M is for Microwave Mast in the Mist#

Sat Dec 28 16:55:49 2024

M is for Microwave Mast in the Mist. The photo mostly shows mist, but if you look carefully you can see above the tree a tall structure made from metal girders (I assume) in triangle shapes that looks a bit like an electricity pylon and/or a skeletal Barad-dûr.

Going to see the microwave mast was the original plan, the weather just turned up as I was riding along. Yesterday I looked at how much free time I would theoretically have today for riding, and at the weather forecast for cold but bright sun, and decided I'd save the mast for another day and take a longer ride out to Finchingfield: "the most photographed village in England" and also a bit of a biker hotspot. But by the time I'd had lunch today I looked again at the remaining hours before darkness and reverted to the original plan.

Which, when the mist came down, I'm rather glad I did. In the total ~ 2 hours riding I saw one (1) other rider who might have been out for a leisure ride, so I doubt there were many folk at Finchingfield anyway

The mast is at Kelvedon Hatch (according to the map, also not far from the site of a Secret Nuclear Bunker) and was originally part of the BT (read: "Post Office") microwave backbone network for TV transmissions, before being made obsolete by fibre optics

Weather: ~ 6°, damp, fine mist on glasses and on visor. I wore my heated gloves but didn't have to actually turn them on until ~ 10 minutes from home. One more data point to add re: RST Paragon 6 heated gloves - it's easy to turn the right glove on while riding along, but it needs practice or a long traffic queue to reliably activate the left glove and turn it down from its default "heart of the sun" to "comfortable" setting

Roads: also damp, but not grievously so. Hard to "make progress" when you can't actually see as far as the next bend, so mostly I didn't. The mist cleared on the way back, which was welcome and meant I could stip pulling over to wipe moisture off glass surfaces

Bike: plumes of white smoke when I turned it on, but they cleared after about a minute. I'm hoping this was just condensation in the exhaust evaporating and the reason I've never noticed it before is I haven't ridden in this degree of cold + wet. It seemed fine after that.

Airbag: first time out wearing the airbag. It felt a little bit heavy and restrictive when I first put it on (like being hugged) but after a few minutes I stopped noticing it. I tried twice to dismount the bike without unclipping the tether, and it didn't deploy either time, which is fortunate I guess. It's supposed to be quite hard to set off mistakenly.

MotoRadds Gopro helmet chin mount: first time out using this too, but I forgot to turn the camera on before the mist came down and I didn't see much point in turning it on after the mist came down. I can say it didn't fall off, and I can say it didn't get in my field of view at all, so that's OK.

Wondering if a Pinlock would have helped in these conditions. I usually ride with the visor up until I get to about 30 or 40 because I value being able to see where I'm going more than I value a warm face ("while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more") but it would have been nice to not have my glasses lenses adding to the fog.

Addendum to last Tuesday's chain cleaning tool review: this was also the first ride since I cleaned the chain, and although there was some degree of fling which will need wiping off, not nearly as much as last time