Cycle Divas and the showerproof saddle covers

Recently, while looking at Cycle Social, I  filled in a poll posted by another member, Cycle Divas, who wanted to know what members thought were the factors that put people off cycling. Prizes were offered to the first few who replied to the poll and, to my surprise, I was among the first few.
Cycle Divas proved to be the business name of a lady who is a qualified National Standards Cycle Instructor and Bikeability provider.   

Cycle Divas  have been preparing a range of showerproof saddle covers which will become available early next year. My prize was one of several prototypes that have been made already and very acceptable it was too. I can anticipate a good demand for these among our growing population of cyclists.  After all, there is nothing more miserable than having to sit on a wet saddle after a rainy day at work or during a shopping trip, etc. and if we are supposed to be doing more cycling, and doing it with style, an old plastic bag just won’t do any more.  This cover is the business and even makes my bike look a bit trendy (and I’m not complaining). It might even deter the thefts of the more expensive saddles by hiding them from view. It covers the saddle very snugly and is quickly attached and detached using a drawstring with a quick-release locking device similar to that found on anoraks and other outdoor clothing.
Cycle Divas hopes to be marketing a range of these covers early in the New Year and they should prove popular, especially as there is so much scope for variations in design.

Cyclists – let’s get together, and promote cycling…

It is shocking I know, but I have done very little cycling lately and I must try to get out there more often. To me, cycling is a leisure activity and a source of exercise and that, at present, is all. In addition it should be a self-perpetuating activity thanks to the pleasure that it provides. This is no longer the case for me and I suspect that I am not alone.  Trouble is, I’ve “done” all the local routes that fall within my range and I really don’t want to cycle much further at present. In fact I have cycled those routes again and again and there is no incentive to continue.
The main reason is that I don’t really enjoy cycling on my own. However, I am not ideal company for most younger and fitter cyclists. I need to cycle at a leisurely pace over a fairly easy route covering a maximum distance of perhaps 10-12 miles just now, but certainly further as fitness improves. This sort of cycling is simply not catered for in my area by any established groups and I am sure that this problem is widespread, and as good a reason as any why so many potential cyclists, especially older ones, haven’t started, or re-started, yet.
I keep thinking that there must be lots of older people who would love to have a gentle cycle ride once or twice or more per week, if only to regain and maintain a bit of fitness  but how to get them together? That is the question. With the best will in the world, the volunteers who run the established cycling clubs in provincial towns and cities cannot cater for every district even if they began to understand the particular needs of the over-60s, and in some cases the well-over-60s, which they probably don’t.
Having almost exhausted local ideas for getting such cyclists together I have continued to look at the internet for solutions. Recently, while looking at various cycling websites I came across one that was new to me, Cycle Social. It has been running for a little over a year and seems to be more user-friendly than other big national sites. It hopes to become Britain’s “biggest social network for cyclists”  and I think that it’s potential could be enormous. It is free to join and has some useful features -  the one that caught my attention was the members map. Members are able to mark their location (only approximately if preferred) on the map, which enables other members to see whereabouts members are in their district and communicate with them if they wish. So far so good.
I joined Cycle Social and marked my approximate location on the map. The search facility enabled me to discover that seven other members were located in the vicinity of Cardiff but it was disappointing to see that only two of them had marked the map and they were outside the city on the opposite side from me.
At this point it occured to me that there are around 320,000 people in Cardiff, the capital of Wales, so why only eight Cardiff cyclists on Cycle Social? Admittedly there are clubs in Cardiff allegedly catering for the city’s cyclists but Cycle Social wouldn’t compete with them. On the contrary, it could improve their communications and help to find them new members – assuming, that is, that they want new members.
As a matter of interest, I had a look at the situation in Bristol, which is only a few miles away, as the crow flies, and is Britain’s first Cycling City, a status that it has enjoyed for just over a year. The population of Bristol is in excess of 400,000. Apparently there are just 12 Cycle Social members listed for Bristol and, again, just one appears on the map. 
It seems reasonable to conclude that, far too often, cyclists themselves are failing to promote cycling and encourage new cyclists, and to support the many campaigns, initiatives and organisations who are working to promote cycling.
Is it apathy, complacency, a lack of imagination or initiative?  Or is it simply a failure to recognise that, with very little effort, we could do so much more to help ourselves in ways which could soon bring results?

