Howies ones from about 15 years ago. Still going strong. You’ll just need a time machine to buy them.

I used to rationalise my number display onto two pin boards. One was the past year, one had all the special/important ones.

BBC are limited to one broadcast and one digital. One of the reasons I signed up for Discovery+, apart from the cycling, was they have every event live and on-demand.

Surely, at some point in the planning, someone asked “Mais et s’il pleut”?

Miming and can’t dance. Hmm.

Opening ceremony on…. nothing of interest to report yet. Hoping for cyclist with beret, stripey jumper and onions.

No spreadsheet – Strava + TrainingPeaks.

Overall time. Moving time is only of vague interest.

Chunky ol’ STW mug. No idea how old, but used every day.

French alliance trying to bridge to the break.

History Today sketch.

Dumb newbie tdf question, why are they racing so hard so early in a long leg? Is if for the KOTM jersey?

It’s to get in the break = if your team has a man in the break you don’t need to chase it, saving energy for the rest of your team. It’s also a great way of getting TV time for the sponsors, so you tend to see the smaller teams always trying to get a man in there.

£1200 including the kit. About £260 on the hardware, but can be cheaper – I went for the more expensive end – then I supplied my own pick-ups. Gotoh locking tuners, 510FX bridge (through body stringing), Schaller pick-up surrounds.

So not bad for a unique, carefully finished, properly set-up guitar. Except the front strap button, that should have been further over but I never play standing anyway.

On Tuesday I went along to Crimson Guitars and was confronted with this:

A “SRP” guitar kit for their three day course. Semi finished neck, body and a bunch of bits. Body was sycamore top, sapele bottom. Reasonable flaming on the top.

First was fret levelling and crowning, then finishing

Then lots of sanding, drilling, sanding, more sanding on the body.

To bring out the flaming, first there was a black stain, which was left to dry and then sanded back to leave this.

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Then the main colour – green middle, blue outer. Neck fitted (with help from one of their luthiers to get the height correct), then off for a satin top coat.

Rubbed down with paper to flatten, then electrics, pick-ups, bridge, tuners. Oh, making the nut too. Then set-up – something new for me – and finally…

Loved the course. There were a couple of people there doing a 3 month course, one of which was over from the US. Two people on a two week course making quite complex guitars, and one on a five day making a basic tele from scratch. I learnt a lot about how a guitar is put together and the set-up skills will come in handy.

Same here, cold baked beans. Yuk.

Pidders/Mr Pidcock said on the Cycling Podcast he’s going to ride for stages.

Pog to win, Cav not to win a stage. Another UAE on the podium, and then either Rog or Jorgenson.

Would be nice to see Bernal win a stage, but he’d have to be down on GC to do that. From a group of GC riders he’s never going to get away.

Heat could be an issue – who does well in that?

We’re going through 1.5kg of sultanas a day… blackbirds love them, unfortunately the 1000000 starlings have developed a taste for them too.

First baby robin of the year today.

Already had baby blue, coal and great tits, rook, blackbirds and about 1000000 starlings.

BA. I check in on app, can see the boarding pass attached in flight booking section but it won’t download anything to boarding cards section. Keeps giving an error that it can’t confirm my check in status.

Get to airport, print a paper boarding pass from machine. Go to security and get stopped at the machine that checks you have a boarding pass, paper pass and app giving a “please see BA” message.

See BA person. After three tries she prints another paper pass. That fails on machine too, so get manually checked.

Get to gate. Pass won’t scan. And as I went through manual check my picture hasn’t been captured, which they check at gate. So they have to call someone to approve me getting on the plane.

Person arrives. I have to now prove that I’ve entered the airport from outside that day, and haven’t been living in the terminal. Or something.

Apparently my car park booking paperwork was sufficient, which made no sense.

Still, here I am in Edinburgh waiting for a very late taxi I booked 3 days ago to take me to Perth.

People.

I didn’t join cubs/scouts after a piece on local news showing an “initiation”.

I feared any public attention after been made to go up to a market stall demo (knives or some other hardware) and interact with the demonstrator.

I didn’t get over my fear of attention until uni, when being in an average student band cured me.

Thanks! I was lucky picking Gee and Jorgenson, went for Remco over Roglic. Rest of the the team did OK.

So… TDF… I still think Pogs going to take it. It’ll be interesting to see how Bernal does this week.

