It must take a lot of training to drive the train on them little thin rails.

Bads:
– I’ve quit quitting smoking.
– I’ve quit commuting by bike.
Both in some way related to an eejit that ran me off the road last week, presumably because I was using the bus/taxi/cycle lane that he wanted to use to skip the queue of traffic. It’s not that I’ve not had close shaves before, but this one incident has left me a lot more shaken than any of the others did before. Possibly because it felt intentional rather than accidental.

Goods:
– The 20 percent pay cut handed out in my work last September has now been reduced to only a 10 percent cut.
– Because I’m not cycling as much, I’m back running a lot more. Even running into work twice a week. May even try running home too this evening!

Mixed:
– After the 6-week delay because I was deemed too ill to be operated on (pesky thyroid), my hosp op’s have now been delayed again for no known reason. Which is good because work is too busy at the moment, but I would’ve preferred to get them over and done with.
– The ex-wife is getting remarried. How I feel about this varies.

I reckon I must be a cyclist.

I own an mtb. It’s cheap, heavy, I’m not very brave on it, don’t get rad air, and don’t speed down any big hills. But I love getting out and getting it muddy.
I also own a road bike. I don’t own any lycra, don’t ride it 2 inches from another rider in front, and don’t shave my legs. But I love getting out on a bright day and feeling miles and miles of country roads roll by fast.

But much more often than those put together, I am out on what can only be described as my hack commuter bike. I use it to get to work, to get to the shops, to visit my friends, to get around everywhere avoiding the pain and price of public transport or running a car. If I could only have one bike, it’d be this one. I’d use for everything and to go everywhere. And I’d still be neither a mountain biker or a roadie.

Never seen an endocrinologist. Had gone to my GP because I’d almost fainted and blood tests caught severe anaemia and the underactive thyroid. Actually just had another increase in dose after a pre-op assessment at the hospital, which has led to the ops being delayed ’til my results are back “within range” again.

I survived all weekend without a single smoke, but oh my holey Jeebus it was hard going! And I ate just about everything I had in the kitchen.

So my initial plan to lose the mince pie belly gained over Xmas has taken a back seat, but I reckon there’s much more benefit from stopping smoking than from stopping snacking.

Managed to get it down from five to three – commuter hack, HT and road bike. And am thinking of getting rid of the road bike too.

1. Get fixed. Which should be relatively easy as the hospital finally decided yesterday that I’m now fit enough to go under the scalpel(s)! So all I need to do is turn up on the right day, lie back and let the docs do their work.

2. Get fitter. Bit vague like that, but it’d be good to get back to the “half marathon in under 2 hours” level of fitness. And once I’ve recovered from #1 I’ll have no excuses.

3. Stop writing long lists of hopes/ambitions/resolutions/to-do’s.

Yes, feeling and looking fat here too. Only consolation is I don’t own a weighing scale thingy to know how bad the damage is.

Having always had a tendency for tall, slim blondes, she was the exact opposite, so it wasn’t with any amorous intentions that we started talking in a pub. But, oh my word, she was just so interesting! We could talk for hours and hours and I would never be bored. I’ve since come to discover that this – how interesting I find someone – overshadows any other possible attraction in anybody for me.

Then her smile. She had a wondeful smile, one that would light up her whole face and make her eyes sparkle. Seeing that smile became addictive to me. All I wanted to do was see her smile, and so I would do anything and everything I could to make it show again and again.

And then her excitement and her joy of life. She would see the most amazing things in every simple thing, and stand there with a look of almost child-like amazement. I have never met anyone else with such a way of seeing things.

They can all be put through a blender to make a sort of soup?

Maybe not the bowls, or the lifesaver whaddayacallit thingy, but the animals. Like frogs (leg) soup and whale soup and sharks fin soup and porridge, ermm, soup. Is that meant to be a squirrel’s tail?

A couple of months back we were either given a 20% pay cut, or given notice of redundancy. I look on it as if everything isn’t an option, then something’s better than nothing.

The one and only possession I value is the watch my parents bought me for my 16th birthday.

It wasn’t expensive when new, the glass is now chipped and scratched, and it only ever gives a vague approximation of what the time is, but I’ve worn it every day for over 20 years now.

