Challenge What The Future Holds

Food: Mint Cake

Jon Waldock — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 21:58:29 +0000

I’ve been looking at ways to keep my energy intake high, especially whilst out on my bike, to which I remembered about the joys of Kendal mint cake. However…when I get addicted to food I tend to buy it a lot and for the amount you get, Kendal mint cake can be quite expensive. So I thought I’d try and make my own. I’m following the recipe from http://www.kendalmintcake.net/recipe.htm if you want to follow along.

The cake is essentially made up of two ingredients; milk and sugar, a lot of sugar. Start off with a 1/4 pint of milk and a 1lb of sugar, I used granulated. It’s the worlds simplest recipe, you start off by heating the milk and then gradually add sugar until it’s all dissolved. Then you boil it for a while.

The recipe says that you should do some weird test with cold water but if you boil it and keep stirring for at least 15 minutes until it’s a bit thick, it should be fine. The test I did was to take a tea spoon of it and put it on a plate, if it hardens up then you’re good to go. Take it off the heat, add a teaspoon (or more depending on your preferred mint level) and then stir whilst it gets cooler and should thicken up.

After that you just pour it into a dish, I’d suggest putting tin foil in it first. Then wait for it to cool and harden, then cut. Simple.

Yumm. Sugary goodness.

I has been climbing – 52 Sports; Sport 5 – Bouldering

Jon Waldock — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 21:18:39 +0000

Sport number 6 in my 52 new sport challenge took me to Oxford Brookes University’s climbing wall. It’s part of the sports centre at their Headington campus and in part, it’s awesome, if exhausting.

If I’m being exact about it, we (Dave (in the picture), Abi and myself) went bouldering, which is a bit like rock climbing but without ropes or harnesses. It sounds insane but there are huge crash mats, so you’re pretty safe and as long as you don’t go higher than you are comfortable with then everyone’s happy.

It was a lot of fun, but we were well done after an hour. Bouldering works your arms really hard and your fingers even harder. There’s a rating system which you’re meant to start off on, but in reality we didn’t pay much attention to them and just used whatever was around. There’s 2 bouldering rooms, one which is much bigger and harder than the one shown in the picture, but it’s well worth a try and I really enjoyed it.

Next sport, not sure. Quite keen to give scuba diving a go…

Eynsford

Jon Waldock — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 21:02:34 +0000

Eynsford has to be one of my favourite places in the country. I discovered this after spending a while in the train station which as you can see, is very much a ‘local’ train station. It’s no Kings Cross, but that’s why I love it. The classic, rustic and just plain old station is beautiful and it just invites people to take photographs of it. I revisited the station on Sunday, and it was as lovely as I remember it but I also went through the village that the station is part of and it fitted the picture perfectly. A small village pub, a fjord with kids playing in it and parents chatting over their picnics. It was like a film.

Where’s your favourite place? What makes it special?

Just for fun

Jon Waldock — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 22:01:42 +0000

I spent a large part of my Sunday at Brands Hatch, which is a race circuit if you’re not aware. In the past I’ve done a lot of motorsport related things; working as a commentator, photographer, interviewer and because of this it’s rare that I go to a race meeting just for the fun of it.

I arrived at 10am in time to see the first race and left just after 3pm having seen the majority of the races. It’s funny because I now can’t sit and watch a day of races because oddly I just get a bit bored. So I took a camera with me along with a long lens which I’ve never used before, and set to work around the short Kentish circult.

Here’s a few of the good ones;

When was the last time you did something just for the fun of it? What was it?

Who really benefits?

Jon Waldock — Sat, 13 Aug 2011 22:21:50 +0000

Recently, the UK government announced that members of the public could submit an e-petition on almost any subject and when that petition reaches 100,000 signatures then parliament has to debate it.

Well a few days ago the first petition crossed that 100,000 signatures mark and as of now it’s at over 180,000.

“Convicted London rioters should loose all benefits.”

Now, let’s firstly put this into context.

(Part of) The reason that so many of the riots happened is due to disaffection with community, the police, the government and a lack of opportunity through jobs, community and young centres etc.
Benefits are tiny. Anyone who tells you that they have a luxury life style whilst on benefits is lying. So many people in the UK are on benefits, the majority not by choice, but due to jobs often it’s the only way to get by and often they will struggle just to get by.

Let’s say for the sake of argument that all of the rioters are on benefits. Now from the programs I’ve watched and the things I’ve read, these people on the whole are going to be struggling to get by on their money, so imagine that they all get their benefits taken away. What the government will have done is push over 1,000 people further down the poverty line, those in council housing will be made homeless and given that this has all happened because of a lack of respect towards the police surely this is a massive coalition own goal?