Italian, I can get by as a tourist but would like to be able to converse more. I’ve spent more time on holiday there than any other country and love the place (as a visitor). I’ve tried evening classes (dull), Duolingo (OK but not really useful at the start) and some Michel Thomas CDs. Those worked best for me as it was conversation focused but I didn’t invest the time. Being in Italy was always helpful, particularly on bike tours with Italian guides as they’d help with teaching useful phrases.

I was pretty good at German when I was 16, but have barely used it since then. I remember having a conversation with a Danish kid when I was 15, he didn’t speak English, I didn’t speak Danish, but we both had enough German.

Their lives aren’t what they want them to be, for whatever reason, so it’s a convenient group of people to blame.

They see pressure on local services – schools, doctors – and blame the immigrants rather than the lack of investment in services.

They’ve come from environments that don’t have much positive exposure to people from different cultures.

Fear of the unknown.

Lack of opportunities to travel to see other countries and people.

Lots of reasons.

 There were probably about 30 wheeling around above us.

I’ve seen 20+ over Newbury! Pretty much every time I look out the window there will be a few Red Kites in view. We’ve a couple of tall trees in the garden and quite often have one on the highest point calling out.

No Ospreys though.

Let me take this moment to revel in being top of the STW league after my dismal Giro performance.

‘This’ veggie burgers are up there with Beyond Meat imo.

We have the Beyond Meat burgers every couple of weeks, so I’ll give these a try.

A friend of mine designed a bike related product that he 3d prints and assembles at home. He’s sold 1000+, it’s quite niche and sells for £50-£150 depending on version. It’s constantly evolved over time and is even being used by pro road teams now.

It’s potentially patentable, but really wasn’t worth doing without the money to enforce. He’s quite up on the patent process and holds a couple obtained through his day job.

He’s even open-sourced the models for the 3d printed parts so people could make their own or print replacement bits – there’s a net positive of this as people see the approach, think “that’s good”, but 99.5% of people will just buy the thing.

As with the mudhugger/crud catcher, brand and reputation count for a lot.

I did:

IT support (graduate job)

Software engineer

Requirements/business analysis – working with product teams to spec what they wanted from the software.

Architecture/strategy.

Technical lead – bridge between product teams and technical teams, general troubleshooting. Was a smaller business unit in the .com days so bringing some order to the mild chaos.

Portfolio management – getting into the funding and budget side of things.

Team leading, mixed teams of technical and project/programme managers.

Technology innovation – looking at new ideas and technology, finding business uses for it.

Technology sales/account management.

I was never cut out to be a software engineer or anything deeply technical. It didn’t really motivate me, and I prefer working with people rather than spending time alone coding.

What motivates you? What do you want from a job?

I think Geraint may have had brown shorts 7km from the finish.

Ultimately the problem species, when any species of animal is vilified, is humans, not the accused species.

Totally agree.

We have a problem ginger cat a few houses down, one of a pair. Total killing machine, I’ve seen it 20m up trees being mobbed by corvids defending their nests. Other one is much less trouble.

Now I have one of these.

https://uk.spyra.com/products/spyrathree

After a couple of shots from 5m or so, I now just need to shoot at the fence and the noise has it bolting home, 4 gardens away. By aiming upwards I can spray it from 10m away too if needed.

I actually love cats, and the others around here are pretty benign or mainly indoor cats. But this one…

Impressive stats – I try and remember to do it most days. Current streak is 109, I think total attempts is about 250. Three failures in that time.

Switzerland will win jury vote. Croatia the public vote, Finland second.

Croatia overall winner (I hope)

When in Italy, fondente (dark choc) and pistachio.

When elsewhere, as close as I can get to dark chocolate and pistachio.

“What are those?”

Hopefully UCI legal…

Good first day. Enjoyed that. Two of my team in top 10.

I don’t think Thomas looked great in the Tour of the Alps, but looking at the startlist the GC contenders are mainly second tier anyway. Ben O’Connor, Dani Martinez, Antonio Tiberi to compete for top 5.

Pog for the win, obviously.

Friends did registry office, TGI Fridays, pub crawl, curry, ambulance, A&E (for the groom and one of the witnesses).

10″ was the first hit I got searching for “family pie diameter”

Well, if it keeps them going into their 80th decade it must be the food of the (near) immortals.

Depends. How good was hole in the heart surgery in 1980?

Or, girls are people too, including the pretty ones.