New Life - part 2 - new pad!

Ok, so having the Royal Wedding week was great, people could take just the 3 days holiday to get a full eleven off. Superb ...... or you can take that time and spend most of it moving house!!!!

So, the landlord's job had fallen through in Canada and that happened over the summer or autumn so there was no surprise when I got my 2 months notice to get out by May 5th. So, the afore mentioned trip to California was ace but the timing was not. It fell right around the time I would want to secure a property, and I did manage to get my deposit down on a lovely house in Longstanton only to be gazumped. I did n't think that happened in the rental market!!!

Anyway, just before I departed these shores I did manage to secure a house in Bar Hill (picture attached, well it will be when I get round to taking one!!). It is more expensive but it is bigger and detached (cue new guitar amp!!!). The garden is bigger too which is good for Chloe and Cookie the dog and bbq's!! It is lovely and I'm feeling nothing but good vibes.

So, I'm really excited about this year. Everything seems to be coming together nicely (bloody hell, there is even an outside chance I might get the divorce sorted this side of Xmas!!!)

... and then there were four!

So the forty-something cycling group has started a little late this year partly as a result of Steve's dodgy back and my work travel. However, this weekend just gone we had a fab time, but first a welcome, to Brendan "Bren" Young who has joined the rabble. The four Muskateers?!! Bren is a lovely bloke with a great sense of humor and he supports the right football team so we have lots in common!

So this weekend saw the traditional first group ride of the year out at Grafham. The weather was amazing and after meeting up, the usual mooching around the expensive and generally out of reach bike porn in the shop, we hit the cafe and then the bogs before the off. In spite of Steve's concerns about his back the group managed two full laps together, each taking around an hour. The last third of the final lap, every time we stopped we seem to get over taken a couple in their sixties with him pulling the grandkids in a trailer. It was a great sense of achivement the managed to overtake them again just before the finish!!! I hope I'm able to pull the grandkids round there in trailer when I'm in my sixties!

After recovery, we headed off back to my place (not for much longer!) all hit the shower and some Stellas and agreed that our weekend of June 2nd would be based at Sherwood Pines which is flat (important for Steve's back) and not too tough, as the training schedule is running rather behind. I'm sure that will be the subject of a later post.

With that agreed, we headed off for a cheap but very cheerful Indian here in Willingham, then into Cambridge to hit some of the pubs. I did warn the guys that there were some amazing young girls down there who had some incredibly short skirts and high heels. The boys were not disappointed ;-)

New life: part 1 - new wheels

Everything seems to change in spring. The weather, people and often our lives. My changes in life, in fact our changes in life (me and the kids) will take three different forms in the near future. Two of them will certainly happen quickly but third could be soon or it might take a while (cryptic, I know!).

Part 1 is the need for a new car. The Discovery has been great but I had been made aware that the brake pads and disks needed changing, an expensive job. Whats more the MOT and tax were due. So when it failed to start and all the usual checks found nothing, the words "it must be in the engine, we'll open her up and take a look" were quickly followed by the reply "thanks but no thanks"!!!!

So, I had a couple of hire cars over a couple of weekends when I needed transport for the kids and then a new car was purchased. Thing to note here is that I don't actually need a car for myself! I thought long and hard about it. The idea of another 4x4 was nice. A great high driving position and no worries about luggage space when we go on vacation or I take Tom and his stuff off to Uni. But decent ones that would last were best part of £10K and I did n't have that (or want to spend it). So, something more sensible? I looked at the Mondeos and the Passats and the Avesis's and they were all lovely but rather "old age". Now I may be a 42 year old father of three kids (for a couple of weeks longer anyway! r.e. the age that is, 43 soon, I'll ot be having anymore kids!!) but I like to feel I still have some life in me. So, I ended up with a lovely Honda Accord. As close to total reliability as one can get, more than 40 mpg and wow, is it frisky (petrol version). I have not enjoyed driving this much in years. On Thursday I had the chance to ride to work and I did, but it was a hard call!

So, to those of you who think that a car is just a way to get from A to B, or if you don't drive, you really are missing out, trust me ;-)

California!!

