A Journey to the Bottom of the Sea
Over the course of this year I've been hearing about audaxes and thinking about trying one. Finally, one came up which was reasonably near home and a manageable distance: 114 kilometres. I took my twelve-year-old Raleigh Record Sprint, which is not really a very good bike in a lot of ways but is fast and comfortable for long distances. It was pretty much standard apart from a Brooks saddle and Shimano SPD-R pedals.
An Inauspicious Start
Start was at Coldingham Beach at 9.00am. I arrived at 8.30, unpacked my bike from the car, assembled it (carefully, I thought), walked over to the control table and signed my name on the sheet. Sitting on the grass by the control table was someone with a long black ponytail who was clearly Jon Senior, so I greeted him and we chatted a little and then I started organising my gear — again, carefully, as I thought. Finally nine o'clock rolled round, and Bruce Lees (the organiser) said his bit, and the whole bunch — about twenty five bikes, including one tandem — set off. Up the first hill was fine.
Fixing the holes in Sun's APIs
I've spent another week fixing a lacuna in one of Sun's APIs — in this case, the fact that JDBC lacks a database neutral means of manipulating user accounts.
Unlike MaybeUpload and the Servlet API, JDBCUserKluge is not even nearly seamless to use for users of JDBC API. It's written very much as an integral part of Jacquard. It's something I've known I had to do for — literally — years, and which I've been putting off because I knew it would be hard. And now I've done it.
Happiness is a Filthy Bicycle
It's been one of those weekends. Saturday the weather was too horrible to go sailing, so in the end I worked all morning and half the afternoon. And then the weather was still horrible so I stated playing a computer game, as you do. And, as you do, I went on playing it late into the night (and then it crashed just as I was about to achieve something), and the consequence of that was I overslept my tide this morning. Although in all probability I'd have got down to the marina, looked at the weather and thought, nah... It was gey dreich. So I was determined to get a bike out but what with one thing and another the day was getting by. Finally about four o'clock I stuck the Mantra on the back of the truck and headed up country.
I left the truck at Stroan Loch and cycled up the Raiders' Road. The wind, which had been easily force six down on the coast, was pretty blustery out of the west but not too bad because it was at right angles to my direction. By the time I got to the Otter Pool it was raining quite sturdily, so I stopped, peeled off my jersey and pulled on my waterproof. Then on up the Raider's Road. I've cycled it before; it's an interesting but not altogether pleasant surface to ride on being essentially a dirt road but much better graded than most dirt roads, so the surface finish where it hasn't been chewed up is almost as smooth as tarmac. Unfortunately it had been chewed up a bit by the Galloway Hills Rally which was through there a couple of weeks ago... It's a filthy surface, though, and the bike was covered in a fine dark grey grit.
You're also climbing steadily but noticeably along the whole length of the Raiders' Road, mostly running close alongside the Black Water. And it's pretty scenic. The Black Water is gorgeous, particularly in the long sections where it runs over beds of flat rock. Towards the Clatteringshaws end the road swings away from the water quite steeply up the hillside, and as the sun had now come out (the weather improved steadily) I stopped at the top to change my waterproof back for my jersey. Then a blast back down almost to river level and another short climb and I turned left onto the tarmac of the A712... for all of fifty yards. And then left again onto the track up to Loch Grannoch, which is signposted as part of NCN7.
When we have independence we can...
Well, John Swinney has resigned as leader of the SNP, and I've applied to renew my membership. Perhaps now the SNP can turn itself around. But Swinney was not the problem (or at least I don't think he was the problem); he merely served as a figurehead for the problem. The problem is political caution and negativity.
The SNP, if it is about anything, is about recreating and re-energising Scotland as a nation. We can't do that by endlessly knocking the party in power. We can't do that by endlessly bleating 'the minister must resign'. We need positivity, we need positive policies, and we need a slogan which unites those positive policies into a coherent message.
So what's the coherent message which differentiates a party which at it's core is about Scotland's nationhood from one which is not? Ah, yes.