Monday, September 24, 2007

Weekend of Biking


As mentioned, I brought my bike to London with me and I spent the majority of the weekend riding it. It is definitely suffering a little bit. I had to mostly stay in the same gear the whole time and in true Amber fashion suffered one flat. It will go to the bike shop before I get on it again but it was nice to be reacquainted with it. Saturday we rode to Windsor, which is not as far as I would have thought. Only 20 miles or so. Sadly, it was a somewhat stressful 20 miles. Riding out of London was no fun, especially for a girl who still looks the wrong way when crossing the street. And who can only ride in one gear. That said though, riding in London can be great because it is all flat. That I like. There was a nice bit riding into Windsor that was pure biking heaven. Leafy trees and wide open lanes with cars few and far in-between. We actually had to take an alternate route into Windsor because the normal route was shut due to foot and mouth. Crazy! Windsor was beautiful and I strangely didn't remember too much of it from my last visit there. It was ten years ago but it seems like it has grown a lot since then. Or it could be that my memory is rubbish.

Sunday there was a bike festival in central London and all the streets were closed for cyclists. My initial thought was you could just cruise around randomly and have a go at the city. Not really how it worked so much. They had planned routes for people to take and it was almost as bad as being stuck in traffic. I enjoyed being on my bike and seeing all the London sites but it was kind of annoying having to start and stop and be told where to go. Felt a little bit like the AIDS ride and trying to ride out of camp. People everywhere!

All this biking meant I have not done my long run for the week but I plan to do that today. It was raining earlier but it seems to have stopped and now there is a not so gentle breeze blowing. I am not sure which is worse, wind or rain.

Friday, September 21, 2007

San Francisco and Back Again

Just returned from a trip back to San Francisco and the first thing I noticed when I got here was that it is officially autumn/winter. There is a definite chill in the air that was not here when I left. Although I don't feel the need to break out the winter coat yet, we have passed into that period when evenings are always cool and you never leave the house without some sort of coat. And we didn't even get a summer.



Trip to San Francisco was really great. Went to celebrate my parents 50th wedding anniversary. We threw them a big old party and almost every member of the Mooney clan was there. It sounds a bit cheese but it was really special. It was a very nice reminder that I have a very nice family and I am really a lucky person. The siblings who organized the party did an excellent job and I don't think it could have been more perfect. Something to remember for a long long time. (the following picture is a new all time favorite...)



After the family left I spent most of my time working on my dissertation, which is now completed and handed in. I am sooo happy it is finished. I should have completed it before I went, and I really regretted that I didn't, but I still had fun seeing everyone, even if I didn't get to spend as much time with everybody that I wanted to.



Now I am looking for a job. I actually had an interview today for a temp position doing web stuff and it went pretty well so we will see. In the meanwhile I am knitting like crazy cause I haven't been able to knit for ages and I went to the yarn shop with Laura which is NEVER a good idea! She is always doing cool things which makes me want to do cool things and she has the same philosophy it seems about sales which is I can't afford NOT to buy it! I finished a project I had been working on and when I stop being lazy I will take a picture and post it. Still training for the marathon and have to run 19 miles this weekend. Yuck. I also brought my bike back with me and will be riding it to Windsor this weekend. How cool is that????

Oh, and this is a picture of the park very near my house at sunset. Pretty.