Tony P.

Из истории Петербурга

Одной из задач молодой Санкт-петербургской полиции в 18 веке было сбережение города на Неве от иностранных посольств. Город был молодой, неокрепший, а посольств было много. В каждом иностранном посольстве творились какие-то несусветные причуды.
Не то, чтобы при пересечении государственной границы посольства массово сходили с ума от впечатлений, предоставляемых нашей Родиной. Но какие-то подвижки в сознании происходили.

Шведы завели себе в посольстве медведей, которых стали ещё и разводить. Австрийцы принялись подделывать "ефимки с признаками", завладев старым штампом для перечеканки. Французы крали коней.

В 1736 году сотрудники персидского посольства, располагавшегося на Мойке у Зелёного ( Народного) моста сели покурить. "...через полчаса дом пылал. Пламя распространилось с чрезвычайной быстротой и вскоре охватило многие деревянные здания на берегу Мойки и Гостиный двор ( это на Невском уже). Пожар продолжался восемь часов и истребил все здания от Зелёного моста до церкви Вознесения". Всего сгорело тогда 10 % деревянного Санкт-Петербурга. Многие погорельцы стали искать эвакуировавшееся персидское посольство, которое пришлось прятать в монастыре. Невский монастырь пришлось, потом заново святить. По результатам пожара в городе будущих трёх революций впервые ввели государственное нормирование продажи продовольствия: 16 видов товаров народного потребления - от мёда до гречи.

Не успели пережить иранскую народную дипломатию, как 6 июня 1737 года на крыше дома, стоявшего между дворцом цесаревны Елизаветы Петровны и помещением, занимаемым посольством Пруссии, нашли мину в виде горшка, набитую порохом и горючими материалами, к горшку прилагался запал. Это уже не просто поджог, тут теракт форменный намечался. Полиция и Тайная канцелярия стала петрушить подозреваемых. Только вышли на сотрудника посольства короля Пруссии по фамилии Ранке, только стали думать, как бы его скрасть для беседы, как 24 июля окрестности посольства Пруссии полыхнули с двух концов. Было это в районе Миллионной. Горело до Мойки, до Невы, до Царицына луга и до Адмиралтейства. Дипломат Ранке исчез. Его потом во Франции за шпионаж повесят.

Глядя на французов с конями, австрийцев со штепселем, персов-поджигателей и террористов-немцев, другие посольства не отставали. Англичане не отставали больше всех. Они повадились стрелять из окон посольства. Не очень целясь по прохожим, но регулярно.

Глядя на англичан, постреливать в домах стали и коренные петербуржцы, дети псковских и новгородских переселенцев.

Под перекрёстным огнём из английского посольства и обывательских домов полиция ловкими скачками бегала по городу за конокрадами из французского посольства, следя искоса за притихшим посольством Пруссии. Персидское посольство из монастыря давно попросили, оно и расположилось шатрами у Летнего сада, там было легче прокормить посольских верблюдов, обросших в России дополнительной шерстью. У петербуржцев стали изымать огнестрельное оружие. Опубликовали объявление: "чтобы впредь никто кроме иностранных послов, посланников и прочих министров в домах своих ни из какого ружья, как по обязанности, так и для забав, не смел стрелять". Посольствам стрелять из окон не запретили - неудобно. Но установили перед посольствами первый в истории дипломатии " явный полицейский караул", который гонял жителей столицы от посольств.

