, so I stuck the second one in.
Got home. Nothing's coming off the first card.
I'm a little miffed.
It wasn't even one of them cheap no name cards.

ranting and work and rain and knitting and a bit of riding

Summer is over. It's raining and it's going to rain until June and I'm not happy about it because Summer only just started and I wanted to do lots of things but had to work.

DISCLAIMER: Don't read this post. It's angry.

This post will be updates with pics when I can get them uploaded. Firefox (yes - tried Opera and IE too) crash when try to upload.

It was really raining when I woke up on Saturday, but cleared up around 11 am. I had to go into work for a couple of hours, then went to see Hilary at the market. Amy and Sean stopped by with 18-day-old Isaac. I walked (roads were wet, so decided against riding since all my bikes are (were) fenderless) home, stopping in at Thrifty's to get groceries on the way. I tried putting the fenders I bought two months ago on my bike, bbut the back one clams around the seatstays. My seatstays must be unusually skinny, because I needed all the foam padding in the packet (leaving non for the front one). Also, my shifter cable runs along the seatstay rather than the chainstay, so the clanp closes around it, meaning I can't shift. I've got the choice between fenders or gears! The front one does fit, but seems to have been only made for straight forks, because it clamps to the fork blades below the bend, so doesn't cover any of the top of the wheel, so I'd have dry legs but get a face full of car juice.
I considered going riding, but was too tired, so decided to be lazy instead.
The insomnia continues. I'm not sure if I've blogged about this before, but I don't seem to be able to sleep properly. I have no trouble getting to sleep, but wake up every couple of hours, and can't get back to sleep for a hour. Then I'll sleep for another hour or two, and wake up again. This has been going on for about four months now. I'm sure it's work that's causing it. I sleep properly on Saturday and Sunday nights usually. It's been driving me crazy.
I'm still working long hours. I can't seem to get anything done at work. I spend all my time fixing other people's screw ups, doing things that other people should be doing, on the phone dealing with people that bought "pre-setup" routers, writing emails to the warranty depot, shipping stuff to the warranty depot, boxing up printers that will get damaged in shipping that I'm not allowed to put insurance on, getting shouted at by customers for everything that's not my fault, doing paperwork, more paperwork, fixing other people's paperwork, and the hours between 6pm and 10 pm are spent doing tech work (that the customer will end up either not paying for at all because on of the boys told the customer it would be covered under warranty, or pay half of what they should because one of the boys didn't have the balls to quote full price). I spend 10-12 hours at work every day, work through my breaks, take the crap for everybody else's screw-ups, don't get any time off, and get paid $11/hr.
Why? Because I'm an idiot? Yes.

