Roundup

Monday / Tues / Wed / Thurs – After the weekend away in the Lakes, managed to get everything tidy and squared away again. When we put up the tent at the weekend we noticed one of the sections of pole had started to split, and when we were taking it down it was obvious it had got much worse. The strong winds we had in the lakes probably weakened an already weak pole (should they last more than 12 months?). Anyway, I ordered a replacement pole for the tent from Vango’s parent company AMG (it says something that it’s not covered under warranty – they patently don’t hold much faith in their poles), and it came very quickly. Have been interestedly watching Sky Art’s Video Killed the Radio Star season going over the birth of the music video in the 80′s.

My O2 broadband has been playing up the last few weeks, but O2 support won’t talk to me as I apparently emailed them from the wrong email address (even though I passed them all the other correct security details). Great. The line has been syncing at stupid speeds (64k anyone?) I had 128k the other day along with 800k – a quick reboot gets me anywhere between 1.8Mbits/s and 2.5Mbits/s which is crap compared to the 3.5Mbits/s I’ve been getting up until recently. Then it drops again. I’ve checked the cabling and the line all the way through to the line box and even connected directly into the master socket with no improvement. I wonder if BT are arsing around with my cross connect or in the dp. Sky is offering me free broadband and Samknows tells me my exchange is LLU covered with Sky (I’m on LLU O2) so I might go across to Sky instead and save us some more cash.

Friday – Only a couple of weeks until I do the Coasts and Castles 170 mile ride for charity, so I did a bit of fettling on the mountain bike. Most surreal evening ever – just idly had twitter open whilst flicking channels on the TV to see that Charlie Brooker had tweeted about the fact that the police had surrounded Raoul Moat and it was on Sky News. Flicked over to Sky and had BBC on the laptop and watched the most surreal and disturbing (yet strangely compelling) 3 hours of TV I had ever seen. The BBC news reporter who was listening in on private mobile phone conversations to gain more information, and the whole weird rubber-neckedness of the broadcast. The only time I can ever remember watching something quite as weird was lying in bed on a sunday morning a few years ago when they invaded Iraq a few years ago and Sky News had a live broadcast from the gulf of the US military attacking a position and blowing it up with tanks. The use that day of live war as televisual entertainment, where people have lost their lives, will never leave me and will always disgust me that I watched it.

Saturday – Obviously the news this morning was strange. Went out on my mountain bike and rode through town to make sure it was OK. Did just short of 19 miles. It rode perfectly apart from the creaky crank which I’ll just have to live with as I don’t want to tweak the bike now before the long ride in two weeks. I’m doing it on the mountain bike rather than the road bike as there are more spares available, some of the route is off road, and it’ll be more comfortable.

The vegetable patch is coming on nicely. Michelle spent the day weeding, and the kids played out in the garden. Mid afternoon we hopped in the car and went to Bridlington for some fish and chips, and also a play on the 2p slot machines. The temperature change was unreal – in York we had 27C and humid, and at the seaside it was 19C and cool and more overcast. Came home and prepped the race bike for a ride tomorrow morning.

Sunday – Bit of a lazy morning today – I was meant to go out on the bike but the person I was meant to be riding with txted me early doors as he’s not feeling well. No probs. More time for chillout this morning

Watched a few more of the Video Killed the Radio Star programmes, and then went out to get some bits and bobs and ended up getting a new set of SPD pedals. Why? Well, the mountain bike had started ‘creaking’. Every time I put pressure on the crank it would ‘creak’ alarmingly. I checked the crank arms and they were fine so the only thing I could think is the pedals or the main crankshaft.

When I got home, I took the 17 year old SPD pedals off the mountain bike, whipped the pedals off the road bike and put the new pedals (which were silver and went better) on the road bike with a tiny touch of copper grease on the threads.

