bangeo

Justice in Scotland?

Just got the witness account which caused my bicycle accident case to be dismissed from court. I won’t post any personal details, but I will sit for as long as it takes typing the account in and hoping that someone can explain to me why I should continue paying taxes and living in this country. p.s. the typo’s and bad grammar are verbatim from the court document.

1. I am retired - I do hold a driving licence but I do not own a car at this time.

2. I am asked about  an acciden on Wednesday 01/08/07 on Swindon Street,Dalmuir

3. It must have been about 08:00hrs - I had walked over the railway bridge from my home and was heading south down Swindon Street towards Dumbarton Road - McGregor’s Bar on my left - I was on the opposite side of the street.

4. I saw a bakers lorry stationary on Dumbarton Road - it was facing west but it had its indicator on and was obviously waiting to turn right into Swindon Street towards me.

5. I saw the lorry start its turn so Dumbarton Road eastbound must have been clear for it - I could not see round the corner to my right.

6. The lorry was still turning when a bicycle came flying off the pavement ahead of me and onto the road in front of the lorry - it looked as if the rider was trying to swerve around the lorry but he was clipped by its front wing and he bounced up in the air and hit the road - so did the bike.

7. I noticed that the rider was a male - he was not wearing a crash helmet. I would say he was in his mid 30’s.

8. It was daylight at the time of the collision - I don’t know why it happened but I blame the cyclist - the lorry driver was on the road and had right of way over anything on the pavement.

9. In addition, the bike seemed to be going pretty quickly - too much so for crossing this road at a junction.

So, there you have it I was cycling on the pavement and rode into the front of a lorry while cycling at more than the 30 mph speed limit. Pretty impressive if it wasn’t lies from start to finish.

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GLAJOG ‘08 - Glasgow To John O’Groats - Update

The GLAJOG ‘08 planning phase is well underway thanks to a constructive session in the pub on Saturday afternoon.

The route will be refined over the coming weeks and there may even be an extension to take in Cape Wrath if we can find a route that has some decent accommodation.

The route as it stands at the moment is:

Day 1:
Scotstoun to Bridge of Orchy
58.5 miles

Day 2:
Bridge of Orchy to Spean Bridge
48.8 miles

Day 3:
Spean Bridge to North Kessock
60.7 miles

Day 4:
North Kessock to Lairg
45.4 miles

Day 5:
Lairg to Bettyhill
45.5 miles

Day 6:
Bettyhill to John O’Groats
50 miles

There’s a nice graphical view in Bikely that shows each days route and elevation profile (thanks Paul), just click on the links above to see the routes, then click the “Show” option on the Bikely menu to see the elevation profile.

Next task for me is to arrange 5 star accommodation on our £50 per night budget.

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GLAJOG ‘08 - Glasgow To John O’Groats - Update

First training ride yesterday and all went very well.

You can read all about it over on Ade’s cycling site Cycleography

More updates to follow over the coming weeks…..

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Home!

Well, that’s me back after four weeks out in Ottawa. Despite the flight cancellations in Chicago and Heathrow, I amazingly made it through unscathed and had a very uneventful journey home (apart from the pirate of course).

It feels kinda weird being back here on my own, but it’s really good to get back into a kitchen after eating out for the past month. I know that sounds like fun, but it wears thin pretty quickly and no matter how hard I tried I just couldn’t find a decent curry out there.

The weather was warming up nicely when I left, so I’m not too disappointed that I’ll have to pop out there a few times more. There are a few more potential curry hotspots that I want to try out anyway.

Hopefully meeting the boys tomorrow for a few catchup beers in Lab, so that should get me back to reality pretty quickly.

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Niagara Falls

I set the alarm for 6am today for my big day trip to Niagara Falls.

It’s a bit of a stretch doing this trip from Ottawa in a day, as it’s a 1200km round trip, but I’ve always wanted to see the falls and I needed something to take my mind off the impending Old Firm game.

Being the adventurous type meant that I hadn’t really bothered to look at a map before setting off. I reckoned that using the car’s compass to plot a South-westerly course would be close enough. Unfortunately, as I may have mentioned before, Canada is a BIG place….. not so big however that your’s truly couldn’t drive right off the end and into the hands of some rather unpleasant US Immigration Officers. Oops.

Them: “Passport Sir!”, Me: “Errrmmm, I left it in the hotel because I wasn’t planning to leave the country”. 15 minutes later they sort of believed that I had stumbled out of Canada by mistake and sent me on my way.

Things improved greatly shortly afterwards when I discovered that my car was equipped with Sirius Satellite radio and that Channel 67 (a Celtic station) was playing the game live. Listening to a Celtic commentary was torture, but made our victory at the final whistle all the sweeter.

Anyway, back to the falls. Absolutely spectacular! I was amazed by the huge ice formations around the falls, showing just how cold it has been here recently. Many photos taken, I headed back to Ottawa, in a thankfully wrong-turn free return trip.

