So near, yet so far

I had a notion that my exercise today would be walking over to the Rodney Street branch of the Bike Coop and cycling my new e-bike home. Hmmmm.

They'd told me I was likely to get a text yesterday telling me the bike was ready to collect (it had to be built), but when I hadn't had one by lunchtime today I tried calling a few times to ask them if it was in fact ready. In the end, as there was no response, I went and did a peloton workout. And then lo and behold on returning to the sitting room, there was a text waiting for me advising the bike was ready to collect.

Great. I took the bus halfway there (having narrowly missed a 36, I took a 10), all set to cycle home. When I got there, I discovered that Halfords, who run the cycle to work scheme and try to push their own products and only very reluctantly allow the assignment of the letter of collection to another bike shop, had screwed things up by assigning the letter of collection twice. I have to say this didn't surprise me as I found every aspect of the scheme hard to navigate and full of holes (as well as attempts to push you to buy from Halfords....). I had to take a picture of the screen beyond which the Bike Coop could not navigate in order to access the funds so they could release the bike to me and tomorrow I will have to email them and ask them to sort it out. I'll let the university transport people know just how rubbish Halfords are too.

So tomorrow I will still be on the old fashioned push bike. Hey ho. Extra exercise. But at least I have a picture of my new bike.