Yayes! I feel great after yesterday! I cycled the 6 miles to/from work...I worked all day. I singlehandedly unloaded an racked up 90 metres of stainless (bastards in the yard wouldn't help me) and unloaded the truck and just generally YAYES! I could honestly have done it all again today...

...when a group of workmates all decided to go for a charity bike ride...




It was a fantastic day. It took a long time, but that was mainly because there were big queues to get water and we passed four serious accidents - which obviously either slow you down or bring the entire ride to a halt. People were smeared all over the tarmac - some of them looked really bad. I hope everyone's okay.

The generosity of everyone living on the route was great - people with water out for us and loads of kids with supersoaker waterpistols saturating us. And quite a few hosepipes too...I got a soaked to the skin a few times! It was so lovely just chatting to people you found yourself riding with or queuing near. When we got to the finish line and queued to be stamped out of the ride a guy came up to me and said "Scuse me, do you know Brighton at all?" So obviously I answered yes...and he had this big sort of sigh of relief and asked "Where's the nearest place I can buy chips?" Hee, the number of knackered cyclists with pints and burgers and chips and ice creams was fab! Ride for the BHF...then stuff the worst sort of food in your face. And have a fag, too. Tricky was smoking cigars all the way down >_<

I'll be doing it again next year, and thoroughly recommend it to anyone!

I'M BACK!

And still just about alive!

Okay actually still very much alive. It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. I shall definitely be doing it again next year.

But for now, I must drink, eat, wash and go and lock my bike up properly.

Thank you to everyone for your support!!

It perhaps says a lot about my job that getting up at 0400 just doesn't seem very early now...

see y'all on the other side!

COME ON FOLKS!

I'm just one hundred and thirty three pounds short of raising ONE THOUSAND POUNDS for the British Heart Foundation tomorrow.

If you haven't yet dug deep (and if you actually have some wonga, not just pocket fluff) PLEASE consider sponsoring me. It's all in aid of a very very good cause.

http://www.bhf.org.uk/sponsor/elf

is the ONLY website you need to visit XD

(And yes, in 6 hours I will be getting up to go cycling, in 12 hours I hope to be back home, aching and knackered and full of a sense of acheivement, that means that you guys probably won't be hassled at all again. Until next year!)

So I'm preparing for tomorrow. I don't just mean in the mental sense, or getting my shit together...I'm also getting my hair cut (which means I'll have to re-do all my helmet starpping), hoping that by some miracle my legs become tanned in the next 12 hours, that sort of stuff.

I've made a list of what I need to take. Which is worryingly long. I have a tiny frame pack, and that's it...luckily a fair bit of the stuff I will be wearing, so not too bad.

So far I have: Water bottle, fruit bars, gonna take a small portion of my puncture repair kit, my housekeys, some money, my bank card, my helmet, my rain jacket (although not if it's lovely out, obviously), my gloves, my sunnies and my clear/low light lenses, my rider number which I will pin onto my HiViz, my bike tag and my mobile phone...See, quite a lot of shit. All got to fit into a few square inches. I'll manage though, I'm sure. Not going to take spare inner tubes etc, cos everyone will have them...may well leave out puncture kit altogether, because ditto.

I'm also trying to hydrate. Cos I'm not very good at that shit, so I figure if I drink all day today I might be okay...pffft, who knows?

The weather today is nice - not too warm, not too cold, but a brisk Sou-Westerly, which won't be much fun, although being inland will make it ok I guess. I must try to find a cable tie to attach my bike tag onto my ride... My bike is already out of my hands - has been since last night, when I left it for loading onto the lorry :( Feel's odd, not having it...

Today good things happened.

I finished those effing bastard balconies!! Yayes!! (apparently they're being fitted on Weds)

I cycled 20.1 miles in 58 minutes. Yayes!!

I'm eating lovely salad for dinner. Yayes!!

I've written some. Yayes!!


And a coupla bad things happened.

At three PM, Si told me we were on site tomorrow. With a thing which hadn't been made. So instead of leaving at 4pm (and cycling further than 20 miles) I left at five.

And whilst grinding back some stainless for somebody else, I was holding the material down between my left index and middle fingers...and I dropped the angle grinder off the top of the material. So a coarse flap disc, going at about 13000 rpm crashed straight onto my index finger. Went through my glove, through my skin and chomped a bit of flesh. Happily though, at that speed, it also cooks ya, so very little blood. It just aches and stings. I showed Ph about an hour later (he is the first aider) and he shrugged. "Yuh?" So, that was fun. It's very very shiny now and absolutely packed out with stainless steel dust.

Yes! You lovely people...it's that time again...


SPONSOR ME!!

You know you want to. Ask the lovely lovely people who already have sponsored me! They feel GREAT about themselves! (And so you should, lovely sponsoring people...some of whom don't even know me! Thank you very very much)

I'm cycling 54 miles on Sunday 17th June. FIFTY FOUR. I have to get up at FOUR IN THE MORNING for this privilege!! And I'm doing it all for charity - The British Heart Foundation.

After fifty miles there is a hill about a mile long that averages more than a 1 in 8 climb...with parts of it steeper than 1 in four!

SO COME ON, FEEL THE BURN...SPONSOR ME HERE

I will do my best to provide photographic proof of my folly after the event, should anyone need it!

ETA...For Jojo, who apparently can't see either of the links in the above post:

http://www.bhf.org.uk/sponsor/elf

Okay, you miserable lot!! The time approacheth! Weekend after next I will be cycling 54 miles, from Clapham Common, London to Madeira Drive, Brighton, in aid of the British Heart Foundation.

All you folks have to do is sponsor me :) I'll do the rest...

(seriously, people, if it's as hot in two weeks as it is today I might ACTUALLY die. Really. So make my last act on this earth worthwhile.)

Go forth, and merrily, sponsor.
I will be posting at least bi-weekly reminders to this end, so sorry if you get sick of it, but that's life. (and it really is life to the people that the sponsorship money helps)

If you can't afford monetary sponsorship then comments of encouragement are equally valued!

Oh, and if you're a UK Taxpayer then don't forget to GIFTAID your sponsor money. This means it's worth 28p more per pound (or thereabouts). There's a clicky box on the form for this.


http://www.bhf.org.uk/sponsor/elf

So, I cycled up to Devil's Dyke - omfg they are some big climbs. It's about 712 feet above sea level - and obviously, I started absolutely at sea level, so that's a climb of around 129 feet for every mile - and fuck me, was the wind up today. Headwind for the first mile or so, then vicious side winds for the rest of the way.

Anyway, I arrived at the top, snotty and sweaty and fucking knackered...and was immediately asked to be in a commercial being filmed about cycling...

So spent the next FOUR HOURS posing with bike, walking about with bike, being put into different shots etc (all in the background, of course). The reason it was SO LONG was because I was selected out of the 120 odd people that started out, to be n the close-ups of ten of us. Luckily a kind guy lent me a coat, cos I only had on a sleeveless top. and as I mentioned...the freakin' WIND!

So, uh, apparently they're gonna send me a DVD of the advert and it will be in the cinemas nationwide - DEFRA and the BBC are making it, and apparently they're going to do an internet version too, but everyone was very vague so I don't really know if any of this is true.

On the way home I managed to break the speedlimit...went over 30mph twice :) Naughty, I know, but they can't speed camera you on a bike with no plates!

All in all, a good day.