If we’re looking at the problem as a generation of young people feeing let down by their government, then taking away the tiny amount of support that they already have is just going to make things worse. Now don’t get me wrong, I think what’s happened is a deplorable and outrageous act that has seen communities destroyed. I think these people should get the sentences that they deserve, but as ever with punishment, prison can’t be the only thing. Sure, putting some young people in prison may help them see the error of their ways, but for others, who just don’t care about the criminal justice system it will do nothing but alienate them. Of course people will cry out and say that these people should pay for the things that they have done to their community, and they should, but they should also be part of the solution, of bringing the community back together again.

The main point of this whole situation is this; the only way our justice system works, is if it’s fair. Imagine entering court tomorrow and there’s two of you in the dock, you’re both there for looting exactly the same things except you chose to follow the crowds and your dock mate decided to do it a week earlier than you and on his own. You both receive the same sentence, which we’ll say is not a prison sentence, say 100 hours community service. You both get sentenced but you leave the court room and you find yourself with no home, no support, no money but the other guy does get some of that help, and does get some of that support that we all need whether we’re criminals or not.

The stupidest thing that we can do right now is make a act hastily and stupidly and then come to regret it. We need to look at what caused these horrendous actions, and what we can all do to help create communities that support each other.

Yes, these people should be punished, yes they should feel sorry for what they’ve done, but if we shove them in prison and then let them go back into our communities feeling even worse, even more out of place in society then who benefits? We might feel better because we feel that justice has been done, but give it a week, a month, a year, a decade, all of this will happen again and all because we made a bad decision.

What do you think should happen? How do you think we can rebuild our society? How do you think the rioters should be punished?

42 Grams – 52 Sports; Sport 5 – Crabbing

Jon Waldock — Sat, 13 Aug 2011 16:51:57 +0000

As sport 5 of the 52 I’m trying to complete I thought I’d try something outside the box. Now it’s fair to say that I’m not the worlds biggest fan of animal based sports, not because I disagree with them or due to any moral issue, I just don’t find them that interesting.

However, today was somewhat different, we; Abi, Calum and myself, headed to the Promenade Park in Maldon, Essex to enter ‘The 3rd Annual Maldon Crabbing Competition 2011′.

Crabbing?. Yes, quite.

The park is based on the Blackwater estuary but (potentially more importantly) it has what’s known as the boating lake, but which is also the place where a lot of crabs live. So we entered, for an incredible £1.50 each, the rules were simple, we had until 2pm to catch the heaviest crab possible and so we got our lines and our bait and set to it.

For some reason I find crabbing a lot more enjoyable than fishing, maybe it’s because I can actually catch crabs. We used chicken carcass which worked very well, and after 3 hours of crabbing in the lake and the muddy estuary…

Success! I caught around 10-15 but given that it was all about the heaviest one I put some back in the water. I took my crab to be weighed at the crabbing HQ and it weighed a gargantuan 42 grams.

Which isn’t great in the overall competition terms but I was happy with it. Between myself, Abi and Calum, Abi got 50 grams and Calum 35 grams. So I didn’t loose! Thankfully.

It was a lot of fun and I recommend everyone has a go, you just need a bit of string or fishing wire, a stone, a bucket and some bait. Google crabbing and you’ll find out where your nearest place is.

5 sports so far, 47 to go and I have no idea what the next one will be. Any ideas?

My First Win – 52 Sports; Sport 4 – Grass Track Cycling

Jon Waldock — Sat, 13 Aug 2011 15:07:52 +0000

I’ve always been a fan of cycling, it’s the most incredible sport when you think about it. On the endurance side they’re cycling 180km in 4.5 hours, doing average speeds of 25mph or more on the flat. Lately I’ve been cycling more and when on an hour ride I do about 16 mph average, and on my 3.6 mile time trial route I can get to just over 18 mph. On the sprint side, the winner of the latest Under 23′s Euro’s did a 1km time trial in 1 minute and 2 seconds, which is over 36 mph.

The problem is that although I’ve always wanted to enter a bike race, it’s one of those sports where you can’t hide if you’re rubbish. If I was to enter a 10 mile time trial right now, I’d be about 15 minute behind the leader, which is quite a lot when you consider that they will have only taken 20ish minutes to do it.

But I got over my issues and I found a race that I was happy (in the nervous sense of the word) to enter.

It was a few miles away from my house, so I set off cycling and made my way to where it was being held; in a school field. When I arrived everyone was just unpacking and unsure as to what was going to happen because the rain had started but we hoped it would lay off.