Feed the birds

It looks as if Granny-Anne has beaten me to it again! She posted about feeding the birds while I was just thinking about it!
Yes, we started feeding the birds at the end of October, using the rather posh feeder which was a gift from our daughter, Jennie, some months ago.
I must admit that, at first, I was a bit worried that this large, shiny feeder would frighten the birds away. So I hung it out in the garden a couple of months ago to give the birds time to get used to it. It was empty then because I understand that it is not good to feed birds in the summer. I filled it a week ago and only then did I notice a complete absence of birds in our garden. Not one would appear in a space of 10-15 minutes. This was odd.
This seemed so unusual that I contacted the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds via Twitter (yes, I know, how appropriate! But Granny-Anne has used a variation of that one already!) and they replied that it is not unusual for birds to disperse after the young have left the nest.
Nothing happened at the feeder for a few days, until the first visitor that I saw was a Coal Tit, a brave little adventurer who stopped for a quick snack to break his journey. Soon after there was a Robin, then a Blue Tit, then a little gang of House Sparrows  stopped for a quick look in between chasing each other around the trees and finally departing at great speed into a thick hedge a couple of gardens away.
The birds were back at last and all, well, that much at least, was well with the world.

Music – the violin

My violin was an inexpensive old thing about 3-4 years ago, with no particular claim to fame. The label within mentions Antonius Straduarius so I concluded that the instrument was a cheap copy of the great “Strad” and there have been many thousands of those.
It was not the most encouraging of experiences when I started trying to play again earlier this year. First, not playing for the best part of 50 years had undermined my physical coordination and intonation. Secondly, the instrument itself sounded harsh, when it sounded at all. A lot of practice has brought me back to somewhere near my earlier capabilities though I am not sight-reading quite as fluently as before. I am gradually improving the instrument itself while recognising that it might, just,  become acceptable for my purposes but that is probably the best I can hope for. A new set of Dominant strings brought about a vast improvement in the sound, which has now been helped further by a new bridge, suitably modified. While it may seem illogical to spend very much on a bow for a violin of doubtful pedigree, I am beginning to think that my violin is a better instrument than I had thought previously and deserves better than the really cheap bow that is showing its limitations already. Even the “cheap Strad copies” varied considerably in quality and perhaps mine is not so bad after all. Admittedly, it seems to me to project itself rather well – or to put it in more down-to-earth terms, it is loud. On the other hand, something approaching a quite pleasant tone is beginning to become apparent  It will be interesting to hear how it changes over the next couple of hundred hours of practice.

Music – the clarinet

The painting has been a bit sporadic lately, the cycling non-existent (unless you count the exercise bike) but I have been quite productive in terms of musical endeavours. I am assured that there is no connection between this and the fact that one near neighbour has just moved and another will be going shortly! 
The clarinet poses an interesting challenge. It is a transposing instrument. Mine is a Bb clarinet, so if I play the note C on the clarinet, it sounds the same as the note Bb on the piano. So from time to time I get totally bewildered and wonder why they don’t just call it Bb on the clarinet as well instead of calling it C?  Is it me, or am I missing something?
The result of this is that if I want to play a duet involving a non-transposing instrument like a piano or violin, and if the piano or violin music is in, for example, the key of G major, then the clarinet part has to be in A major.
Having gained my musical training on the violin during a large part of my youth I can read treble clef music for the violin but struggle to connect the same music to the clarinet fingering – but that will come with practice. Trouble is, this process is not helped by the fact that I am able (too often in the present context) to play the tune in question “by ear” and tend to ignore the printed music – or I get so involved in actually playing the tune that I forget to look at the music and therefore lose my place in the score. Is this a musical “senior moment” I wonder?
If there is a really disheartening aspect of the clarinet it is reeds. Even experienced clarinetists have problems with reeds – or they would if they hadn’t found their own ways of dealing with them. The problem is that although manufacturers grade their reeds according to their hardness, the raw material is inherently inconsistent – and so are the reeds. The consequence is that a comparative beginner (in particular) may find that out of a box of ten reeds only two or three will be playable straight out of the box.  Just last week I had no playable reeds left, just a motley collection of rejects. Fortunately, I had acquired a copy of “Reeds Reeds Reeds!” by Alan Cresswell.  Alan is a New Orleans style jazz clarinet player, who plays with Max Collie, The Muskrat Ramblers and The Golden Eagle Band at clubs and festivals in UK and Germany. He says that he wrote the book to share his experiences hoping they will help others. It is a slim A5 book of a couple of dozen pages, which includes detailed (and well-illustrated) practical information about reeds, mouthpieces and ligatures and how to improve problematic reeds, whether too hard or too soft. I strongly recommend this book. Why? Last week I had a collection of reject reeds – a collection that cost me more than the book itself. This week they are all working well and producing quite a nice tone.  The book is available from Dawkes, who supply other music shops and Foyles bookshop in London and you may well find stockists by looking for Reeds Reeds Reeds on Google.

