Guidance systems break down

Well here we are in the depths of almost-winter. It's still only December, and in my mind, winter should start on January 1st. Three months per season please; and none of this 18 inches of snow before the end of November, thank you.

The big 6V 4400mAh battery I assembled lovingly for my Vistalites several months ago has been powering the 5W and 10W pods very happily, until today. First the centre terminal in the socket wouldn't contact properly, requiring much wiggling of plugs and mild swearing. This evening I've had half a dozen false peaks in succession on my Pro Peak digital charger, and cranking the charge current to 3A, in the hope of shoehorning more electrons in before it noticed, didn't help either. This is a slight problem.

My original (and hitherto backup) 2200mAh battery is now being recharged for tomorrow's snowbound adventures. I'm going to have to pull apart the big battery and test the cell voltages, because it sure as heck isn't playing today. How fortunate, you might say, that I designed the battery to be taken apart with greater ease than its predecessor.

As I'm patently failing in my duties as a blogger, and even a rare one at that, perhaps another précis of events is warranted:

• Henrietta Brompton, who lives in the corner, joined the august ranks of Becky's Garage back in July. We've been on the train to and from Glasgow many times, she's been stowed in car boots, and in October we spent four days pounding the roads of London. Henrietta is perhaps the single most useful bicycle I have ever owned.
• The Stealthmachine, that big black beast that was party to so many bizarre encounters with the motorists of Great Britain, went to live with a new owner. It's still in Edinburgh, though, and so I shall smile broadly if I happen to see it on the road with Keith at the controls.
• Speedy remains with me, and we've been out on the road three times in as many months. While the ride is as bone-jarringly rigid as ever, the sheer chuckability and guaranteed stability is, in these icy days, quite the treat. The SKS/Moulton mudguards I adapted have not fared so well, with every one of the pop rivets having corroded into powder. Even the aluminium layer between the plastic had corroded and split.
• Tabitha, the P-38, isn't very well with a distorted front boom resulting from over-tightened pinch bolts, which themselves resulted from the boom being too short. Tim Brummer will have a little explaining to do.
• Victoria, the monstrous American recumbent, is even more monstrous with her Terracycle tailsok in place. I've drawn the line at a front fairing, for now. Using some spare carbon fibre plate and four Cateye multi-fit mounts, I also knocked up a pair of Terracycle-esque accessory mounts to run my headlights on the fork blades. That would be the headlights for which my big battery isn't working, then. Sometimes a bunch of AAs and another Cateye EL135 seems the way to go.
• And Annie the Blue Bike, ah, dearest Annie, is into her 20th winter and still going strong, mostly. For a few days we dabbled with a stripped-back, mountain biking guise, but full length mudguards and a pannier rack were just too useful to do away with. Riding in -10ºC didn't exactly work wonders for my Scottoiler, as the lubricant froze in the reservoir, the delivery tube fractured, and the valve inside the squid dispenser broke. And of all the unusual things to happen, the chain broke! Well, nearly, as one side of a link had peeled open while I was riding along Edinburgh's foremost highway: the bus-filled, thronging, yet slightly shabby, Princes Street. Of course, I'd already detected a regular-irregular ticking through the pedal feedback and mentally traced it to the chain and immediately reduced my pedalling effort, so I was spared any traffic light hyperacceleration plunging-to-the-tarmac accidents. I've never broken a chain before.

And what about me? The first day of snow, and I nearly broke my ankle as I slid, lost my footing, found the ground, lost my footing, and fell into a snowdrift. Three weeks (or is it four weeks?) later, I'm still hobbling, still lacing up my hiking boots as tight as possible, and still cycling. Another eight days and I can put my feet up for a while.