Panda On High

I think god must have been getting me back for yesterday's wee bit of blasphemous nonsense...

Getting the bike out of the garage I realised I'd left my mobile in the house. Which I couldn't get back into. Our Yale has been playing up for a while, the snib inside occasionally locking down after the door is closed. It was only a matter of time before it did so with no-one in the house to let me back in. And I don't have a back door key on my keyring. Ah well, I'd work something out, probably involving a locksmith, and do without the phone for the day.

That's not bad is it? Well a mile and a half on the way to work my chain snapped. Marvellous. And the one tool I didn't have in my bag? A chain splitter. Superb. The walk to work would have taken me to around 9.15 I reckoned. And I'd have a bike at work with a knackered chain. Okay, I could buy one at lunchtime, but I had other stuff to do at lunchtime. So a walk and a freewheel home, swap bike (a spare bag in the garage meaning I could move everything across from the saddlebag for which there is no mount on the new bike), and set-off again, unable to phone work to let them know I might be late (the phone still stuck in the house) and the rain suddenly starting as if it knew I was mudguardless off the usual commuter.

I got to the work bikepark bang on 9. Result. My lunchtime yoghurt had exploded in my bag. Damn you supreme deity! (though you are proving my point that you're vindictive). Actually, doesn't the theory of divine retribution rail against the concept of man's free will?

Anyway, rescued by Mel's dad who has a back door key for our place. I'll be replacing the Yale in the next few days.

p.s. the shirt in the shot is a new citycycling.co.uk embroidered number created by a friend of my line manager with a company in Norn Ireland. Good stuff it is too. Am I allowed to promote someone else's website? What the hell - Logos Promotional Wear

p.p.s. been trying to catch up with mountain bike hall of famer Jacquie Phelan who is in Edinburgh briefly. She's one of the the founding, er, mothers of mountain biking (along with her husband Charlie Cunningham) and would have been world XC champion for 3 years running, if they had had such rankings when she was competing. Anyway, she's completely bonkers, a great laugh (I interviewed her on stage at the Edinburgh bike film festival a few years back when she was drunk) and loves our chickens. But she went and lost the mobile she was loaned (I called it and had a conversation with a chap in Upper Largo who had found the phone) and naturally she left a message on my phone today while I had left mine in the house. Sheesh.