On Thursday evening, an angry lady came in to pick up her laptop. It wasn't ready. It was dropped off at 6:30 the evening before to be setup. Apparently it was supposed to be setup when she first bought it, but Tony (who sold it to her) sent it home with her as it was, so she brought it back Wednesday evening to be setup, and sppke with Robin, who told her it "would be ready in a couple of hours". Firstly, if I were to sit in front of the computer and do nothing else, it would still take 6 hours to get done, not "a couple". Secondly, I'm supposed to finish work at six, 30 minutes before it was brought in. Thirdly, Robin put it on the in shelf, and put the ticket in the incoming folder, and didn't say a thing to me - the ticket just said "in-store setup".
So I didn't know it was supposed to be ready, so it wasn't, but she came in a tore a chunk out of me. After she had been shouting at me for ten minutes insisting that her money be returned and the laptop delivered to her house that evening (because she's had enough of driving "all the way" from Chemainus), Sharon (a manager) came over. Angry Lady changed her tone immediately and went through it all with Sharon, ending with "Tony was great. Robin was great, and you've been great too Sharon, and I feel bad about getting angry at you because one of your employees let you down", and she looked directly at me.
So, I ended up staying til 10:30 to get as much done as I could, then I rode to Chemainus to drop it off. Sharon was going to go, but her kids were with a sitter and she lives in Shawnigan Lake (the opposite direction). I needed to go for a ride anyway.
It was a nice night - not much wind, dry, and warm. It turns out Cheamainus is further away than I realized: 42.2 km to her house from work and back to mine. Didn't get home until after midnight.
I thing I get an average of four customers angry at me a day. On friday I had a lady that didn't want to pay for virus removal because she had an extended warranty, a man who's HP mininote died after six weeks and didn't have a warranty from us expected me to give him a new one, a couple that expected us to honor their Future Shop warranty, an old lady that wanted me to go round to her hose to install the ink cartridges in her printer for free, and a man angry because I couldn't special order a battery for his laptop from just the serial number, plus two people that couldn't get their routers to work. A bad day.
But it's not the angry customers that make me angry, it's all the other stuff (see the second paragraph). And I've just figured out why.
I've got a conscience.
There are other people that get frustrated at work and do more work than anyone else - namely Priyanka (who handed in her notice this week) and James (who would quit, but needs the benefits), and everyone else seems quite happy - they don't care if the stuff that needs to be done isn't done, they'll still leave at 5 pm on the dot, while James, Priyanka and me stay late to do all the stuff done that they should have done while they were texting their girlfriends. These people must have no, or very weak, consciences - they don't care if things aren't done proplerly, as long as they're not around when the angry customer phones or comes in. They don't get tasks done, or don't do them properly, so all their tasks get given to the ones that get things done properly, on time.
I've heard both Priyanka and James saying that they're giving up - that they don't care anymore, and they're not going to worry about it. It never even lasts five minutes. I've said the same to myself, but I can't help it. I have responsibilities. I know that I'm the stupid one, but I can't help it. I've been cursed with a strong conscience, and I don't know what to do about it. Get a job when my co-workers take their responsibilities seriously? Does such a job exist?
I'm of the opinion that the grass is always browner on the other side (though I don't dislike brown grass - I prefer it over people leaving sprinklers on 24-7). I'm not a pessimist, just a realist. All jobs are crap.

Anyway, I didn't go riding on Sunday, becasuse it rained ALL day.
I went out for a lap around the lake after work on Tuesday. I left my place at 7, and it was getting dark when I got back. It must get dark before 8 now.
Last night I left work at 7 and went to Coffee on the Moon to knit with Hilary, Dana and Amy (and Isaac). I rode back to Hilary's with her and then we took the dogs for a run. We had no lights, and I was riding along roads I'd never even seen in the daylight. It's always fun when you hit a pothole at night. It reminds me of driving over cattle grids in Wales.

I had been working on the summer scavanger hunt for the camera club, but hadn't got time to finish it before the deadline. I'd take all the photos, but didn't get around to processing or uploading them. I missed the first meeting on Tuesday as well.

Last time I went mountain biking I forgot to post a picture of my burn:

I was stood on the wrong side of my bike, and my leg touched my front rotor. It only took a fraction of a second to burn me just below my right knee.

I knitted a teal coloured diamond cable ("Koolhaas") hat last winter.
It turned out perfectly, until I wore it a few times and then it strewtched and lots its elasticity and shape. I started knitting it's replacement when I bought some brown wool when Erica took us to a wool shop in Victoria. I'd left it at work to work on in my lunch breaks, but haven't been taking many/any breaksx, so it's still not done! I brought it home last weekend, and have now started on the crown decreases.
I've also started Mum's birthday or Christmas present. I phoned her on Sunday, and apparently she wants some bed socks - damn.

Riding Updates

I've been meaning to update for over two weeks now.
I can't even remember what about. I always have loads of blog posts being written in my head, but don't find the time (ie. am too lazy) to type them up.

On Saturday 15th Aug I went for a ride on Tzouhalem. The weather was grey and cloudy, but warmer than expected. Since I hadn't yet got around to taking any decent bike photos I took my camera and spent several hours climbing into the bush and propping by bike up with sticks.