Yes, I smoke. But I can quit any time I want. I’m so good at quitting that I regularly quit two or three times a week.

Saying that, I am making a determined effort this time and haven’t lit up since Sunday. I miss it.

I once caught a glimpse of our Administrator password – it was either 8 or 9 asterisks.

Best of luck with it mate. And speedy recovery to you Ton too. I have stopped smoking as of this morning. Am doing okay so far I reckon as I’ve missed two fag-times and haven’t punched anyone. And although I’m expecting this evening to be challenging, I’m fighting that with some “I CAN do this, I WILL do this, I AM doing this” thinking.

My thyroxine (for thyroid problem) has also just been upped in dose again after the hospital discovered that was too low.

That was when I was in hospital getting assessed for a hernia op.

They also deferred that op (and the circumcision I’m also queued up to get) because I’ve got a cough, but my GP didn’t seem to think that was serious enough to kill off with yet another prescription.

And my mum has just Friended me on Facebook. That’s quite injurious.

Am following this too as had a pre-op assessment yesterday for my hernia operation. Have been told it’ll be open rather than keyhole.

But saying that, they’ve also told me they that their blood test showed my thyroid seems to have gone deranged again (whatever that means!) so I won’t get operated on for weeks yet. Pah.

I’m sure that after xmas the market will be awash with Android powered copies for less than a couple of hundred quid.

There’s a £100 one in Asda already…
http://direct.asda.com/eTouch-7ins-Portable-Media-Tablet-%E2%80%93-Web%2C-movies%2C-music-%E2%80%93-10gb-storage/000504956,default,pd.html

Every time I go to sit on the loo I need to check under the seat for spiders. So far I have never found any spiders lurking there, nor have I ever (knowingly) been in a country that has native spiders that are known to hide under loo-seats, but I just cannot unclench without knowing there aren’t any there.

They don’t just bite you, they crawl up and nest and you’re then forever shitting out baby spiders! It’s gross. You really should check under your loo-seats for spiders every time too. (But you just need to do it once. Having to check anything twice is just mad.)

Rest in peace. Thoughts and condolences to his family.

Thanks Spaceman.

The reason I’m getting it done is phimosis. I’ll let you Google that yourself. It’s fair to say it’s put a fairly hefty limit on my life so far. I’ve avoided the problem for the last 20-odd years, even avoided getting into a relationship in the last 10 years.

But finding myself getting more and more hermitic lately, I’ve finally accepted I can’t carry on like this and saw my GP about this and other little niggles that have been ignored too long. Onward to a new me.

I was also diagnosed with this when had a blood test for something else. Been on thyroxine about a year now, with the usual fun and games at the start trying to sort out the dosage. Whatever it is they count, mine was lower after having been on 100mg for 6 weeks than I was on 75. The solution? Bump it up again to 125. Been on that level since.

My sister who also has the same thing seems to suffer it a lot more than I do. I’m normally fine, but have the odd day or two here and there where I can tell I’m not quite right. And these days can swing every which way. It can make me struggle to do just about anything, when I feel slow and/or depressed. But equally I get days when I have too much energy. This has good points, when I can happily get up at 6am to go for a 10k run before cycling to work or pulling an all-nighter on the XBox as I just can’t sleep. But it also has bad points. I get snappy and irritable, am constantly fiddling or strumming my fingers, and get what I can only describe as mischievous.

I look on it as a brilliant thing to blame just about everything on. If I can’t be bothered, feel tired or put on some middle-age spread, I can blame the thyroid. If I lose weight, get snappy or have little mad moments, then it’s the medication.

Ah yes, Aberdeen butteries. They’re butter and lard, baked, aren’t they? They are great though.

Hmmm, let me see. That'd have been '98 for me. So was working for the European Commission, I had just bought my first house with the woman who would become my wife (and then would soon become my ex-wife), and didn't own a bike.

C'mon people, don't ignore recumbents. They're bikes too, y'know!

I only suffered this after using a new, proper running top (as opposed to any old t-shirt) in the rain.

Used Vaseline to repair the damage and use plasters to avoid it happening again.

I'm alone too, means I don't ever need to wash anything.

