Quick update for everyone on our situation.

We have completed nearly all of the 2 weeks of stimulating injections, and OH had a scan today. It’s very much on the cusp of what the NHS will agree to do for us – they need to be able to harvest 3 x eggs in order for continued funded treatment to be viable.

As it stands OH has 2 x follicles which are mature, with only a couple of days before they start to over-mature. There is one more follicle which is really far behind the other two and will produce an egg, but not one that is mature enough to fertilise successfully before the other 2 follicles kick the can. And of course, not all follicles are guaranteed to produce an egg at all.

we have been scheduled for egg collection on Monday, as it’s kind of the only chance before the procedure needs to be called off really. If they only get 2 x eggs, then that’s it, no more funded treatment if the fertilisation / implantation doesn’t work.

To say that it is squeaky bum time is an understatement. Nothing to say it won’t work first time with just a couple of eggs, but our chances have slimmed down quite considerably.

HAHA. Oh wow…I thought I had typed up this question during a frustrated break from my application and then decided against posting. Must have clicked the wrong button. Better not tell the job I’m looking for that; not very good communication is it?

Now that I have started it I had better put a further opinion in now that I am becalmed and the application is sent.

It’s not the type of question – I understand that situation-based questions are important. For example, this particular application also had “Describe a time where you have provided great service” which I had a very good example for in the STAR format that they like. That, alongside a few similar questions about overcoming an issue, teamwork, organisational skills etc.

The problem is specifically with the “Communication” question. It just feels so nebulous, and I could have chosen literally any one of my other answers to put in there, because they all involved a great deal of communication to sort or fix. It starts to feel like a very redundant question to ask during a written application, and makes me question what actually IS a good example of communication.

I wish I could just put a few impressive bullet points in about what I am doing currently, and why I would be good at doing what they want me to do. Because I really would be good at it…but I am sure that because I wrote their application not in the way their externally hired HR consultant likes (I know they do it like this) they will just chuck it in the deleted pile.

Sausage Rolls (the pasty ones) when hot are up there in the pantheon of godlike foods.

Sausage rolls when cold are a weird, chalky, heartburn-y brick of displeasure.

Check out Beinn a’ Ghlo. What I did was hike up the staircase from hell that you can see from the A9 onto Carn Liath, bike on back job. After that can descend to the bealach, and then do the second munro on the ridge – go back the way you came and fork off left down the wee path at the bealach again. It’s a fun descent, a bit broken up in places.

Carn a’ Chlamain also supposed to be good as mentioned. I actually did that on my gravel bike on the landy track (quite the experience), but meaning to check out the singletrack path too. Looks nadgery. In any case it’s an easier one to get up with a decent amount pushing or even riding, compared to carrying.

The fun parts of Beinn Dearg behind Blair Atholl are fun near the top, but short lived as there is a big land rover track most of the way up and down so a bit boring.

If you can stretch your travel to closer to 1h30 north, Sgor Gaoith is a total blast. It is in Glen Feshie roughly level with Kingussie, so you’d have to drive over Drmochter first. It’s easy to hikeabike or even ride up a lot of it, and the middle descent down is unreal.

Beinn Glas and Lawers are both great rides, the latter is pretty tech and steep from the top but the path from the saddle to the carpark is great fun and largely flowy with some tight tricky bits. Similarly the Loch Earn Ben Vorlich is good.

Ben Vrackie is also good, quite a quick out and back from Pitlochry itself, don’t even need to start the car.

Check out Thunderstruck and careless Whisper if you like tech. They are below Golfie level but a good bit more “Enduro” than the rest of the stuff there. I also like Ho Chi Minh because you can just point your bike in a straight line and hold on. None of them very scary but can be challenging.

I am happy to admit that my favourite book series of all time is now the Gaunt’s Ghosts series, by Dan Abnett, which is a Warhammer 40,000 series. Ultra dorky but so much fun to read. It’s basically just Sharpe but in a slightly bizarre dark militaristic sci-fi setting, with fun characters.

