Life in the Bus Lane

After a fairly quiet day at work, I headed out for a quick spin on the Langster. I did briefly consider doing the 24 miles I needed to reach my target for the year, but my legs weren’t working properly do I settled for a little over half that, leaving me 11.5 miles to do sometime over the next 10 days or so. I might try and finish it off Saturday morning if I get around to delivering presents in time.

It should be a good day at work tomorrow, the filing cabinet is well stocked with mulled wine and other alcohol to help the passing of the hours.

Tonight was our usual pre-christmas away match at Combe Down RFC. It’s a funny alley, reasonably honest, but you can score 48 one leg, and follow it with a 25.

We swapped legs for the first few, then started to drop behind a bit ending up at 4-2, somehow we brought the game back to 4-4, but managed to lose the last leg by a good 10 pins or so. Despite getting a 0 in one leg, I somehow managed to be top score for the night.

Engineers took the full 8 points, Housing Admin had to settle for 4.

We now get a few weeks respite before the return match on Jan 9^th 2006.

Very smooth, and very very nice.

I could get to like this, but I suspect my wallet would complain.

John Spencer has died of a heart attack. His character in The West Wing, Leo McGarry, survived a heart attack whilst White House Chief of Staff and then went on to run for Vice President.

No doubt it’ll screw up the story line for a while, how badly depends on how far ahead they have already filmed as they are currently midway through the seventh season.

BBC News: West Wing’s Leo dies at age of 58

The birthday bike ride was a bit of a disaster as my legs appear to have gone on strike, so I cut it short and only did 17.5 miles or so. That leaves me about 33 miles to do before the end of the month.

This evening was spent at my parents opening more presents, which as mainly a selection of good books, and eating and drinking too much. I’m now joining Matt in his annual Nirvana Unplugged evening whilst sipping Whiskey which was another birthday present.

I appear to have survived another year without actually working out what I want to do when I grow up. I think I’ll head out for a birthday bike ride.

This morning I managed to finished my Christmas shopping, at least I hope I’ve finished it. Town wasn’t too painful thanks to it being a weekday morning, although I still despise shopping in real shops.

After lunch I took the Stiffee out round the Uni for a quick spin, the chainsuck didn’t reoccur, but the brakes are shockingly bad. The front one squeals continuously, and both brakes locked up after the descent from the downs back to the canal. I’ll have a go at bleeding the brakes and hopefully that’ll sort them out. Ideally I’d like to replace them with some Shimano ones, but that’s not really cost effective, I could steal the XT ones of the Craftworks, but that leaves me with brakes of the wrong size on each bike, so the E4s will have to do for the moment.

Not quite a record breaking match this week, but it was still all over by 21:30.

A relatively easy 5-0 victory for us again, and we won by 38 pins or so.

Housing Admin took the full 8 points, Picadillys again went home empty handed.

After a near two hour wait, I’m now on the waiting list for surgery. The maximum waiting time is six months, but they aren’t actually allowed to operate on anyone until they have waited six months because of a lack of money, so I’m assuming my appointment will be sometime on the afternoon of June 12^th 2006.

Thanks to the joys of a generous holiday allowance, I’m enjoying a week of leisure. After a nice lie-in I headed out on the Langster for a quick spin around the lanes of Saltford and Keynsham. It was partly the usual Saltford - Burnett route with an extra trip up double-gravity, and a scenic meander back through the lanes and round the edge of Keynsham, a very pleasant if slightly chilly 20 mile ride.

Despite being off work, I’ve got to head in to the hospital this afternoon so they can work out what size carving knife or chainsaw they need to cut the lump out of my back.