Blurgh!

I’m coming down with another cold.. the second one in 6 weeks. I blame the poxy freshers!

Well, it seems that Trek can’t source a replacement frame for my bike, so… they’ve offered to replace the whole bike with a new one, an L600 (as opposed to the L500 I had). I agreed to it even though it’s a hard-tail bike as there were no other real options available. Trek don’t do rear suspension bikes anymore.. maybe they found that they couldn’t design them correctly?

Anyway, they’re still going to have to source the replacement bike from the Netherlands (as Trek UK don’t sell hub geared bikes) so it will take a few weeks for the replacement to arrive.

Now, all I have to do is see if I can get the rear wheel rim on my old bike replaced as a same-day service in a bike shop near work before it collapses on me.

So, what have I been up to since Thursday?

Well, Thursday evening I went out to the pub quiz. We didn’t win anything this week.

Friday morning I got my old bike ready for the road by oiling it up and putting new brake pads on the rear. At this point I noticed that I need a new rim on my back wheel as it’s really badly worn by the brakes. On one side it worn down by a good 2mm but on the other it’s more 4mm, so the wall of the rim is probably paper-thin now! I also tried to replace the pedals but couldn’t get the old ones off.

In work, it was the day all the new postgrads and undergrads get inducted, or induced, so it was pretty busy.

Saturday started with getting up at about 9am and driving into Witney to get a hair cut. I timed it just right as the barbers was empty and I walked straight in and got the hair cut. The person cutting my hair told me that it had been the first break she’d had all morning.

Then it was into Oxford, where I had a latte and wandered around the shops. I picked up three CDs in Virgin Megastore’s sale. Also, having decided that although my iPod Shuffle is fine a lot of the time, there are times when I’d like to choose what to listen to, so I splurged out on an 8GB iPod Nano. The price in Dixons^H^H^H^H^H^HCurrys.digital is the same as on the High Education Apple web site (I think Apple have woken up to students prefering to buy iPods from the HE web shop).

Yesterday afternoon, evening and this morning I started playing with the latest version of the Mandriva Linux distribution. My first impressions? Well, gratuitous changes (such as moving autofs stuff from /etc into is own sub-directory which will break lots of set-up scripts), lots of show stopping bugs (such as CD/DVD writing not working and the default 3D X server desktop preventing logins) and a new degree of annoying automatic “updating” of system files such as /etc/hosts and /etc/resolv.conf. I’m not positively impressed.

I finally managed to get the new petals on the old bike after buying a set of open ended spanners. However, it needed more than just a spanner to get the old pedals off though. I needed a hammer a lot of muscle work to get them to budge. The first one took a few hits before it eased but the otherone needed about 5 minutes of heavy bashing before the thing even started to move and then kept needing the hammer until the thread was almost completely out.

This afternoon I managed to get out and cut the grass in the back garden. It was quite a job as it’s not been cut for a good 5 weeks now and was as many inches tall. Still, that’s done now.

Time to get ready for the first week of term now then.

On the way home tonight one of the welds my bike’s frame failed. I didn’t notice really until I got home, other than a rather big clunking sound when I started off from some traffic lights.

It’s still just about ridable with care so I’ll take it into the shop I bought it from in the morning and take the bus home. I’ll have to try to get my old bike in a usable condition for Friday, however, so I will have to buy some pedals in the shop tomorrow and a tool to fit them with.

Grrrrr!

[update]
Here’s a picture:

So, Lindsey finally managed to get married yesterday.

I’m pretty shattered now and will be going to bed shortly.

For those who are interested you can find an album of photos on my gallery.

On BBC Breakfast News just now they were talking about a new report on mental health provision. The presenter, Suzannah Reid, went through a number of “damning” statistics in an incredulous manner. Included in the list was this gem: “46% of health trusts are below average performance.”

Hmmm….

So, 4% more health trusts are at or above average performance than would be expected then, if the distribution was normal.. sounds like a positive rather than a negative to me. (Though there would have to be a few *very* low scores to skew the average.)

Why can’t journalists understand the very simplest statistics?

For those of you who read my entries via their “friends” page you might like to know that I’ve now completed uploading my Tromso diary as backdated entries in my journal and hence you might miss them if you don’t look directly at my journal.