I also managed to attach my SD770 onto my helmet for some of the ride down:
The first is the bridge on M-One, then a bridge on Skywalker, and the last clip is then end of Fluid, end of Emma's Express, and the beginnning of Resurection:

This camera seems to do really well as a helmet cam. (Quality directly from the camera is a lot better - bighter, higher frame rate, less jaggy), except for the mounting issue (I used elastic bands and my helmet light mount).
This one picks up at the end of Resurection, and the there's a bit of the Providence Farm trail:

You can hear my brake catching at 0:56. I'm fell off on T-Bone and smacked it against a rock. It was VERY bent. The wheel wouldn't spin freely with the backend off the ground at all. It was catching on the pads for 180º.


I went to Cobble Hill the next day. I was going to take the bus, but missed it, so rode there. I messed about on the dirt jump park for a while, then headed up the mountain. The trails up (and even the fireroads) are quite steep. The dragging brake didn't exactly help me get up.
I don't know the trails on Cobble Hill very well, and ended up in someone's front garden, and then had to ride on the road along the bottom of the mountain. Has anyone got a map or suggested route down? I can always find my way up, but can never find a way down that takes me to the bottom.
(that's the wet tip of Shawnigan lake you can see in the photo - I think)

On Saturday 22nd, I went around to Carole's house to install her new printer. She made me a tuna melt and we watched some tennis, then I went riding on Tzouhalem (big suprise there...). Having had Adam at the bike shop straighten my rotor ("wow - that really is bent!"), I rode to the top on singletrack and fireroad, and then sat at the top and ate my sandwiches with my legs dangling over Cow Bay.
I rode along the ridge, and I usually turn right immediately before Arbutus Drop, because it used to look really scary, but I haven't even looked at it in the last year, and today it looked completely do-able (not the drop to the right of the tree, but the rock to the left). I didn't ride it (I'm going to have to get some armor, because there's rock everywhere), but I did ride the ride-around, which is a steep rooty drop, and if you don't make the 90º corner immediately after it you'll end up in Cow Bay. I carried on along Boogie Man, which I hadn't been along since my second time on the mountain, when Willy showed me some trails. It all seems ridable - nothing I couldn't do. I walked a lot of things, but I'm confident that after seeing them, that I'd be able to ride them next time (and when I find some leg armor that fits - damn my short, fat legs!). The problem with Boogie Man is that it doesn't fit into a ride very well. It takes you to the trail that goes to the cross. Your options from there are to the cross and then down some steep slick rock that goes straight to the Providence Farm trail (meaning you miss out on a whole load on singletrack), along the the fireroad to Chicken Run 2 which leaves you on the wrong side of the mountain for the nice trails, or along thge fireroad a tiny bit to the top of Danilizer, which I don't really like. I rode it that day. It's very rooty and rocky, steep climbs, up and down, bumpy, NO flow what so ever. Annoying, in a way. It was so much easier on the new bike though - rather than trying to climb over every root and trying to control the deflection, this bike just rolls over them without my momentum being damaged at all.

On Sunday I went for a road ride around Shawnigan Lake. For some reason I thought it was going to be a 100 km ride, so I was a little suprised when I got back two and a half hours after I left! Turns out it's only 60 km. It's a really nice loop around the lake though - smooth(ish) roads, nice rolling hills, well sheltered, lots of trees and green stuff, not a lot of traffic, and because you're riding around a lake there's no temptation to change the route while riding (which I do a lot).