So, I'm back after having a wonderful time in the States. Things did n't start brilliantly as the car that work organised to collect me did n't turn up. After half an hour failing to call the useless buggers I realised I was on my own. So, local taxi organised I call Virgin Atlantic to be told that if I'm not there 90 minutes before the flight then they won't let me on board (hang on, it was n't like this with Ryanair!). So, the taxi driver absolutely hammers it down to Heathrow and I know I'm going to be late. I turn up about and hour before take off and stagger up to the counter short of breath to be greeted by a beautiful young lady who asks me how I am today. "Well, I'm rather late and vrry stressed"! She asks me which flight and tells me we get an extra 20 minutes in business class so I'm fine, lol.

After that it was almost all good. The flight was fine and I enjoyed "Inception Day" on the way over. David "The Hoff" Hasslehof was sat a few seats ahead of me (for sure!) and for a while I was debating if JLS were also just infront of me too. My Brit Pop knowledge ain't that hot but I don't think it was them.

The conference was good. It's not every day you get to listen to a Nobel prize winner give a lecture. We had a nice meal out at a Chinese with our Japanese colleagues too which was fun.

One of our colleagues from the San Diego site offered to give us a lift down there but he was leaving a day earlier than we had planned. Hotels in California, or maybe just the people, are a lot less fussy than over here so they were happy to let me leave early and give me some money back. A quick visit to Tripadvisor found the Hotel Indigo in the Gas Lamp Quater of the city and we were set. We arrived late afternoon, freshened up and headed off to where the action was. On one of the main streets all the restaraunts had their tables out on the very wide pavements so that's where we had dinner followed by hitting a couple of bars where there was live music and even dancing in the last one.

Next day was "free". We visited the Seaport Village where I grabbed loads of presents for the people I would be staying with later and the kids. In the afternoon we hit the USS Midway, an aircraft carrier turned into a museum. There were loads of planes on deck and we even got to stand on the bridge.

I was there with a colleague from work. Katherine is a rather attractive 29 year old and it was funny for me when some guy thought we were together, hahahaha!! She chuckled too!

That evening we got a cab out to Torrey Pines heading back up past the airport. I recently saw a tv programme called "the world's 10 most dangerous airports" and SD was in there because they built a high multi-storey car park right in the flight path. The planes, as we saw for ourselves, have to pass really close over it as they come in to land.

We were spending the weekend at the Hilton at Torrey Pines. The hotel is lovely, separated from the sea only by the PGA golf course. My favourite part was the pool and jacuzzi on the back patio, especially in that California sunshine. We Spent Saturday with our old friend Ben, walking the nature reserve and then dinner and drinks in his garden around the chimanea.

Sunday Ben was racing so Katherine and I had a nice day in La Jolla, a lovely little seaside town. Monday was a work day, visiting our colleagues at the San Diego site with a very beneficial mutual exchange of science.

Tuesday Ben I were supposed to hit one of the best mountain bike trails in South California. A high level ride with excellent views of the sea, so I'm told. Unfortunately, I'd hurt my back hauling the suitcase around so we could n't go. There is an irony to spending the night in a lovely big $225+ a night hotel room with a kingsize bed and then sleeping on the floor, which happened a few times!!

We consoled ourselves by driving out to one of the local breweries for lunch, a tour and then some sampling. We headed back to Ben's where we spent the evening sipping the exquisite Aberlour A'bunadh that I'd brought him. After that the 18 year old Glenfidditch seemed pretty ordinary.

On my last day Ben had to work but he lives about a mile from the beach so I managed to have a nice day even without his car, which he offered to lend me. Next morning a big breakfast for us two growing lads and then I'm on Amtrack up to LA. The train was a double decker and I'd been advised to go upstairs and sit on the left for the coastal views. Shuttle bus from Union Station got me to LAX. I could have spent an hour or so looking round downtown LA but following the "joy" of journey out I just felt I wanted to get to the airport nice and early. Anyway, that way I got longer in the business lounge ;-)

Then it was done. What a fab time I'd had. No Katy Perry but one of the funniest moments was when I mentioned to Ben how gorgeous all the Californian girls seemed. "You should come back in the summer...." he replied "...all the same girls but they just don't wear so many clothes"!!!!!!!!!!!