It's health and safety gone mad!

A rotten picture taken through the open window of a minibus, but I had to capture this beautiful example of resourcefulness?

I have been talking to people recently about how restricted and occasionally overprotective society seems to be in Britain. The most obvious example for me being laws against walking on a railway track. I mean seriously, a train weighs about 58 tonnes and makes more than a little noise, I think I have a good chance of noticing it before it reaches me. And then there are situations which remind me why a certain amount of health and safety rules are valuable.

Let me just talk you through what's going on here, because the details are important: the sign advertising this very acceptable watering hole in Moshi had fallen down in strong winds overnight. This enterprising crew is welding it back into place. First of all, notice the home-made power supply, involving a board of wood, to which somebody has attached four large capacitors (correct me if I'm wrong here, sparkys) which appear to have been salvaged from an electricity pylon. Of course the sign needs to be held still while it is welded into place, hence the two blokes standing on the roof of a single cab Nissan hardbody, balancing it on their heads. The scruffy old ladder seems to be fairly stable, although if I was standing that close to the top of it, I might want something holding the bottom in place.

He has no mask, which almost goes without saying, but there is one extra frisson of excitement which you cannot see, as my exposure time is too short to show the sparks: The long metal tube to the left of the ladder as we look at it, is live! Consequently the welder himself, has periodically to stand atop the ladder on 1 foot, and use his other leg to kick this pole away from the aluminium structure supporting him.

If you can think of any way that this procedure could have been made any more dangerous, then answers on a postcard please. I haven't thought of much, except perhaps the introduction of a hungry lion to proceedings.

Incidentally, while sitting in the minibus I also had my first encounter of the whole two years so far, with "aggressive begging". A young man asked me for money, to which I replied (with complete honesty, as happens) that I did not have any spare cash with me, having given out all of my small denominations to 2 disabled beggars already. He then started telling me, in broken English, that begging was better than stealing, that he knew where I lived (which was a little far-fetched, given his surprise a few seconds earlier to learn I came from Dar es Salaam) and that if I did not give him money he would attack me. I stood up and stepped out of the minibus, as I felt I should inform the local shopkeepers that this kind of company may not be conducive to passing shoppers, and upon seeing me to be a clear 30 cm taller than him, he took off like a tiny Usain Bolt. In a way the comedy situation would have reached a perfect conclusion if only he had run headlong into the ladder, or at least the pickup. But the welding crew were minding their own business, so I am mainly glad that they survived unhurt.

Bottling It

This might be a good time for another blog about bikes. It's been a while eh?

In particular I thought I would entertain everybody with a little information about bottle cages. "Bottle cages?" I hear you cry, and perhaps detect a smirk in your voice as you continue; "could there be a more boring and unremarkable part of a bicycle?" If I heard you correctly, then I'm afraid you have fallen for my little trap, because these humble loops of alloy or occasionally carbon can cause more consternation and intrigue than their humble role would suggest.

For example, the UCI, a probably necessary but nonetheless much maligned organisation responsible for setting and enforcing the rules of competitive cycling, sets a minimum weight which every bike in its races must meet.*

This is a rule which is never going to bother most of us mere amateurs, since any bike which can realistically come close to this threshold is going to set you back at least five or six grand. For the pros, however, the investments made by their racing teams in the latest, lightest and stiffest frames may leave riders in charge of machines -- particularly when shod with fancy mountain climbing wheels -- liable to fall foul of this regulation. "Hold on," I sense you grumbling, "this doesn't seem to be about bottle cages at all." Patience, I am getting there. In these situations, manufacturers will run out a very small batch of heavyweight bottle cages, which can be bolted to the bike at the last minute if the team suspect they are too close to the weight limit. Most of us experience the opposite problem, and are aware that our bikes could go up the mountain passes a tiny bit more easily if only we could afford to reduce their weight, by swapping to some fancier components. Consequently riders such as myself, with a tendency towards geeky and a little more money than sense (I would stress that this is much more a result of dearth of sense than a surfeit of money, except perhaps for the few days of each month wedged between payday and mortgage) bottle cages represent a tempting area to shave a few grams. Having invested in a lovely titanium frame, it's even possible to justify to yourself that fitting an ordinary five quid drinks holder would be spoiling the ship for ha’peth of tar. Plus, mechanically speaking, one can indulge in the silliest and spindliest of designs, safe in the knowledge that it will not affect the bike’s stiffness or cornering ability, and the worst that can go wrong is that it snaps and you arrive at the next town, bottle less and thirsty.

