47 posts tagged “england”

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...

Well, last night proved somewhat terrifying. Korina and I awoke at 3am by someone in our bathroom. Someone who was not one of our flatmates.

 

I looked around for a suitable weapon, but forgetting my camping knife the closest thing I could find was an innocuous looking book of human nutrition. I ventured out into the bathroom to find the lights on but no one there. So I then crept out into the kitchen…to find no one. But the lights were on, and the front door was ajar.

 

So I found a more effective weapon (a knife) and called Bret’s mobile phone. As we didn’t know if the person was still in our flat we then started a room by room search – Korina and me from the bottom, Bret from the top floor.

But they were gone.

 

Luckily they had not taken my bike, my GPS or Korina’s car (the keys were right where they were fossicking around). The next morning we found that they had taken something out of Korina’s handbag, thinking that it was a wallet – but they had ditched it outside when they worked out that it was a makeup purse containing a scarf.

 

So, pretty scary, didn’t make for an easy night sleep. I am very glad that Bret is off on study leave today so Korina is not alone in the house. He’s also getting the locks changed – our place will resemble pretty soon.

OK. Simple plan.

The first May Bank holiday would see Korina and I travel down to the North Downs in Surrey, staying at a traditional British pub and spending the weekend relaxing, mountainbiking and hiking. Idyllic. Korina had been working really hard, so some time chilling out together was just what the dr ordered.

Unfortunately, this simple plan did not go, ah, as planned.

Started well enough, with a picnic near Coldharbour before heading up into the hills mountainbiking. We were really just pottering around on the Saturday, as I had been racing the weekend before and was still pretty sore. Save the harder stuff for Sunday and Monday. We thought.

 

So anyway, we were meandering down a path near the end of the day when Korina had a bit of an off. She fell into what looked like a rather forgiving clump of undergrowth. However, under this forgiving layer was a rather unforgiving tree stump. Which she was impaled upon.

She was obviously winded, so we waited for a bit to see what would happen next. Afterwards she was still sore, and we thought that she may have cracked some ribs. But she was still able to ride out, so that is what we did for around 30 mins. Back at the B&B for an hour, still looked like she may have cracked some ribs. Sore, but managable.

 

Then it all went down hill. Korina is tough, but I've not seen someone in that much pain before. All the same she insisted on driving to the hospital because I was not insured for her work car. A somewhat scary ride later and we arrived at East Surrey hospital.

The next three days were spent with Korina in a surgical critical care unit as various doctors and surgeons debated the relative merits of taking out her spleen (or not), which had apparently ruptured and was bleeding internally into her abdomen. However, not taking her spleen out won through, as she was otherwise fit and healthy, and young.

So that is where Korina remains.

She's been there a week now. Fortunately every day she looks less like needing surgery and looks a little more healthy.

 

 

However, the past week has not been without other dramas. Such as Korina reacting badly to an anti-nausea medication, sending her (and probably my) heart rate up to 160 and her blood pressure up to 155/119. Not great considering her family history.

Hopefully she will be out in the middle of next week, with another week or so of complete bedrest to look forward to at this stage.

When Darren invited me to fill in for a night race I wasn't sure. I'd never done one before, and I was not that confident that I would be up for it.

As it turns out my concerns were for nothing. It was a great challenge and nice to race in a team situation - as I find mountainbike racing to be generally quite individualistic.

 

The only scary thing was when my lights crapped out half way through one of the laps, and I had to ride for 5 km using only "the force". Interesting this went OK, although I did hit a tree on my next lap when I did have light.

So my lap times were '40, '45 (light problems), '40, '39. Interesting that my blind lap was only 5 min off my regular pace. Also interesting that I got faster each lap (ignoring the blind lap).

 

Although we took a pasting, it was good fun. We're talking about doing another race soon.

Getting home wasn't so good though. Major rail delays at Reading station turned a 2 hour direct train into a 5.5 hour, 4 change epic. Not what I was after after 2 hours sleep and carrying my bike and camping gear! Bloody National Rail!

Here is a ride that I did in the weekend with Darren in Bracknell Forest. We had to pick our way around the Gorrick race that was happening that both of us were too lazy to enter!

 

If you want to see a fly-through of this trail, then post a comment and I can send a Google Earth type .KML file - long live GPS! If you want to download .GPX of the ride, then Download .gpx from here.

OK, so its been a really mild winter - but we have had a couple of cold snaps recently, including this morning. When I woke up there was about 5-10 cm on the ground...

Another year, another Waitangi Day pub crawl! Saturday dawned beautiful and sunny, quite unseasonable for this time of the year in London. Unfortunately it also dawned with me having a case of the 'flu. Downing a variety of pharmaceutical products, I decided to head on out on the pub crawl with Korina, Megan, Nicola and the rest of the crew from the Mutrix.

We got there a bit late, which meant that the other 8,000 kiwis on the pub crawl this year had already managed to shut down the tube at Notting Hill Gate - we ended up walking (and drinking!) for the next three stops or so before getting on the Circle Line.

The pub crawl again impressed with the usual selection of people dressed up randomly, including some people dressed in sheep hoodies, another guy with an inflatable sheep attached to his groin and a random Maori fella wandering around with a spare tyre!

 

Eventually we ended up at Westminister, ready for the mass-haka. Unfortunately, not too many people joined in this year - the 500 or so from last year cut down to around 50-100. Due to my 'flu, I opted out this time around...Although the haka was less impressive than last year, a couple of guys climbed a pole next to Westminster, and Pete did a backflip in front of Police van - so plenty of random happenings.

 

After the haka we hooked up with Adrian and the other Megan from Deloitte in Dunedin, and after mucking about a bit, crashed a 30th birthday in Chalk Farm. Following on from this, we ended up at Little Bay (again) for another amusing dinner - the highlight of which was probably an impromptu karaoke session. Adrain and Megan were also accompanied by Richard, another fella from Deloitte in Dunedin - who ended up having a little bit too much to drink and ended up crashed on our couch before mains were served!

 

 

Following on from dinner we all headed around to the Mutrix, at which stage I crashed out as my 'flu got the better of me. Luckily for me this meant that I missed out on Richard being sick in our lounge and the girls dancing on the chairs in the kitchen!

So another great pub crawl - different from last year - but still good with a very relaxed feel and an ability to talk to a random range of kiwis...

 

Recently entered a race in a place called Tunnel Hill in Surrey with two of my UK friends - Darren and Bryan. They were in a more difficult class to me so I had finished when they were racing so took a couple of pics:

 

My race went fairly well after an abysmal start. I had to fight my way back up through the pack and traffic which often times became congested in narrow single track. Some quite dubious overtaking maneuvers ensued, and I fought my way up to around 20th, before running out of steam slightly before the end. My final result was 25th.

So after what has been a really mild winter in the UK, we've finally had a bit of a cold snap. It even snowed one morning - it was quite pretty - here are some shots from my ride to work...

I really enjoyed the Notting Hill carnival last year (although admittedly I was unemployed at the time, meaning I could get as drunk as I liked without having to worry about a hang over the next day), so I decided to take Korina along as she wasn't in the UK last time around.

Unfortunately the weather was not as good as last time, but we still had a great time - particularly as last time I spent most of the time on the outside of the circuit where the floats were, whereas this time we spent more time in the middle of the circuit where the DJs and bands were.

The best one was with the crashed plane. Very amusing and were initially playing some great tunes - although when we went back later with the flatties the DJ had changed and it wasn't as good.