16 June, 2008

Mondayitis

OK- so I didn't ride this morning. I've been told that you shouldn't ride every day- you need to give your body a chance to recover. And with yesterday's rather chilly temperatures still working their way out of my system, it wasn't a hard sell to stay in bed.
So I shut off my alarm on the first beep at 4:30 and snuggled down in the blankets for a couple of extra hours in the sack.
I guess it must be my bike getting back at me- "You didn't take me out for a spin today! Just you wait!" Call it carbon karma if you will.
I arrive at work at the usual time- about 30 minutes before I'm actually scheduled to start- turn on the laptop, grab a coffee and sit down to log on- but something is not quite right. Clink, clink, flash, flash in an endless pattern. One of the tubes of the dual fluoro lights above my desk is malfunctioning (I will call it much worse as the day progresses).
Being the dutiful sort, I log a call with our corporate Help Desk by leaving a message because "all of our operators are currently busy". A couple of hours go by and no response to my message- oh and in the interim, my immediate supervisor has appeared behind my desk. Not that I mind- it's just that he usually works in an office about 1100 km away and I haven't heard from him in a couple of weeks. Sort of makes the hair on the back of your neck stick up a bit in a "What's going on here?" feeling.
Now, I've often wondered how difficult it can be to change a light bulb and I think I'm going to find out. Two and a half hours after leaving the message with the Help Desk, I called again and actually spoke with a real person who, in a most helpful manner, logged a call. No sooner had she completed the call when I received two emails advising two different call numbers for my flickering light- which had now taken to giving that characteristic "clink" that only a fluorescent light can make on start-up.
Let's time warp ahead to 3:45 this afternoon and the light still hasn't been fixed. The flickering has just about taken me to the point of distraction but at least I was able to drown out the "Clink, clink" with my headphones and a bit of Queen and Billy Idol.
4:00- I'm outta here, making my way home as quickly as possible to get to the bike shop and meet my wife who was looking at a new soft-tail MTB for the upcoming Paluma Push. And you know what- getting on the bike and heading off down the road at 4o km/hr put everything else out of my mind- just me and the bike and the road.
Oh yeah- the bike shop had assembled the wrong size bike for Dee so no sale there today...
And does anyone want to make a bet on whether the light will be repaired when I show up for work tomorrow?
I'll be taking my bike out tomorrow- I don't dare have too many more days like this..

Cheers

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