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| Tales from the Woods |
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| 27-01-2008 |
 Out and about. |
Since the TV preferred Tennis to Cyclocross I decided to go out on my bike, and catch the Womens' race afterwards. Went into the forest again because of the fierce wind. I wanted to do something intense so I settled for a hilly ride, a good opportunity to test my legs. The trails were even better than yesterday , offering good grip even on the steepest climbs.
27-01-2008, 16:12 geschreven door Big Bad Wolf
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| 26-01-2008 |
| Red Reverse |
I had to manage my time today, because in the PM I must go to work. So I got up at 9am and set out for a ride along the red Meerdael BLOSO, but in the reverse direction. The trails were damp and wet, and the forest was alive with the sounds of chainsaws as the forestry is busy cleaning it out. The smaller tracks are all blocked at one point or another by timber. This will be going on for the next few months and it is an annoying but necessary task. At the end of spring the forest will be cleaned out of all fallen trees and then riding through it will be sheer joy.Still, it wasn't bad today either. I was tempted to stop and have a look around more than once. Got my phone camera out but still I am not happy enough with the results to post a picture. Ok, well here is one for you to check out..
The white balance seems off and with average shutter speeds of 1/30 to 1/60th making a sharp picture is not possible. I really have to make some time to figure out how to improve the camera's settings. I am possibly too critical about my pictures .
But that is the way I look at photography, using a professional Nikon (and being used to the quality that camera produces) it is not easy taking a step back. With my other little Sony - a 3.2 megapixel DSC-P9 - I also get reasonably good pictures so I was expecting at least the same quality with this one. My expectations were obviously too high, or I am not using it correctly. We'll see in the next few weeks when the weather improves (more light ! ) whether I can rely on the phone camera or if I will still have to bring my other Sony along during my rides for the occasional picture.Ride Stats : 26.5K and 280 heightmeters in 1h25mins465.5/3660
26-01-2008, 12:37 geschreven door Big Bad Wolf
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| 25-01-2008 |
| Murmurs |
I have been brooding over an Ebay item that I bought last week, and have not yet received .. Ebay.. yeah right. But the buyer has over a 100 positive comments (would anyone go to this much trouble to set up a fake account? ) so I will be patient for a while before taking action.
Have been enjoying my new GSM.. GPRS and 3G , Internet, RSS feeds, MMS, MP3, it's amazing what this beastie can do. Only thing I have to watch is the cost of all those little nice-to-have-options.
This weekend brings the Cyclocross World Championships so I probably won't be able to ride much. Sunday in the AM I want to see the Womens' race and in the PM its the 'Boys from Belgium' against the rest of the World. I wonder how many medals we will bring home.. Never saw such an open contest, with Lars Boom and Francis Mourey the obvious favorites, but I am also expecting Enrico Franzoi, who had a bit of an off-season due to a fall, but he has been living towards this WC - in his home country - for the last few months. So I am counting on him to stir up some dust. From the Belgium side I expect Bart Wellens, who can save his season with a good performance here, and also Sven Nys. Sven has had a little conditional dip - real or fake? - which puts him in an underdog position. I think he likes to be in that position. And Erwin Vervecken is always a force to be reckoned with in Championships.
As far as the Women are concerned, my money is on Hanka Kupfernagel, Marilyne Salvetat and Dutch girls Daphne Vanden Brandt and Marianne Vos. I also hope Belgians Sanne Cant - she is only 17 y/o - Veerle Ingels and Loes Sels can play some role. Outsider for the title is US girl Katie Compton, who has show great form in the beginning of the season. I'm sad to see that Christine [Vardaros] has not been selected. She will be in bad spirits about that. But she has been suffering from a concussion around the turn of the year, that must have broken her rhythm and her chances for a selection. The official full entry list is HERE
Today
saw a cold breeze but out of the wind it wasn't bad at all with around
8 degrees near the end of the day.. Yippee, I went for a long slow distance ride along the
Yse borders - part onroad, part offroad and I really enjoyed myself.
