Thorn Cycles Forum
Community => Muppets Threads! (And Anything Else) => Topic started by: Andre Jute on July 12, 2025, 01:09:30 PM
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Either somebody at the BBC Weather Bureau is a practical joker, or global warming is returning, at last, after we Irish cyclists have long been nostalgic for the wonderfully predictable summers of the 1990s.
I don't actually live in Coolfadda, but as the crow flies it is just across the river from me, so that's the nearest hot-spot for weather. Check this out:
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Hourly Weather-Coolfadda, County Cork
As of 12:49 IST
MODERATE HIGH TEMPERATURE WARNING
Saturday, 12 July 13:00
Sunny 26°
Rain 0% [presumably of time]
Wind SE 19 km/h
Feels Like 27°
Wind SE 19 km/h
Humidity 54%
UV Index 7 of 11
Cloud Cover 6%
Rain Amount 0 mm
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Anything over 20 degrees is considered a heatwave here. Nothing moderate about 26 degrees C!
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29° in ullapool Scotland today.
Not on the bike. In an a/c car and still too hot.
I think another ice age is due.
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Well, guys, if it's any comfort, you're not alone. We're in the midst of another hot'n'humid spell here in the valley: temp at 10 PM: 25º, humidity 90%. Two hours ago, temp of 29, humidex (="feels like") 39.
Friday 10 AM, I made a 3-hour ride up into the Gatineau Hills across the river, 48 kms and a lot of hills. I left mid-morning 'cos the temp was a manageable 25, but the humidex was in the low 30s. By the time I got home about 1:30 PM, temp was 28, & the humidex getting closer to dangerous territory for any strenuous outdoor activity (mid-30s). On that ride, I drank two full 650 ml water bottles with electrolytes.
Truth be told, I'd be very cautious about even mild touring in this kind of weather. Today, we visited friends at their cottage across the river, and went swimming in "their" lake. It was divine.
Andre, on the matter of touring in inclement weather, did I mention Eric Newby's Round Ireland in Low Gear? He took about four months IIRC, in two spells, including Feb/March on the west coast (Jaysus, Mary an' Joseph!) Great read, though. The image that stays in my mind in not the cold rain, but his word picture of a fellow in a field in your neighbourhood dressed in rough cotton and holding a two-handed vertical scythe: "He looked like a survivor of the Peasants' Revolt."
Stay as cool as you can,
John
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Matthew: An ice age is always due, as a cyclic fact of earth's geology, about every 8000 years, and they last very much longer than the brief warm spells. But don't worry, we're still in the warming stage of the current inter-glacial age, with the next ice age, we hope, still thousands of years away.
John: I read Newby's book* you recommended, and dipped into a couple of others he wrote. The fellow was quite nuts to come here when he did. I guess his generation were hardier men than ours, present company excepted, of course.
I ordered the two Farley Mowat books you recommended. He has an impressive bibliography, many books still in print. Thank you for all the spot-on recommendations.
*In these parts possibly not an uncommon experience, though there are so few cyclists, most probably are in their cars, and the unkempt peasants with scythes are being replaced by commercial firms' huge spiky agrimachines dashing around dangerously in the lanes. I certainly had the same experience as Newby on my bike, long before I ever heard of Newby: I was riding down a hill on a narrow, steep country road into town, clearly marked 50kph, with a sharpish bend by the house of a retired policeman from whose kennel of hounds I saved the ancestors of the fox family that still lives in the gully below the orchard behind my house. At 55kph I was paying attention to the road and cursing the sun low on the horizon blinding me, even with the near-black polarizing lenses clipped over my prescription cycling glasses. Suddenly I saw the silhouette of Lucifer coming for me, forked goatbeard sticking out to both sides of his face, sceptred scythe over his shoulder. I thought, 'Oh dear, another stroke. [I'd fallen off my bike and into the ditch on that road before, but I recovered consciousness before the people who'd been standing talking up the road reached me. My neurologist defined a transient ischemic attack.] When did I last tell my family I love them? But the Teflon Kid doesn't go into the flames without at least trying to talk his way out of it.' I screeched to a halt right before him, saying preemptively, 'Nonsense. My bike computer will prove I was travelling at only 50kph, which I'll use in court to make a fool of you. Perhaps the magistrate, after walking past my camera team on his way in, will bung you up for wasting his time.' I flicked up the Polaroids to give him one hundred percent of my best thousand yard stare before demanding what the devil he was laughing at. It was an old farmer who always had a cheery greeting for me, walking home from one of his fields after a day of cutting silage for his horses.
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Andre, there's really no such thing as coincidence. Some weird causal e-connection at work here: Shortly after reading your post, I opened my email, and an email from Lee Valley Tools advised me that they're offering this lightweight Austrian scythe:
https://www.leevalley.com/en-ca/shop/garden/lawn-care/scythes/10198-traditional-austrian-scythe-set?item=PC509&utm_campaign=760258_Jul13-ProdFeature-Garden-AustrianScytheSet-CA&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Lee%20Valley&dm_i=6EER,GAMA,1OVHO2,2MKCH,1 (https://www.leevalley.com/en-ca/shop/garden/lawn-care/scythes/10198-traditional-austrian-scythe-set?item=PC509&utm_campaign=760258_Jul13-ProdFeature-Garden-AustrianScytheSet-CA&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Lee%20Valley&dm_i=6EER,GAMA,1OVHO2,2MKCH,1)
No curved wooden stave, tho' the holder has passably rough (cotton?) pants ;)
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Andre, there's really no such thing as coincidence.
That reminded me of the response to my question, What are the chances of that happening, from my ol' pal, Tom, the maths professor.
His answer?
Between 1 and zero.
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Your friend is making a joke with you, Matt. All the possibilities of any event occurring will fall between 1 and zero, the same as a shrug or 'Who knows?' And, to confuse the matter further, when we're talking about natural occurrences on geological scale, with only two or three possible outcomes stated (ice age, warm age, interglacial transition), I'm willing to make a case that, absent historical knowledge, in practice the likelihood of zero and evens (0.5) are actually the same. But we do have historical knowledge from core samples that ice ages are much longer than warm ages, and that in the last two millennia there was a flux in between centuries-long cold and warm periods, so the likelihood of natural occurrence in any reasonable period, say a handful of centuries, is actually positive, that is, above 0.5.
I take the view that perfect certainty is a delusion of the academic classes and dishonest bureaucrats.
Sophisticated people with their own money at stake are usually willing to make serious decisions at 0.05 uncertainty, which is the same as 95 percent level of confidence (an expensive place to arrive at because statistical confidence is dependent on the size of the sample interrogated) when the due diligence is correctly done with 'known unknowns' (Donald Rumsfeld?) given a suitable value and the 'unknowable unknowns' (ditto) are given a conservative discount.
John, coincidence is the stretch between 0.95 and 1.00, otherwise known as what screws the best laid plans of Man aka Arrogance. There's no sure thing when Murphy is around.
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John,
that looks like a nice scythe, but I would plump for one with a wooden snath.
I got the one I use from https://www.thescytheshop.co.uk/index.html plus a shorter one for my wife,
and a selection of blades for use with length in inverse proportion to what is being scythed.
Julian