I do like more cerebral, well-regarded books and have tried to get through lists of booker prize nominees and classic fiction to varying success…but sometimes I just need to read about space soldiers shooting at chaos cultists.

It’s probably not for everyone!

Check out Bernard Cornwell’s books like The Last Kingdom. That’s easy to read pulpy viking historical stuff if you are into that. Swords.

Aha, finally a chance for me to get on my high horse.

Sourdough Bread.

It’s fine I suppose, it is not actively bad, but unless you go to a greasy spoon literally everything that is served with bread is sourdough. For one it tastes kinda, well, sour. When toasted the crusts can be utterly impenetrable with the de-rigeur butter knife. In many places, the crumb is so full of holes that the misbalance between crust and crumb is just so weird.

It’s gotten to the point where sourdough is so ubiquitous that I am convinced everyone is just slightly suffering a mass delusion that it is somehow better.

If you have a plate with buttered / toasted slices of the following are presented: Soda bread, plain fresh white bread, fresh granary bread, french baguette, plain pan loaf, even a morning roll…and sourdough. I genuinely think you are lying to yourself if you choose sourdough bread over any of those.

I was an evening go-er for many years until about 5 years ago, when I seem to have transitioned into a morning go-er. Every morning around 10. I don’t think I noticed it at the time, maybe one day I just woke up and needed to go, and that was it.

Seemed to happen around the time or shortly after I swapped from an outside, active job to a desk job. Perhaps before my body was protecting me from needing to go in sweltering, fly-ridden portaloos.

Still reeling from the URC final to be honest. What a job the Warriors did, if only the boys on my side of M8 could play with that much grit. But it does seem like there is a cardinal unwritten rule in rugby that if one Scottish team is doing well, the other team must be mediocre at best. ]

Not seen any Scotland side, club or international, play with that much grit and intensity for years and years.

Buy some dried Chipotle and Ancho chillies online or from your local mexican food vendor (we have a great one here in edinburgh). Soak a couple of those in hot water (not much) until soft and the water is kinda dark red. Chuck that in at the same time as your tomatoes.

Not gonna lie, MSG is also a weirdly delicious addition to chilli.

I have this issue with like 75% of pads. In my case I am almost certainly doing something wrong but it seems to self correct after a short ride around and various centrings.

They’re better as they’re easier to fit or remove without rounding a bolt, but worse because its much more annoying to fix on a far flung bike ride somewhere. I haven’t felt any real tangible benefits.

Weirdly, my gravel bike forks seem to only take centre-lock rotors. Sounds like I am mistyping there, but I am not – if I fit a 6-bolt rotor, the bolts rub against the post mounts on the brakes.

Annoying thing to find out after getting a new set of wheels…I have had to use the flat bolts from an adapter to secure them which are even easier to round the head on.

@jimdoubleyou – thank you for your best wishes and sorry to read that it did not work out for you, I hope that the time was not too hard on you. It is good to read that for me in a weird way, it does keep things realistic.

Re: Counselling, yes we are taking advantage of that and have had 2 of our sessions already. It was actually really helpful when we went…though the various nurses at the clinic have all had a kind of counsellor sort of vibe to them as well. Everyone is so lovely.

One of them told me that the majority of the staff that work there do so because they have been through the same thing, and it shows with their empathy and manner.

Alongside all the hard, stressful parts – we are finding the process quite interesting and engaging as well…just learning about how everything works a bit more closely.

Thanks for all the replies everyone – it is helpful to read about both good and bad outcomes to be quite honest. It is very much appreciated.

I also had no idea that the support offered varied so much between trusts. Someone having to pay from being the other side of a dual carriageway is pretty nuts to think about. Feel very lucky to have the support of the NHS in our case. If something goes wrong and a cycle has to be cancelled before implantation that doesn’t even count towards our 3 x funded cycles.