Ride Stats : 36.5K and 250 heightmeters in 1h35
439/3380
25-01-2008, 20:30 geschreven door Big Bad Wolf
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| 23-01-2008 |
| Going deep |
A fine day today, and even finer because I had taken the day off from work. It was dry, a bit cloudy and with temps of 7 degrees C and a chilly wind from the south nothing stood in the way of a good training session. I opted for a combination of the 3 Meerdael BLOSO routes, some 53km and 500 heightmeters and not something I would suffer to much on. At least, that was what I thought. The rains had stopped for 2 days now so it was reasonably dry, with the occasional muddy patches though. Caused by horses hooves , jeep tracks , mountainbike tyres and just plain wetness . I always make a little detour around the extremely soggy section next to the E40, I am not in the mood for deepsea diving when I'm on a bike and that particular section is always wet with deep gullies because of the quads and jeeps that keep on passing there in full illegality. May their wheels drop off .I set out on a reasonably easy pace, bearing in mind that the last weeks were not brilliant as far as training kilometers were concerned. The hills seemed steeper than I remembered them, but I made them all, even the very slippery end of the Savenel climb. When your condition is slowly coming back every climb you make is a little victory on its own. Near the end of the ride I began feeling soreness in my neck, shoulders and lower back. Obvious the muscles in those areas have been 'taking it easy' these last few weeks and the have to re-adapt to the higher workload of offroad riding. I tried out my new GSM's camera. I have to read the manual , a shutter time of 1/8 of a second is not really something you can get away with and expect sharp pictures. But I'll get there, don't you worry. Had a nice surprise when I got home, an Epica CD I had ordered last week had been delivered - obviously not by TNT - and I could put it on my phone immediately to enjoy Simone Simons' mezzo soprano voice in combination with goth-rock rhythms.. a divine combination, I can assure you.
Ride Stats : 57K and 535 heightmeters in 3h04mins402/3130
23-01-2008, 15:44 geschreven door Big Bad Wolf
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| Perfect scam? |
Some of you may remember I wrote I would get a GSM. I ordered it at Coolblue company Smartphoneshop.be and after my payment had been received by them last wednesday they arranged for TNT to deliver it at my place.
Last saturday I still didn't receive anything and contacted Coolblue about it. They told me that according to the tracking record TNT had been at my place on thursday and on friday, but they could not deliver the package. Strangely enough there was someone at home the whole day but no courier was seen approching the house. Our place is not the easiest to find, so I thought, OK, they will find it on the third try or in the worst case send the package back to Coolblue.
Then today I checked the tracking record again and it mentioned the package had been delivered ! It even showed a link to a pdf document containing a signed receival slip.
Gasp ! What has happened? "I" didn't sign anything!!
The signature on the receival slip is not mine. I checked with the neighbors, none of them had signed anything or seen a TNT messenger for that matter. Since I saw the tracking record yesterday around 9pm I have not been able to contact either Coolblue or TNT about this.
Seems like a perfect scam so far. Goods cannot be delivered so instead of returning them, signature is faked, goods are "delivered" . Coolblue is happy because TNT reports that the goods are delivered, there is a signature on the receival slip so TNT is covered as well.
Only thing is, I DID NOT RECEIVE ANYTHING.
I will contact TNT first thing tomorrow, and see what they have to say, but I feel robbed . If they cannot or will not help me, I will turn to Test Aankoop , a consumer protection agency and see what can be done about this. I also have a lawyer living next door, I will talk to her about this at well pending the outcome of my contact with TNT and Coolblue tomorrow. At the moment I feel robbed and very helpless about this and as you can see from the time I'm posting this, I am also losing sleep over it!
Funny thing is, a collegue at work had exactly the same thing happening to him a couple of months ago, if I am not mistaken involving the same delivery company and the same phone shop..
Oh, I would almost forget to mention it. Wind and rain made me turn to the rollers again for an hours ride.
Ride Stats : 23K in 1h00mins346/2595
22-01-2008, 07:11 geschreven door Big Bad Wolf
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