2013 was pretty good... 2014 will be better!

Wow!

So... I didn't post anything since March 2013! What happened since then? Well, a lovely new lady entered my life (actually she entered it a bit before March but she stayed in it for a while and is kind of still there, in spirit if not in person). Actually we just returned from a lovely trip to Italy where we had a weekend of shopping in Milan and a sunny ski trip in Cervinia. A few trips to see ballet at the Royal Opera House and Teatro alla Scala, nice food and nice smiles; It was great. Sadly she's had to return to her own country, much to my dismay as I need a visa to go there!

We also had a few other nice trips. Several road trips to France, where we discovered some wonderful places in Normandy, another ski trip in Italy and a road trip in the UK to Wales and the Lake District, which was just as lovely as Normandy but in different ways.

Many gastronomic delights were discovered, many beautiful sunsets observed, and many good times were had.

Long may it continue :)

What else has happened?

Well, I tried mountain biking for the first time.

I bought this cool mountain bike in 2007 with the intention of using it abroad, but it's not been used off road much at all, only the occasional forest trail. It was a bit like buying a Range Rover to use on the school run. I have a group of friends who try to get me to go to the Alps every summer but it's always my birthday, but this year they were away the week after so I joined them for a long weekend. It was awesome! We were in Sauze D'Oulx where I've been a few times for skiing. It was really nice to see the place in summer, especially as my first mountain experience was in the summer in the piedmont region anyway. I'm hoping to go back this year, maybe for a bit longer this time. But it depends on holiday allowance, which is massively constrained due to my next topic:

Lots of politics at my last employer, a public sector transport organisation which is the most wasteful place I have ever seen. Individually everyone seemed quite reasonable but as a collective it was trying to move a herd of drunk rhinos through a swamp. Pure madness. Eventually politics killed me off as the part of the organization I was in got absorbed into the parent company and the project I'd spent the last year working on got cancelled. £2 million of public money wasted on what would have been a fantastic project if only people would listen!

And then I was enticed to work for a fresh fashion brand company where so far everyone is lovely and the office is grey on the outside but sunny on the inside. I've only been here a few weeks but so far I'm enjoying the work and the people. If only I could do something about my evil commute in the morning!

What else? Oh yeah, Amsterdam. 30 people came with me to Amsterdam for my birthday where we did the Friday skate and spent the rest of the time enjoying nice sunny weather and relaxing. I was surprised how many of them chose to stay in the Hilton DoubleTree hotel with me. We had a good deal on the pricing and it was right next to Centraal station so well located for the city. It also had a skybar with awesome views!

And I bought Mr Wolf, my ongoing restoration project:

He's a 1987 Mercedes-Benz 190E 2.3-16 which to those in the know is a pretty special car. I might post about him later :)

What's coming in 2014?

Well it got off to a pretty good start with a nice New Year celebration enjoyed with some close friends. I've just come back from a ski trip with my wonderful lady...

...and I went to France last weekend for someone's birthday. I haven't seen her for 10 years and her husband asked me on facebook if I could come. Last time I saw her it was a surprise for her 30th birthday also secretly arranged by her husband. It was pretty cool :)

I managed to take this cool photo from the plane on the way back... Wish my iPhone camera was a bit better!

And next week I am off on an absolutely epic ski trip to Tignes, with a group of about 45 people. I've arranged the whole trip and it's getting pretty stressful at the moment but I'm hoping we have good snow. Good snow makes everyone happy, regardless of what goes on après-ski!

I suppose then, that my next post might be about the ski trip.... though at the rate I'm going it will probably be about 2 trips and an entire year worth of adventures compressed into a few paragraphs.

Bring it on! :)

24 Hours in Berlin

So last Friday I decided at about 11am that I was going to go to Berlin to skate in the BMW Berlin Inline Marathon. This would have been a great idea, except that it meant I had about 24 hours to get there. I’ve done the marathon before, and as long as the weather is good it’s one of the best routes you can skate. Check my video here:

