.....Yeah, I know. Odd isn't it. Cubes Urban Concept bike. The result of cooperation with the University Coburg. Its a 28″ wheel folding bike which, when the frame is folded, fits into a rucksack. The wheels don't but hey, you get my drift. Still weird though.
This morning I felt almost human thanks to the power of Beecham, the sun was shining (yes, the sun!) and so I rode Bob into work. 12.48km trail in just under 50 mins @ an average of 15.35km/h. By a mile in I was regretting it and felt like death on a stick but in for a penny...anyway, had to get him to the shop so I could begin his transformation. I'd already begun stripping him down last night and so rode to work with no rear brakes. Well no brakes at all actually as the front ones were disconnected last week ...got interesting when I forgot that small point at the only road junction in that 12 and a half km but as I am now almost masterful in my ability to disguise a complete fuck-up as 'I actually meant to keel over sidewards into that tree' or 'No, really, I enjoy freefalling over cliffs'' I got away with it.
Note to self: write note to self ref brakes and stick on handlebars.
Work was another day of organised pandemonium which was supposed to end with a calming evening at yoga but that didnt happen due to Sue (friend and yoga partner) having a really shit day at her work and arriving at house after falling out with customers and B&Q and therefore sooooo not being in the mood for a Salute to the Earth and me forgetting my cash card which turns out I hadn't actually forgotten in the end but couldn't find in my rucksack and thus wasted 14 miles of bosses petrol (he ran me home) and near an hour of searching. Ah.
Anyhoo todays weirdness....last night I watched the story of Flight 009 on 'Aircrash Investigations'. I don't usually watch it as I'm not a fantastic flyer (somewhere between nervously reading/monitoring turbulence/engines or sleepily inebriated usually) and watching plummeting planes on the telly doesn't do much to bolster my confidence. However, N had read the book about this particular flight and assured me everyone lived and the plane was fine. Well, that was ok then. Bloody interesting! Long story short - long haul Boeing 747 accidentally flies into invisible (to radar) volcanic ash cloud (quel timing Mr TV Programmer...) and all four engines die. Planes plummets (quite slowly actually) due to ash getting in engines and causing aforementioned engine death. Crew manage to restart engines minutes before ploughing into sea/mountains nr Jakarta, everyone lives and are understandably reallyfuckinggladtobealive. Survivors form Galunggung Gliding Club (named after the Volcano that near killed them) and though this happened in 1982, are still in touch with each other today. Thats flight incident (and a similar one near Anchorage some years later) are the reason we have had restricted air travel since Eyjafjoell blew.
So 'D', a quiet spoken local roadie, who comes into the shop near every day and is one an original offshore tigers and at 73 can still whip most folk half his age on a bike (& if you were to look at him, you'd guess he was only around 55 yrs old) comes in as I'm telling Bike Boss about this amazing incident. Turns out 'D' was ON the bloody flight and has a newspaper clipping to back it up with his photo on it! He was remarkably nonchalant about it. I asked him how he felt. Did he think he was going to die? No he said, he had absolute faith in the BA staff to get the engines going again. There really was very little panic (considering they were plummeting from 33000ft in an engineless, smokefilled Boeing 747..). He handed me a copy of a newspaper clipping from 1982 - he'd been interviewed after the event and insisted I keep it. Its hanging on my wall now and the whole thing has had a profoundly odd and utterly unexplainable effect on me.
Coincidence or the first hint of a future life lesson? Time will tell I guess but right now this hippy is off to bed to wage war with the remnants of this stinking cold.
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