Не успели перевести дух, посольство Польши подало о себе весть: разбили огороды перед резиденцией графа Грабиенки.
Голландское посольство завезло коров. Всё это в двух шагах от императорской резиденции. Пришлось полиции ловить по городу россиян, пробравшихся в столицу без паспортов "для следования в столицу". Изловленных "убогих, слепых, дряхлый и увечных, купно и с прочими чудаками и к художествам склонным" бросили на объект века: осушение болот от Лиговского канала до Невского монастыря для организации общегородских огородов и выпасов. Известный потомственный мелиоратор, фельдмаршал и покоритель Крыма Миних Бурхард Христофорович оставил по себе расчеты огородного парадиза. Чтобы посольские не орали, на образовавшийся огородный рай стали свозить навоз из всех возможных мест. Чтобы с огородов не воровали, завезли туда и людей для жительства. Завезённые жители Лиговки встретились со строителями лиговского чуда ( убогими, слепыми, увечными и художественными чудаками), которые за ненадобностью совсем уж заскучали. Встреча вышла непростой. Рядом с огородами построили полицейскую караульню. Понаблюдав за развитием событий, полиция к караульне пристроила и небольшую тюрьму, ставшую на долгое время центром лиговской культурной жизни и наложившей некоторый отпечаток на облик лиговского жителя. После к тюремке пристроили мертвецкую. И всё это из-за каких-то поляков с голландцами. Целый район выстроили, ландшафт вручную изменили, повернули вспять течение каналов.

Испанцы из окон своего посольства спекулировали мартышками. Всё бы ничего, но ожесточённая мартышечная торговля и прочие эффекты от процесса мартышечного размножения и взросления, происходили напротив резиденции петербургского архипастыря Иеринея. Мартышки часто убегали от своего испанского концлагеря и искали убежища у православных. Полиция ловила мартышек. Мартышки скакали по подворью, между богомольцами, выбрав свободу. Богомольцы разносили по всей Руси доподлинные сведения о том, что видели в Санкт-Петербурге живых чертей. За это богомольцев Тайная канцелярия крутила и отправляла на восток.

Посольство Ганновера вербовало среди неустойчивых питерцев рекрутов для продажи в Англию и последующей отправки в восставшие американские колонии. Вербовка происходила по кабакам, рекруты приходили в себя уже на кораблях по пути в Гамбург. Полиция ввела запрет на совместное распитие спиртных напитков подданных империи и иностранцев. Пить с иностранцами могли только те, у кого на изнанке кафтана стояла специальная печать обер-полицмейстера, т.н. "доброе клеймо". Это помогало не очень. Ганноверцы сбивали с пути и проверенных бойцов невидимого фронта. Однажды на корабле в Гамбург очнулись агенты сыска Михайло Шишлаков, Игнатий Толкачёв и Михайло Мальцев, о котором в именном списке петербургской полиции говорилось "грамоте и по латыни знает, токмо шумен, вор и пьяница". Шишлаков сбежал уже в Гамбурге, потом пробирался год с лишним к своим. Толкачёв отправился служить на острова Карибского моря, потом дезертировал к испанцам и следы его теряются на Кубе. А Мальцев организовал в Лондоне контору по проведению собачьих боёв и был впоследствии сотрудником английской полиции, боксёром-профессионалом, сидел на цепи в тюрьме, закончил жизнь в Италии, библиотекарем кардинала Пиориззи. Встречался с Казановой, который собирался переезжать в Россию. Советовал обязательно, обязательно ехать.

(c)gilliland

From the Imperial War Museum in London, a couple of incredible photos of nurses testing out infant gas-masks: "Three nurses carry babies cocooned in baby gas respirators down the corridor of a London hospital during a gas drill. Note the carrying handle on the respirator used to carry the baby by the nurse in the foreground."

GAS DRILL AT A LONDON HOSPITAL: GAS MASKS FOR BABIES ARE TESTED, ENGLAND, 1940 (via Kadrey)

Disneyland fans have created many of their own theme days, some of which I've been lucky enough to happen upon or attend -- Bats Day (goths); Gay Days, and more. But I didn't know about Dapper Day, where 10,000+ people descend on Disneyland and Walt Disney World in natty outfits and style their way through the fun park. Just looking at the official gallery makes me want to mark this in my calendar for next year.

"People are looking for an excuse to dress up," said Justin Jorgensen, who started Dapper Day in 2011 and has organized five of the events, all at Disneyland. The latest Dapper Day — the same Sunday as the Oscars, Hollywood’s own dress-up day — drew an estimated crowd of 10,000 to the Anaheim park and about 1,000 more at Florida's Disney World.

"Everything, including the workplace, pushes this idea of being casual," said Jorgensen, 38, of Burbank. "When do I get to wear my great stuff?"