Aside from the skate itself which you now know is really cool having watched the video, there were a couple of good reasons for this decision; namely 2 friends who I texted to wish them luck.
One of them is Emily. Emily is a bit of an action girl and was not just skating the marathon but also running the same race the following day. Please sponsor her; her donation page is here: http://virginmoneygiving.com/emilyorme
The other is a very close friend of mine who won’t be named. Actually she will, might as well plug her business too, which is sports rehabilitation and fitness conditioning. Her name is Kinga and she works independently at a company called Ambition Fitness – www.ambitionfitness.com
So I texted them both to wish them luck, and the responses that came back were something like this:
Kinga: I’ve never been to Berlin without you! Shame you couldn’t join!
Me: I looked into it but the flight and hotel was super expensive…
Kinga: Too bad, I had a spare space in the hotel as well!
Emily: You have no idea how much that means to me!
Me: Well I wish I could have been there to support you better…
But actually I could have been there. So I looked for a flight and booked it. Then booked airport parking. Then asked around to see if anyone who had a registration wasn’t going, so I could pretend to be them for a couple of hours during the race. Then I told Kinga I’d see her tomorrow. At first she thought I was joking but I assured her I wasn’t.
My flight was via Frankfurt so what followed was an epic journey of flight delays, the obligatory anal (not literally) German security at Frankfurt airport (only Frankfurt, other German airports seem more relaxed), and an epic fail of a skate that saw me have to stop 5 times to rest, because my back gave out about 2km in.
I did eventually finish though, and having met with friends and caught up with everyone, I was heading back to the airport within 24 hours of arriving.
I’m really pleased I went, as it’s given me a reminder of how unfit I’ve become. Starting today I went for a run in the morning; something I hadn’t done since 2006, and I felt great afterwards. My body is still aching but it was a great feeling watching the sunrise over Tower Bridge. I’ve also been eating healthily today, but it remains to be seen how long that will last. I’m fairly determined to get fitter again though, and lose the 10kg or so I’ve piled on since being in my prime 6 years ago!
Wish me luck

Le Mans 24 Hour Rollers 2012

So I just got back from our annual London Wheelers team trip to the Le Mans 24Rollers event.
I've done it 4 times now, 3 running our own team, and it was mostly excellent!

Every year I go to the event and think of something that could be done better next year. Last year, after a long train journey and a horrible walk to get to the campsite with several heavy bags, I saw some friends roll up on motorbikes and in cars and thought "I could have done that" so this year I did!

I wanted to really look after the team this year, as some were travelling from across the Atlantic ocean and others hadn't been before, so I bought enough tent space for everyone. This consisted of a gigantic tent that was sold as a 6-person tent but could probably fit an entire battalion of troops in it. The best tent on the whole campsite though, was my VW Camper Van shaped tent. It was very popular with hundreds of people stopping to take photos of it. At night while trying to sleep I kept thinking a thunderstorm was about to start from all the flash photography, and people were using it as a landmark for describing how to get to places!

To transport all this stuff there, I spent some money getting my old BMW 528i back on the road. It has a huge boot and, apart from the problems with fuel consumption and steering that both still need looking at after the MOT, it was a great motorway cruiser.

Back at the track, the team got on really well and it was lovely to have everyone there with smiles on their faces. The only downside was that although we were sharing our pit lane with several other London teams consisting of a lot of our friends, we arrived at the pit lane a little later than everyone else and they had left no space for us at all, filling it with double mattresses and a baby change area. It made the pit lane useless to us and we mostly found ourselves sitting by the trackside instead of with friends. This is reflected in the photos which either all show the other teams or our team but never together.

Next year we'll turn up early and set up a Hard Rock Cafe in the pit lane. And maybe fit a toll booth for anyone who wants to pass.

My fabulous tour of London's finest Burritos... on skates.

So... last year, I used to regularly run street skates on Wednesday evenings during the winter (there's already a far more official organised Wednesday skate during the summer).
Part of the fun was that I'd make the route up as I went along, and pretty much everyone who joins in really likes this.
I haven't run one for a while now though, partly because I got lazy and partly because of my fabulous girlfriend who I'd rather spend time with... but she's out of town at the moment, so I ran a skate. Yay! I was so pleased with the turnout - about 12 people, which isn't bad for a freezing Wednesday night.

This time though, I had no idea which way to go. It had been so long... and what was the first thing that sprang to mind? Burritos of course! So my route consisted of skating to one burrito place, and then from there to the next. At one point I was thinking 3 places ahead to plan the best route...

We covered Poncho No. 8, Daddy Donkey x2, The Flying Burrito, Burro Burrito, Mas Burritos x3, Tortilla x2, Buen Provecho, Picante, Benito's Hat x2, Chipotle, Freebird, Adobo, Burrito Bros and Luardo's.

Unfortunately my route didn't take us past Chilango, partly because of a failure to route well on my part, and partly because they seem to have their own exclusive coverage area that no other burrito places dare encroach on, which is kind of cool, but also not cool because it means it's really awkward for me to get there at lunchtime!

