James Thinks

Mark Rigby's Rough Diamond is described as a "fast 300" on good roads and, being in July, the weather is usually better than 300s in the Spring.

German appliance manufacturer Miele have been trying to market themselves as a reliable brand, boasting that their washing machines are tested for "20 years equivalent usage. That strongly implies the machine should last better than most. On this basis we bought a Miele W5740 for the princely sum of £958.98 back in 2011. As you can probably guess from the fact I'm writing this, ours didn't last that long.

The final session of the alpha course had two themes, the role of the church and asking whether God heals today. I think it was a bit of a shame that the two sessions were crammed into one as I think there was a lot to discuss here.

As LEDs have become cheaper and brighter in recent years, there's been a proliferation of bike lights, which makes choosing one difficult.

If you use Strava and a Garmin eTrex 30 and care about that the climbing figures you get are accurate, then you may be disappointed that Strava is ignoring the barometric data the eTrex 30 gives you and working it out roughly by itself

The alpha course video on the theme of evil featured a woman who was a sports presenter, although I didn't recognise her. Hardly surprising as I tend to play more sports than I watch. She told some somewhat amusing anecdotes about people getting into mild peril, but also highlighted the shocking scale of present day human trafficking.

In the last couple of years we've started using our tandem for longer rides and are looking at ways to make the bike more comfortable.

Over the last couple of months, I've attended a local Alpha Course, organised by a friend I used to work with. I expect some who know me think that is a bit odd, given that I'm a non-believer, philosophical naturalist, agnostic-atheist, secular humanist, etc

The next evening's subject was evangelism. However the feel of the video was a lot less pushy than the word "evangelism" usually implies. In contrast to the earlier alpha course videos, I didn't feel like I was sat in church, being preached to.

When I got back to Miele, they offered to send an engineer for a free inspection and let us know what they could then offer us. Nothing to lose, I thought.

This post describes the latter part of a single alpha course evening session, the first part was about the church

Lately it's been hard to fit calendar audaxes around family commitments, so DIYs have filled the gaps, both to maintain fitness and to keep a half-hearted RRtY going.