Most of those in attendance that day were in their 20s and 30s. They had come of age in a time of shoulder-padded power suits, windbreakers in neon colors and frizzy hair — not exactly a time that will be remembered for its classic elegance.

"I think people like history, people love nostalgia," said Heather A. Vaughan, a historian studying 20th century fashions. "People love imagining a time they didn’t live in."

Dapper Day at Disneyland, the nattiest place on Earth [LA Times/Rick Rojas]

(Photo: Christina House)

Quentin Tarantino on the grave of Russian poet and writer Boris Pasternak in Peredelkino. 2004

[::SemAp::]

A TSA screener at JFK pepper-sprayed five of his colleagues at Terminal 2 on Tuesday, according to the New York Post. The screener, Chris Yves Dabel, found a pepper-spray cannister on the floor and believed it was a laser-pointer, so (for some reason), he aimed it at five other screeners and pressed the trigger. The six were sent to Jamaica Hospital.

The screener sprayed five other TSA agents around him, sending all six to Jamaica Hospital and halting security checks at Kennedy for at least 15 minutes, police said.

No passengers reported injuries. Dabel refused medical attention.

TSA officials scrambled to keep the embarrassing incident under wraps yesterday — until The Post began inquiring about it, a source said.

Oops, TSA guy goes spray-zy! [NY Post/Josh Margolin]

(via Digg)

(Image: Pepper Spray Cop - White background, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from donkeyhotey's photostream)

Ars Technica's Nate Anderson decided to try cracking passwords (from a leaked file of MD5 hashes), to see how difficult it was. After a very long false start (he forgot to decompress the word-list file) that's covered in a little too much detail, Anderson settles down to cracking hashes in earnest, and provides some good data on the nuts and bolts of password security:

By this point I had puzzled out how Hashcat worked, so I dumped the GUI and switched back to the command-line version running on my much faster MacBook Air. My goal was to figure out how many hashes I could crack in, say, under 30 minutes, as well as which attacks were most efficient. I began again on my 17,000-hash file, this time having Hashcat remove each hash from the file once it was cracked. This way I knew exactly how many hashes each attack solved.

This set of attacks brought the number of uncracked MD5 hashes down from 17,000 to 8,790, but clearly the best "bang for the buck" came from running the RockYou list with the best64.rule iterations. In just 90 seconds, this attack would uncover 45 percent of the hashed passwords; additional attacks did little more, even those that took 16 minutes to run.

Cracking a significant number of the remaining passwords would take some much more serious effort. Applying the complex d3ad0ne.rule file to the massive RockYou dictionary, for instance, would require more than two hours of fan-spinning number-crunching. And brute force attacks using 6-character passwords only picked up a few additional results.

The point, really, is that if you want to understand the relative security of different password-generation techniques, you need to understand what's involved in state-of-the-art password cracking techniques.

How I became a password cracker

A few months ago I had a blast playing with Simon Monk's 30 Arduino Projects for the Evil Genius, and noticed that his 15 Dangerously Mad Projects included a coil gun. I've always wanted to make a coil gun!

Since the coil is wrapped around the tube from a plastic pen, and the iron projectile is inside the tube, it will fly along towards the coil. As all the energy from the capacitors will be spent in a matter of milliseconds, the coil should ideally be turned off by the time the projectile passes its center and exits out the other side of the tube.

Simon's plans and walk-through are wonderful. I learned a lot reading the detailed but easy to understand instructions. He also selects parts and components that I am sure I can source locally and I love that he improvised brackets from a plastic drinking bottle.

I also learned that I will not be making a coil gun. That curiosity is now satisfied!

Simon Monk's 15 Dangerously Mad Projects for the Evil Genius

The Pocket Spotlight is the next best thing to sun-controlling superpowers. It is a a continuous light source you can mount to your phone’s headphone jack, your camera’s hot shoe or off-camera in your hand.

Картина Фортунио Матаниа (Fortunio Matania). На переднем плане изображен сержант Генри Тенди (Henry Tandey). Герой войны. Кавалер высшей военной награды Великобритании – Креста Виктории. В 1918 году он вместе с двумя товарищами атаковал немецкий окоп и захватил 20 пленных.

