Life in the Bus Lane

A fairly manic day at work today, mostly spent trying to work out how I’d managed to break the dial-up remote access. That ended up taking a couple of hours with the aid of a copy of Ethereal before I worked out what was going on.

I popped down to PC World after work and picked up one of their cheap Toshiba 160GB external HDs for backups. Once that was plugged in I headed out on the Kaboom for an hour or so. I wasn’t intending to ride tonight but I could see the snow on the top of the hills and decided it was too good an opportunity to miss, it also gave me a chance to deliver a birthday present in time for tomorrow. Once I’d climbed up to the top of the hill there was a couple of cm of snow in places, not a great deal but more than I’ve seen here in quite a few years. Probably one of the best rides I’ve had for quite a while. Might even try for another ride tomorrow night.

Headed out for a quick spin on the Langster tonight. First I popped into the LBS to say goodbye to Ian who’s off to Australia for a month, I ended up collecting my birthday present and a load of cards so had to pop home again before heading back out. It started to drizzle as I headed to Saltford, so I’d half decided to turn around at Saltford and come home again, however the drizzle had more or less stopped so I decided to carry on. A bad choice. As I rode up the hill it started raining, then turned to sleet, then snow. It turned back into sleet as I headed back down the hill again, but didn’t let up until I got home freezing cold and soaking wet, but somehow strangely satisfied.

Unfortunately Pipex seem to be having routing problems at the moment, so I can only see about half of the interweb, and can’t get any mail. I might have to find something productive to do this evening at this rate.

Due to some spectacularly bad planning on behalf of HR, I’ve got my payslip which tells me my new pay scale before the official letter telling me what it is has arrived. I now have the delights of getting extra money in the form of protected pay to top me up for a while. Hopefully my appeal will go in next week and should be successful as my co-worker has been placed on the next grade up. The only downside is that the appeal could take six months to go through.

Tonight was the first solo night ride of the season, and my first proper ride on a mountain bike for about 10 weeks. I loaded up the iPod with some folk-rock type music, the obligatory woolly jumper helps keep you warm on winter rides, and headed out into the fog on the Kaboom. Having fettled the bike a bit since the last ride, it’s a lot more comfortable now and a lot more fun to ride. Riding across the top of the hill through the fog was somewhat spooky, particulary descending across the golf course where I couldn’t see more than about 5 yards in front of me. Ace fun though, I must do it more often.

The first few legs of the game were fairly even. Police lost the first leg on a tie, and we swapped wins for a few legs until it reached 3-2We went a bit downhill at that point and thanks to two truely atrocious legs, dropped to 3-4. However a late resurgence bought it to 4-4 and we left the Police with a 46 to beat. In an uncanny re-enaction of the first leg, the again lost on a tie, and we took the game 5-4, and won the pins by 2.

Housing Admin took 8 points, Police took 4.

I also lost out on a new lens on ebay by about three quid while I was playing. Such is life.

Went out for a quick spin with Steve this morning, thanks to the sub-zero temperatures and the fog I had to scrape ice out of my beard every few miles, and the unprotected parts of my legs were soon covered with frost. Ironically my new winter tights arrived 5 minutes after we got back.

Tomorrow I think I’ll stay in the warm and fix the rear wheel on the cross bike which has a broken spoke and consequently a bit of a wobble.

Unofficially I’m unsurprisingly disappointed.

I was idly looking at the cost of memory upgrades for my laptop earlier when I stumbled across a fantastic bargain at Crucial. You can buy a 1GB module for £76.99, or a pack of two 1GB modules for only £158.20. You can save almost as much with the 512MB modules where one will cost you £35.99 or just £73.97 for a pair.

After much faffing and delaying, we’ve finally been promised that our Agenda for Change outcome letters detailing our new pay will be sent out to us next week, or as I prefer to call them, the letters of inevitable disappointment. This time next week I should know whether I need to start looking for another job or not.

Last year, this match proved to be our earliest ever finish. A record which lasted for an entire five days until we played the return fixture. This year we managed to last about 45 minutes longer.

Housing quickly took a 2-0 lead with a couple of good legs, however it soon went downhill from there. By the end of the match we’d manager to drift into our rather too common 5-3 defeat. Police took the full 8 points, Housing took an all too familiar 3.

Congratulations to Mike and Sandra on the birth of Isla Rose Davis last night.

Nightspeed finally managed to deliver my new camera bag today, although there is still no explanation why they didn’t actually try to deliver it to me in the first place.

The bag itself is almost perfect, and quite happily holds my day-to-day kit with space to spare, and should be a lot easier to work from than the Lowepro rucksack I had been using. The Lowepro will still get used for pure carrying duties, whereas the Geekstar is more aimed at when I’m wandering round with a camera taking pictures.