Then using a crank extraction tool, I took both the crank arms off, and using a cloth covered in citrus degreaser, gently cleaned the crank arms (including the holes where they fit onto the crankshaft), the crankshaft itself, checked the bottom bracket (seems fine) and injected a little grease and teflon into it, cleaned up the front chainrings seeing as they were off the bike having taken off the crank arm, and then using a tiny amount of copper grease in key areas, refitted everything and put the newer SPD pedals on it (that had just come off the racing bike). A quick oil of the chain and a quick test ride and the creak has gone. Fab!

Cooked some tea (cranberry gammon joint) and then settled down to write all this! Can’t believe they’re showing the world cup on both BBC and ITV. I’ll be watching Top Gear anyway.

Monday / Tuesday / Wednesday – Not much to put here really. Not feeling too great and no energy. A medical problem is keeping me downhearted a little. Orange thankfully ported my handset overnight Monday/Tuesday with no problems at all. Felt fairly down and slept very awkward hours (including an 8pm to sleep and a 4am to wake). (Sorry – boring entry!)

Thursday – A little better. Worked from home to catch up on a shedload of work. Packed the car ready for Friday’s journey. A success at work with a signed off project. However, this will be the last time I mention work in my blog (apart from saying I was there!).

Friday / Saturday / Sunday – A day off on Friday and we drove across the Yorkshire Dales and into Cumbria for a long weekend as the kids had a teacher training day. A last minute thing and we got a cheap deal at the Haven Lakeland site near Grange-Over-Sands. Well, it looked good in the brochure…

The pluspoints are that the entertainment complex itself is well appointed, there are some kids activities in the morning, the pools are really nice and the bar is good and the price is reasonable. However, once you’ve exhausted that, there’s not much to do and that the little bits they do have cost you a fortune. It’s really in the middle of nowhere, right out on the tip of the peninsula.

On the site,  you had to walk through the arcade to get into the bar/entertainments area, and they use the kids pester power as a conduit to try and get you to spend money (£3.50 for a small tub of Marshmallows? Almost nothing was included in the price. At least the beer was cheap – although two ice creams and two cakes costing £10 really is taking the mickey!! I wouldn’t mind if it was starbucks quality…). There’s also more than a little nod to our friends at Disney (hmm – I don’t remember Haven doing pin trading last time we stopped at one…) plus don’t expect to take a photo of your kids with the characters – they’ll stop you from doing it and get their own photographer to do it as they ‘own the copyright’. I love the fact they have a character called DJ Ned – it must have been a nod to the scots who call chavs ‘Neds’.

But we chose to camp instead of go in a static caravan, and that was a mistake – we learnt our lesson. If you ever go to the Lakeland site, never ever ever camp or take your caravan there unless you’re in a group of a few tents or vans. If you go as a small family on your own – only ever go in into a static caravan. Why?

The touring/camp site is a disgrace – where do I start? Maybe I’ve been spoilt with the generally first class Camping and Caravaning Club sites which are well laid out, well looked after and friendly. I’m sure this Haven site breaks fire regulations – we didn’t see any fire points anywhere! The tents were so heavily packed in it was like being at a festival, and cars were driving around anywhere as in the chaos with no organisation, people were being selfish and parking over the roads, so you couldn’t get through. If there were an emergency on the site, they would have no chance. I was worried because the youngest was running a temperature the first night we were there, and yet I’d been blocked in so would have had no chance of getting her out quickly. They put us right in the middle of the field between two rows of tents which meant our car was blocked in 90% of the time if people parked their cars badly. There were never any wardens around (and the one that was looked pissed off when he was there) so people were playing music really loudly and being bawdy until 2 and 3am even though there was a 12pm curfew for noise. It’s OK if you haven’t got kids, but when they stay awake all night because of the noise they tend to be fractious the next day as they haven’t had enough sleep.

When you tried to put your tent up, you would find that the ground was no more than 2 inches of soil over what seemed to be solid concrete, so you couldn’t put tent pegs in properly which worried me as I then had to angle them in shallow. It’s permanently windy, and forget it if it rains – it’s notorious for flooding as there’s almost no grass – just mud – so don’t expect a dry night if you are in a tent and it rains. We were lucky because we had two days of solid sunshine, and keeping an eye on the weather we upped sticks early doors sunday morning before the forecast rain. (There were a couple who had been there for a week and when they took up their tent, their groundsheet under their floorsheet resembled a swimming pool with the amount of water in it….)