В 1914 году Тенди столкнулся на нейтральной полосе с немецким солдатом. Солдат был ранен и так измотан, что даже не попытался поднять винтовку. Тенди пожалел его и не стал стрелять. Немец благодарно кивнул и побрел к своим. Этим немцем был Альберт Эйнштейн Адольф Гитлер. В 1918 году он случайно увидел газету, в которой была статья о награждении Генри Тенди и узнал его.

В 1938 году на встрече с Чемберленом Гитлер рассказал ему о том, что его спас английский солдат и попросил передать Тенди свои наилучшие пожелания и благодарность. Чемберлен пообещал лично позвонить Генри Тенди по возвращении. И сдержал свое обещание.

Rua Goncalo de Carvalho: Most Beautiful Street in the World via Amusing Planet

Bush Lowballed Us on Iraq by $6 Trillion

Source: MoJo

 

 

Discuss

 

 

Click to enlarge

Source: AOL

Hat tip Kid Lane!

(Spoilers) If you’re already sold on G.I. Joe: Retaliation, then don’t watch this clip. It’s that good. It’s really for folks who are on the fence or are not interested in seeing the whole movie.

• Hat Tip
• Link

More Awesome Stuff for You to Click On:

G.I. Joe: Retaliation: Storm Shadow
G.I. Joe: Retaliation (Trailer 3)
G.I. Joe: Retaliation (Trailer 2)
G.I. Joe: Retaliation (Trailer)
Planet of the Apes: Fight Footage

Are you tired of being around fools? If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. Great satire from the folks behind the Vytautas ad. Sadly its point is bound to be missed by the very people it seeks to awaken.

• Hat Tip
• Link

More Awesome Stuff for You to Click On:

Old Spice: Poker Face
First World Problems Anthem
XCOM: E. U.: Selling the Game
Flowers.NL: Screwed
Rutaesomn Chill Pills

In 1971, the US government's Environmental Protection Agency sponsored a photography project called DOCUMERICA to capture on film the impact of pollution, waste, and environmental dangers on American life. The result is a stunning portrait of 1970s American culture. A selection of those images -- more than 20,000 in total -- is now on view at the National Archives in Washington DC. They've also released an exhibition catalog with text by the EPA's first director, Bill Ruckelshaus, who was in charge during the DOCUMERICA project.

Above: "Children play in yard of Ruston home, while Tacoma smelter stack showers area with arsenic and lead residue” (Gene Daniels, Ruston, Washington, August 1972). Right: “Young woman watches as her car goes through testing at an auto emission inspection station in Downtown Cincinnati, Ohio" (Lyntha Scott Eiler, Cincinnati, OH, September 1975).

"16 Photographs That Capture the Best and Worst of 1970s America" (Smithsonian)

Searching for the Seventies: The DOCUMERICA Photography Project (National Archives)

"Searching for the Seventies: The DOCUMERICA Photography Project" (Amazon)

When is writing about someone the equivalent of writing to them?

The distinction is an important one. Writing about someone enjoys broad First Amendment protection. Writing to someone can, under some circumstances, be treated as harassment, or as a threat, or as a violation of an existing restraining order — especially if the contact is unwelcome and threatening.

The distinction is rife for abuse. Consider convicted perjurer, drug dealer, and domestic terrorist Brett Kimberlin, who got a broad and unprincipled "peace order" against blogger Aaron Walker purporting to prohibit him from blogging about Kimberlin. Kimberlin's theory was, in part, that because he had set up Google alerts on his name, by blogging about him Walker was contacting him and harassing him. Or consider blogger Dan Valenti, saddled with an unconstitutionally broad restraining order forbidding him from blogging about a criminal case on the bogus theory that his writing about someone constituted harassment.

Thanks to several tipsters, I see that a Florida court has examined the distinction in the context of a threats case. The case is Timothy Ryan O'Leary v. State of Florida, and the opinion is here.