The worst that can go wrong? Oh no it isn't.

Picture the scene, a man sits in his lounge, contented smile on his face and set of Allen keys in his right hand. He is in his mid-30s, ahem, but keeps in shape and would probably look younger if he could only be bothered to shave. His thoughts of late have returned, fondly, to the theme of Ironman triathlons, and with this in mind he is preparing his kit for an hour’s riding later that day. To save space in the saddle bag or shirt pockets he is attempting to fit a hand pump and bracket between down tube and bottle cage. A bottle cage which you should bear in mind, was a result of much deliberation, and weighs a mere 9.5 g thanks to its construction from only two rings of woven carbon fibre. Even the bolts which attach it are made of lightweight aluminium alloy, and are counter-sunk flush with the surrounding carbon. If you think this sounds so good that it is almost sexy, you may be correct.

The first bolt feels exceedingly stiff, which is odd as we can be confident it was greased before it went in. Pulse quickens, frown. Thankfully there is a loud squeak, and it begins to turn. But no, we celebrate too soon, there is another less pleasant noise, and the Allen key shears through the head of the bolt like a warm fork through Wensleydale. And there it sits neither in nor out, refusing to revolve in either direction and with £30 worth of neatly sculpted carbon rattling from its midriff.

What to do now? Pliers will not grip it, and no Allen or torx key is ever going to move it again. I could drill the head off the bolt, as I had to do to get the radiator out of the old Suzuki Baleno, but while this would free the bottle cage I would never be able to reattach it or indeed anything else to the frame. Eventually I realise I need to create a surface which something else can grip. My trusty leatherman (probably the finest multitool around) is pressed into service for the unusual job of filing down the bolt head into two parallel edges which I hope will give enough purchase for a small spanner. It starts to look as though it might work, despite having nothing to align my work except the naked eye and elbow grease -- an elbow which I am grateful to believe is recovering from the misery of RSI. Unfortunately, by the time I offer up a spanner, I find I have missed my chance with a 9 mm and must continue to work until it fits an 8. Thirty minutes of careful fiddling later the spanner fits, and I am able to turn the little swine again. I think I achieved three or four full revolutions before the spanner slipped, damaging one surface so that it would no longer grip. Curses. Forty minutes of even more careful filing later and a 7 mm wrench is sitting in place very snugly. This is good, but I'm aware that I won't have many more chances, as my smallest spanner is a six, and besides there will be no metal left to reshape anyway.

Thankfully this time the tool fits perfectly, and it is not too difficult to unwind the bolt carefully, albeit with nervous, bated breath. I haven't yet had the guts to loosen or remove the second bottle cage; I may let that sleeping dog lie for the moment. But a replacement now goes to the top of my Christmas list, and I will be checking the exact make and model for the quality of its fixtures and fittings, even if that means that the weight of the unit gets pushed into double figures.

*I guess I would be more correct to say mass, rather than weight. Mass is an absolute, whereas weight is a product of the way mass is affected by gravity. As such, the same bike will have the same mass but a fractionally different weight at the top, compared with the bottom of a major climb, such as Col du Galibier. However, since no portable scale would be sensitive enough to detect the difference, I hope you will forgive my colloquial use of the word weight. Thanks

Running up that hill

... is in Kate Bush's back catalogue, a metaphor for the worries and difficulties of life. Personally I have never found any better escape from the humdrum of life’s dull cares than running (or perhaps cycling) up and down some hills, and when the hill concerned is Africa's highest peak, then so much the better.

In a double stroke of good luck, both of us were sent by our respective projects to observe and present at a Tanzanian collaborators meeting in Moshi last week. We made the most of the opportunity and headed out of Dar on the Friday night, in order to get a weekend in and around the foothills of Mount Kilimanjaro, before the meeting started. What a great place! A repeated frustration of our life/lives here is that in Dar es Salaam, we have a few interesting restaurants and are more able to go about our business without attracting so much attention as outsiders. But the traffic, the dust and the crowds can be horrible, and make exercise a real chore. On the other hand Mtwara has so much more space, is closer to the countryside, but lacks any real choice of venues for evenings out. Moshi manages to combine the positives of both these places, and is also 2 to 3° cooler, by virtue of being at around 1000 m altitude. The views are beautiful, and the whole town feels a little better developed and maintained than almost anywhere I have seen in Tanzania.