The single block of toilets are also clean and new, and were well appointed, but sadly the clientele staying there when we were there didn’t clean up after themselves and the toilets degenerated within 3 or 4 hours post cleaning to a bad pub state. Enter at your own peril! (There are some reviews here that seem to back up our experience – I did feel like I was living in an episode of Shameless…)

The site notwithstanding, it worked as a base, so we ventured out into the lake district. First ever visit to Keswick (which is a lovely town) and went to the rather fabulous ‘Puzzling Place‘. A place to spend an hour enjoying some fabulous optical illusions including an Ames Room and an Anti-Gravity room! From there we then drove back down the spectacular valley to Ambleside and had a nice early evening meal at the Queens Hotel (I can recommend the ribeye steak) and stopping to get the Mark Beaumont book (and a couple of books for the girls) at the wonderful little Fred Holdsworth Bookshop (which has a brilliant cycling and geology section – so instantly becomes my favourite bookshop!)

Back along Windermere and back to the tent before coming home this morning, and just tidying out the garage, cleaning and packing away the tent (and ordering a complete replacement tent pole as one of the main pole’s sections has fractured) and tidying the garden. The wind is vicious today – although it’s glorious sunshine this side of the pennines. It’s good to be home – especially cos our veg patch has gone mental and the courgettes and pumpkins are taking over the garden! The tomatoes needed moving and restaking because they’d grown so tall.

Sat down and watched Avatar with the kids as they bought me it for Father’s day the other week. I explained that it’s a metaphor for what America (and the Western World as a whole) are doing to the rest of the world in our quest for Oil – and that the Unobtainium is just the same thing. First time I’ve watched it since seeing it on 3D IMAX and it’s not lost it’s charm – an astounding movie.

Oh well, back to the grindstone tomorrow. I suppose I should try for a bike ride or two too….

Saturday – Mum and Dad went home, and then went out on a fabulous 72 and a bit mile bike ride (in a story further down). Home and had a BBQ and a few Budweisers before going to bed pretty early before flicking around iTunes on my new iPhone, finding, buying and listening to the new Orbital EP (iTunes). Awesome choonage.
Sunburn kept waking me up though, so a bit of a restless night’s sleep.

Sunday – Up early(ish) and off to mother-in-law’s for an hour or so. They have a problem peacock that is tearing up the neighbourhood. I did offer to borrow a shotgun and despatch it (and then pluck and eat it) but she reckoned it would be a bit tough and all the locals like it anyway. Shame. Peacock curry anyone?
Back via Harrogate, trying to get a case to protect the shiny new iPhone I have, but nowhere seems to be open and those that are open don’t have any iPhone 4 cases yet. Aargh. I know it’ll get scratched if I carry on like this.
Home via Tesco (who also didn’t have any cases either) and we had another BBQ and a welcome surprise visit from sister-in-law, hubby and nephew so we sat and watched the England game. Actually, it was a day of slobbing out, drinking beer and BBQ as it was way too hot to do anything else. I reckon another day of riding my bike would have killed me!
Thank god for the return of Top Gear.

Monday – Worked from home today. Weather was glorious, was OK, but felt a little burnt out. Went to the hospital at lunchtime. Then home, finish off what I was working on. Cooked tea and watched TV. Didn’t feel like going out on the bike today. I may rest a couple of days to allow my achilles to totally recover and then commute on Wednesday. Beautiful sunset – almost like an oil painting with bright oranges and blues.

Tuesday – Woken by the sunshine and my daughter. Michelle says ‘Go for a ride tonight when you get home’. Nice one. Off to work – Given bad news at work about our pay, and then there’s more bad news on top of that by the chancellor hiking VAT. So inflation is high, they put up VAT and we don’t get any cost of living increases. Really makes you positive.

Home and blew away the cobwebs and frustration of the day with a long-ish ride and then a lovely dinner and TV.

