and things i dislike this week....

avid brakes

which are fitted as standard on both my last bikes and which i've had problems with in each case. in the former it was all about avid's foolish pad replacement finnickiness - was the stupid pad clip the best they could do? The easiest way to replace these, unless you have the fingers of an elf, is to remove the caliper. now call me cynical but i'm not about to be doing this any time soon in the middle of an endurance race. or at night.

as to the latter bike. well there the rear brake just hasn't worked since i got. my bike shop guy can't/won't/isn't going to fix it and i'll be making yet another trip to him tomorrow to suggest it may be disc alignment that's causing the awful noise and juddering braking so characteristic of the bike since buying. race friendly? i think not. was i happy this week when, after taking the bike out for the first time after it being 'fixed' i was almost instantly back to using front brake only, a rule of diminishing returns for me on the steep bits and the reason all of my left elbow is currently a fetching shade of green. at least it wasn't broken which at first i feared. modesty forbids me putting up a picture of my shoulder, revealed to be full of gouges once i;d pulled my jersey out of it. ow, that's got to hurt, said t. she wasn't wrong. was i happy? i was not.

suffice to say i will be avoiding any bike sporting avid brakes in the future.

talking of things disappointing and unreliable on to the euros and the entire french team. i threw what can only be described as a strop when italy, for god's sake, put them out of their misery. i shan't repeat any of it. no i really shan't. then it was an early bath for sweden and further grumpiness. tonight i endured the only game i've actually been able to watch, a two hour borefest until the last two minutes until croatia actually scored then the turks who, unlike their european counterparts really do play to the final whistle, scored in the dying seconds on injury time in extra time. what drama! and then croatia blow it on the penalties. germany are the only winners after this performance. other than france and sweden my third team choice, poland, because of the immigrants obviously, had to be my third team and a good choice for a proxy scotland they were. three games and off home. it was as if they were wearing blue....