Author: Buck

Cancel last. Cancel everything. Momentous things are afoot.

Sod the bike-bus, the camper van and the transfer-to-Cornwall job, I have a new plan; Canada!

Home of the brave, land of the free. Or some such.

I had another go at my Ironlap today.

The bottle dynamo, which I repaired, re-positioned and tested before setting out, failed utterly. Again. I had to keep stopping, putting in the next position on my ‘phone, starting the GPS, and the satnav, seeing where I was supposed to go, then shutting it all down again to save my battery. Then I’d find I’d missed my turn and have to backtrack. And so it went.

That ‘hill’ at 48 miles, that a fellow triathlete described as “a bit of a leg-burner” is an utter nightmare. You wind up a steep hill. (You get to the summit, think ‘YAY!’, whizz to the bottom on the other side then find you’ve missed your turn and have to go back up the hill. After about 50 hard miles. Your tears on the return ascent are hidden by the sweat running off you.)  I was thinking that at least I’d done the worst hill, that now it was just normal roads back to Warrington. Ha! The road that I should have turned on to, Rivington Way (Rivington something) is the nightmare, the preceding climb was just a warm up.

After my bump two weeks ago I was not so good last week.

You have to have confidence you know what you are doing and a sense of what you can do. Like when you are in a car and doing a reverse manoeuvre and there is a post or low wall. You have to hold in your head where the back end of your car is, where it is going to go and where the object would be if you could still see it.

Of course it can be a tad trickier when you can’t see the whole side your 13 metre trailer, or the wall you are trying not to hit, and you have to judge the amount it is going to swing (without reference to the striking point or the point that could be struck).

After the hols last week I thought the works or the agency had got rid of me but it turned out they had just lost my number (along with their mobile.)

Sunday evening they ‘phoned me on the landline and ruined my chi. I was quite looking forward to having Monday off. C’est la vie.

Bright side being, A: it gave me some wages, B: it got me back into driving. You wouldn’t think I’d need a refresher after doing it daily for six months, but at the first island driving away from my works I found I was approaching at car speeds. Not good in a truck. Then on Wednesday I backed into a barrier. Total bummer.

Turns out work haven’t got rid of me, the agency lost their mobile ‘phone and with it my mobile number. They rang me on the landline tonight, I’m back in as usual all week. Bugger. I was looking forward to a few days indolence.

It’s good in several ways though; it pays the bills while I apply for another job and it keeps my hand in so I’m confident for any assessment. Also it looks better applying for a job whilst in work, especially applying for a trunking driving job whilst you are doing a trunking driving job.