This last weekend I did the same loop again on Saturday (except took the road from Cobble Hill to Rona back to the highway.
It was Cobble Hill Fall Fair. I've been avoiding the thought for the last few weeks - it feels like Autumn already. Summer is ending. I don't want it too. It's gone by so fast. Last year, summer seemed to last forever - probably because I had a lot of time off work. There were loads of things I wanted to do over the summer. I haven't done any of them - not even the island-hopping trip, or a single mountain bike ride somewhere other than the Cowichan Valley. After spending the whole week angry at work (and working 2 12 hour days, and 3 10 hours), I spent the whole ride on Saturday pissed off. Mainly because I'd been invited to ride the North Shore and Whistler with Ted and his friend Ian, and I couldn't go. I had to be on the last ferry on Friday (10:45 pm) to go, and I knew I wouldn't be done work early enought. In fact, I was at work until 10 pm that day.
I really hate my job. It gets in the way of everything. My hours are horrible - 9:30 to 6, but I never leave on time, so no time in the morning to do anything, but no time after wrk to do anything. And no one gets a shouting at. It's all backwards - the more you do, the more work gets dumped on you, whereas the less work the lazy ones do, the less work they get given, because the don't do it properly or don't get it done at all. So I've got three people waiting to talk to me after the one I'm dealing with, and one of the guys passes his customer onto me while he stands around doing nothing, and I've got a whole load of tech work to do and issue that need resolving. I could be employed full time just doing paperwork and shipping and dealing with warranty issues and phone calls and speaking to customers. I don't have time to actually fix computers. I've still got stuff on the bench from seven days ago. We took in three times more money in tech last week than average, which means my work load was three times as much, and I haven't been able to get caught up or get to the non-essential work since March, so I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do.
Quit, I guess. Anyone looking for a cheap techie?
Anyway, I was talking about the riding. I didn't go mountain biking at all all weekend. I phoned Hilary to see if she wanted to go riding, but she was doing a craft fair in Ladysmith, so I rode up to see her, then rode back.

Look, it is autumn!:

Last Saturday

... I went to visit Hilary at the market and then rode to Mill Bay to take some pictures.

That's not your bike!Hilary insisted I take a photo of a lady's giant cabbage:This first video is a time lapse I made at the market on Ingram Street:

This is a "tour" of part of the market. I attached the camera to the top tube of my bike with a GorillaPod.

At Mill Bay I tried some long exposures. I can't find a ten stop ND filter (77 mm) that can be had for under $150 (!), so these were improvised with ND8 and 720 nm IR filters stacked, but best I could get (and this is on a cloudy day) was one minute. I really want at least four to get the clouds blurry, probably more.
This was the first setup:
It was inevitable:
A steel frame full of salt water. It had needed a good clean for months. I guess that was the final nudge.

More pics coming...

Prevost on Monday

...with Ted.
(You can see the outline of Mt. Tzouhalem in the background)
After each watching seasons multiple times and studying Stevie Smith's section, Ted and I wanted to go and find some of the trails in the movie. So, with some directions from Doug in mind, and some muffins from Tim Horton's in backpacks, we headed up Prevost.
After several complaints from Ted ("This is definitely a shuttling mountain."), we decided not to ride to the top, but took the fire road across the mountain. We stopped to peer down Patchworks, and continued on until we came to what must be the DH race course.
As it hadn't rained in a long time, the trail was very dust and loose. There were a couple of steep sketchy bits that I didn't ride that I'm sure I could ride now I've seen them. There was one place where we had the choice of three trails, and we took the right (almost a u-turn) as it looked the least steep. We ended up on the same trail that we usually do if we take Graceland.
The whole trail was pretty ridable. I think there was only one bit Ted didn't ride, and pretty sure we could both ride it next time, especially after a bit of rain.

(skip forward to 5:04)

Total Distance: 24.6 km (from my place back to my place)
Total Time: 4:23

Riding at the Tzou (again) last Sunday

Katie,
Roland,Jen,
Dave,
Jamie,
Ted
and I went for a ride on Tzouhalem last Sunday.
Up some fireroad and singletrack to Field of Dreams, up the fireroad to the top where we took a break, then down Rocky Ridge, Santa Cruz Way, Blueberry Pancakes, along the fireroad to Middle T, Showtime, Luc's Skywalker,Fluid, and Resurection.
Ted fell off the first bridge on Field of Dreams/Little Dipper, but rode it the second time.
Jen fell off the long flat bridge on Skywalker, but rode it on the second try.
Katie got a pinch flat on Middle T.
Roland fell off multiple times while not moving.
Jamie rode all of Zig Zag.
Roland rode some.
Ted rode some.
Thanks for coming everyone. Great ride!