17 Apr 2017

17th April 2017 Twirley + five = roundtoit

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Monday 17th 36-45F, 2-7C, cloudy but bright with lighter winds. Five years ago I officially became an old fart. Five years later than that I'm still here. Still pedaling along despite the hurdles and obstacles randomly cast in front of my mud splattered wheels. 

For instance, I ought to be entitled to a UK bus pass by now and become a registered Twirly. For those unfamiliar with the term a Twirly is an elderly, UK bus pass holder who tries to board a bus before the official start time for free travel. Presumably buses are now very popular with the countless impoverished in Gravely Blighted under the vicious May Regime. So they don't want hordes of senile old zombies taking all the seats ahead of paying passengers during Ye Olde Traditional Rush Hour. 

All this is pure guesswork, of course, but I'm known for having a vivid imagination. If Broxit all goes horribly wrong I shall be on the last boat at Dunkirk which still has room for a trike, or three. Whereupon I can chant the official Twirly greeting to the heavily armed, boarding ramp staff. "Am I too early?" To which will come the standard response. "Yeah! Now Gerroff you daft old #%@@er!" Leaving me stranded on the beach with [low hanging fruit] Junckers strafing the stragglers with lapsed EU status. 

Which is probably just as well because I really wasn't looking forward to the UK immigration questionnaire. How the heck do I know who came second in the Tetley's Under 15s Welsh Women's Curling Cup in 1873? Or the nickname of the second cousin removed of the stand-in barman at the pub in 'Corry' during that 1943 flashback to "The Blitz?" Whoops! Sorry, I was getting confused with the Danish Citizenship questionnaire. Easily done at my age. I'm seventy, you know! 😎

The Head Gardener has been saving her pocket money and bought me a nice, new Sigma BC16.16.STS.CAD trike computer to replace the 16.12.STS.CAD which lost its tiny, cadence battery lid, contact strip. The instructions sheet is nearly 1.5m x 1.5 meters square or 5' x 5' = 25^2 ft in Old Money. So I have carefully stored it in the Carradice "Camper" 'Longflap' saddlebag. To be used as an emergency rescue or bivouac blanket in event of confusion or hypothermia causing a sudden brain glitch at the bike rack outside the local supermarket.

Like all of those who hate reading instructions manuals I have resorted to Sigma's YouTube instruction videos. It took me less than five minutes to fit all the kit and seventeen hours to program the computer to read in Miles and Fahrenheit. So that's all right then. Now I am finally ready for the road. Perhaps Sigma should consider a talking AI "companion" like Ford's Cortina, to do all the initial settings? Just a thought... 😏

They could have saved considerable complexity by offering [temporary] deletion of unwanted services. Why on earth would anyone want car fuel savings or the rider's inside leg length measurement as inputs and readouts of any significance? Hasn't Sigma heard of those new-fangled electronic calculators? Or even those silly "Sinclair Home Computers" which will never catch on. Even those daft smart phones have calculators these days. Or you can just ask a virtual friend on The Dark Net to do the maths. Were Sigma really that desperate to additional "features" beyond the existing 167 of the previous model? 

Test ride to the shops. Detoured on the way back. Still only 9 miles. The trike felt so much quicker with a new computer and one clean chainstay and my cadence was off the chart at times. I always feel that the acres of empty screen could be better served with more data. Why not three simultaneous readings using only slightly smaller digits? I did like the small super-magnet whose little plastic holder presses into the inner end of the pedal spindle's hex socket. Far neater than the stacked bits of sticky plastic of the last iteration. It remains to be seen if it stays there in the longer term.

There was a rather decent, wet hail shower, mid afternoon, with thick, 6mm, 1/4"cornflakes. It was quite impressive for a while!

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