Part of the reason for Moshi's relative wealth is the coffee industry. This in itself is reason to celebrate, when very few places will sell you any coffee except the ubiquitous Africafe -- a murky brown powder which makes Nescafe seem full flavoured. I still can't help raise an eyebrow when I see local Tanzanians making up theirs with an average of three sugars, but perhaps it is the only way to make it taste of anything. Thanks in part to a tipoff from my sort of colleague (on maternity leave) but definitely friend, we were able to book a full day's walk into the mountain on the edge of the national park, which included a visit to the small-scale local coffee plantation.

It was a fantastic day out, run by a company called Akaro Tours (they have a website but we haven't made it work yet). We started off walking up and down the hills through small subsistence farms, growing tomatoes, bananas, potatoes, peas and lovely dark red coffee beans. You read articles (if you're interested in this sort of thing) about coffee being a crop which requires an enormous amount of water, which is not the best in terms of sustainability. But what I can understand now is that it is also a shade loving plant, consequently encouraging farmers not to fell all the tall trees on their land, which presumably has benefits in terms of preventing soil erosion, as well as balancing the greenhouse effect.

Anyway, following a good lunch we got the chance to participate in most of the coffee making process, including peeling the raw beans by pounding them in a huge pestle and mortar, sorting the beans from the skins by tossing up and down in a small basket while standing in a crosswind, then roasting the beans before returning them to be smashed up with the same wooden machinery. The powdered coffee is then made up with boiled water, which itself can be gathered from naturally occurring springs past which we had walked. Maybe it was the atmosphere, the views, or just the knowledge that we had done it ourselves, but I’ve never had a better cup of hot black coffee.

The walk included a couple of other surprises, including a rather pretty chameleon, and the chance to throw oneself into the cold plunge pool of a 70 m high waterfall -- a truly refreshing experience to both mind and body. And a real treat for me was seen very near the pool: I have given up asking guides if we might get the chance to see some snakes, even though some of them understand my interest. Even when they assure me that there are numerous cobras/mambas/whatever else in the area, I hardly ever get lucky. But this time (although I now find out it is very unusual) we were fortunate to see a decent sized serpent rustling through the low grass on the right of our path. It was a medium-sized green job, which is about as helpful to herpetologists as little brown jobs are to Bird lovers. Who knows? It could have been the spectacularly venomous but also passive boomslang, or the somewhat less tolerant green mamba. Personally I think it looked too broad for either of these tree loving snakes, but I don't have any sensible bid about what it may have been instead. Still, with or without a name it was lovely to watch him throwing efficient curls along the bank next to us, moving almost silently along the contours of a hill, while doing what snakes do best -- getting out of the bloody way.

Our final treat, if that's the right word for it, was to stop at a local bar (i.e. unfurnished wooden shack) and sample something which I think was called mbege. This generally gets translated as banana beer, a naturally fermented product made of pulped bananas, water and millet seeds. The only yeast involved is that which is found naturally on the skins of the fruit, and it is served in a large plastic jug, without ever having passed through a filter or indeed a bottle. It is an odd sensation to consume it, not entirely unpleasant, and considerably more enjoyable than a similar brew which we sampled in Ethiopia, but it is definitely not about to become “my usual". It has a texture like loose porridge, with the remnants of the yeast forming an unattractive head. The taste would not be recognised by many people as beer, although most would guess that bananas were involved. If it doesn't sound pretty, then it isn't. Refreshed (?) by this brief stop, we marched a little quicker downhill, in order to catch the local minibus back to town. And at the bus stop, lo and behold, another revelation, some enterprising local businessman has taken it on himself to bring mbege into the 21st century. The bottled version is substantially stronger thanks to the addition of sugar, has been filtered to remove the pulpy lumps, and uses extra yeast. This seems to do a little better in out- competing the bacterial fermentation so the final product (called Kibo) while still a little sour, no longer makes your mouth feel like someone is forcing your jaws out sideways with the jack from a Toyota land cruiser. I felt a little bit like a brave beer journalist, sampling something new and unknown, charting new territory, filling in the blanks on a brewers’ map of the world. Honestly, it was genuinely pretty good, and reminded me a little of Belgian geuze, which one might enjoy in the “Mort Subite” in Brussels, or those of you with very good memories might recall sampling at our wedding. This discovery, called “Kibo”, does not make my top 10, but it does provide me with an excuse, however tenuous, to list those brews which do:

Hence, partly for fun and at risk of making me even more thirsty, my ten favourite beers of the world, maybe in order. You may ignore or discuss.

