6 inches, Thatchers, Roger Red hat

Keeping everyone informed.

This last 10 days I have been a bit quiet on the blog front. Just to advise you what I have been up to.

For anyone that doesn't know I cycle 10 miles to work and back on a weekday. So although I haven't done a 'big' cycle I have been keeping myself fit.

Last weekend I went on a stag do in Reading, on the Saturday we went canoeing, now this was good because it meant all day I was exercising my arms. Another fact about me is because I have never really been a gym goer I have big strong legs from cycling and comedy kids arms so it was good to exercise them.

A thought I had over the weekend is probably the same reason that my blog posts aren't full of vocab. Its down to my poor primary school education. I learnt all about Billy Blue hat and Roger Red hat and their activities. This is fine I could therefore understand that Red and Roger start with a 'R' and Billy and Blue start with a 'B'. However it has taken me just under 25 years to realise that John and Jennifer Yellow hats do not actually work. I think it was because this was the late 80s no-one had random names but boring ones. Therefore Yannick and Yolanda Yellow hat would have been strange. If anyone asks me how to spell Yellow its got to be J-e-l-l-o-w.

This week I went to Bike Polo again and have even been looking at the Internet for a second bike so I won't buckle my bike. This would mean I could be more aggressive in the game. Someone at work had picked up a second hand bike, so they told me about it, brought it into work and I was to give them the £15. What a bargain, however I got a little confused with the measurements when he said the wheels were 24 inch I thought perfect only a little smaller than my current bike. My bike's tyres are 25 mm in width and 30 inch in diameter, I got confused, the bike was tiny and I felt like a monkey in a circus going round in circles. It was far too small, amazing the difference six inches can make!

It has rained a couple of days this week and hopefully come September it will be drier for my cycle challenge to Land's End. Although it was quite warm and dry this evening so I went to Critical Mass. There were only 12 of us which made formations more important in stopping traffic, we still had amazing time, we were called all names under the sun and because of the weather that was technically correct.

A previous blog entry mentioned cycling to the Thatchers Cider farm, the great news is I have found a local shop four minutes walk away gets a regular delivery of two draught kegs so I can wont have to go back to the field to scrump the apples. This is probably also the reason this entry is only just coherent.

Signing off

Louis £545 raised so far looking for any sponsorship to boost this total nearer to £1000. You can make a difference

Tired Boy, Rest and Repair

Blog update

I have woken up today and I am still aching from football on Sunday. So I decided to have a rest and repair day. This is on two levels, fitness and my blogging. So you may see a couple of minor changes on my blog, I had upgraded my Justgiving widget to include how I am getting on with my fundraising target. Just to update you, with five and half weeks to go I have raised £535 for charity, increased my fitness levels and bored you to tears with over 7190 words. The last stat was because my Nan hasn't got access to the Internet, so I have had to copy and paste all the blogs onto a word document for my Mum to print off. This reminds me of a conversation I overheard when I went out for dinner with my Girlfriend, my Parents and Grandparents. My Grandad said to my Dad 'Doug, have you downloaded any tunes on your Ipod recently?' Yeah my Grandparents may not have the Internet but they are certainly 'down with the kids'! I have also added a web counter for everytime someone checks my blog, how exciting I can check its latest circulation figures. Also I amended my facebook page, with new details of my blog rather than a link to my Oxfam Cambodia/Vietnam entries of 2007, and removing the Wallbirds from my music likes and nearly removing Summer Heights High off TV programmes.
Thanks again to everyone who has sponsored me so far.

So to the second rest/repair, fitness, as I said my body is aching with the cycling and not warming down from football. Last season I started going to Yoga classes at a school, the main reason for this was a magazine article I read with Ryan Giggs who said he has prolonged his football career by using Yoga stretching exercises. If it is good for probably the best left winger in the history of the Premier League then I need to keep going, however as I am reminded constantly by status updates from teacher friends, schools are closed for the holidays so Tuesday night Yoga is off ufn. I thought I would go for a little cycle.

Cycle Ride

Then I had a lightbulb moment, I would do an entry with a few pictures cycling around Bristol, as a lot of the people I e-mail the blog updates to are not from round here. First off though just thought I would update on the Bin Men front (as I have just remembered my landlord is on the distribution list for links to my blog), I put the black bins out last night and they duly took them.

Now because it was a leisurely cycle ride I ended up getting carried away with the photos, so I will try and work out how to put the whole album on, rather than just a couple of images. After a few minutes I thought what has Bristol been famous for recently? Last year over 12 weeks more than 300,000 people, visited the Banksy vs Bristol Museum exhibition this matched the museum's own annual number of visits. I would take some pictures of Graffiti.

