2013: Married life begins

Married life begins in earnest this year.  There has been a 'phoney war' period since October, when Laila and I carried out the religious ceremony in Beirut.  This was not the legal marriage; we decided to have the registrar marry us in the UK, on 16th February in Manchester Town Hall.  Preparations are still underway.  Invitations have now been sent, I think, and most of the important things organized, but there are plenty of tasks to be completed.  Laila has been wonderful, and has shouldered most of the burden, partly because she is still living in Manchester and I'm down south in Eton, but mainly because she is fantastic!

An update for James...

...as he is the only one who might even spot this! This blog has been mouldering for two and a half years now, and I cannot remember the last time I thought of its existence. If you read this, let me know! It's like a message in a bottle. Who will pluck it from the sea and uncork it?

It's Tour time!

It is that time of year when Phil Liggett, Gary Imlach and the team bring me an inexplicable feeling of contentment as crazy fellows pedal round France. The highlights may have been jumping around from C4 to ITV and ITV4 over the past few years, but it makes no difference...France remains the same and the tour is still the grand act that it has always been. The music is still the same, and it is time to indulge in the lovely jargon: pelotons, echelons, flammes rouge, lanternes rouge, EPO, domestiques etc. No doubt the majority of the riders are hopped up on their boosted blood, but it doesn't alter the fact that I love the Tour.

Mark Cavendish won a stage today with some stunning speed at the final sprint, but it's the mountains that all us armchair Tour riders are waiting for, and they begin tomorrow. Bring it on!

(ITV4 should bring back the riders' intro at the advert breaks.)

Holy Update, Batman!

Here I am, writing an entry in my blog, watching my AS physics students struggle to complete a past paper. It doesn't look so hot for the exam next week, although it is very hot in this room.

Three cheers for Padua!

My, my, it has been a while!

And what have I to show for it? Well, I have been assigned my house at Eton. It's a nice little terraced house, overlooking the cricket fields and next to the golf course. The situation is very Leafy. Now I have to fill it with stuff because it only comes with carpets, a cooker (bought off the previous occupant) and a few shelves. My kind neighbour, who is moving, has given me some the stuff that he no longer needs, so I am now fully equipped with chairs, table, sofa bed, wardrobe and fridge. Really, what more do I need?

I have also started work at the King's Buildings in Edinburgh, doing general setting up of a lab. It's fun to be back, although I had a bad experience with bolts this morning, as the threads got crossed and they had to be sheared off. Anyway, tomorrow should be a better day.

And I went to Venice, but my camera got lost, so I have no photos of it. Still, it was a great break, and because I've been there twice before, I didn't feel the need to run around and do all the Sights. I did go to Padua for a day, and in the big old city hall there was a 20 metre Foucault's pendulum. Accompanying the pendulum was a computer to inform the visitor how it works. It was the best science exhibit I've ever seen, because the computer slideshow did not patronise at all, but went into great detail about rotating reference frames, Coriolis force, with vector algebra and everything! Imagine seeing that in a British museum. Never in a million years. Hurrah for Padua, I say!

(I commented on this to my dad, who had visited it before, and he said that he couldn't understand it at all and therefore it was a rubbish exhibit. Nonsense!)

Tryfan and the Glyders

This weekend, Iain, Ed and I went to Snowdonia. Iain had mooted the idea of a weekend in Wales and I suggested that we climb Tryfan because I had heard good things about it from James. We were not disappointed. The steep, rocky scramble was just what I wanted, and was the perfect contrast to the flatlands of Cambridge that the other two needed. The weather was atypical: clear skies and sunshine all day. Our route was a clockwise loop, starting in the north, so the sun followed us round and left us asymmetrically sunburnt.


We did the traditional route, starting from the A5, up the north ridge of Tryfan (above), down the Bristly Ridge, then up Glyder Fach and Fawr before descending the ridge in between the two Glyders. The route was not very far in horizontal terms but it was full of scrambling. The scrambling verged on rock-climbing at one point as our route-finding went a bit awry amongst the heaped slabs of Tryfan's north ridge.

This is our geologist, Ed, who had lots to say about rocks, striation, foliation...

And this is Iain, who had nothing useful to say about rocks, but did have things to say about Queen of the South and Gretna.

This is the most scrambly part of the ridge. We made a bit hard for ourselves near the top but we were determined to get the full Tryfan experience.


And here is a view of the top of Tryfan. You can just see Adam and Eve at the top of the hill. I did the leap between the rocks, but Iain and Ed declined.

We skirted the tricky buttresses of Glyder Fach and climbed the steep scree slope to the left. The top of Fach is not so exciting, but it is odd-looking. It is a rough, rocky plateau with little tufts of rock splinters dotted around. The cantilever stone shown below is on the plateau.


Below, looking back from Glyder Fawr towards Tryfan and Glyder Fach.


And here is Snowdon in the distance, with Crib Goch visible.


After completing our tour of the Glyders, we descended a ridge to the east of Tryfan.

A grand day out!

Recycling

Over the past (nearly) month, I have been occupied by looking for, buying and then riding my new bike. My old mountain bike, which I had had for 11 years, was stolen in Cambridge. With the help of Robin, who professes to be something of an expert in these matters, I plumped for a discounted 2006 Trek 6500, sans disc brakes. It is a lovely orange colour, and I shall put up a photo at some point. I decided not to go for disc brakes because it allowed me to get better componentry for my budget, plus a lighter bike. The bike is disc ready, so upgrading later should not be a problem.

I got the bike about 2 weeks ago and I have been out on four rides. There was an interlude of about a week when I went to visit Laila and Sai. The Saturday was my birthday, and we spent it in Bath, enjoying the sunshine, ice creams, Georgian and Roman architecture, and donkeys. We also called in at Taunton and Cheddar Gorge. I never realised that the Gorge would be so dramatic! I then stayed in Stoke for a few days, before calling in to see Jonathan in Bolton. A great trip and wonderful to see everyone again and catch up. It's reassuring that we never change much.

Anyway, after the four rides, the bike is still going well, but I have yet to figure out how to properly clean grit off the chain. Must buy some accessories! Paraphenalia and upgrade purchases are one of the joys of cycling. The only gripe I have is with the forks. They are Manitou Axel Elite with 80mm travel. That's not much travel, and so far I have only been able to get about 60mm out of them. I'm not a mad cyclist, but I do some drop offs and hops, and I have ploughed the front end in occasionally. Surely, I should have got more out of them than this? Plus the fork feels quite stiff. I'm not greatly experienced with forks, but I think a 100mm+ fork with plusher ride will be my next big upgrade, whenever I can afford it.