There’s only one thing I can say about the whole event. It was incredible.

I have never seen grass roots sport done so well. Maybe that’s because I’ve been around motorsport for so long but all sports could learn a thing or two from British Cycling.

Having arrived and signed in, I was given a sheet with the outline for the evening, explaining each event that I would be doing (I had entered the omnium, which in this case was a combination of 3 events with the person gaining the most points winning overall) and so I knew where I stood. However due to it being the first round of the series and the weather, the numbers weren’t quite what they were hoping for, but the 3 seniors (that’s me, apparently) all met and decided that instead of us all having different bikes (I had a hybrid, one guy had a road bike, one guy had a track bike) that we should use the same bikes…

This brings me onto my favourite thing about the event. It’s under the ‘Go-Ride’ banner which is British Cycling’s way of getting young people interested in cycle sport and this event was directly supported by British Cycling which meant that they bought all the kit with them, including about 15 bikes. So, if you were that way inclined, you could turn up to a bike race, without a bike, and still race.

Fantastic.

So once we’d all got our bikes we lined up for our first race, this was going to the sprint, a 1 lap, 400m sprint around the schools running track. The race began, and something quite extraordinary happened.

I won. I still don’t know quite how it happened but I made sure that I got a good start, then kept pedalling hard around the first 200m, occasionally looking over my shoulder, but I’d pulled away and even though I was slowing up in the last 100m I crossed the line first. I was quite astounded really, but not bad for my first race.

So, sport number 4 done. 48 to go. I encourage you all to have a go at grass track, it’s so easy and a lot of fun and all you have to do is be able to cycle in a big circle!

—

NB: I dramatically lost the other 2 races because they were more endurance based, but we won’t talk about them!

The EV Cup

Jon Waldock — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 20:46:15 +0000

Tomorrow is the first round of the EV Cup! Are you excited? I am. The first round of the worlds first electric racing car series at our very own Silverstone, amazing new high-tech opportunities start then and it’s very exciting. The 4 race UK calendar is visiting Silverstone tomorrow, Snetterton on the 20th, Rockingham on the 10th of September and then finally Brands in late October. Not only that there’s going to be 2 European races and 2 races in America. I’ll be at all of British rounds and from what I’ve read about it, it’s going to be incredible.

Except it’s not.

And I’m not.

And I’m really quite disappointed.

Everything was so well planned, at Autosport last year I spoke to the MD of the EV Cup Sylvain Filippi about it (an interview which ironically, seems to have disappeared from my website) and it sounded great but I didn’t think any more about it until January of this year where again we discussed the plans for the series. There was a calendar and cars, they’d had support from the old Stig, Damon Hill and I spent a lot of time investigating the prices and it was so affordable which made me even more excited.

Then in February something quite extraordinary happened. Lord Paul Drayson of Le Mans fame decided that his team was leaving sports car racing of the endurance kind, and would instead turn their attention to the EV Cup. This was a huge move, and I was so impressed at the commitment that it showed from Lord Drayson and his team, but then there was silence.

Silence from Drayso n Racing.

Silence from the EV Cup.

Until May. When everything was cancelled.

I still can’t quite believe it. Everything seemed so great, it was so on track, but then they called time on Europe, because things weren’t ready. I don’t really understand what went wrong, from the emails I’d had with them it seemed all ready, because in terms of the cars there wasn’t going to be loads of them and so there would be no issues. But the US is the place for them apparently.

What I still can’t get my head around, is Lord Drayson. I am still very impressed at his commitment, but he’s left the worlds biggest endurance series to have it thrown back in his face and clearly he didn’t want it to happen this way but it must be heart breaking. He took criticism from some of those in his own part of the industry but no he believes in this and so this is what he’s doing.

The EV Cup is really exciting, but through a lack of communication, causing a lack of interest, I can’t see this year being a big hit for those involved. Recently they replaced their old website, which was great because they out grew it very quickly, but there was no grand launch or ‘look we have a new website’ until the day after.

Their Twitter stream went like this;

26th July; GUESS WHAT?????? …….. EVCUP’s new website is being launched tomorrow!!!

27th July; Tick tock tick tock

- At this point I checked their website and it hadn’t changed and I continued to check it all day. Their website then launched (and there were 11 other tweets that day, and then…) -

28th July; Has everyone checked out our new website!??!?