I knew very little about the clarinet when I started to play it but that soon changed thanks to David Pino’s book, “The Clarinet and Clarinet Playing”. It is packed with practical advice and information and is very readable. I found it at Amazon.

MBE for Nicole Cooke

I was very pleased today to read that Nicole Cooke, our Olympic and World Champion road racing cyclist from South Wales received the MBE from HRH Prince Charles at Buckingham Palace.  A well-deserved award indeed.

Business as usual

I see that Granny-Anne is having a go on her blog about the stupid complexity of modern living. Oh, don’t get me started or this will turn into an open-ended series of rants, a catalogue of depression-inducing experiences  – usually when attempting to deal with retailers or other “service” suppliers – which no longer induce anything other than a despairing mood of self-congratulation for anticipating the outcome and for not being stupid enough to expect better.
By way of a recent example, this week I sent an email to a manufacturer in Sweden, asking whether they would kindly tell me the weight of one of their workshop machines. I am selling one of these machines at the moment and a prospective buyer needs to know the weight so that he can arrange transport. At the same time, I sent an email to a British shoe manufacturer, asking for addresses of their stockists in Cardiff.
Within a couple of hours I had a more than adequate reply from Sweden. 
The next day, after waiting about 30 hours, I received a reply from the shoe manufacturer. It told me lots of things about their returns policy and other matters that were of little interest. It didn’t tell me anything about Cardiff stockists and its arrival was too late for a further exchange of emails on the same day.
So a Swedish manufacturer who had no reason to expect a sale by replying to me, did so within two hours. A British manufacturer, who had every reason to expect some business, replied late the next day and got it wrong even then.

Says it all really.

Homeward Bound

Once again there were plenty of ships in the Kiel Canal including these two heading towards the Baltic Sea.

By breakfast time on September 8th our holiday was almost over. It was our 36th Wedding Anniversary and as a detailed description of the celebrations, and of the final stages of our travels, appears on Granny-Anne’s blog I will try to avoid too much repetition here. Ahead of us lay two days of cruising, first, through the Kiel Canal to the North Sea. then our course would take us south to the English Channel and along the south coast and up the Solent to Southampton. The next 36 hours passed very quickly, in retrospect, until later on the Wednesday evening I noticed with some surprise that we were just about within sight of “The White Cliffs of Dover”. I had never seen them from sea level before and we were a long way off in poor light, Even so, I had to try, at least, to take a few photos, one of which is shown here.

Part of our distant view of the White Cliffs of Dover in the poor light of late evening.

One good night’s sleep later and I awoke early to find that we were in the Solent already – another place that I had never been before. I was amused that at such an early hour of the day, one of the first vessels I saw was this ferry (?) seemingly sponsored (or perhaps owned) by IKEA – suppliers of nearly all our bookshelves and other storage units of which a few can be seen here.

This was a tremendous holiday from Page and Moy. It had been a complete change from our normal routine and we had been totally pampered by all the wonderful people who looked after us aboard Ocean Majesty. Though we had done little exploring in some of the ports, we were very happy with the whole experience and would return to any of them for a much longer holiday.
And finally, to my frequent visitor Shoreacres, I haven’t taken many photos of the sea but here are three, just for you!

Berlin

Checkpoint Charlie, in a brief moment when the lone U.S, soldier was not surrounded by tourists wanting to be photographed with him.

The structure of the Berlin Wall was far less formidable than I had always imagined and I took this photo of the end of a surviving section to illustrate the point. It didn't need to be any larger as there had been several thousand East German guards watching every inch of the other side of it.

