A muddy good ride

I set off today with high hopes of reaching another of England's best churches on the bike. High hopes, but totally unrealistic in light of a late start, lazy route planning, and waterlogged paths that forced a couple of diversions.

I got as far as Ruislip, but the highlights were well before that, as I followed National Cycle Route 61 from near Maidenhead almost to Uxbridge. A lot of the path was waterlogged, with the remains of a covering of ice. So the bike ended up covered in mud. I covered 43 miles, got fairly messy myself, and had great fun.

Paraskavedekatriaphobia

Only a couple more hours to go, and all will be well, at least until next month.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paraskevidekatriaphobia

and

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triskaidekaphobia

Miserable stuff

As the snow clears I've managed to fit in two short rides this week. That's after a fortnight when I allowed the bike to rest in the shed. By this time last year I had already covered more miles than I have this year. Since I didn't get the bike until the end of January 2008, that makes this year's mileage look particularly poor. If I'm going to get back on plan I need to start covering some serious distances. So let's hope the weather improves.

Financial advice

My bank is offering me advice on how to manage my business through the economic downturn. 

They recommend that I keep an eye on cashflow, deal with bad debts, concentrate on maintaining profit margins, and spread risk.

All very sound, but this advice is from an organisation that is being propped up with £20bn of our money, that is expected to announce losses that run into billions in the next few weeks, and that is reported to have set aside a £1bn fund to make bonus payments to staff.

At least they haven't lost their sense of humour.

Global positioning system

To set up the sytem:

• Print out the picture
  
• Put it in your pocket
  

To use the system:

• Take out the picture
  
• Read your position
  

(batteries not included)

Donkey Wheel

It's an odd thing, the Interweb. There's been a sudden burst of activity on my Flickr pages, because somebody linked to this picture in order to illustrate their point on a discussion forum about the TV series Lost.

Apparently in one episode of Lost, a capstan was wrongly described as a donkey wheel, which might mean something important - or might not.

And sadly I have spent half an hour chasing through the links to discover where all the extra hits were coming from. Time I will never recover and put to better use.

I really do need to get out more.

"Snow in South-East England: crisis mounts as dozens of journalists are inconvenienced"

With thanks to my brother for the pointer to an excellent film from 1963 that puts current press coverage into perspective.