Wednesday – Up early, cycled to the leisure centre, swam 350m (14 lengths) at the pool, and into work. Bit of a strange day, ended up firefighting a chunk of the day and then got a major document completed which I was happy with. Obviously people were in bad spirits and pretty pissed off at work. I reckon they’re probably gambling on the fact it won’t last and people will just get over bad news, but the atmosphere this time round tells me thats not the case. It’s strangely quiet.

It would be an interesting statistic to see quite how many people pop up on Jobsite/Monster/etc now the job market’s picked up…

Back on the bike and rode home in a record time of 1h09 which is much quicker than my usual 1h20. However, my achilles was a little painful so I put some ibuprofen gel on it and rested up.

Thursday – Skipped the bike this morning and just went into the office. By the end of the day there were 3 iPhone 4 handset owners in the office as surprisingly they managed to get stock at Tesco. Looking at the reports on the internet, it would see a large amount of people would be disappointed yesterday. (Not me – I ordered one from Orange early doors). Atmosphere still ‘wierd’ at work. Spoke to T-Mobile who provided me with a PAC code for migration virtually instantaneously and were really helpful. Got home and tidied the house ready for the folks to arrive tomorrow. The weather knocks Michelle for six as she gets a migraine so she goes to bed with the kids!

Friday – High cloud and overcast this morning. Working from home today. Passports were delivered today – thankfully that means both my youngest daughter and I can join the rest of the family on holiday now . Recieved a text message from Orange telling me the exact hour my new phone will be delivered. How cool is that! Never had anything like that before – the nearest thing is Ocado texting you to tell you that Chris in Suzy Strawberry van will be delivering your shopping.

Quickly got WP to Twitter integration working (so that any blog updates will tweet out at the same time). Very geeky.

Set up the new handset (display is awesome. Shame the antenna isn’t). However I hold it I end up shorting the two antenna sections. A definite design flaw which is a shame cos it’s lovely.

Mum and Dad came by again and the kids were at their end of term party.

Saturday – Weather was exceedingly windy today, and was flicking between rain and sunshine (albeit quite cold) so we did stuff in the house today. Moved a load of furniture around and tidied up the house. Went to B&Q to get a coat rack for the hallway. I was glad I have a stud/pipe finder as just where I was proposing to put the coat rack just so happened to have all the heating pipes under the plaster! Then work called early evening with a power issue in one of our sites and one of my team had been called out, so was logged onto the office helping with an issue until around midnight.

Sunday – Fathers Day – kids woke me up with a card and a copy of Avatar on blu-ray. Thankyou We originally planned to go to The Forbidden Corner, but because we hadn’t pre-booked the tickets the only way to get tickets was from the Tourist Information centre in Leyburn which was a bit of a risk. In the car we said ‘what is our backup plan if we can’t get tickets’ to which Michelle said ‘What about Lightwater Valley’.

Me – ‘Wouldn’t it just make sense to just go there today and plan in advance for ‘The Forbidden Corner’?’

Michelle – Yep.

Apart from a slight detour where we ended up having to drive round in circles to get there (some junctions on the A1 on our map show roads that don’t exist!) we were third in the queue at the gates.

The park was quiet all day – and I forgot quite how much of a headache, how uncomfortable, and quite how much whiplash ‘The Ultimate’ roller coaster gives you.  I only rode it once. That was enough. They need to close it, sort out why the track is quite so bloody awful and doesn’t have smooth curves (they whip you left and right) and make it smooth. Then it would be awesome. Until then, rider beware!

We had a lovely coolbox lunch under the trees and more rides (it’s just like a veritable Yorkshire Disneyland ) and then home. Highlight of the day was the dodgems really (where I overhead an asian man from bradford exclaim that they’re off to ‘do the bumpy cars innit’ ). Went to the disappointing outlet centre attached to the site (they could do so much with it but the shops are just awful). But we had a fun day.

Came home via the garden centre, and then cooked a winner of a tea (ham cooked in cranberry juice and colcannon as a side), and then fettled the bike (changed the tyres back to Conti GP4000′s and lowered / moved the saddle, removed the rack) and then out for a ride of 21 miles. Felt much much happier.