O'Leary sounds like a scary nutcase. He posted the following on his Facebook page, referring to his relative and her partner:

FUCK my [relative] for choosin to be a lesbian and fuck [the partner] cuz you’re an ugly ass bitch . . . if you ever talk to me like you got a set of nuts between your legs again . . . I’m gonna fuck you up and bury your bitch ass. U wanna act like a man. I’ll tear the concrete up with your face and drag you back to your doorstep. U better watch how the fuck you talk to people. You were born a woman and you better stay one.

O'Leary's cousin Michael — a Facebook friend — showed this statement to the threatened relative. The issue the Florida appellate court confronted was this: by posting the threat on Facebook, did O'Leary "send" it to his relative or her family, as required by Florida's criminal threat statute? Yes, said the court:

Here, appellant reduced his thoughts to writing and placed this written composition onto his personal Facebook page. In so doing, the posting was available for viewing to all of appellant’s Facebook “friends.” With respect to the posting in question, appellant had requested Michael O’Leary [note: the cousin mentioned above] to be appellant’s Facebook friend, a request that Michael accepted. By posting his threats directed to his family member and her partner on his Facebook page, it is reasonable to presume that appellant wished to communicate that information to all of his Facebook friends. Given the mission of Facebook, there is no logical reason to post comments other than to communicate them to other Facebook users. Had appellant desired to put his thoughts into writing for his own personal contemplation, he could simply have recorded them in a private journal, diary, or any other medium that is not accessible by other people. Thus, by the affirmative act of posting the threats on Facebook, even though it was on his own personal page, appellant “sent” the threatening statements to all of his Facebook friends, including Michael. Michael received the composition by viewing it. As the trial court correctly ruled, at that point appellant’s violation of section 836.10 was complete, because the target of the threatening composition was a relative of the recipient.

In other words, by posting the threat on Facebook, O'Leary sent the threat to Michael, a relative of the victim, satisfying the elements of the statute.

Perhaps this result is less troubling because it concerns a threat of bodily harm, not a discussion of a disputed subject. (It appears that the question of whether this was a "true threat" — meant to be taken seriously, or reasonably taken seriously — was not the issue contested in the case.) But it's easy to see how, in an age of forums and blogs and social media, the doctrine could be abused. If someone has demanded that you stop writing about them, but you continue, knowing that their friends monitor what you write and will relay it to them, are you "sending" your communication to them? Doesn't this threaten to give people a heckler's veto over people writing about them? Or will courts interpret the doctrine narrowly to apply only to threats, when circumstances suggest that the defendant intended to use the medium to communicate the threat to its ultimate victim?

By the time the courts figure it out, we'll probably be using an entirely different technology.

To You, Or About You? © 2007-2013 by the authors of Popehat. This feed is for personal, non-commercial use only. Using this feed on any other site is a copyright violation. No scraping.

Have you ever wondered why you rarely see beautiful serif fonts on the internet? Well wonder no more. The website UrbanFonts.com has created this handy infographic that explains the differences between serif and sans serif fonts and why you should choose one over the other.



Via.

. . . . BECAUSE I AM GOING TO BE FEATURED IN A MAGAZINE THAT IS DELIVERED BY. PRIVATE. JET.

Below is an unsolicited email I received from an outfit that has been spamming my firm for some time. I have changed the name not to protect the guilty, but to deny them publicity. All grammatical and punctuation errors, bizarre grandiosity, odd capitalization, and general foolishness is in the original.

I wanted to take the time, as I noticed you are one of the top lawyers in San Francisco. [Note: I am located in Los Angeles.] After reviewing your profile and doing some research, I wanted to personally invite you to be the exclusive Lawyer in Tragically Insecure Lawyer Network for Los Angeles [Wait, I thought I was in San Francisco? Also, missing period in original.] I am the director of Tragically Insecure Living Magazine’s Lawyer Network: http://www.nobodylikeslawyerssoitismorallyacceptabletospamthem.com

What we are offering in this exclusive membership has tremendous value for our members, as we only partner with one member per category and market. We promote our members via our Top Rated Website http://www.imnottypingouthtatjokeurlagain.com/ along with being featured, in all of Tragically Insecure Living four magazines (NY, LA, SF, and Miami) that are distributed via private jets, in over 75 Hotel Rooms, and also mailed to multi-million dollar homes.