1. 1. Fuller’s ESB (England). Malty, biscuity, hints of hay. A mouthful of ESB is more satisfying and complete than a whole pint of Stella (or a barrel of Miller). Best enjoyed, in my experience, slowly and quietly in the Melton Mowbray, High Holborn. I’m pretty sure that if every young man in GB switched to this, we’d have an end to lager-loutism.

2. 2. Zlaty Bazant (Slovakia). I feel bad having pilsner but not a Czech one, given that they invented it, but even though this is Sk’s most mainstream brew I still think it’s the perfect hot weather drink. It’s sad when people assume that lager tastes of A-B Budweiser, which is simply wrong (and by some definitions not even beer). This is how a lager can be as full and grown-up as any other type of drink.

3. 3. Timothy Taylor’s Landlord (England). Madonna’s favourite, allegedly. Almost as rounded and full as ESB above, but a little less malt and more hops, allowing one to enjoy a little more of it.

4. 4. Zubr (Poland). Strong lager in GB has traditionally meant Tennent’s Super but it can be sophisticated. Zubr is refined and complex and probably my favourite lager in the world ever. And if I’m translating it right, a portion of the profits go to conservation. It is also the ideal thing with which to wash down spicy Sri Lankan curry; a happy discovery of Britain’s various waves of immigration that might otherwise have gone forever unknown?

5. 5. Rogue Imperial Stout (USA). Oh in the name of Thunder. Pull up a chair, put on your most comfortable sweater and maybe play some classical music, because a bottle of RIS (at only 330ml but about 11.0% ABV) is going to take you a while. To rush through this in less than 25mins would be wasteful and actually difficult. Your mouth reels from it, confused but intrigued, and somehow relaxed. Hard to describe the flavour except to say enormous.

a. Honourable mention to Zywiec Porter (Poland). Very similar to the above but maybe a smidgeon less complex. It has a fore-taste that for some reason (and even though I have never eaten any) always makes me think of kelp.

6. 6. Cantillon Organic Gueze (Belgium). Frankly bizarre, an acquired taste and not one for the kids. Having said that, I’ve acquired it. Surprising, sour, with stale cardboard-like hops. Made in strictly old fashioned and organic conditions. For example, the brewery clears itself of pesky flies using... spiders; you’ve got to respect that. The fermentation is spontaneous using ambient airborne microbes. But don’t be scared, take a breath and then a sip. I’m not saying you’d want to sink four of them on a Friday night, but I am saying that until you’ve had a couple you can’t really say you know beer.

7. 7. Schneiderweisse (Bavaria). I had to include a weissbeer and this one is probably my top choice, but if the wind changes I could easily say Franziskaner. If you aren’t sitting with a weissbeer you’re not really in Bavaria. (Oddly there is also a brilliant weissbeer from the Ukraine, name of which I forget and probably couldn’t type on this keyboard anyway). Fresh and fruity and tart, great. Mein dunkel, mein dunkel...

8. 8. Black Isle Yellowhammer (Scotland). Somehow Scottish ales seem distinct from English, lighter malt without losing body? The grassy grapefruity hops in this are so clean tasting. The fact that a fully-organic beer can taste this good makes me yearn to live in the countryside growing or foraging all my own produce. Tastewise, Schiehallion brewed by Harviestoun, is roughly as good, but Black Isle makes me happier.

9. 9. Cooper’s Sparkling Ale (Australia). It would be easy to believe that all Aussie beer is terrible, since 99% of what we taste of it is Fosters or XXXX. In truth Fosters is the p*sh that they happily export to anyone fool enough to buy it, while back home they get to enjoy gems like Cooper’s. Fruity but not sweet, light but not lite. It ought to come in bigger bottles.

10. 10. Hmm. How to finish? Maybe Innes and Gunne’s Oak Casked beer (Scotland again). Vanilla and toffee on top of beer. Quite a new innovation and almost in a style of its own. Never lasts long.