Category Archives: Amuse-Bruce

Pack up your troubles?

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So this weekend’s jaunt was a repeat of last weekend’s run from North Berwick to home, but this time carrying luggage. Lev’s panniers weighed 1 stone 8 lbs (9.8kg), and contained most of the things I think I’ll take in August. I have no idea how much Fidel’s panniers weighed, but rather than faff with packing lists, Elly quickly filled them with old copies of the London Review of Books.

Here’s the inevitable cyclemeter map, and below is Lev’s panniers’ contents. There’s a PDF of my packing list here just in case you’re really interested.

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Slow progress

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It’s been fairly challenging recently. I won’t go into why here – let’s just say that a combination of issues has led to full nights of sleep being conspicuously absent. I’d not been spinning for at least two weeks, so endorphins have been in very short supply. This culminated yesterday in a spinning session that was an exercise in fighting myself, followed by a painful cycle home and a ‘cultural’ event that I should have body-swerved.

Elly has also not been having a good time recently, and we’ve both missed burning up the miles together. So I’m pleased that we were both able to cycle from North Berwick to Servants’ Quarters, taking a longer route than strictly necessary. Here’s the obligatory cyclometer map:

map of cycling route from North Berwick to Edinburgh

Click to see full-size map on cyclometer website

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Keeping the rubber side down

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It being sunny and all that, and the ever-wonderful Elly both not being at work, and us needing to get some miles under our belts in preparation for this summer’s wee jaunt, we took to Edinburgh’s somewhat patchy cycle-paths. Because this was our first cycle together in far too long, we didn’t push hard, and we had a wee pause at the Beach House after fighting through the crows on Portobello promenade. So I’ve just had my first doppelespresso of the year. You have been warned!

graphic of our route around Edinburgh, with hyperlink to cyclometer data

Click the graphic to see the cyclometer data.

I’d forgotten how much I enjoy being out with Elly, Fidel and Lev!

My wallet is bulging – with paper receipts

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I prefer to pay for nearly everything using my debit card. (The exceptions are the snack vending machines at work, because they talk back to lusers with an annoying Sirius Cybernetics voice. I prefer to receive receipts, and keep them to check that the entries on my bank statements are believable. However, this means my wallet tends to bulge with valueless pieces of paper.

It struck me tonight that this is a huge waste of resources too: paper, printing ink, electricity, whatever the printer is made of, people’s time putting rolls of till receipt into machines (been there, done that, bought the t-shirt with the image of trapped fingers) and so on. And there is no need for any of this! Continue reading →

What has Bruce been up to (late March to early April 2018)

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Last week

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What has Bruce been up to? (again)

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Following on from this post – I’ll try to blog each week:

  • Tuesday 13th: being interviewed about my experiences of Edinburgh, and how tourists and residents see different aspects of the city
  • Tuesday 13th to Thursday 15th: on this course, which was ‘enhanced’ by two fire-alarms and freezing our collective bits off in the snow
  • Thursday 15th: completing two funding applications, one of which succeeded. (The other will be decided in about 3 month’s time.)

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