In other news, Steve Ells (founder of Chipotle) was in Chipotle on Tuesday, which was cool :D
Oh and I went to Daddy Donkey again, who are back up there on quality so I'll have to revise my ranking. And they are across the road from Prufrock which is a fabulous coffee place. So fabulous in fact, that they let us sit there and eat our burritos. Yummy!

Indiana Backpain and the Skate of Power

OMG skating last night was so fast, I couldn't keep up with the people I was supposed to lead, and this morning I could barely move... d'oh! :)

And while I'm on the subject, one of the skaters following me skated in front of me, then braked, then asked me which way to go. He got upset when I told him it was a dumb idea to skate in front of me and brake. He failed to see that this is the same as a lorry cutting you up while driving, slamming on the brakes and the driver asking you for directions.

Oh well :)

It rained this morning but I beat it by riding the Boris Bike to work and not being very wet. I risked not taking my umbrella because I'd left it in the car and couldn't be bothered to go and get it. Then at lunchtime it started pouring with rain. £16.95 and a very wet head later I now own 2 very similar Fulton umbrellas, one of which is still in the car.

Rain

I was in Berlin again this weekend. Now don't get me wrong, Berlin has some really trendy areas and all, but the last 2 times I've been there it's rained pretty much non-stop the whole time. This seems to coincide with it being almost exclusively my German friends who make fun of England for our rain. At least London is still colourful in the rain. We have red bricks, red buses, black cabs, yellow ambulances, silver police cars. Berlin has beige taxis. I don't even remember seeing a bus. They must be rain coloured, or maybe off-white, like the police cars. And all the buildings are grey. Lovely.

So anyway, why was I in Berlin? Well I was supposed to do an inline skating marathon, but it rained so I didn't. Instead I watched people skate in the rain, then went to the after-party and woke up the next morning feeling like I'd raced 2 marathons :)

Oh and in a nice twist of events, the friendly chap in the Omega boutique at Ka De We fixed my watch for free. This restores karma after my previous visit to Berlin resulted in my watch being broken when I crashed into a tree while skating in the wet.

The last 3 times I've travelled anywhere, I've always been really happy to return to London :)

Holy Calamazoo!

I haven't written anything here for ages.

That's because I couldn't be bothered, but while having a burrito at Benito's Hat this afternoon one of my colleagues told me he has a blog, and because we were talking about it I decided to write another post.
Holy Calamazoo!

So what's happened since the last post? I can't remember when it was, so I'll mention a few trips...

Le Mans 24h Skating race. That rocked. T-shirt fail by Nike but we are all up for going again next year.
Bunk Barn weekend. Also rocked. Cheap as chips too :)
Paris Birthday weekend. I am at a loss for words on that one. Whoa! 50 people showed up in Paris and another 40 in London. Amazing :)

What else?
My employer wants me to be featured in the social club newsletter. W00t!

Oh yeah, Boris bikes. They rock too. Not as good as Ve'lib but close enough. £45 a year gets me unlimited access, free for the first half hour of usage. One or two teething problems but I've been riding to work on them, and back :)

The only thing is, everyone beeps their horn at me. The gearing on them is terrible so they can't go very fast, so taxis and buses beep loudly. The bus this morning was the worst so far. I had to stop the bike in front of him at the ring of steel and let him beep his horn for a bit longer before carrying on. I forgot the number plate, else I'd have reported him. In Paris the buses have a bell so they can politely remind you there is a bus behind you. This guy pulled away from his bus stop into the next lane, I proceeded at my regular slow speed (as fast as I can make the bike go) but the bus realised he shoudl be in the bus lane and started to close in on me. The front of my bike was level with the front of the bus when he started beeping me. He really wanted to crush me.

Oh well, I kind of enjoy holding buses up. Feels like revenge for when I'm driving a car and they hold me up at 20mph :)

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.

Everything and Nothing

24 hours ago I woke up with nothing to do but watch the F1 qualifying. A lot can change in 24 hours.
Since then I have cleaned the inside of my car, gone to see the London Philarmonia Orchestra at the Royal Festival Hall, gone out and met with some good friends and had a great time until the early hours of the morning, and explained a brief history of the Earth to a random new person I met.
Today I woke up to awesome gorgeous sunshine, and I'll watch the F1 race, followed by some skating later this afternoon.

On days like this I think to myself "Life's Good" ^_^