As you can see from our current list, we have an impressive resume of members, and are growing 15% a month. One important aspect that separates us, is the exclusivity you will receive with us. We only list one Attorney per category in each market; that exclusivity is not truly found with any of our competitors. In addition, there are various components of this membership, not just print advertising, as our magazine is very prestigious, giving our members a great branding partner. Along with being places online and in Tragically Insecure Living Magazine, we also perform a Press Release for all members distributed to over 20,000 News Sources, and usually placed on the first 1-2 pages of Google Linking our members profile to Tragically Insecure Lawyer Network.

If this is of interest, please fill this form out with some info, so we can set up a quick interview: http://www.tragicallyinsecurelawyer.com/I-have-no-self-respect/

Tragically Insecure Lawyer Network, a division of Tragically Insecure Living Magazine

Just as there are people who buy hair-in-a-can and respond to enlarge-your-penis emails, there are lawyers who will respond to this. Would you want one handling your case?

Edited to add:

I have elected to write back.

Dear Tragically Insecure Lawyer Network:

I accept your offer on the following conditions:

1. In all references to me in your promotional materials, you must maintain the uncertainty regarding my exact whereabouts. As you have noted, I am a top lawyer. But am I a top lawyer in San Francisco, or in Los Angeles? It is not possible to know at the same time both (1) that I am a top lawyer, and (2) in what city I am a top lawyer. This has something to do with an Uncertainty Principle, and possibly a cat.

2. I accept your offer to be featured in magazines that will be left in over 75 Hotel Rooms, but only on the condition that your organization warrant and guarantee that each such Hotel Room is equipped with the accessory commonly known as "Magic Fingers." In the alternative, I would accept a Hotel Room that includes a complimentary portion of Sanka.

3. Your message indicates that your membership is growing by 15% per month. My experts tell me that at that rate your membership will include the entire population of North America in only 12 years. That does not strike me as particularly exclusive. Also, I am concerned that the magazine will become rather heavy. So: how strong are your private jets? Will they be able to carry the magazine containing the pictures of every person in North America?

4. Regarding your press release — sorry, Press Release — to over 20,000 News Sources: (a) may I presume you will be using Comic Sans? (b) are all 20,000 News Sources reputable? I wouldn't want my Press Release featured on a non-reputable News Source. I trust your clear devotion to excellence and selectivity has resulted in a list of only the 20,000 most elite News Sources.

5. Regarding your mailing the magazines to multi-million dollar homes: can we arrange for my page in the magazines to be a pop-up? Because rich people can be very jaded.

6. In my featured profile, I will be mounted on a pony. I will require you to provide the pony. I trust this is not an impediment.

Very truly yours,

etc.

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Footprints by Iain Blake

Inspired by Channel Four’s coverage*, I used to fantasise about riding in the Tour de France.  Of course, riding the Tour was just a dream.  Being an extremely average physical specimen and a smoker, I was never going to get the call from Cyrille Guimard or Peter Post.

However, I took the Tour into my work.  After all, because of the way that the work of a bicycle courier is organised (the more parcels you deliver, the more money you get), the daily life of a messenger (courier) is pretty much a race.  You are competing against the other riders to get your hands on the parcels before they do, get them in your bag, and get them delivered.

I modelled myself on the pros. I ditched the cut-down, upturned bars, started using ‘proper’ drop handle-bars and wearing cycling caps, and began to draft the wheels of other cyclists and tail-gate motor-vehicles, just like I had seen the pros do on the tv.

Theobald’s Road, a very slight incline, would be the lower slopes of the col du Galibier (I always preferred to imagine myself on Alpine climbs, never Pyrenean).  Percy Circus became one of the lacets of l’Alpe d’Huez.  I went on Sunday rides with mates, and started to ride harder and harder.  Occasionally, I was able to sample the delicious sensation of dropping a fellow cyclist who was trying hard to keep up with me, enjoying watching them drop away from my back wheel, thrashing like a drowning swimmer might.

