As Korina and I were going away in January to Cuba, we stayed in London for the xmas and New Year period. Initially we had wanted to go to Cuba then, but it was going to be twice as much, so really wasn't worth it.
We had Cam and a couple of Nicky's mates over for what turned out to be a very drunken xmas day! A large amount of champagne and espresso martinis resulted in our lounge being converted to a break dancing pit.
Korina was surprised that no one ended up in hospital (there was a lot of enthusiasm, but not much skill on display).
New years was also in London. We headed to a pub in Primrose Hill and then to a house party. Unfortunately I was just not feeling the love.
The girls did embibe in a bit more break dancing once we got home.
Mum was graduating with her PHD, and Cam and I had planned to surprise her by arriving just before her ceremony. Jessica was also getting her LLB.
Somewhat amusingly, Dad had not been able to tell them that we were coming, and so they had tried to give their tickets away to friends. Unfortunately for Mum and Jessica, they were in Melbourne when the tickets arrived, so Dad just intercepted them and blamed the University for mucking up the tickets!
However, nothing is ever easy. Two days before we were due to leave and Granny passed away after a long illness. Although it did turn what was supposed to be a celebration into a more sobering time, it was good being back for the funeral and to support Mum - she said that she almost cried when she saw Cam and me arrive.
It was a pretty intense and emotional week. I was pretty much busy from the moment I stepped off the plane, to the moment I stepped back on it 5 days later - so much so that I didn't get the chance to look up anybody in Wellington, which is something I usually like to do. Oh well, maybe March will be a bit more relaxing!
Recently, I've been working my arse off getting a USD1,000,000 proposal ready for National Grid - the document being completed 5am the morning it was due. The proposal we pulled together went really well, and so we were then asked to present our ideas at a joint UK/US pitch in New York.
Not being one to look a gift horse in the mouth, I jumped at the opportunity to join the pitch team, both because it was something I had not done before, and because it enabled me to get work to pay for a trip to the big apple. After some lengthy negotiations, I also managed to convince Korina to let me pay for her trip as her 30th birthday present (which she had when we were over in the US).
So we flew over on the Friday after work, arriving at some ungodly hour in the morning. Fuelled by copious amounts of New York coffee, we were able to arise (somewhat) refreshed on the Saturday morning, and set off for a spot of sightseeing:
Thankfully, as we arrived at the Empire State building on Saturday afternoon, the teeming rain started to break. By the time we had negotiated yet another lengthy cue and airport style security check, the weather was clear and we were treated to an awesome view of the New York skyline from Brooklyn to Ney Jersey. We got to the top of the Empire State around dusk, meaning that we got to see the view in both daytime and at night.
We had been told that the meatpacking district was "the" location to go out on the town, so after a quick rest and change back at the hotel, we then headed uptown for some dinner and drinks (thanks to my giant expense claim!). Although we were expecting the dress code to be quite formal, as it was close to Halloween, there were people in all sorts of strange getups...
It turns out that switch hitting espresso martinis with champagne is the perfect solution for any tiredness you may be feeling!
Luckily, the rest of the trip the weather turned out cool and clear. This meant on the Sunday we could explore some areas of New York that would have entailed getting drenched the day before:
I had to work the rest of the week on the National Grid pitch, but Korina was able to entertain herself shopping and doing further sightseeing. She headed home on the Tuesday night, with our pitch being on the Wednesday morning - it went really well, and we find out next week whether we were successful or not. Our team celebrated by walking back along the Brooklyn bridge.
And now that I have finally finished this post (computer crashing three times in the process), I'll now see if the bloody thing is going to save...
Since Korina's unfortunate spleen accident, we have not spent much time cycling, nor have we gone away much. So at the last minute, and following some really long hours at our respective works, we decided to head out in the country cycling for a weekend.
We stayed in Sonning, which is a small village about half way between Reading and Henley. On the Saturday we rode a loop from Sonning to Henley and back on the other side of the Thames, and on the Sunday we rode the other way along the Thames, past Reading to Pangborne. All in all we covered 65km, which wasn't a bad effort.
We also went to the local pub in Sonning to watch the Rugby World cup final, thankfully to see the English lose. I say thankfully otherwise work would have been unbearable for the next month or so. The game itself was pretty boring, and led me to the conclusion that something is wrong with Rugby at the moment - where teams that play attractive rugby and attempt to score tries are ultimately punished, and those that play low risk wars of attritution, kicking it often and waiting for the opposing team to make a mistake are ultimately rewarded. Hopefully they address the rules before 2011...
With my bike being broken (brakes getting rebuilt), I've not been doing much riding. What I have been doing is a lot of sitting around drinking, and even more watching of rugby. I travelled up to Edinburgh (so much for this being a French World cup) late on the Saturday night and caught up with Korina and Branko. However, the fact that I still had my bag with me and was dressed in a pair of shorts really ended the evening before the night clubs.
Probably just as well, as Saturday saw Korina and me take a walk up Calton Hill before meeting Branko, Megan and Will for another drinking session in preparation for the match.
After a few drinks we headed down to Murrayfield to watch the match.
40-0 was a fair result, given that the All Blacks forward destroyed their Scottish counterparts, and several of our backs seemed incapable of catching the ball. Hopefully things will improve on this front for Romania.
Quick post - travelled down to St Tudy in Cornwall to see Johnny Manor's wedding to Lara. A bloody long drive on a Friday afternoon which included being stuck in Slough (where the Office was filmed) for about an hour in traffic.
Brad had arrived over that day on his whirlwind tour of the UK, departing on the Monday following the big day.