YouTube is like my TV really – I don’t watch many series on Netflix or whatever, but spend hours on YouTube just to tailor my content to myself really. But somehow I am still loth to pay for it, despite ads. The usual pattern for me is a 15 second ad, followed by a skippable one. Any longer I get absolutely raging. Watching 2 x 30 second ads back to back before a 3 minute video is ridiculous. Fair enough if it was a 20 minute video with a couple ad breaks like TV.

@snowy1 – Absolutely. We have discussed and are aware that the chances of IVF are usually less than 50%. Having kids is something OH has always wanted, I was a little slower to get off the fence, just in the past 5 years or so, but after some family stuff happened a while back it is now something I am just as enthusiastic for.

However, we both think that if it doesn’t work then we will be able to come out the other side. We are attending counselling as a couple and on our first one the woman started crying because she said she doesn’t see many couples as strong as us haha. I thought that was a bit hammy myself (internally) but there you go…

It’s not something we are focusing on at the moment, but we both know we will have to add that extra meaning somehow if kids don’t come along. We’ve all but ruled out adoption, and paying privately as well if our 3 goes don’t work. But – you never know what will happen and how we will feel at that stage!

If anything, there might be regrets that we started quite late (relatively in NHS terms, we are both mid-30s). But that was a mutual decision and we don’t blame each other…and have had the opportunity to do some cool things we may not have been able to do otherwise.

Enjoyed it more than the first. I think Alpecin’s evil bond villain storyline was probably amped up for dramatic effect, but I do get the impression that at least Jasper the Disaster is a k**b. I forgot about that nasty blocking move on the Intermarche rider. I hope he gets soundly beaten every sprint stage this year.

The sections with Ben O’ Connor didn’t do him many favours, he was coming across really bratty and volatile – I wonder if he will go better on Jayco now that’s a near certainty. Kinda funny comparing him to Hindley who seems much more chill and Aussie about the whole deal.

I was getting emotional watching Madiot tearing up when Pinot went through his corner, really affecting watch.

Smaller observations:

I like Pogacar, he seems to have a much more relaxed attitude than Jonas. Jonas seems like a nice bloke but also a bit weird to be honest, like he is a robot. I wouldn’t say he is unlikeable though.

Felix Gall is a likeable rider, and looks like he should be in Stranger Things with that 80s lid. I hope he goes well this year, his Loze win was really cool to watch.

I do kind of get the feeling that there is some winging it going on with the biking advice. However, it is not for too long (been two weeks, just another two weeks until it works or it doesn’t). So in this instance I am keen to follow it just in case it is the last 0.5%…but as you say it is probably very extra-cautionary. I am still bike commuting, and to be quite honest would be happy to do some “push up, ride down” MTB rides.

Luckily my wife is very on it with noticing my mood changes etc, and is in a very “We are in it together” mindset whatever happens. So I have that on my side.

It is quite good to hear some more “real life” stuff from you all. A lot of what we get on various social media algorithms is all very idealised and curated about the whole topic. A slightly different experience when you are holding a bag of frozen peas against your partners stomach at 7am to numb it before shakily jagging a needle in there!

@northshoreniall – Thank you very much for that – I may take you up on your offer of a chat at some point or at least just vent a bit more, nice to be in touch.

It is a funny thing to keep secret, I think for my wife especially it feels like there is a bit of a stigma attached when all of her friends with kids have conceived naturally. But on the other hand, it is private and invasive and perhaps we want to just put a brave face on. My work is good about it, but I think it’s quite hard to get it across to them that as well as being great news and a quick op with a turkey baster, it’s many weeks of very hard going.

Re: the bike – doctors orders really. As I understand it, it is a very tenuous link between sitting on a saddle for ages and sperm quality. However my counts have been up and down in my samples, and the doctor framed it as “This is one of the biggest things you’ll ever do, and hopefully it won’t be for long” – so I just want to maximise chances. It sucks, but I am convincing myself that running is fun, ever so slowly! Tell you what, walking up mountains without a bike on your bike is an amazing feeling…just coming down isn’t as good.