I started doing actual bike races, on an actual racing bike.  (Ok, it was only the Tuesday 10s at Eastway). I had become a proper amateur cyclist.  I was ready to test myself against the Giants of the Road, on the roads of the Tour de France.

In 1993, I rode up Mont Ventoux, literally up it.  Nearly all ‘mountain’ roads pass between mountain peaks.  This is one of the very few mountain roads that takes you to the very top of a mountain.  And, for all that Mont Ventoux appears much older and far more eroded than the nearby Alps,  it really is a mountain, which, as I write this in February, has snow on it.

This was my first ride on roads used by the Tour.  I rode to the summit via Sault, having started that morning from my great aunt’s house on the Crau plain, about 100 kilometres distant from, and 1900 metres lower than the summit.  The climb from the Sault side is the easiest of the 3 road climbs, with a total elevation gain of around 1200 metres over 24 km, at relatively gentle gradients.

The weather was benign, being hot and not very windy.  I generally go alright in the heat, and I had plenty of water, so the dehydration so dreaded by cyclists wasn’t a problem.  Pretty much by chance, I wasn’t on an over-geared bike, being on a triple chainset, with a lowest gear of something like 28 X 24.

I had taken it relatively easy on the ride in, so my legs were reasonably ok by the time I got to Chalet Reynard, which marks the start of the hardest part of the ride, if you are coming from the Sault side.  Again, I was lucky with the wind, so was able to ride to the top without serious difficulty.  My first ‘major’ climb, and one of the most famous, and significant for a British cyclist.  I left a cap on the Simpson memorial.

5 years later, I would reach the foot of Mont Ventoux having danced my way over the Col de Murs, which had been designated a Cat 2 climb for that year’s Tour.  Arriving at Saint-Estève, which is where the real climbing starts, if approaching from the much harder south side, I had felt really strong, and attacked the first kilometre into the forest, thinking how easy it was.  Within another kilometre or so, I was sat under a tree, trying to inhale my lungs back into my chest.

The ride up through the forest on the south side is steep, and, as it is not possible to see very far through the trees, somewhat disconcerting, as it isn’t possible either to look back and see how high you have climbed, nor to look up and see how far you have to go.

By the time I hauled myself up to the Chalet, I was suffering, and the Mistral, which had been blowing all week, absolutely destroyed me mentally and physically once I was above the tree-line, and into the arena of the white stones, which make Mont Ventoux appear snow-capped when viewed from a distance.

If you don’t know what the Mistral is, you have never been to eastern Provence.  The Mistral is a wind that blows from North to South down the Rhone valley.  The wind is a regular feature of the climate of that part of the Midi, and is generally caused by an atmospheric depression in the Bay of Naples.  When it blows, it generally blows for 10 days or so, and is very, very strong.

The inhabitants have adapted to the wind by growing lines of poplars and pines to protect gardens and houses from the wind, and none of the older buildings in that part of Provence have any large windows facing north.  It is a wind that can whistle up insanity and disorder, not to mention ruin any number of days on the beach, or, indeed, any otherwise pleasurable outdoor pursuit.

The road from the Chalet to the summit zig-zags along the flank of the mountain, turning north and  west.  Every turn to the north forces the cyclist into the jaws of the roaring monster that is the Mistral, if it is blowing.  On that day it wasn’t blowing hard enough to rip me off the mountain, but it was more than strong enough to bring my speed down to a crawl, and to force me and my legs to crab desperately along the road in over-geared (39 X 26) discomfort.  Robert Millar describes this sensation as ‘blowing your brains out’.  Millar once said that it doesn’t matter how strong you are, the sensation of climbing on the limit of your endurance and beyond is the same.  You go faster if you are fitter, but the pain of grovelling in the gutter is the same, no matter how strong or weak you are.

One of the most disconcerting aspects of the climb from the Chalet is the optical illusion.  As you ride towards the summit, the Observatory appears not be getting any closer for a considerable amount of time.  The kilo stones count off the distance remaining accurately, but in the hundreds of metres in between, with the mind in free-fall from the effort, the disorientation of this receding mirage can be very demoralising to an exhausted rider.