Monday – Another day of R&R as advised by the people doing my op on Friday. I’m glad this is the last day of rest as I am getting sick and tired of TV and Xbox. Things are still a little tender.

Tuesday – Back to work. Still full on Ibuprofen today but left the paracetomol out today. Felt OK and slowly getting better.

Wednesday – weather was a bit changeable today. got a bit depressed in the evening much to Michelle’s annoyance. Not being a football person meant watching wall to wall football was very boring I did eat some chocolate today which may have been the culprit too. Also had some great advice over the last couple of days from people on the CTC forum about how soon I can expect to get back on the bike. Decided that if the weather was nice might risk a ride tomorrow night.

Thursday – The weather is too nice to work, but I had to anyway. Went out at lunchtime and got some new trainers so I can walk around the field at work in my lunch-hour. Then home and I got changed and went out for a bike ride. Surprisingly I did 10 miles pretty easily from an operation perspective. However, my sodding achilles started to ache (if it’s not one thing it’s another) so I took it steady. So as a reward we all went out for a curry in the village

Friday –  Work today – Typical timing when a BT engineer arrives to install a line just before lunch. Any other day I wouldn’t have cared but I promised to meet an ex colleague for lunch. Ended up getting one of the other guys to cover him whilst I went to lunch with Ed (lucky chap now lives darn sarf) and a chunk of the rest of the IT department. Home and some stuff I’d ordered had arrived including my nice new howies merino top and some refill ink cartridges for my Epson from Amazon (which actually work amazingly well – and for £7.50 instead of £70 for a set of 6 are quite a bit cheaper – after all the printer is very old and it’s not worth putting £70 cartridges in a £130 printer especially when the kids seem to just print ‘my little pony’ web pages!). Went out to the garage and did some tinkering on the bike – cleaned the chain a little and changed the tyres from the marathon pluses (which are great puncture proof tyres but feel a bit wooly to ride on) across to the continental GP4000 folding tyres which are just amazing. Watched the football where the England team may just as well have spent the entire game standing around with their hands in their pockets. Dismal.

Sat / Sun
After my operation on Friday afternoon I have been told to rest and recuperate for 3 days. (I thought it would be two but they told me three.) Boredom is my biggest problem as the pain isn’t too bad thanks to industrial strength paracetomol (1 gram!) and ibuprofen. Sleeping’s OK but occasional twinges are the biggest problem. Plus the constant feeling as though someone has kicked me very hard in the pods and sometimes it feels like someone’s sticking a needle in them too. (All men reading this will wince )

Saturday was particularly difficult as the weather was glorious but every time I thought ‘i’m OK’ and started doing something simple but energetic, then the aching pain would get the better of me or I’d get nauseous and have to stop. My body was obviously telling me to take it easy.
I’ve also been told not to ride my bike for at least 1 week and realistically two weeks, which is going to be very hard for me. I’m sick of watching TV and playing Xbox already after 2 days.
I may not update this blog very often over the next few weeks as I get the feeling my life’s going to get boring (well, more boring than it is already I can hear some people say) .

Monday - Busy day at work, then home and cooked tea. Watched the WWDC Apple announcement live about the iPhone 4. My patience and non-upgrading to Android or 3GS paid off as it looks just stunning, especially the retinal super-high-def display. I do have the option to upgrade but I may wait until after the summer holidays to order one.

Tuesday - Out of the house early doors this morning. Meetings all day today (bleurgh) but left my laptop at work so I could cycle in on Wednesday. Home and re-fitted the rack on the bike to take the panniers as the rucksack killed my back last time. Packed all my clothes in my pannier. Watched a bit of TV and early to bed.

Wednesday – Up like a shot and out the door on the bike for the commute in. Much easier this morning with the panniers vs a rucksack. Weather was overcast but thankfully not raining. Made good time in on the commute and stopped off for a cheeky 12 length swim at the leisure centre round the corner from the office.