So Graffiti is the name for images or lettering scratched, scrawled, painted or marked in any manner on property.[Wikipedia definition] There are number of debates with Graffiti, whether it is art or considered vandalism. It can be used as a gang symbol for tagging terrority, it can be used to decorate the side of a shop or an eyesore area. It can be used as political statement, someone even sold a Banksy mural with a free house included, as part of their house sale.

My two hours of cycling showed me a number of different displays and forms from just a simple tagline to elaborate wall paintings. It showed me how
People had made ugly old buildings look less derelict and jazzed up Railway stations.
People had made political and anti-corporate statements. Well there is a lot of unrest around with a new Tesco being built one person had even gone as far as putting posters up in their window showing a price match for local shops compared to the nearest Tesco stating, Think Tesco are cheaper?
People could remind other residents not to use their bins.
People can advertise their shops

But it also showed me the negative side of graffiti, how
People had defaced a local street signs from Cotham Park to Gotham City which is hilarious, but the postman may deliver to the wrong address.
A council worker had to clean a wall with taglines off costing the taxpayers money. (I took the picture after when he had gone round the corner for a break.)
People had even gone as far as vandalising fellow artists work.

My conclusion is there are some amazing street artists out there and they should have dedicated spaces where they can work. But what is with little taglines in black on people's houses it looks awful. Although as everything is subjective some people may like that thing.

If someone wants to go on a Louis' magical cycling tour taking in Graffiti let me know, I can widen the spectrum to Pirates and TV locations! (Only Fools and Horses, Casualty, Skins and Being Human)

After two hours of a gentle cycle I got back to see someone from the Top Floor Flat taking two of the four Black bins back onto our drive, (why he couldn't take all four in I don't know). He then proceeded to place Books, DVDs and empty Folders onto the wall. I was just having a relaxing tea when one of the Recycling Men who were just emptying the cardboard, paper, tins and bottles picked up one of the DVDs off the wall to take home. Now if only the Bin Men were as helpful someone would have picked up rubbish when the bins were on the drive two weeks ago! I then went out there myself picked up the rest of the stuff, put them in a bag and gave them to a Cancer Research charity shop minus a finder's fee (ironically Summer Heights High on DVD).

I am not looking forward to football training tonight.

Louis

Cycle to Football

Shadwell Rovers versus Stoke Bishop

Before today I had only clocked up about 140 miles, not including Bike Polo on Thursday night. Yes I went back to give it another go. I turned up and only three other people were there so it a little more obvious that I was a beginner although it meant I had more touches of the ball. I am really getting the hang of it. Since the previous week I have found that it is not going to be in the 2012 Olympics, it was two years ago when I saw a BBC Sport VT with Mike Bushell, he was trying out the sport at a time when people were campaigning for it to be re-introduced. Oh well it makes me feel better that I would not have been good enough for an Olympic squad.

So last night I made a decision to cycle to football and back. It was in Keynsham at the Cadbury's Chocolate factory so I picked up a friend in Southville and another in Whitchurch in a sort of cycling bus. This is the factory non-locals may have seen on the Television as it is due to close February 2011, so this may be my last chance to smell the Chocolate whilst playing football. I think that would be my favourite past time.

The good thing was my friend had an i-Phone with GPS signal which meant we could follow a route and have a map to follow which was handy as I didn't know the route we were going to take. This reminds me of normal journeys to football where I just sit in the back of the car and not really take much notice of the journey. Although after playing football in and around Bristol helped me realise there is much more to Bristol than Park Street, Gloucester Road and The Centre. The ride was going well, or I thought, we had got to a massive roundabout and even given someone directions. We cycled for another 15 minutes and ended up doing a massive loop ending up at the same roundabout. Ironically my friend worked out on his phone that we needed to take the road we had directed the lost pedestrian. I couldn't blame my friend as I hadn't take much notice of the signpost as I thought he had it under control.

We continued on the right road and met up with another team-mate and made it along to the Chocolate Factory playing fields. On arrival the sweet smell of chocolate hit my nostrils, I nearly started dribbling. Only 10 players turned up, usual pre-season friendly so the other team loaned us a goalkeeper and our goalkeeper played out on pitch. Yurka, a Czech the 1st one to play for the club. We played really well considering we had loads of players out and we hadn't played since the 1st week of May. To only lose 2-0 was a good result I think my fitness showed as I was running about for the full 90 when most others were struggling.

The journey back was tiring I saw it as a warm down, just taking it easy. I stopped off at the supermarket to get an Apple Juice and Pasty, Sportsman's snack you may think.

I managed to get out of taking the kit, perhaps I should cycle to every game, hmmm...

A very tired Louis