@onehundredthidiot – Absolutely, I don’t want to come across as if this isn’t something we will be putting all of our energy into. Many thanks.

I have a Hero 10 and I don’t think I would be able to make use of anything better. The stabilisation is fantastic, and IQ is pretty mind blowing to be honest. The front screen is very handy. Make sure to get an extra battery if you can, they don’t last very long on high settings (or mine is a bad battery). Think I paid £180 for mine with a chesty and a few mounts, second hand.

@sturdylad – I had a Hero Session 4 before. It was decent but I struggled with not really being able to see what I am doing with it. Would be ideal for a dog or something though, or as you say a commuter cam. The quality si decent enough without being “Youtuber” quality.

Ah cool, another list thread where I can reaffirm my hoarding tendancies.

Outdoorsy:

Rab Goretex “nice” shell

Haglofs “beaten up” shell

Endura MT500 MTB jacket

Rab windproof

2 x Softshells – 1 Alpkit, 1 Rab

Montane synthetic belay jacket

Mountain equipment big down jacket

Terrex running jacket

Roadie waterproof x 2

Roadie windproof x 1

Casual:

Finisterre puffy jacket (yellow – barely wear it)

Passenger Puffy jacket (black – wear loads)

Black denim jacket

Smart-ish wool coat

Baseball jacket I got from a vintage shop

And I think about 10 “shackets” in various styles for that Americana lumberjack look I try and cultivate for some reason.

3 x pairs of “casual” trainers for walking about town etc – Vans, Nike x 2

1 x Adidas Velosamba for commuting

1 x Northwave SPD shoes

1 x Shimano Road shoes

1 x Etnies Culvert flat pedal shoes

1 x Road running shoes

1 x Trail running shoes

1 x Lightweight walking boots

1 x Winter mountain boots

1 x Doc Martens Chelsea boots

1 x Timberland 6″ boots

1 x Safety boots

1 x Weightlifting shoes

1 x Nike “Metcon” general gym shoes

1 x Smart brown leather shoes

1 x Highland dress brogues

1 x Teva sandles

1 x Merrel Moab from 2012 that I use for “odd jobs”

1 x Scarpa climbing shoes

1 x Wetsuit booties

I have a problem. That’s 22 pairs of shoes. I am sure there are more that are just in the attic.

I’ve had Corona 3 times to my knowledge. Currently doing IVF so have had to give a fair few “personal samples”. Two of them were given within 1-2 months of having ‘vid and my count and motility were through the absolute floor. The doctors think there is almost certainly a link there.

@grahamt1980 – there is a balance to be had. One of my favourite regular rides is a sort of gravel / xc ride out along the coast paths west from Edinburgh with a mate of mine. We are fully tacitly racing each other on the way out, stop for a chippie at the turnaround point, and then just go steady and chat towards home. Kind of a monthly thing.

Literally EVERY time we leave town we are both like “yeah I’m just gonna go steady tonight” and that never happens and it turns into a smashfest trying to tear each other’s legs off within a km. However we know each other really well, it’s not far at all (20km each way), and the thrill of beating your very fit mate up a little climb is great fun without the rules and regs and nerves of actual proper racing.

I’d never do that in a big group with people I don’t know.

@grimep – I am no stranger to cafe legs, so I just carried on thinking that it would clear within 20 minutes…but it never did. So I think it was some form of bonk or other brought on by my stomach not wanting to digest anything. Never felt anything like it since, genuinely felt like someone put a bung in my stomach and drinking water was just filling me upwards like a test tube.

By the time I had got to Aviemore I was starting to feel good again, and hungry again, but by that time with all my 10kmh creeping up beside the A9 for the preceding hours it was too late to carry on anyway.

Would you consider a used bike?