Got loads done today at work and a little bit of chinwagging. Didn’t like the rain that kept pouring all day and then realised I had to ride home in it. Tried to work as long as possible to wait until the worst was over and then left around 5pm-ish. The headwind was a bit of a killer but the rain wasn’t actually that bad.

Home and then a lovely dinner (had a bit of a vegetarian day today – vegetable soup for lunch and spinach and ricotta canneloni for tea) and then watched the Big Brother inmates go into the house. I reckon it will probably be the only bit I’ll watch.

Thursday – Another grim weather day today Might need to watch my achilles as I’ve woken up this morning with a slight ache. Lots of work done, fairly uninteresting day really, and then home.

Friday – Worked from home today – in fact both of us did. Conf Calls and got loads of work completed and then had to scoot off around 4pm to have an operation. Was under the knife until 5:30 when I was picked up (wasn’t allowed to drive the car). Home, feeling drowsy, and was advised to take the maximum dose of Paracetomol and Ibuprofen all weekend, and not to work till Tuesday (I thought it was only 2 days rest). Felt really dozy.

Saturday – Up early doors and off on the Great Yorkshire Bike Ride. Family were there to meet me at Filey – hindsight I should have got them to take the bike but I’d paid for return transport so I used that. Glad I did it quickly as it absolutely poured down with rain just after we left Filey. An hour on the coach and it was a small world moment as the chap who sat next to me used to work at my employers around 14 years ago! Arrived back at Wetherby, and eventually the bikes arrived around 45 minutes after we did back to the racecourse, and I was picked up from there. Got home, cleaned up and changed, and had a nice barbecue. Kids wanted to watch Britain’s got Talent final. I was still restless and buzzing after the ride.

Sunday – Weather was shocking today. Am doing the global corporate challenge at work and updated my steps/miles and got a speeding ticket due to the 72 miles plus steps for yesterday!!

Went to B&Q to get some bits and bobs for the garden. Helped Michelle plant out a stack of the veg, and pulled out the dead hazel to replace it with a nice Lily Michelle had recieved recently. Did feel a little restless today – too much energy . Hope the weather picks up a bit so I can get some more mileage in this week because I won’t be able to ride for a couple of weeks after this coming Friday….

Tuesday – Worked from home today. Weather was just shocking. Overcast and drizzly. Spent hours on conference call after conference call. Logged off around 5pm and went in the garage to swap out the tyres on my new bike and re-fit the marathon pluses to give it a little bit of a chance for puncture protection.  Michelle came home and made a nice salad after we rescued the tomato plants which seemed to have all flopped due to the rain. House seems quiet without the kids around. We sat and watched the Sherlock Holmes movie which was enjoyable.

Wednesday - Much nicer day today. Drove into work today. Tedious audits but c’est la vie. Escaped to the bike shop at lunchtime to get some new bottle cages and a little frame pump for the new bike. Although I bought a lovely superlight black rack for it, I’m going to try and resist having the rack on it as much as possible in the summer (unless I need the panniers) so I want to carry very little but still have everything on the bike that I need should the worst happen.

Left my work bag at work so I have less to carry if I feel like riding in tomorrow. Went home and Michelle was home early with some good news. Kids are still at mum’s and weather was scorching, So we celebrated her good news by us both going out on our bikes (and the inaugural ride of the new one ) and for a nice ride, including going to the pub for dinner en-route. What a wonderful evening.

Thursday - I was woken this morning by bright sunshine streaming through the windows. Seems like a good day for it, so I cycled the 19 miles to work this morning, stopping at the nearby leisure centre for a swim and a shower before work so I don’t hum in the office.

Worked and then a nice ride home, although did feel a little knackered due to the wind being against me. Slept like a log!

Friday – With all good intentions to ride the bike I figured if I rode today I wouldn’t make 72 miles tomorrow. So I didn’t. Out in the car and went and had a nice pub lunch with Niall at the pub at lunchtime. Stopped off at Cycle Sense on the way home to pick up some new brake pads for my bike as the Miche ones fitted to it are, well, useless. Mum and Dad came up this evening with the kids.