You may recall that in my last blog post I set off without bicycle repair gear only to get a puncture more than 5 miles out of the city, what could be a worse case of Murphy’s law? Well on Monday I set off to Halfords to get some new inner tubes and also a puncture repair kit (I’ve ran out of instant patches). Rather than take my usual route along the cycle path of Aykley Wood and via Newton Hall (now 50% mapped as a result of many trips), I decided to go along the road to Framwellgate Moor and do some mapping in new territory.
Everyone seemed to be cutting grass verges beside the road or around carparks. I surveyed a number of roads, a lot of which were quite rough and more like tracks so I’m unsure which side of the terraces was the main entrance. I came across Beyond Ourselves, the charity shop owned/run by my church, after hearing loads about it the last two years. As I took a photo I was prompted to survey the other shops along the road and almost missed a pub. I wonder how I will tag the shop, religion=christian has the debate that the shop is open to all religions though, owner=Emanuel Church is probably suitable, and I’m not sure how accepted shop=charity or shop=second_hand are. Harry has it worse with shops though.
I eventually cycled into Pity Me (insert pun here), and reached the Arnison Centre. It was a nice day for cycling just for the sake of it, and so I cycled round all the lanes of the Sainsburys’ car park, people must have been totally stumped as to what I was doing. In Halfords they were still doing the 3 inner tubes for the price of 2 deal. However there were none in my size (dear, it’s as terrible as women’s shopping problems). The guy behind the desk happily dug around in a bargin bin for me but only found one. So he kindly put it in a drawer and would ring me back when he got two more, that were possibly sitting downstairs in an unprocessed delivery. Ohwell, another 20 minute cycle out of town wouldn’t be bad if I knew they would have them reserved for me.
So I cycled back to town and went to do an hours or so revision in a university computer room. I come out side and unlock my bicycle, something is not right. Ah, I have a completly flat tyre a few hours after leaving Halfords empty handed. It was fine walking 20 minutes home, but I can’t repair or replace the inner tube and had to order the stuff online. For the last week I’ve been missing being able to feel free and relax by going for a cycle, and getting to good revision locations takes soooo much longer on foot, thus taking away critical revision time. Is this grounds for mitigating circumstances and mentioning Murphy’s Law on the form? I had also beeen feeling good with only 2 punctures in about 6 months (plus one due to not replacing the tyre after the last). Now my recent record is 2 punctures in 5 days (different wheels). Framwellgate Moor may get mapped last because of this.
Anyway, 2 exams down and 3 to go. Revision will now be broken up by breaks to check the post at college. Unfortunatly they don’t accept deliveries on weekends and I’m told it’s a bank holiday on Monday (teaching parts of the university don’t acknowledge bank holidays). My netbook hard drive has filled up, 3 GBs of road sign and post box photos since October 2008. I need to work out moving stuff around until I can trace all my surveying.