 

The concert hall at The Gendarmenmarkt, where I was out of sight of our tour group by the time I had wandered off far enough to get it all in the picture.

The German Cathedral, also at The Gendarmenmarkt.

The Brandenburg Gate

On September 7th we arrived at Warnemunde and, after an early breakfast,  set off for a coach tour of the Berlin Highlights. The journey to Berlin took approximately three hours. A fine restaurant lunch was provided for us but the day’s schedule was delayed in the afternoon by heavy traffic.

As everywhere else where conducted tours were taken, I am sure that the selection of the route by the guides, inevitably, will have cast a somewhat rose-tinted light on the city as a whole and Berlin was no exception. It was elegant and impressive. We saw wide streets with many palaces and fine churches and other majestic buildings of an historic nature, many of them restored or rebuilt since World War Two.

We saw parts of the former Berlin Wall (1961-89) and also the amazing amount of reconstruction that has occurred since 1989. There were also many examples of modern architecture in glass etc. which I found impressive – and, coming from me, that is a compliment indeed.

It had been a long day by the time we returned to our ship, Ocean Majestry, for a late dinner.  Berlin was one of the few European capitals that Granny-Anne particularly wanted to see and although there are better ways to get there from the UK, our Baltic cruise had presented the opportunity so we took it.

And finally, some of the many very relaxed-looking cyclists and other pedal-powered transport that I saw in Berlin.

Stockholm

We approached Stockholm at breakfast time in fairly calm water, though there was a brisk wind. The sun was shining and the view was beautiful of all the islands on each side of the ship, with various large and small  houses right down to the water, and many moored boats.

Our docking time was delayed by the overnight storm which had been the first experience on this cruise of anything resembling rough conditions. Admittedly it had just started to become a little bumpy in the North Sea on our outward bound journey, before we diverted through the Kiel Canal, but last night was certainly rougher and as I referred to this in the first post in this series  I won’t repeat it here.

We decided to have lunch on board then take the 1.30pm shuttle bus the short distance into Stockholm. We then had a boat tour of the harbour for about 50 minutes but reflections in the boat’s windows put an end to any thoughts of photography.

It was all quite pleasant but we had neither the time nor the walking capacity to see much of the city. In addition it seemed to be a very busy day, partly no doubt due to three  very large cruise ships moored close to the city which could well have disgorged up to 3,000 tourists each into the city centre. Secondly, there was some sort of big-time EU Ministers meeting in the city that day so several self-important looking convoys were rushing about disrupting the traffic (as if paying their expenses wasn’t bad enough, we have to put up with their disruption!) – and doubtless this also explained the presence of lots of police personnel on the streets, many of them apparently armed to the teeth.
On Sunday, September 6th we had a full day of cruising across the Baltic Sea to Warnemunde, in what used to be East Germany. The day started grey and cloudy with a choppy sea but the ship was running smoothly. The wind was quite strong but didn’t seem cold until later in the day. In the Baltic Sea we were rarely out of sight of other ships and on this morning there seemed to be two or three others a long way off but running on a parallel course. 

In the morning we attended a talk by Richard Jarmain on Warnemunde, Rostock and Berlin. After 14 years this was his last voyage on Ocean Majesty. All of his talks were well researched and illustrated and also entertaining.
Lunch was more than ample as usual and was followed by a short nap and then coffee upstairs. Then to the Majestic Lounge for the early quiz in which Granny-Anne and I formed a team with one of our new friends and managed to score top marks – nothing to do with me, I just wrote down their answers for them.
We watched a ritual being enacted by the entertainment team and involving the swimming pool on one of the top decks. This was all about asking permission from Neptune (King of the Sea) to enter German waters. I couldn’t hear what was being said (shouted actually) by the participants but the idea seemed to be that most or all of them would end up being pushed into the swimming pool. There was a very strong wind, which was no longer pretending to be warm.

Around 5.00pm we started to prepare for the evening activities which commenced with dinner at 6.00pm. On booking the cruise we had requested the early sitting for dinner as it suited us better than the later sitting at 8.00pm.  It was the second of three evenings on this cruise for which we were invited to wear formal dress. Meanwhile, the sea had been growing from moderately choppy to much larger swells and I hoped that it would get no worse, at least until both dinner sittings were finished. I had visions of glasses tipping and plates of food sliding off tables – and almost everyone in their best frocks!