On that second time up, the temptation to get off and throw my bike off the side of the mountain was great.  It’s possible that the only reason I didn’t was that I wearing racing shoes, fitted with Look cleats, upon which it is virtually impossible to walk very far.  I made it to the top, but the climb of the mountain hadn’t been a pleasant experience.  I seem to recall that David Millar said he couldn’t understand why anyone would ride up Mont Ventoux for pleasure, and on this occasion it really hadn’t been a pleasure. On the ride down, I was virtually torn off the road by the cross-winds, which made it even less pleasant.

My 3rd encounter with the mountain was in 2004.  I had signed up for a week  with Veloventoux, a cycle-holiday company run by Craig Entwistle, who has probably ridden over Mont Ventoux more often than any other Englishman, alive or dead.  The programme was a few light rides, with La Ventoux – Beaumes de Venise cyclo-sportive on the Saturday.

A few light rides, I say, but we rode up the north side of Ventoux on the Tuesday, completing my set.  It had taken me more than 10 years to ride all 3 of the roads up Ventoux, but some people do it in the same day, the so-called Cinglés du Ventoux (cinglé is colloquial French for ‘mad’).  With 160 hilly kilometres on the Saturday, we probably should have done nothing of consequence, and, almost certainly, we should have stayed away from the local produce.  Mont Ventoux is flanked by some of the most celebrated vineyards in France, Côtes du Rhône.

I am happy to tell you, dear reader, that we did neither, even managing to combine a very pleasant afternoon’s ride with the local touring club with an evening in the club h.q., a café-bar in Nyons, making an extensive inquiry into the nature of the local rosé, whilst hearing of the club members’ exploits on their various long-distance epics on Les Diagonales de France.

On Saturday, the big race.  Let’s make no bones about it, a big cyclo-sportive like La Ventoux is a big race.  There are motorcycle out-riders for the leaders, and proper prizes for the winners.  The roads are more or less closed by default in the bigger events, as there are thousands of riders, making the road pretty much impassable for anyone not participating.  Spectators line the route.  A cyclo-sportive is the closest that the mere mortal can get to riding the Tour de France, especially when the sportive uses a road like the road up Mont Ventoux.  It is hard not to get carried away at the start, and blow your legs off in the excitement of being in a huge group, riding on the roads that the stars use.

The other really great thing about cyclo-sportives for the extremely mediocre rider such as myself, is that, no matter how often you get dropped from the various groups that form and re-form, there’s always another one behind.  You might spend most of the day watching a lot of back wheels disappearing into the distance, but there’ll alway be a least one, not far away, that is coming back towards you.  So no matter how slow you are, relative to the fastest guys, there will always be someone that you can leave behind on the road, grasping futilely at your dead air.  The amateur can enact his (or her) fantasy of launching a race-winning attack on the run-in to the finish that will turn the general classification upside down, in the manner of Merckx, Coppi or whichever rider you prefer.

The course of the event is one and a half times over Ventoux, with a loop round to the north of the mountain, if you do the full route, thus making every finisher demi-cinglé, or half-mad.  The route also takes in two tremendous descents, first from the top of the mountain to Malaucène, and then from Chalet Reynard back down to Saint-Estève.

As on my first time, the weather was extraordinarily benign, being nice & warm without being too hot.  I can’t remember too much detail about the day, apart from one moment when I was foolishly sitting on the front of a smallish group with another guy, and, getting annoyed with our companions, who weren’t coming through to take their share of the wind, said in french, ‘look, 15 Frenchmen led by an Englishman and a Belgian’.  I do remember that at the feed station at Chalet Reynard, on my second time around, there were cups of wine available.  I also remember being a little disappointed by the meal supplied at the finish, the disenchantment being somewhat off-set by more free wine, and the Gold certificate that I ‘won’ for getting the requisite time in my age group.

The lack of detailed memories, however, does not erase the glow of having ridden in the tracks of Giants.

* I watched an episode from the late 80s again, looking for Stephen Roche’s attack on the descent of the Col de Joux-Plane, and was totally stunned to see that Richard Keys was the presenter in 1987!