Bicycles, trainers, beans-on-toast, earworms and Scarlett Johanssen

If it gets any worse than this, then I'll have to get the trainer out early. Given that bike-riding is a pleasure and not a chore - something only to be endured between T1 and T2, I generally eschew the trainer for as long as possible. Nothing about it can possibly be any fun. I will admit that there's always a masochistic pleasure to be found in intervals, but a ride on the trainer lasting hours? Sure, you can sling on a DVD, several in fact, perhaps work through the season on Lost you missed this summer as you were always out training, but it can't, won't, recapture the sheer joy that is getting out on the roads.

Spotted in Cyclesmith last year; an over-the-handlebar remote control holder. Actually, I wonder if it's supposed to be a modern take on the handlebar mounted bottle-holder of yore?

Anyway, it works for remotes. This is when you know you've gone too far! But surely makes a handy seasonal gift for that special someone who spends all Saturday afternoon pedalling to nowhere like a demented hamster.

Music sometimes does the job better than film, so, what songs go through your head when you're slaving over a hot fly-wheel? Training rides are often referred to as chain gangs, so it has to be Back On the Chain Gang of course!

I guess the London skyline looks pretty much the same today. Nothing's missing as such; the Gherkin has been added, but really it's the South Bank that's undergone the Renaissance. Speaking of London, and the Pretenders, there are a whole bunch of Pretenders songs I associate with my short time riding with the Crest CC. I don't know why, but Don't Get Me Wrong gives me a memory flash of the Log Cabin cafe in Abridge where the Crest used to start some of their Sunday club runs; the others used to start at the Hobbs Cross Farm, but the Log Cabin had better beans-on-toast (and was fractionally closer to home!).

Speaking of beans-on-toast, cafes, milky tea and the Pretenders there is, of course, Brass In Pocket

Which was covered by Scarlett Johanssen in the Karaoke scene in Lost In Translation....

There is a catchy little number in Lost In Translation from Phoenix. I've been exposed to beaucoup de musique francais recently, but not Phoenix, who even though are French sing (thank goodness) in English. Anyway, Too Young is the Phoenix number in the background of Lost..... The video, inexplicably, takes place in a fish-packing plant!

....so today's mental jukebox finishes off with Phoenix's Lisztomania cut to a montage of John Hughes films

ahhhh....

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