I have a now 10 year old Trek Crockett 7 that I use for winter road riding as well as gravel riding these days. Bought it 6 years ago. It’s set up with Rival 1×11 which is totally fine. It’s “old” but could very much pass for a modern bike visually…has partially internal cables but none of this handlebar routing stuff and it’s easy to route.

The geometry is similar to that of a generic road bike now, rather than a modern slacked out gravel bike. Chucking 30mm tires on it and it rides amazingly. Nicer than newer gravel bikes with skinny tires on for road duties, but can still put 40mm tires on and have a thrash offroad.

Only thing I don’t like compared to modern disc bikes is that it’s QR not TA. Pain in the arse to be quite honest – enough that I am considering getting a new fork for it. Other than that I absolutely love it and hope it hangs around for a few more years to come.

Worst bonk I ever had was when I did a 2-day ride from Edinburgh to the NW Highlands. It was about 380km all-in and paved the whole way, so not a crazy massive ultra distance by any stretch, but it was the most I’d ever done. I was fit at the time and could do 100 mile rides well enough without struggling too much, so foolishly I didn’t do much specialist training other than “ride my bike a lot”.

Left Edinburgh at 5am, and got to House of Bruar at 12 noon – goal being Dingwall that evening so was ahead of schedule. Think that was about 105 miles or something. Felt amazing the whole way up to there and was having the absolute time of my life…but I was definitely putting in more work than I should have up hills etc. Being ahead of schedule not necessarily a good thing.

Sat and had a massive box of chips and an overpriced coffee outside watching all the tourists. Stayed for like 40 mins which in hindsight was way too long.

I set up again on the gradual uphill cycle path to Drumochter and my legs had completely died. I felt like the chips were not digesting, and started to feel a bit sick. Tried to chase the chips with an emergency gel and that also didn’t help. Was reduced to a total crawl within just a few miles. My arse started absolutely killing me, and I started noticing all sorts of aches and pains, headache, kinda also felt like any water wasn’t going down and I was really “full”.

It took me 2.5 hours to get up to Dalwhinnie with many stops, by which time I was a total pale wreck with shaking hands. I decided to shorten the day, and absolutely crawled into Aviemore at like 6pm. Totally grim, never felt like that before. I had a shower, ate two main courses and 10 hours sleep and I felt totally amazing the next day and finished off with no issues. Weird!

@scotroutes – so do I – for hayfever mostly. It helps a lot with that and possibly with the bites too, but there is a creeping worsening every summer even with them. Luck is on my side in that I don’t seem to get bitten by them too much though, compared to others.

@chapaking – Yes, the old Gen 5 model is what I meant to specify! Just feels like an alloy trail bike to pedal around to me.

I forget every single year about the midges. I actually got bitten up pretty badly at the start of May, at the uplift carpark in Innerleithen of all places. Not ventured into the Highlands yet this summer…

I’m actually allergic as well which is annoying. I come out in big raised white welts and swell up a bit with every bite, so a proper midgie day is quite bad news for me. Clegs are even worse, I got bitten on the arm last year and my entire forearm and fingers were swollen for 3 days. It’s getting worse every year to the point where I think I am going to need an epipen soon. Feel like I am a bit of a defective scotsman.

The Highlander II is supposedly a total “one bike quiver” for aggressive riding by all accounts…some of those accounts possibly have a bit of an incentive from Deviate to say that though.

I do everything that isn’t easy XC stuff on my Slash though, which rather surprisingly I have actually found is easier to pedal and climb than my old trail bike. So probably these days whatever you choose south of a full DH rig will be totally fine for big techy rides.

I have generic clarks ones paired with my Rival calipers. They’ve been totally fine.

You can get SRAM centreline rotors fairly cheaply if you look around, if you are wanting to keep things in-brand. I don;t think it makes a whopper of a different on a gravel or road bike.

Check out FB marketplace for a used Garmin Edge 520 or even a 510.

