Smoking is safe!

Thanks to my dear friend (and technology guru) Geoff, I have discovered a source of Camel cigarettes (my favourites) which are not only much cheaper than those I usually buy but are entirely health-risk-free. Look!

camel-pack-dubai

Not a health warning in sight. These cigs don’t harm your baby, damage your sperm, give you throat cancer or lung cancer or have any association with heart disease or arterial problems. And they also cost about one pound a pack. (They are from Dubai where they are obviously enlightened.)

I’d like to know though, how risky those cigarettes I used to smoke really are – I mean were. Stats often talk about the ‘increased risk of being a smoker’ but they never say how they define a smoker. I think the WHO defines a smoker as anyone who has smoked 100 cigarettes (or was it 10?) But I wonder about the relative risk of smoking 8-10 a week as I do compared to 8 – 10 every day. Maybe health promotion bodies don’t want to get into this kind of detail as it might distract from the message that smoking is BAD.

My feet in blocks of concrete

Now its the moment for investing in some decent motorcycle boots and motocross/enduro boots seem to offer the best protection. Yesterday I bought some Alpinestars Tech 3 boots:
Picture 1
Shopping is a strange experience. In this case I had to endure the gratuitous comments of shopkeepers along the lines of ‘well, you don’t strike me as a supermoto rider. No, really. How long have you been riding then?’ My answers are usually bumbling and mumbling. Yesterday after a good ride upto Peterboro (apart from getting completely lost around the roundabouts there giving rise to some not too bad u-turns) I investigated the off road specialist shop above the Suzuki dealer Stamford Superbikes. At last a shop that actually stocked Aplinestars boots. But they only stocked the top of the range nearly £400 lumps of highly protective concrete – ‘they drop a ton weight on them to test them’ the young assistant told me – and the ‘entry level’ boot for £169 which is what I walked or rather hobbled out with as a kind of gentle introduction to wearing boots that don’t bend at the ankle. Unfortunately once on the bike in the carpark outside the shop I realised that I coudln’t do useful things like change gear in these boots so slipped back into my old carpetslippers I rode there in and strapped the huge Alpinestars to the back, resolvng to find an hour to spare to learn the new technique I’ll need to actually go anywhere in these boots – or adjust the machine or buy some snazzy and overpriced new part from Touratech specially made for riding in these ridiculous boots.

Book on my Christmas list

Its the nicely titled ‘Riding with Rilke’ by Ted Bishop. Here’s (what I think is) the opening paragraph:

It wasn’t a mid-life crisis: it was mid-life money. I had inherited some cash and was desperately afraid I would do something sensible with it, like put it on my mortgage or into mutual funds. So I bought a Ducati Monster. I had the fall term off and planned to go to the Harry Ransom Center in Austin, Texas, the improbable location of the best archive in the world of British modernist writers such as James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, George Bernard Shaw, and T.E. Lawrence. Then I got a travel grant from the Ransom Center. They didn’t say how I had to travel. September would be perfect for a ride.

Good eh? As the reveiws say, a book about biking for people with an A level in English Literature.

Star wars and lids

People don’t seem to talk about it much but it seems to me that the original Star Wars films from the 1980s were influential in style terms – in terms of computer games, vaguely Zen philosophy and, of course, motorcycle helmets. The lid I’m currently trying to get hold of seems to owe somethings to those nasty anonymous storm troopers.

nasty storm trooper

nasty storm trooper


Picture 2

Thinking about sunnier days

This could be very approximately the first half of next year’s biking journey from Santander via the Pyrenees and Geneva, and the Rhine to Hook of Holland:

this first leg is 937 miles: could be done in 4 days

Picture 1

Picture 2 The second bit is 640 miles: and could be done (by me) in 3 days:

Picture 3