It’s so disappointing to see such an exciting prospect being let down in the way that it has, the EV market and interest is bigger than ever and now we have to wait until next year to see what electric racing is all about. There are so many opportunities for their website to keep the interest; interviews, video tours of their factory, they’ve already tested the car at Silverstone so a video of that would have been great. For whatever reason, the EV Cup has had a year to forget, which is fine…

But I just wish they’d keep us a bit more informed.

0.4, 0.47 and 40 from Olympic Glory – 52 Sports; Sports 1, 2 and 3

Jon Waldock — Sat, 30 Apr 2011 20:15:28 +0000

My life is endlessly ridiculous sometimes.

I think it reached a point of peak ridiculousness around 11 oclock last Sunday (March 27th). I was in Bath you see, home of, something important I’m sure. I got the train to Bath Spa and had to be at Bath Universities Sport Village by 10.30ish, but the map I drew myself wasn’t hugely helpful once I’d got off the train so after cycling around for about 5 minutes I asked someone. Who pointed me in the right direction before saying “it’s a bit of a trek”, but I thought nothing of it. The reason I thought nothing of it is because I knew the distance between where I was and where I wanted to go and the only problem I had was the direction. 2.2 miles it was. 2.2 miles.

Nobody told me, that Bath is a hill. 2.2 miles in the lowest gear, cycling up the steepest hill I have ever seen. I got there, legs in tatters, not the best start for a day of competition.

I locked up my bike and headed for the sign in area, filled in the registration form putting “none” in the “sporting experience” box, and then joined the crowd. We watched a presentation about our chosen subject for the day, what it would entail and what would happen if we got through. It was hardcore, don’t ever let anyone ever say that professional atheletes don’t sacrifice alot. I was there for some fun and if something came of it then great, but I knew what I had come for.

It might not look like much but this is the British Bobsleigh Associations push start track, one of the best in the world. And, I got to push a Bobsleigh, jumping in et al, twice. It was epic. We did 2 different types of sprints and a standing long jump, which apparently can tell you your future potential, but that’s a whole different conversation. Funnily enough, I didn’t do great, but I didn’t come last, so there you go.

Sports 1, 2 and 3; Bobsleigh, Sprinting and Long Jump. A pretty good start I think.

One of the other people to try out during the day…

This weeks thoughts

Jon Waldock — Sun, 06 Feb 2011 23:51:49 +0000

Alot has happened this week and a twice I’ve just wanted to bang my head against the wall and just shout at the world and the other time has just plain ol’ confused me. So here we go, my take on this week.

Top Gear

So the irony of last weeks stupid comments about Mexicans was that the Mexican ambassador was watching and he wasn’t happy. Clearly there are two sides to this, one side says that this is Top Gear, we expect this, when I saw it I didn’t laugh but I wasn’t surprised and it’s the exact type of crass ‘humour’ that Top Gear delivers each week. Others have weighed in saying that the humour is basically, not funny any more, and if you think about it they’ve got a point. 2 episodes in and this years season hasn’t been any good, the only good bit was the rally bit in episode 2, the old enjoyable smart, fun and a little riské has gone and whats replaced it is lowest common denominator. Annoyingly, I don’t have a definite opinion, they’re both right and they both have definite points, so it’s on the fence for me.

Egypt

If you’ve been living in a cave for the last few weeks you won’t know about the situation in Egypt. Put simply, the current President has been there for an awful long time and the people want change. Now I won’t weigh into what I think should happen there because clearly it’s a) their decision and b) if the choice is between the current guy and some potential extremists, I think it’s clear which one i’m going to choose. What I don’t get, is the constant talking from politicians from us and america about what they think Egypt should do. It’s Egypt’s choice, they’re a country who can work this out by themselves and as long as they don’t breach the human rights of the people whilst they do it, we can’t legitamately tell them to do something one way or the other.

Sally Bercow

This final story has really wound me up and made me very angry. Sally Bercow if you don’t know is the wife of the speaker of the house of commons, John Bercow. She, some may say, stupidly posed for a paper in what was just a white sheet and then talked about all sorts of things that the same people would say she should have. I, am not one of those people. The constant commenting on this woman has been disgraceful, I can’t believe our politicians who’ve said that ‘she demeaned the house of the speaker’ and other completely rediculous things like saying that she’s not acting how the speakers wife should. These people have clearly never heard of feminism. I don’t care what she did, or what she said, but the attitude from so many people has been that she should bow down and do exactly as she’s told. She’s a grown woman, with her own opinions, feelings, thoughts, whether or not she has done something that she now regrets is neither here not there, she should not be treated the way she has been.

That’s my thoughts of the week. It’s been a long but good week by all counts, hopefully next week shall be too.