I have officially named my Brompton "Little Orange Dude".

Well the whole thing was a bit spur-of-the-moment. It being my friend's last day at work, we were gonna go and do something after work, probably go to a pub for a couple of hours then bugger off home. Then I noticed there was a Critical Mass ride going on in London this evening. Since we both had bikes at work, we decided to go for that instead.

I knew it was a good choice when we got to the meeting point under Waterloo bridge, there were hundreds of bikes everywhere and people were handing out FREE CAKE! If there had been ducks there too I would have been in heaven.

We set out around seven. The riding was very slow throughout. It didn't feel like hard work, although afterwards I had that post-ride glow. :)

Started out north over Waterloo bridge. Up through Holborn, across to Farringdon, south to St Paul's then east into City, along Cannon street, eventually crossing south over London bridge, then along to Tower Bridge, which we crossed. I'd been under Tower Bridge by night before and it is beautiful, but cycling over it is fucking amazing. We stopped half way across and looking up at the towers, the way they were lit up made them seem not quite real. Like looking up at a painting.

The crowd had started to thin out by this point - the ride headed west along Thames Street, past the Monument, along the Embankment then up into the West End. It was getting on for ten, and there weren't many people left so we left the ride on Oxford Street and went home.

It was all really fucking cool anyway. There were people towing speaker systems and playing music, a guy with a bubble machine on his bike, people throwing feathers... I love bike hippies!

Little Orange Dude had the time of his life, although on my way back to Waterloo I did a silly thing and took my bag off his rear rack but left the elastic straps dangling. One of them got caught up in the rear wheel and one of its cords got broken. In disentangling it, the whole bike fell over and I think that might have broken something in the front dynamo light, as it wasn't working when I got back to Aldershot. Arses.

Other Stuff

Oh yeah - and the dentistry went really well the other day. I didn't need a root canal, instead having a large filling. Could still need one if I start writhing in pain, in which case she'll have to drill down through the new filling, but I'm so far OK, the only pain is a little tenderness / stiffness of the jaw. But that visit took care of what should be the two largest fillings. Yay!

Also, I don't understand punk music. I've tried to get into "proper" punk music like the Sex Pistols and the Ramones, but to me it just sounds like drunken blokes shouting. Perhaps it's because I don't have enough appreciation of lyrics. I normally don't even listen to lyrics - out of all the music I listen to, I have very little idea what most of it's about. I go for good guitar sounds, beats, etc. That's probably where I'm going wrong...