Sweeties, Pies and Ginger

Had a bizarre dream last night which spilled over into reality a bit as well. I sort of half woke up in the middle of the night and can remember talking to myself; something about having found it. I was leaning over the side of he bed and racking through a pile of magazines and books, so I must have been dreaming about finding a book or something. I then woke up some time around four o’clock to find I had lifted all the magazines and some books into the bed and had been sleeping on top of them. They were swiftly removed and I managed to get a bit more sleep before the alarm went off.

Went out for a meal last night with work, so I ended up leaving the car at work and getting Karen to pick me up once the meal had finished. This meant that I had to cycle in this morning as Karen normally goes to the gym, so I wouldn’t be able to catch a lift. I’ve also started going back to the swimming pool this week before work and didn’t want to miss out on a swim. So I decided to cycle to the swimming pool, have my swim and then cycle onto work.

The cycle to the swimming pool was a complete nightmare as it was windy as hell. I was totally knackered by the time I got to the pool and sweating buckets as it had been really hard work. Because I’d woken up a bit late I didn’t get to the pool with enough time to do anything other than a two hundred metre warm up followed by a straight fifteen hundred metre swim and finally a hundred metres of breaststroke warm down. As it turned out this was perfect as doing a full hour’s session would probably have totally wiped my out for the cycle to work.

Changing from the swim to eh cycle was interesting as well as I couldn’t get my shorts or top on very easily as my body was still quite damp, even after towelling it off. I think I’ll have to get one of these suit type things as I really don’t fancy having to fiddle around with my cycling top etc when I leave the pool.

I found the cycle to work a bit of a chore, it had started raining and that coupled with the strong wind made for a pretty unpleasant ride. I also found that my calf were on the verge of cramping when I really tried to put the power down, so I had to be very careful not to end up in agony. In the end I made it to work in not too bad shape and I think I’ve learned quite a bit for this bike-swim-bike effort.

It was a beautiful dawn that greeted me this morning as I left work around quarter past four. The sky was lightening up with only a few wisps of high cloud that turned from grey to a magnificent fiery pink orange during the trip home. Once I’d turned off the A10 and driven through Landbeach parts of the road to Cottenham were obscured by patched of ground fog. I slowed the car right down as I went passed the Point-to-point race track and drank in the beautiful vista. While it didn’t make up for being in the office till the early hours, it did mean I drifted off to sleep with my soul feeling happy and uplifted.

Good luck and Godspeed SpaceShipOne...

I went out for a quick cycle with one of my neighbours yesterday as he’d just purchased a set of tri-bars and wanted to try them out. I’d also just modified my saddle height and position and wanted to see how I’d get on as well. We headed out of the village towards Histon and Impington and turned left to head towards Milton and the A10.

I still can’t get the chain to engage with the big chain ring at the front so had to go all the way on the little chain ring. Because of this I found myself spinning out of control on occasions as I wanted to go faster but couldn’t turn my legs any faster than 130 rpm. Once we hit the A10 we turned left and headed in to Landbeach and started on the way back home.

Once out of Landbeach we turned left again on to the Cottenham road and got caught in a ferocious headwind. The Landbeach to Cottenham road is either really, really nice or really, really nasty as there is either no wind or a howling gale. I was down on the tri-bars in second gear and finding it hard to get any sort of consistency going. Jeff was finding his tri-bars were too high and thus he couldn’t get low enough out of the wind and was really struggling.

All too soon we made it back home and were both quite pleased with the performance we’d put in considering the wind. I noticed that Jeff’s handle bars were raised on three spacers, so he quickly set about adjusting it so he could get them lower. I dashed into the house and did a quick change before running round the farmer’s field eight times for an estimated two mile run.

Labour had a bad night at the polls last night if the first few results are anything to go by. Already they are making excuses about the Iraq War skewing the vote against them. Hello!?! Maybe it’s the fact that no-one trust you any more as you’ve constantly failed to deliver on promises you’ve made. It’ll be interesting to see the full scale of he damage as the rest of the results come in.

Ray Charles R.I.P. The music world has lost a true genius.

It was election day today and after getting home from work I p[popped up to the polling station to cast my votes. I voted in the local district council election where I voted as I've voted all my life. Then I also voted in the European elections where I changed my vote and voted for an independent. We’ll just have to wait and see what the results are tomorrow to see if there are any major surprises.

Our wedding rings arrived from the jewellers today, they look very nice. I think mine might be a bit on the big side, so I'll need to be really careful on the honeymoon that I don't loose it. The only downside is that it looks like they may have charged us twice for one of the rings, I'll need to investigate...