How Rude!

Yesterday I was innocently minding my own business cycling to work, overtaking cars in the correct position (to their right) when a stupid cyclist whose path was blocked while undertaking the cars swung out into my path without looking. I said “whoa” and he proceeded to swear at me, so I had a go at him and then sped off. He seemed unable to keep up with me, which is strange considering how light his bike looked.
On Friday, I was stuck behind a bus, the driver of which was beeping the horn. I passed the bus to see he was driving about 10cm away from a cyclist in front who was doing her best to keep moving. This was completely out of order.
The irony of the bus incident is that there was an advert on the back of it for the Road Hug campaign being run by the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. The campaign aims to get every road user treating other road users as if they were friends. An admirable cause.
They are giving away free stuff – a hi-vis and some lights… get yours now at www.roadhug.org
In other news… well I suppose there isn’t much other news. I am going snowboarding again next week though. Bring it on

*edit 12/9/2011 - I never received my road hug pack :(

The blog post with no title

Why is there no title? Simple really, I couldn't think of one for my current post (or rant if you prefer).

So last night I went for a curry with some colleagues. This was a good thing, everyone was happy, but I deliberately left my cycling gloves in the office as my jacket has nowhere to put them. Who makes jackets with no inside pocket (well, Levi Strauss does), and more importantly, why?? And what idiot buys such a jacket in the first place? (Me, that's who). It is a very cool looking jacket though.

Anyway, lack of cycling gloves meant finger freeze on the way home yesterday, and again on the way to work. It's taken me an hour to thaw out before I can even type this, and I made coffee for everyone this morning just to warm up my hands!

And this isn't even the reason for my post. I've forgotten what the real reason was. Oh yeah! Tonight I'm going to the Royal Albert Hall to hear a lecture from Professor Stephen Hawking. I've never read any of his books, but I've heard he's quite clever :)

Speed, or lack thereof...

Why is it that when I cycle to work, riding as fast as my legs can push me it takes me 20 minutes to ride to work, but when I cycle home it doesn't matter whether I am ambling in some random direction or what speed I am going, it only takes 15 minutes?

Could it be that the weight and gearing of the Boris bike is so bad that the slight 1% uphill gradient equates to 12.5% additional journey time?

Well I can't explain it any other way. When I take the tube the evening journey takes longer, and walking takes about the same in either direction!

Ouffff

Ouch.

My entire body hurts... *groan*

So on Monday I cycled to work. Nice ride. All happy. Tuesday, went climbing. My life was saved several times by multiple climbing buddies, but my arms and legs were aching afterwards. So much so that I struggled to move the next morning. Rode to work again, and back home. Great, getting good at this cycling malarkey.

Unfortunately a by-product of cycling was that I'd stopped looking out for rough surfaces in the road, because the bike just goes over them without any problems... so when I was skating last night I fell. Twice. Hard. Now I have multiple injuries, shoulders, elbows, wrists, knee and ribs. Ouch. This wouldn't be a problem ordinarily, were it not for the fact that I'm supposed to go skiing tomorrow.

It's going to be a long and painful week (and free of further blog posts because I won't be online).

This may well be the last post I make in a while, because I'll probably forget when I'm back.

Another day, another blog post

Good morning everyone!

What a glorious sunny day ^_^

Yesterday I got a parking ticket in Shoreditch. How annoying. I am always very careful where I park and I was on a single yellow line on a Sunday morning. The adjacent resident permit bay was in force, but I wasn't in it. I suspect the stupid traffic warden was confused or just trying to increase his quota. I shall have to dispute it.

What was I doing in Shoreditch on a Sunday morning? I went to the Albion for breakfast. It was a rather nice breakfast, but £15 for 2 sausages, 2 eggs, a bit of toast, a cup of coffee and a marmite and cheese swirl is excessive. If I end up having to pay the parking ticket as well, £75 will make it the most expensive breakfast I have ever eaten, and this coming from someone who used to have to get work to pay £20 in the Glasgow Marriott just so I could have a bowl of cereal.

What else happened yesterday? Some nice skating, oh and then a fairly nice dinner in Dalston. It wasn't the best I ever had, but I did manage to clean the plate, and it cost considerably less than the breakfast down the road.

I have no idea why I even wrote that. Nobody reads this anyway.

Oh yeah, this morning I rode my bike to work again. It was rather splendid, but I have decided I can't ride it in less than 25 minutes so I'm not going to try and go any faster. Happy to be passed by the crazy Lance Armstrong wannabes in their lycra.

If the weather continues like this I may have to ditch the car and ride to work more often! Yay :)

One week of movement

Awesome! Yesterday I finished one week of exercise every day. I didn't intend to, but I've been feeling much better as a result.

It started with Rock Climbing at the Westway sports centre last Wednesday. I totally sucked at it and slipped a few times. Good thing I was secured with ropes or I'd have suffered yet more horrific injuries.
I skipped a fast skate to go climbing, so when the weather was good on Thursday I organised a skate of my own, which worked very well.
More skating on Friday, though this time I managed to skip dinner and while assisting a friend who was lagging behind, I ran out of energy myself and couldn't quite keep up either. Still made it to the end.
Saturday was epic. Intended to go for a short cycle ride and then do some more climbing in the afternoon. Epic fail for climbing though. What started as a short cycle ride ended up being a 40 mile mission to Richmond Park and back. Still, the weather was great and I could still move when I got home.
Sunday saw a return to skating, this time just a bit of gentle exercise on a lovely sunny day.
I woke up on Monday to gorgeous sunshine and a cloudless sky, so out came the bike again, this time to cycle to work and back. For a special bonus, my boss managed to fix the gearshift on my bike, so the ride home was even better (despite the sore bum I'd suffered from the epic Saturday mission).
Yesterday, another trip to the climbing centre where my buddy pushed me pretty hard and I bashed my knee on the wall. Still feeling it today so time for some rest. Yay!

Happy International Womens' Day

Happy Day to all you fabulous (and not so fabulous) women today, international or otherwise.

In other news, I cycled to work today, for the first time ever. It was quite nice, but I think I'll go back to my car tomorrow because it's going to rain. Cycling in London (as well as skating and driving) confirms that the average motorist here is completely clueless. It's all about following stupid rules that try and fit everyone, but really fit nobody, and there are so many of them that people just switch off as long as they are below the speed limit. In the car at 30mph I switch off because there is nothing to engage me, so I'm probably more of a danger to other road users at this speed than I would be at 40 or 50mph along the same stretch of road. On my bike it's frustrating having to stop at red traffic lights when there is no other traffic around, not to mention inefficient. And cycle lanes often run in stupid places. One nice thing about cycling though, is that I can hold buses up. Makes me feel all smug when I manage to do that :)

When I am in charge of the universe, the DLR will be replaced with a covered cycle and skate track, with rope lifts to pull skaters up onto it.

Ok, so... I made a second post. Yay!