The capital of tea rooms....Worthing....

Southampton University and Shiney Dave.......

Winston reveals a hidden skateboarding urge in his homage to Animal Chin







SandM..Portobello Road on Wednesday night

Southampton University witnessed Winston's homage to M.A.S.H.

Back to London and familiar faces at UCL......

Some times were also set at U.C.L.
Bring me my Fix turned up and won the day with 22.62
Overdrive got a healthy 25.64 and me following closely behind with 25.84.......
The times are slower than normal because of the resistance from the belt powered motors attached to the rollers to power the lights behind the bikes. If it wasn't there we would all be flying close to the 20 second mark!!! Maybe. Fast times at Gordon High.

Could be a Wheelers ride...even used some of the same roads in part 2.

Bristol.....Bath......Reading Travelodge....Thursday night.
Plenty of roller racing in the west country....a bit of skateboarding, good food, not so good food, a few nice beers and a chance encounter with an ex London courier in Bath, not to mention a snowboarding trainspotter who posts videos on youtube of both of his passions...........

Motion skatepark in Bristol, skate and ride totally rebuilt. Video art

Bath water

Creative coffee

Waking up in Bristol over half way through the tour....Cardiff yesterday and Bristol Uni today

Day 6 of the Rollapaluza tour over as far as the racing goes, we were at Exeter University today in the sunshine......switched from Caspar's to Paul's rig for the next 2 weeks......got up to London yesterday after a really short weekend in Worthing at home with my girls....stepped out of the darkness of Finsbury Park tube to hear Overdrive shouting out from a passing car, amazing....in a buoyant mood i got a bagel and got down to Winston's place...saw the skatepark at Finsbury Park in the distance but no time...John arrived and we headed west to Camden Road again past Cantelowes...no time...got round Camden easily despite the Hawley Arms fire...and it was West all the way, Westway...feels safer in a van rather than on my bike, scary place to cycle but it's a quick way from W12 to Marylebone Road....if a little hairy. Down to Sheperds Bush, Hammersmith and further west than you would care to go eventually ending up in Exeter by 9....a day at the races and here we are in Cardiff.

The visual highlight of last weeks racing was this gorilla....sitting here at the beginning of a new week at the Travelodge in Exeter i can only hope to find a better spectacle.

Post 101...from the safety of Worthing...a brief break from the rigors of the Rollapaluza tour..


Rob cycled to Warwick from Leicester to ride on the rollers....posted a time had some lunch and a catch up and then rode all the way back again...32 miles each way...the bicycle powered ipod played The derailleurs for the unsuspecting students in honour of Rob's epic ride

Maypole for a second night....permeated with the smell of the Subway below we sit in our cosy family room....Caspar uploading the pictures of todays competitors, John reading his book and me writing this journal, Queen playing on my laptop. Tonight's meal promises much.... a curry is our plan and a drive into town or the curry triangle at least....Aston University was nice and friendly and we had a few racers....my time for 500 metres remains around the 25 second mark but my distance covered is vast but unrecorded. Tomorrow is Birmingham University, another large out of town campus like Nottingham....... i'll be reading the classics and trying to break into the sub 24 second time.....and getting annoyed when i Kant, it's all in the mind i believe....thats my philosophy.

Birmingham Maypole Travelodge...a few mishaps at Loughborough University; strong winds blew the equipment every which way and it ended with the speaker/amp box blowing over and the cabinet burst open on the muddy ground exposing the electrics to the elements....the amp burnt out and silenced the bicycle powered ipod for a couple of hours....not to be defeated by the elements i went into town to a car audio shop, a cornucopia of massive black speakers with names like Blue steel and lazer and ornate alloy wheels and got a cheap amp....it still looked like a piece of Cylon hardware but it got the tunes going back at the Student Union. A sudden downpour almost ended the event a couple of hours early but we dragged the gear into a back entrance hall, dried it all off and started the racing again with music and lights.....motelwise it's back to Travelodge and down the road pub food....a pint of Mild and back to some cookies from Sainsburys.....a culinary lowpoint but tomorrows city centre Aston University could bring us back from the edge of mediocrity. On what is in some parts Super Tuesday and others Shrove but with no pancakes or spoilt chads in sight i'll settle for a pack of lychees and a cup of tea to round off day 2.......


power tools... drill drivers for president.

A dream of yesterday with the promise of more today....yes it's the beginning of day 2 and i woke up with stiff legs.

East Midlands Airport Travelodge....around 10pm....aching legs after the first day of our 3 week tour, Nottingham University and a day of riding the rollers. The bikes are now designed to power a series of lights and the red bike powers an amp attached to an ipod so the wheels have to keep turning to keep the music going....probably kept the wheels turning for 2 hours today.
Back in the Travelodge the room is again identical if a mirror image of Nottingham. Tomorrow we set up at Loughborough Uni which is my old University....don't think i'll have much time to get over Epinal Way to Lusad though.....it's outside aswell and with the forecast of some rain it might end up being a wet day 2.
Foodwise Nottingham Uni is a winner, Quorn in a vegetable/tomato sauce with rice and Nan bread returned my lost energy for an afternoon of powering an ipod riding a static bike. Evening meal at the pub down the road from here was a standard vegetable lasagne despite four amazing sounding vegetarian meals being all off today because of delivery problems from the local greengrocer.....high hopes for Birmingham tomorrow night. In the meantime a lot of cycling on the rollers in possible inclement conditions on the grass outside Loughborough Student Union.........


Quorn meal at Nottingham Uni food court

Nottingham Riverside Travelodge......it's the eve of the Rollapaluza grand UK tour, 3 weeks of Roller racing at university campuses the length of the country...unlike last year there are 2 sets of rollers at 2 different locations each day...i'm in team 2 with Caspar and John....unaware of any solid details for tomorrows race we are blogging out of a very familiar Travelodge family room...every room in the Travelodge is exactly the same as the previous one, you can wake up in any room and be at the gateway to another city, another adventure awaits outside the walls of these familiar four walls.....the inspiration for the Tardis maybe, Dr Who was written in one or more of these budget roadside hotels. It's not the spaciousness of that time machine but the ability to step out of that same interior into another world that came from the writers experience....it could be Nottingham, Loughborough, Birmingham or Warwick behind that door and thats exactly what it will be this week......team 2 is rolling so who knows what tomorrow will bring, except for the certainty we will fall asleep in an identical room again after the day is done.
As an aside to Winston and team one we ate at a Turkish restaurant tonight and the food was amazing...stuffed peppers and homous and a complimentary Cherry brandy to finish, a dangerous precedent to set ourselves in our quest for quality food....knowing a trail of takeaways and Wetherspoons and Pizzas could quite easily become the weeks norm, we will fight it as much as we can.