*** This is the end of the public information announcement. ***

Another early start. This time far earlier as three of the group had an early plane to catch.
Thankfully, I bumped into the nice student midwives in the kitchen so that I could say my good-byes to them and wish them well with their studies, oh and inform them about the small amount of food that they could use that I couldn’t take home with me.
I was out of the house by 8:15am and over to Tromsdalen. Thankfully, the road were back to normal and I managed to get to the camp site early.
The night before had seen the first frost of the year and Scott’s tent was covered with a sugar frosting of ice. It had been a good call for the majority to have sort shelter in the huts.
After a short delay due to Jane trying to retrieve a glove from the Linda and Nigel chalet with the occupants being fast asleep, we were off. Jane and Heather were well pleased that I had brought with me my last supply of peanut cookies as they had them for breakfast. I deposited Jane, Heather and Scott at the airport just in time for check-in. I then took the opportunity to find out where to park my car so as to hand it back to Europcar in the afternoon and where to fill it with diesel.
It was now time to take my final journey back to base, do the final packing, and checking before putting my luggage into the car, cleaning my room and locking the door for the last time. After returning my key (and the one Isabelle had managed to find for their room) it was back to the camp site for the last time.
By the time I got back Linda, Nigel and Isabelle were all up and having breakfast in the cafe. Ed and Kate, however, were still in bed.
At this point the day, thankfully, slowed down and a few hours were spent hanging around the camp site. Linda and Nigel went for a little walk to see if they could find any war graves before the majority of the remaining group started their journey to the airport by bus. Isabelle and myself had an extra hour to kill so went for a little walk up the valley, where secondary school kids were having a cross country run.
Then, it was time to say good-bye to Tromsdalen. The journey to the airport was uneventful (other than having an annoying person in front at the petrol station) and when we arrived there we found Linda and Nigel had already arrived. This very much helped matters as they could help Isabelle transport the masses of luggage up to the main concourse and keep it safe while I took the car back.
After checking in, the long wait began before our flight. I managed to find a space at the southern end of the waiting area with plush seating for the group. Once there Isabelle had a well needed sleep while I gave the rest a slideshow of the photos I’d taken while they were on their trek.
So, at 5:18pm the plane took off to the south. The sky was almost crystal clear for most of the way down to Oslo which gave spectacular views of Norway and Sweden as we hurtled south. The captain was obviously enjoying the view as well as he gave an almost tour-bus like narration of what to look out for. Though, at the end of the journey, once we had landed, it seemed that he was eager to get home for his dinner as he seemed to taxi the aircraft at almost take-off speeds to the gate.
We had arrived in Oslo slightly early to find that our connecting flight was going to be about half an hour late, so we got something to eat before having to go through customs and sit in the rather small international departure lounge.
As it turned out, our plane was only 25 minutes late leaving, due to finding a landing slot at Heathrow and the actual journey was quite swift so we were hardly late arriving at all. During the flight I sat next to a fellow who was the main IT person for a geophysical survey company and so the journey went by quite quickly in conversation (and griping about rubbish commercial geophysical software applications).
And so, we were back. We queued for ages to get through passport control, collected our luggage and wandered into the main concourse. There we said our good-byes to Kate and Ed (who had to sleep in the terminal as his flight up to Edinburgh wasn’t until the morning) before being ferried back home by Linda and Nigel’s son.
It was a very long day. Having woken up at 5am CET and not been able to get back to sleep again I managed to survive without any sleep for 20 hours. Once I got home I unpacked the minimum I needed so as to get to bed and fell asleep.

The day started early. I had to get to the camping ground by 9:30am and it takes about an hour to travel there due to the excessively low speed limits.
I actually made pretty good time and arrived to pick up the first group just after 9am, though they weren’t ready. This was the start of many car journeys in the day. I had to transport two loads of people from the camping area to a camp site in Tromsdalen and then go back to base and pick up their valuables.
After spending a night with very little sleep due to the cold weather, Linda and Nigel decided that they weren’t going to camp out but instead splash out on one of the chalets and share it with Kate and Ed. Hard man Scott, of course, wouldn’t have none of that and pitched his tent. Isabelle, Jane and Heather took a rather smaller hut for the night. The seasons were certainly on the turn as the tops of many of the mountains now had their first snow of the season blanketing their summits.
I finally finished all my journeys at about lunchtime and had some food with the others in the camp site cafe before everyone, now washed, showered and clothed in non-smelly clothing, travelled into town to do their own thing before meeting up at Peppe’s Pizza for the final night evening meal.
Having left the car at the Tromsdalen camp site, I took the bus back there at around half four, picked it up and drove back in. I then struck lucky as someone left a parking space in a zone where it was free to park after 5pm just as I arrived. I subsequently saw a number of people try and fail to find a space there.
The meal at Peppe’s was well attended, with everyone there including Julia and Zhenya. I’m afraid that the banana split finally defeated me, though, and I had to leave half of it. It was a fun meal.
Afterwards the group said our good-byes and thanks to Julia and Zhenya before I left towards base, giving Zhenya a lift back home. I had offered to give Julia a lift but because she thought it too far out of my way she took the bus home.

I moseyed into town at about half past nine to take photos of Tromsø in general, i.e. all the non-touristy bits, so as to get a record of the town as a whole for the sake of memory. It’s probably the last time I’ll walk around there in daylight. I also picked up a number of provisions, such as mashmallows, for the group tonight as they’re having a camp fire.
At lunchtime I met up with Julia for coffee and waffles so that she could return the power lead converter I lent to her when she visited Oxford at the beginning of the year.
I left base at about 6pm to join the rest of the group but due to the way that Tromsø roads change like a rat’s maze I didn’t manage to take the tunnel under the sound but was forced to journey along the road along the sea front… which has major road works. This caused a rather big problem as the people doing the road works basically closed the road going towards the town centre but failed to actually signpost the fact! It was quite interesting avoiding the combination of on-coming traffic and construction vehicles and getting the car over piles of gravel and hard-core.
Anyway, I did manage to arrive only slightly late and was met by Isabelle in my high visibility waterproof coat I’d lent her for the hike.
The group were camped on a small grassy area just behind the beach with a hollow for a camp fire. It was obvious that this place was a well used one by local people for just this sort of thing. Everyone was glad to see me arrive with the goodies, especially the chocolate!
Despite accidently picking up greaseproof paper instead of tin foil, the chocolate bananas worked well. It seems that Nigel and Linda may be trying them out at home once they get back.
Kate was the best chef of the night, however. She caught some mussels and boilled them up before eating them with pasta.
I left them to their night in the wilds around half past ten and travelled back. Thankfully, the tunnel back towards the island was still open so the journey back was far less of an adventure.