I have a 510 and it does pretty much everything I need and more. Great battery life and easy to set-up with fancier stuff should you want in future. You’d get one very cheap now I would bet…coupled on marketplace now for £50 after a check.

I do wish it had more detailed basemap navigation though as it only has breadcrumb trail. Fine for on roads, but can be tricky with complex mountain paths or faint paths etc. But if you don’t necessarily want nav then it’s a nice bonus to have anything. Think the 520 and upwards has proper maps.

Ah I never thought of running the conduits for the electrics. I actually quite like that idea and will give a better idea once the interior is clad and I can visualise the placement a bit better if anything needs changing. Quite like the industrial sort of look, might look quite good next to the upcycled wood.

Interesting. I ordered a (then) new 2018 Propel from Rutland Cycles back then. They got in touch during assembly and showed me a picture of the exact same crack in that location. Very much just a paint crack but I wasn’t particularly keen on it. They said it wouldn’t be liable for a replacement / swap through Giant (was the last of my frame size in stock, unless they went up a model series), but they offered me a £50 gift card at most, or I could cancel the order.

I went for the gift card and it didn’t get any worse but it did leave a bit of a sour taste in my mouth about Giant.

Interesting, might look it up. My drop bar bikes always end up giving me numb hands if I wear padded short finger gloves, so unless its cold I just go bare hand. Not had hand road rash yet but I do feel like it is in the mail…

I did this with my gravel bike.

As others have said, best way is just to have an equally compatible cassette on both wheels so it is just plug and play. For example I had an 11-42 on my gravel wheels, and an 11-34 on my road wheels. Same size Rotors also fitted to both wheelsets.

I honestly never found much difference between wear rates on chains and cassettes between them…never paid paid much attention to it. As long as one cassette isn’t split new and the other nearly dead then I don’t think it will affect much. Just keep an eye on your chain periodically.

It is a bit of an outlay to get both wheels with all fittings attached, but it’s worth it compared to having to swap tires, cassette etc every time. Takes seconds rather than an hour or more if you lose your lockring tool for example.

My biggest one is throwing stuff. Just an overarm throw of a tennis ball for a dog, or skimming a stone for example. It is quite comical to watch; I just don’t have the proprioception to throw something over arm or get that “snap” of my wrist and elbow to fling stuff with power and distance. When I do it, it looks like my skeleton has disappeared suddenly, and whatever the object is flies off at 45 degrees to the intended direction. Or I don’t let go in time, and the object just gets absolutely tw**ted into the ground a metre in front of me.

I suffer with tennis too for this reason…but strangely I was alright at passing in rugby with two hands. As long as my 10 was to my left, not my right.

Electrics are a dark art to me too…struggled in school and struggle now. My FIL is trying to encourage me to wire up electrics to my shed myself, but I don’t have a clue how to approach it (may make a separate post for advice!). Weirdly I seem to have a good natural aptitude for plumbing and can sort plumbing jobs around the house fairly easily, but I suppose that doesn’t come with the risk of a fire or death.

Something else isn’t it, imagining all those young guys as part of this massive operation.

Films and whatever always show these soldiers as older-looking, like some of the BoB, Dunkirk or Saving Private Ryan who seem like they could be late 30s. But in reality a huge amount were barely out of their teens and had never travelled before. I can’t imagine being tasked with invading a continent when I was a snotty 18 year old. Barely know much about life now, let alone then.

My Grandad was not directly involved in the first landings, but he was a pilot flew supplies over in the following weeks. I still have his dogtags kicking around somewhere. I wish he was still around now so that I could talk about it – unlike some of the combat troops he was very happy to talk about it but I can barely remember it.

I am not particularly old but I do remember well being a young kid and thinking WW2 was “only” 50 years ago…now the end of it is almost 80 years ago. Be a century since D-Day before we all know it, and I wonder when this will start to become a similar type of history to say the Napoleonic Wars. World War I is starting to feel very old now.