No riding for the last two nights. After my pathetic attempts at a ride on Sunday, I’ve decided to take a few days off while I shift this annoying half-assed cold I’ve got. Due to other committments I can’t ride for the next few nights, but hopefully I’ll get a longer ride in on Sunday.

Nightspeed don’t appear to have tried to deliver my package at all, or if they did they never bothered to leave me a card to say so.

I ordered a new camera bag last week. The shop website states that most stuff is delivered by Royal Mail which is fine, but some large stuff is sent via Nightspeed couriers which is no use to me as I’m never in when they call, and their depot is two hours drive away. So on the order I ask to be told if it’s not Royal Mail delivering so I can sort out a seperate delivery address.

At the weekend I chased the package up as it’s not arrived, only to find that it’s been dispatched by Nightspeed who obviously failed to deliver it as I was at work and so took it back to the depot. Guess I’ll not be getting that parcel then, I’ll just have to wait for it to get returned to the shop so I can have a refund.

Probably my worst couple of hours on the bike for a long time. I had absolutely no energy at all and couldn’t breathe properly which didn’t help much. In the end I made it as far as Bradford-On-Avon with Ian then turned off and took the flat route home along the canal as I couldn’t face another hill. Shame really as it was a nice clear day out and almost perfect weather for bike riding.

The pictures from today are now done, a couple of them came out quite well.

Bristol Zoo gallery

No prizes for working out where the title of this post comes from.

We had a good trip to the zoo today, I’d not been for a good 5 years or so, and Ethan seemed to enjoy it. I took plenty of pictures and gave the 70-200/2.8 lens a good workout. We finished off with far too much Chinese takeaway at Mum and Dads, then a gentle stroll back down the hill to work some of it off. The pictures will be up tomorrow once I’ve fettled them a bit.

Looks like it this time, although the weather isn’t that much better than the last attempt.

Shame my new camera bag has failed to arrive in time.

For the first time in ages, we did the Bradford-on-Avon loop tonight. 24 miles, 90% of which is canal towpath, this makes for a nice fast ride. It was also my first ride with a freewheel equipped bike in over a month, which wasn’t actually as odd as I expected, shame the front shifting is still crap. Hopefully a new front mech might sort that out.

I’ve just noticed that it’s over a month since I last rode a bike with a freewheel. No doubt it’ll feel very odd tonight when I take the crosser out for a spin.

We got off to one of our usual starts tonight and were soon losing 3-1. We managed to win the 5th leg, then the 6th, and somehow we also won the 7th and 8th to take the game 5-3. Not quite sure how we managed that really. Thanks to a 56 in the last leg we also took the pins.

Housing Admin took the full 8 points, Bath Hospitals had to settle for 3.

Yet another 5-3 match for us this season. This could be habit-forming.

I manged to fit in a quick ride this afternoon between rain showers, a did the usual Burnett route on the Langster. I only did 14 miles or so, but it was enough to overtake Simon again, and more importantly I’ve now ridden more miles than I did last year. I’m still vaguely aiming for 2400 miles for the year, but 2300 is a bit more realistic, particularly if the current spate of bad weather continues.

Tomorrow I might wander into town to look at camera bags, my Schlong is no longer long enough.

I was marshalling at the fireworks in town tonight. We turned up for the 6pm briefing which was exactly the same as last years, then were assigned to our areas. Unfortunatley I got stuck with Bath FM again which drove me mad last year, so I managed to get moved to the area in front of the crowd. At 7:30 the fireworks started, and so did the rain. 20 minutes later, both had finished again. After pasty, chips, and a few pints of Bass I started walking home, only for it to start pouring with rain meaning I got absolutely soaked. I think my clothes will take a week to dry out again.

Just to taunt myself, I watched the 6:30 weather forecast when I got home which promised a clear and dry evening. Lying bastards.

I’m meant to be going to the fireworks again tomorrow, but the weather looks to be even worse that today, so I think I’ll stay home.

The biggest disappointment of the night was getting to the bar and finding out that they aren’t doing Old Speckled Hen at the moment, that set the tone for the rest of the night.

Being forced to drink Wychwood Hobgoblin wasn’t too much of a hardship, but the alley just wasn’t working for us tonight. One leg you could get 7 off of one ball, the next leg you’d struggle to get 4 from thre balls.

Bath Hospitals took 5 legs and the full 8 points, Housing Admin sloped off home with a paltry 2.

It was manically busy at work today getting the new remote access system in, but at least it seems to be partly working now. Due to that I got home late then had to go straight out to pick up some cat food and a huge expensive book which looks to be very nice indeed. As soon as I got home from that it was out on the Langster for a quick (for me) 15 miles or so. At least I can put my feet up now.