Well worth the long drive.

Click the pic to see some more.

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GLAJOG ‘08 - Glasgow To John O’Groats

The date has been set and the charity sponsor page set up so there’s no going back now!

GLAJOG ‘08 - Glasgow To John O’Groats

• Date: 2nd August 2008
• Distance: 350 miles (ish - final route to be confirmed)
• Time: 5 days (ish)
• Participants: Ade & Geo
• Charity: Leukaemia Research

More details to follow. In the mean time head on over to our fund-raising page and dig deep in aid of a very worthy cause!

Posted in Cycling, GLAJOG '08 | 2 Comments »

Something fishy goin on…

It seems sushi is the big thing here in Ottawa. The hotel I’m staying in has it’s own Japanese sushi chef and when I went out with a few guys from the office last night, the choice of restaurant was between three different sushi places.

A refreshing change from the USA, where the best you’re likely to get is Sushiburger on a sesame bun with extra fries.

The meal last night was superb, with some of the best sashimi I’ve ever tasted, all prepared at the table. The restaurant was called Kinki and i’d recommend checking out the Website even if you don’t like sushi.

http://www.kinki.ca/

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Ottawa Walking Tour

Planned a nice 5 mile route round the Canadian capital for my walk today. Starting at Byward Market on the East side of the city I walked to the Rideau canal and wandered along the path you can see in the picture. It was -10 at this point, with a headwind and totally freezing. I had to seek refuge in the first Starbucks I could find, where the girls took pity on me and dug a hat and pair of gloves out of their lost property section. Brilliant!

Slightly warmer now, I headed to the parliament buildings. These are fantastic gothic, castle style buildings with massive granite gargoyles. Very impressive. Unfortunately the viewing tower was closed due to ice, so I couldn’t take in the view from the top.

Onwards then and across the Ottawa river via the Portage bridge to Hull. Back into Quebec at this point, so everything is French once again, unfortunately no burning sheep to warm my hands on though. Apparently there is a fair amount of rivalry between the  occupants of Ottawa and Hull, not surprising with such a big cultural divide.

Back to Ottawa over the Alexandria bridge and starting to need some warmth again!  Final stop of the day is lunch in Byward Market. Salmon Teryaki at a world famous deli whose name escapes me at the moment. Very nice though.

All in all, a really good day and more enjoyable than Montreal. I like cities that you can do a full circuit of in a day. I think I missed out a bit in Montreal, as I didn’t have a guide book, but I will head back better prepared next weekend.

Lots of pics over on Flickr.

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Brass Monkeys Spotted in Montreal

It gets mighty chilly in these parts folks!

I set off this morning from Ottawa at around 8am for a day trip to Montreal. The temperature indicator in the car read -19 degrees, so I knew that the two jumpers I had on probably weren’t going to be enough to fend off the cold. Things improved slightly later in the day (-7 max), but it remained at frosbite levels with a strong wind all day. Apparently in the winter the city is even colder than Moscow due to the windchill factor.

Montreal, on a warmer day, would be a lovely city. Very, very French, but also cultural and cosmopolitan. I spent most of my time today in the downtown area where there seem to be some nice restaurants, bars and shops (didn’t go into the shops obviously!). There are lots of parks and interesting statues and architecture, but it was just so cold that I couldn’t spend more than a couple of hours wandering about.

I will be back to Montreal at some point during this trip and if I manage to equip myself with woolly hat and gloves I might even venture down to the waterfront area!

There are some more pictures over on my Flickr site. Just click the image above to visit.

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Fight the Foo

I’m not normally a huge Foo Fighters fan, but when someone walked into my office today asking if I fancied an all expenses paid corporate ticket to their gig in Ottawa, it didn’t take me long to shake off the jet lag and say “oh, ok then”.

The concert was at the new Ottawa Senators ice hockey stadium, appropriately named Scotia Bank

Two supporting acts, HiFi Handgrenades and About Me! set the tempo midway between Green Day and Green Day, but as soon as Dave Grohl took the stage the quality improved dramatically.

The man has a big ego and likes to talk himself up and the act was a wee bit theatrical for a “rock” band - there was actually a triangle solo, but it was all nicely tongue in cheek.

They played for two hours, so the advertised 1030 finish was actually 1230 (0430 UK time :O) and as we left the stadium into a major blizzard I was starting to worry about getting home. Luckily the Canadian nationals are a totally different breed from the US or British post night out crowd and as I was walking towards the bus stop a nice couple pulled over and offered me a lift to the hotel. Why can’t we all be that nice! An Ottawa taxi driver chased after me yesterday, because I had overpaid him by five dollars!!

The hospitality was brilliant, waitress service at a concert…. I must be getting old.

Have a look at some of the shaky pics on Flickr.

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