The bike trailer that ramtops found and ordered for me on eBay (from this retailer) arrived this afternoon from Germany. A small w00t! at least is in order; I've been wanting such a device for quite some time, and it means that pretty much all of our shopping from now can be done without firing up the car. The thing even has a waterproof cover so, within reason, weather can be disregarded.

It weighs 7½kg, and you hardly know it's there when pulling it (empty at least; the load limit is 40kg :) though it's a bit of a pig getting through bollard chicanes. I took it for a test run along the village cycle path and up Glebe Road, which is enough of a hill to judge how much work the thing is going to be in practice: I dropped a gear (middle 2nd AOT middle 3rd) getting to the junction at the top, but it really isn't nearly a gear's worth of extra effort.

It's really well thought out: it folds flat when it's not in use and is remarkably simple to set up and collapse. You pull it along with an articulated tow bar that mates with bracket that sits neatly inboard of the back wheel quick release, held on with a pin and circlip (and emergency strap). My only minor quibbles (apart, of course, from the beast being utterly insecure: order of shopping is going to have to be taken into account) are that the knobs holding the crossmember in place are irritatingly overendowed with thread and there's no strap or other mechanism to hold the folded trailer closed, or its detached wheels to the rest of the machine. Oh, and there's nothing to hold cargo in place, but a suitably sized bungy spider will fix that.

Turns out, of course, that we don't actually need anything bulky from the shops this weekend, but its time will come soon enough…

Recommended.

surliminal asks who will win:

[Poll #1198471]

I've not posted anything for a while - not even about last weekend's rather fine Eurovision-fest with agc, purple_peril, Pat'n'Dave WANOLJ joining ramtops and me - so here's a completely pointless post to prove to anyone reading that I'm still in some sense alive.

Today, ramtops and I went to the garden centre in Cleeve, for hanging basket plants and basket liners, and some herbs. They had sold out of 16" liners, which we need for the largest basket that's going to be filled with strawberry plants, normal and (Blessed Be!) metsämansikat, we bought along with a whole raft of other herbiage from D the LibDem. So, we stopped at the Brockley farm shop on the off chance they had some (they didn't) and walked out with a punnet of strawberries, a tub of cream (we already have chocolate cake; these will be combined later tonight :), a small loaf of bread-with-roasted-peppers, some sossidges and a pack of locally sourced pig bits which we're going to consume tonight.

We stopped to drop some of Mac's surplus shoes (yes, you read that right) at the village charity shop and discovered a small but perfectly formed crisis as we got back into the car: it turns out that Mr Rodda is less than conscientious about the fastening of his tubs of cream (bad bear!) and about a third of the tub had redistributed itself in the bag, on the floor of the car and on Mac. Thankfully, home was only a few hundred yards away, and cleansing wasn't too traumatic.

The bread, which was exceeding good, was consumed for lunch, with apples and cheese.

This afternoon, I cycled home » Ashton Court » chocolate path » centre » Slavers Quarter (where I sent water filters for recycling at Dyers in the Galleries) » Easton » St Pauls » St Werberghs (refilled washing up liquid bottle, buy more Greens cheddar, porridge and dishwasher tabs) » Ashley Hill » Montpelier » Gloucester Road (apple and blackcurrant juice, round rye crispbread (but no thin rye crispbread, and neither did the scoopshop up the hill)) » Redland » Cotham (yay! thin rye crispbread, and some green tea) » Clifton » Leigh Woods » Ashton Court » home. Weather: hot and humid; your correspondent: likewise.

Minor mishap on the cycle path through the village: I had to stop quite suddenly to avoid ploughing into two people just round a blind right angle bend; I stopped, went to put my feet down, and found that I hadn't stopped and in fact continued gracefully sideways with my bike onto the path. All most undignified (and down to not taking enough account of a raised centre of gravity caused by my fully loaded backpack), but no real damage to me, bike, shopping or (concerned!) pedestrians.

Tonight: food, wine, Dr Who and likely more West Wing (we've finally got a couple of DVDs into S4).
Tomorrow: gardening, lots of.

…nostalgia_lj has written TARDIS/GCU instafic.

It's quite sweet, really.

ION, ramtops and I ran the bar at the annual N Somerset LibDem 'ossidge'n'mash dinner'n'quiz last night, as we have for the last few years. A good time was, I think, had by all but we both woke up with mouths that felt like Lilith had left some of her discarded Bits inside, which was deeply unfair as I drank precisely one bottle of Butcombe Gold, and Mac even less. I blame the ersatz ice cream Cornettos we were given near the end of proceedings. Chock full of Ingredients, I'm sure; toxic waste, I suspect.

While I'm at it, this photo seems to have attracted some attention since I uploaded it this morning (99 views in 14 hours, as I type), and will make a handy icon for those many, many times I feel the need to write about mouseless heads.

I need a cycling icon.

I've just ridden from home to Winford via Wild Country Lane, Hobbs Lane and Barrow Lane. The sign said "Dundry 1½ miles"; how hard could it be? Dundry Lane was ok, but that last stretch of Winford Lane to the top of the ridge was fucking hard work.

I'm a lot fitter than I used to be, but I've a way to go yet before I'm truly comfortable with gravity defiance.

Still, Dundry Lane, the Bridgwater Road, Barrow Street, Hern Lane and Wild Country Lane was pretty much all downhill on the way back. Time to sort out tonight's dinner now, and finish updating our backup server's Ubuntu (having isolated the fscked memory stick that was upsetting it earlier today).

ETA route.

A dock strike in the US against the war? Something from over the pond to give me a warm glow inside, for once :)

Bugger all on the BBC yet, of course.

[ HTT ginmar for the heads up ]

Some people will do anything to avoid werk: this is what I was extracting from our washing machine / dishwasher drainage plumbing, instead of programming, this afternoon…

ramtops photographed the extraction process from the other end.

Via gmul, I find that the London mayoral candidate best matching my views is Lindsey German (Left List) by some margin from Ken and Siân (neck to neck), and Brian a little further behind.

It seems that I'm still an old leftie really then, and it's probably redundant to mention that the BNP arsewipe trails at the bottom of of my list, some way behind the godbotherer, UKIP and Winston McKenzie (whoever the fuck he might be).