We stayed at a cool B&B in Washaway, about 5 miles from the wedding. It was a nice sunny day, so we watched Portugal get destroyed by the All Blacks in the rugby and spent an hour or so drinking out in the sun before the wedding. In addition to the drinking we were also stalked by the owner's kids and forced to play fetch with their dogs for several hours.
The week before the wedding we had a particularly debaucherous stag night which included a few shots of Absinthe and bottles of Vodka bought over the bar - whose great idea was that particular combination?
The result of this mix saw me feeling pretty unwell most of the Sunday following, but I fared better than Johnny B who proceeded to throw up in our kitchen sink, then ring Reena at 4am to come and rescue him. It was like we were 16 again...and of course I wasn't the most popular person in the world...
So recently we had a bank holiday (long weekend). We had been too slack to come up with any specific plans, and so after (quite a few) wines on the Friday night we decided that a road trip to France the next day was definately the best use of our time. Loosely, the plan was to show Cam some of France, as he had been going stir crazy in our flat whilst looking for a job.
Saturday morning we drove down to Dover, then hopped on a ferry across to Calais. Now Calais is basically a shit-hole industrial port, full of chavvy day trippers who head over there for cheaper drinking. So we quickly left and jumped on a local train to the little village of St Omar.
However, we did not anticipate St Omar being full, which numerous hoteliers assured us it was (once we got there). All the same, we managed to get a somewhat crappy B&B.
To celebrate our success getting a place to stay that night, we then headed out on the town, with somewhat humorous results.
Korina led the way with some French breakdancing (which looked much the same as Korina break dancing anywhere else, except it was in France). It would have been even more impressive if she didn't wake up the next morning with a buggered knee.
Sunday morning, nursing severe hangovers, and our thoughts were to head to the beach at Dunkerque before heading back to England via Calais. However, once we got to Dunkerque we realised how screwed the train service is in France on a Sunday, and that Dunkerque had no effective public transport, so we pretty much turned around and headed back to Calais via the town we had stayed overnight in.
A somewhat random weekend, but great to get out of the big smoke for a couple of days.
Over the last wee while I've been scaling up my endurance racing - this summer I had already done 2 X 12 hour races as a team. So when Jac asked if I wanted to fill in for her club team, I said "why not?!". However, I didn't count on having the flu in the lead up to the race - but as it turned out, I recovered well (enough) to still partipate. Still, I spent the week before wondering whether the timing was that good for my first 24 hour race.
These events work by having a lap-based course that you do as many laps as you can within the time limit. People race in teams (as we did), in pairs or, for the really stupid, as a solo.
In all, I did five laps (plus a warm up lap). I attacked my first really hard, and was rewarded by a 40 min lap time. My next was a '45, which was also good as it was at night. I then had a double lap to look forward to - luckily it was light again by this stage, but unluckily it had been raining (so slippery) and I also broke my seat 5 mins into the lap - 2 slowish '52-'55 laps resulted (in addition to a large amount of swearing and kicking my bike).
Basically, the part where my seat joins the seatpost had slipped, meaning the seat rotated back as I rode. This had two consequences - firstly, I kept feeling like I was going to slide off the back of the seat, and secondly, every time I stood up, I was rewarded by a crack in the back of my ballbags by the front of the seat.
Two uncomfortable laps later, I then took my bike to pieces and managed to rig up a temporary fix, resulting in my final lap which was back to a '45.
Obviously I still felt a bit uncomfortable, as evidenced by this photo:
Full results are here: http://results.singletrackworld.com/category.php?id=230. Overall, we came a respectable 41st - the first BOB team home. Not bad, considering the calibre of some of the teams involved.
So my Sony Cybershot finally gave up the ghost, meaning that I have recently invested in a new camera. Having a new toy, this has meant that I now feel inclined to take lots of random photos and video!
So - testing the 10 X optical zoom:
Testing the sports mode:
Testing night shots (and getting drunk whilst handing out a beating to some Americans in pool)
Testing video taking abilities:
Well, Korina is finally starting to be a bit more mobile following on from the dreaded spleen incident. Although I'm not that fond of tennis, the chance to do something with Korina after all these weeks persuaded me to accompany her.
In the weeks leading up to Wimbledon, the weather has been, to put it nicely - shit. Day after day of rain. So we were not that confident of seeing a whole day, but having purchased the tickets we headed along anyway.
The day started off at the Walkabout in Wimbledon where we watched the ABs choke in the second half. About this stage I started to wonder if wearing my All Blacks top was such a great idea. Nevermind, it was too late now. So after a pie and a couple of snakebites for breakfast (the staple of any good antip living in London) we stepped out of the pub. To be greeted by a ferocious rain squall. The chance of play was looking bleak.
We jumped on an old London bus which took haf an hour to fight its way through the rain and crowd to the tennis stadium.
About the stage we dismounted the bus, the weather started to look a little brighter.
We quickly found our seats and opened a bottle of cava to be greeted by the news that it would be another half an hour or so.
The crowd was just starting to get restless (or perhaps drunk) when they announced play would resume.
We watched Sharapova vs Sugiyama. Sharapova won in straight sets which was lucky as immediately upon the game's conclusion the heavens opened. Under an hour was the sum total of the tennis we saw.
Again, as I am not that fond of tennis I was not that worried.
We then decided to make our way to the hospitality tent (courtesy of Korina's friend who works for Tennis Scotland).
Being England, we of course cued for another half an hour or so to get in. Once we were in we realised that the lounge was full of pensioners, and even worse, you actually had to pay for drinks! At £4.50 for a glass of Pimms, this had the potential to get expensive!
No matter, having nothing else to do, we proceeded to drink. Me heavily because I was bored, and Korina lightly - because of her spleen.
Eventually they called the tennis off for the day, so we headed off home to the news that some guys had tried to blow up Glasgow airport and Team New Zealand had also lost again...
