StreetCowboy

We have never encountered any dangerous cycling, though I can think of one or two occasions when we have encountered dangerous driving. If I was wanting to improve road safety, I would eliminate the killers, not the victims.

Pubcycle 2023, our tenth excursion, is scheduled for 26th November. We will be raising funds for Agathian’s Shelter, and if you can’t join, just send the money. My first task is to confirm the participating pubs; then the posters, check the route in detail, confirm the riders, start collecting sponsorship… Thanks in advance for your support - the kids appreciate it!

It's a shyte state of affairs, and all the fresh air in the world won't make any bluddy difference.

Skelmersdale's finest!

I still can.

There’s only one f in of, and if people don’t understand that, they’re as well effin’ off.

I’m terms of literacy, you may be an example of decline. “better off” and “better” are not synonymous.

I think I was better back in the 80s

There's certainly a lot more drug testing in professional cycling.

I had planned a long ride on a gravel road we had ridden some years before, then (as previously planned though not achieved) via a complex route avoiding busy highways to home. I had identified the most significant challenging junctions, but my navigational error came from forgetting that we had stoped in a petrol station on the right hand side, and set off thencewards in the opposite direction. It was not a short ride, ten km extra was not going to make it any shorter, and I gave the navigational fruit machine a couple of extra pulls and a bit of a kicking to boot. ”I’d rather admit defeat now than double back and start on the navigationally challenging bit of the ride. We can head up here and along and around and about a bit and find ourselves in The National Capital whence we can get the train to Serdang or Kuchai or Taman Tun” ”We can decide that when we get there…” One short wrong turning saw us sheltering from the rain, commiserating with a motorcyclist who had fallen backside-down at the junction where we had erred, and our signposts were not adequate to find our way easily to the station, but Google Maps mitigated our omissions. We rode wrong-direction through the bus station, and boarded the train in good time. If anyone asks you, the air con on the train is fine - if anything too cold, and anyone that says otherwise is a troublemaker with nothing better to do while they’re travelling than post spurious complaints on social media. “There’s still rain on the windows - it might be raining here - let’s stay on till TTDI” ”I was hoping you’d say that” It was raining gently at TTDI as well, so we went to the nearest pub to the station.

How many cars are there in Le Tour de France, compared to Formula 1? my understanding is that in Formula 1 there are 22, plus a Safety Car. I would love to cycle on closed roads, but not when there are more cars following me than a Formula 1 race. How does Formula 1 manage without camera motorbikes?

An acquaintance from back in the day had called me out for a pint, and never one to back down, I had taken him at his word. As one is wont, we turned to times and places gone by, and after he had escaped in a taxi towards the safe haven of his home, I thought I would stop by to see how much the KL pub had deteriorated. If “ a lot” had been enough, I’d have headed home, but some depths need plumbing. I hope memory will serve me well enough that I will not come back soon

Those of you with calendars will know that this is the only Sunday 20th of the year, so we combined our 20-20-20 ride with an excursion to a Toddy Shop, for the benefit of our friends, local and foreign, who were not familiar with such places. The ride there was neither more troublesome nor more difficult than I expected, and we were little surprised that no one else arrrived at the Toddy Shop it was a fair bit more than 20 km to the toddy shop, And not much shorter coming home. We didn’t manage 20 kph on the way home - not after 3 litres of toddy. They were offering”cocktail toddy” with sweet fruit syrup flavourings, which I thought made it much more drinkable, and it went really well - quickly, at least - with the wild boar curry. I spent this evening fettling the gears on the shopping bike , which was a bit of a waste of time as I’ll probably not be riding it till the next Sunday 20th.

As you know, the architects have made the bike racks a tourist attraction in their own right, though not a very popular one. An acquaintance had been waxing lyrical about the beauty of the Scottish highlands, with a photo similar to yesterday’s ride - complete with rain clouds. The road from there to Kajang is lovely, until you get to the Highway - worth the struggle over Ampang Lookout; we stopped half-way up to admire the view and marvel at the brutal ugliness of the Duke Highway as it slashes through the heart of KL. The stop made the climb up the hill all the more bearable - I suppose a photo would have been in order to share the monstrosity. “There’s a bit of a haze over KL city centre” There’s haze everywhere; you just don’t notice it over the suburbs because you can’t see the buildings behind it”

Steady on, pal, ye’re not the ‘kin’ Pope Ref previous story about TheBlether

There are few amongst us so ready to share a little light in the gloom of our limited imaginations. I had the remarkable good fortune to be recommended “In The Penal Colony” by one of our fellow posters, and I wish I could offer such helpful advice to my peers. Perhaps read again Catch 22, or The World of Suzie Wong

I have met a couple of posters here, but have no desire to meet those with whom I disagree. I don’t seek out people with whom to have an argument.

I don’t see how a Nazi symbol would be different. Symbols are symbols. You should perhaps try to understand how much people try to use the law to persecute their opponents, rather than interpreting everything too literally. You may also need to dig a little bit deeper beyond what CNN report. If I was going to fight Malaysia’s intolerant laws, this is not where I would start, and I would try to avoid getting my friends’ festival terminated.

I took a rake past one of our Stations to form my own opinion of allegations of vibration, and whilst I was there, availed myself of their top bike rack. That Station is surrounded by highways, but Who Dares, Wins; getting home was just as SAS. Anyway, the vibration varies according to the state of the train wheels, and I have no reason to single out that station. I went down a couple of stations for comparison, and checking out some parking problems at the same time.

Life is never full of uncertainties - there is always room for more. Back in the day, slowly sobering up in a distant and unfamiliar part of Taipei, as it started to rain, I thought “this could not get any worse”, and I have rarely been so spectacularly wrong.

My son played for Kettle. He became a YouTube Sensation… and without doubt Health and Safety would have taken a dim view, and perhaps had words with whoever was in charge.

Where do you get the solid story line from? Pictures are pictures, no matter whether they are drawn from a syndicated artist, an art student or Skynet. If you believe that we will believe the stories that AI will tell us, then it is time to take up the hammers and pitchforks of the Luddites and cast the abominations into the abyss, before they do the same to us. There is no reason to believe that washing machines have our best interests at heart.

Cheer up, they said, things could be worse... so I did, and they were. Pessimists think that things cannot get any worse, and Optimists think that things can only get better.

Although THX1138 was well directed and well produced, the story line was what was important - and not the words of the story. AI wiill give us a superlative substitute for human thought, which eventually will make "Terminator" obsolete - we will not know that we are subservient to machines, ... Maybe that will happen in the future, maybe it happened five or ten or twenty years ago.

If I was going to never have an alcoholic drink, I think I would choose one of those sugary alco-pops.