Mark Brown 🏃🚴🚵

Todays commute coffee break, NCR51

I studied astronomy at college, I did equations with parsecs, wrote computer code to show the orbits of planets in our solar system, I learned how to work out actual magnitude from apparent magnitude. Today I failed to put my oven clock back one hour.

I am still cycling. Most days. I’ve just stopped putting it on Strava, or recording it at all, as of last Monday. 🥳

National Cycle Route 51

Cycle commute coffee break out of the rain

I wasn’t always a cleaner, ten years ago I was duty manager at a busy Citizens Advice, I quit due to mental and emotional burnout.

Genius level of planning here, all approaches for motorists clearly signed and re-routed, cyclists and forgotten as usual.

Feel too sick to ride motorcycle safely, but not sick enough to miss work. So.. prepping Brompton for morning, max 12mph instead of 50mph+ as reaction times might be impaired, and I can always bail out and hop on a bus, and cos im riding the cycle way instead of the bypass, take about same time,

Watching the crew clearing the house next door utterly fail to get the sofa out. I could’ve told them that the only way it went in, was I helped my old neighbours by removing the gate from it’s hinges, clearing my courtyard of pot plants, and then sliding my own 6ft fence panel out. But i didn’t.. 🤭

I cycle to work past a castle slighted in the 13th century, along a river Vikings traded on, through a village that predates the Norman invasion.

Damn i feel old, just filled in the forms to cash a pension in. 🫤

Worth a shot.

Before I had a CRF250L i had a ratty old Honda XR250 which i once got stuck in a snow drift.

My old Honda CRF250L it was better than the sum of it’s parts, it took an absolute beating and kept running, upgraded the clutch and levers, added a bash plate, bark busters, haul loops, mousses instead of tubes, but was otherwise pretty standard.

Me on a Fazer thousand following my friend who crashed, time lapse photos as I was trying that mode out on my new camera, he was mostly fine, broken collar bone. Around 2011. Local IAM used video on a training course. As video shows, crash helmet saved him from serious harm.

Video of me with my old second hand Honda PXR 50cc

My dog got your pizza but he ated it.

This is the state with many drivers in the UK these days. Just mow down a person cycling in daylight. Completely unremorseful or willing to accept blame. Backed up by crowing idiots. A fecking driving instructor too to cap it all. What message does he give to his students? road.cc/news/daily-m...

Me in 2014 on a 105km hike, I did it in 20hrs 29 minutes around 900 started and under 500 finished, hottest day of the year. Between checkpoints 7 and 8 i started hallucinating on my own in the dark. Said “never again” then signed up to hike Greensands Ridge 🤣

Parked my motorcycle next to a 125cc scooter at work today, impressive amount of luggage capacity

This weekend’s Bedford Running Festival .

Lying in, sore after my fastest 5k of the year, i can hear the running festival on my doorstep and the start of the HM and 20miler, and am experiencing no FOMO, just a quiet contentment that i went running yesterday, might even go watch the podium medals, usually im still halfway round the course.

Well, did the running festival 5k in around 26minutes, not sure of chip time yet, didn’t stop watch till i was way through the finish tunnel. Probably ran too fast for my current fitness, but I enjoyed it.

Entered a 5k race later today, modest target time of 30mins. Psychobilly playlist through my bone conduction headphones, with Rick Astley 🥴 to come on at 31minutes, motivation to pick up the pace in the last 800 metres. 🤭

What it was like delivering food during the early days of the pandemic.

I hit 27mph wind assisted on my Brompton, the roll top briefcase attached to the front mount acted like a sail 🤣

BREAKING 🚨 | Unions tell @icr.ac.uk board: end the strike, value your workforce and protect our national resource. Trade Unions representing 800,000 workers have just sent the below letter to the Executive Board and Trustees of the ICR. Share the letter below 👇 #StrikeMap

Well, first run after illness, not fast, but did a 5k without stopping, only a little sore. Never missed the local running festival since it started in 2016, it’s next week, I’ve entered the 5k instead of my usual Half Marathon.

Once in a forest, something fell out of the trees. He was laughing so much he couldn’t get up. A lone wolf saw him fall, went in search of a ladder. He bit into the ladder, used it as a spear… and something died laughing.

Well, i am cured, balance and hearing returned NHS ENT surgeon sorted me out, was not the rare ear disease I had been diagnosed with. Too out of shape to enter the Half Marathon at local running festival (assuming there are places left) so will do a 5k. What a relief, was in pain for months. 😀

Every Wednesday evening this summer ive joined a bunch of 50year olds to play frisbee in the park. 🤣

I’ve started stopping and talking to other Brompton owners about their setup and luggage etc. Saw this one along the Embankment today.

Just got luggage for my Brompton, which will now be my commuter, no longer cycling to work with a backpack

My dog ignores me when i come home, goes nuts if the wife comes home, gets super excited if people call round. Sidles up to me in the evenings, sleeps on my legs at night, and apparently is quiet and sulky if i am away.

Loaded up modded Skyrim on my XboxX, stable load order for months, refuses to work. 🤷‍♂️ Started over with a new character called Shonkee Lo’Dorder,

I finally emptied the loft. Even found a NTSC/PAL VHS player, and a VHS to DVD machine I forgot I owned, sadly no other treasure, apart from a hat I used to wear.

Hey Le Col you can offer me a 90% discount and I still can’t afford your stuff. Thanks for the Strava badge though. 🤭

Anti-Car sticker spotted in Buxton, UK

Really? Is that it? If this is all that’s come from COBR, it’s pitifully inadequate. As crisis deepens, it beggars belief that there aren’t eg plans to increase resources for the fire service, support for farmers, max workplace temperature, funded community cool spaces & obvs ban on new fossil fuels

This is an outrageous failure from Andy Burnham and this Labour Government. He says they "don't know the remedy." It's obvious to almost anyone. Nationalise water companies. Tax fossil fuel companies. Invest in renewables. Labour selling us down the river to please their donors as country burns.

Partial solar eclipse in local park.

Resorted to using the communal well at my allotment, with my refurbished wheelbarrow. Today I finally ran out of stored rain water. 🫠🤯 Dumped 100litres on my mulched apple tree.

Novice green laner gets motorcycle stuck on wet chalky climb. It’s steeper and wetter than it looks, in the audio you can just hear me chuckling when their groups TEC waves me on and I chug past, I think I was on. CRF250L with upgraded clutch etc.

Riding a BMW 650 Sertao motorcycle along a private dirt road to my friends house in the fens. (Music is Mhòrag’s Na Horò Gheallaidh by Clannad).

Following behind a 1959 AJS motorcycle whilst greenlaning, i was on a 2016 300cc 2 stroke

That time a faulty Travelodge Television was possessed and turned Sooty into an anime rave .

Well, my diagnosis is now officially Keratosis Obturans, and I have exposed bone inside ear, along with concrete like wax that can’t be removed by usual methods. GP suspected, took 5 months to get a specialist appointment, via private/nhs place, now have Urgent ENT referral. And lots of codeine.