There's also the Edinburgh Bicycle Co-op Courier bikes. I've used one of the 'classic' one for years for commuting, and had also used it for longer rides (before I got the proper road bike) and off-roading (before I got the proper MTB).

V v bad idea, as you found out!

True, but it can usually save me a few seconds so is worth the risk. (Yes, I'm trying to make that sound ironic, but have never really been sure I had the right understanding of the word since what's-her-name had that song out.)

I'm not claiming I'm entirely not at fault with this, but it meets the title criteria by being a near-miss on my commute.

From commuting for a fair few years now I've got quite good at anticipating the lights. And now that the Glasgow schools are back the rush-hour roads are all clogged up again. Yesterday morning two lanes of traffic are queued back from traffic lights, I'm slowly filtering up the middle watching for the opposite-direction lights changing to red. Those lights change, I speed up, and time it perfectly to cross the line, fast, just mere millimoments after it's turned green. Just as a ****-******* **** ****** in a Range Rover goes through the red. If I hadn't stopped he'd have side-swiped me at easily 30+ mph, as it was I still almost ran into the side of him. I loudly implied he partook in acts of a homosexual nature, then carried on, letting the adrenaline help me finish the rest of the journey faster than usual.

1. Quiting things after I've barely started trying.
2.

Once had a big list of things I wanted to do. Nowadays the list has a maximum of three items, with each one getting replaced as it gets done. The current list is:
1. Cycle 100 miles in a day
2. Run a half-marathon
3. Do a triathlon

I had signed up to do both of the first two next month (the Glasgow half-marathon and Pedal for Scotland) but a knacked knee scuppered my training. So when I can, I'm planning on just plotting a route and going and doing them on my own one day rather than waiting for any 'organised' event. And being lame means I can use this time to try to learn to swim, a somewhat necessary skill in order to ever achieve no.3!

I fear I may be at risk of being burned and banished, as the bike in question is a 456.

Yes, I'm sure it's a brilliant bit of kit in the right hands or built with less-budget bits. But this bugger weighs 32lb! I'm not even sure my last bike weighed that much!

Fantastic news! Congrats to the whole team.

Ahh, the talk of foot-through-spokes experiences is bringing memories flooding back.

When young and stupid, it used to be a laugh to cycle alongside pals and give their front wheel a little kick so that the handlebars would be twisted and they'd have to stop to re-straighten them.

I thought I could fix it without stopping. Try to kick the rim but foot goes into the spokes instead. Foot and leg gets twisted round almost throwing me off. That could've been quite nasty on its own, but my foot then met the fork. Boy and bike became a somersaulting mess of snaps, stains and screams. Lesson #1 learned.

Lesson #2 was learned when one of them pals. We were cycling home from town. He had a plastic bag hanging from his handlebars that swung into the front wheel and got caught. Same acrobatic result, same loss of blood and teeth.

Lesson #3 may sound common sense, but I learned this the hard way – when going down a hill and gathering speed, keep your head up to look as far ahead as possible. Do not, DO NOT, look down at your front wheel (no, I don't know what possessed me to do this). This seems to bring your weight forward, tipping you forward. Watching the ground rise up to meet your face is unnerving. Hitting the ground with your face is unpleasant.

I thought this would be to do with being able to fit a whole banana in your mouth, sideways.

Yes, I've been there. She cheated, I begged her to stay, she left to have a string of relationships, I was gutted and did not cope well at all. When she came back three years later asking if we could try again, I immediately agreed.

But that lasted all of two months. It took me that long to admit to myself that I just did not trust her any more. And that wasn't fair on either of us. So when that ended we finally divorced.

There used to be "rules" for fighting, like,

1st Rule of fighting: Don't fight.
2nd Rule of fighting: Use a weapon.
etc.

I've done some martial arts and I thank all the Gods I've never had to use it on the street.

The first time I heard the term darkside in a cycling reference was when it was used to describe recumbent bikes/trikes, and the riders thereof.

Is it also frowned upon to use the term in that occasion? Because I might otherwise have to revert back to calling them completely ****ing idiotic instead.

4pm in the morning

That, right there, that's what endurance racing does to you.