samuri.co.uk

I was wondering this morning on the way into work, if I’m clinically depressed.

Now normally I would regard people claiming to have depression as bitching wusses who just need to MTFU and stop complaining. Life is pretty shit most of the time and the only time it gets any good is just before it’s getting ready to knock your feet out from under you and give you a quick kick in the bollocks. Get used to it, it’s not depression, it’s just life. Perspective is of course a wonderful thing and I suspect seriously considering driving my car into a wall might be one of those indications that perhaps things have got a bit much.

Obviously, lots of people percieve depression as nothing to shout about or even banter about light heartedly on a web blog but having done a quick check with doctor www this morning it appears that I have an alarming number of symptoms suggesting I might be afflicted.

Peaks and troughs is the major one I suspect, although mine seem to coincide with what’s happening to me rather than just occurring out of the blue. I can certainly wander from near euphoria to abject apathy or homocidal rage in a matter of hours depending on what input I’m recieving. I certainly havent been sleeping very well for quite some time, worse than normal. I’m not arsed about the future, I really couldn’t care less if I keep my job or not  no matter what issues that may create.  I’m always knackered although I put that down to not sleeping.

In short, I always assumed this is what everyone’s life was like all the time. It never occurred to me that this wasn’t normal. Maybe it is, I dunno. I’ve always been socially inept, don’t like being around people for any extended periods, highly introvert unless protected by the anonynimity of the internet, lacking in confidence in face to face confrontations. I thought there was a whole generation like me. Not taking pleasure in things? i only enjoy one thing nowadays and and don’t get to do that very often (riding a bike before you get dirty thoughts)

Watching telly though (and I always assumed that regular telly watchers have already accepted their depression and embrace the virtual world they see in the box), there are people who have leaky bladders and poorly tummies who look happy and have social lives. Even some of the people getting cancer treatment look quite chirpy most of the time and they’re got things far worse than me…. if I’ve got things bad, I’m not sure. That’s another sign of depression you know, uncertainty.

Maybe I need a good walk round a renal hospital ward to remind me of just how lucky I am.

if I was going to top myself even that has it’s own set of problems. I’ve no problem with doing the act, it’s the legalities associated with that are the issue. If you commit suicide most of the your life insurance and pension payments don’t come through for your family. If you just disappear then your family get nothing for 8 years! So you have to fake your suicide, make it look like an accident. Car crash, mountain bike accident, open water swimming problems. And it’s much harder to make something look like an accident than it is to do it properly. Maybe people who actually do it don’t care about these things.

Maybe that comes next, at the moment I’m just not interested in anything, even finishing this blog…..

Bike:Chameleon
Distance:24 miles

At the end of a particularly shitty weekend, I chucked the bike into the back of the car and headed for Llandegla. I don’t understand the issues people have with the place. Yeah, it’s not massively technical, yeah, it’s quite easy but it’s a trail centre for heavens sake. None of them are technical or difficult. What do you expect? Even the *hard core* ones like Glentress, Inners and Afan are easy, I don’t get what the bitching is about. They’re fun, and there’s usually a nice cafe at the end. And Llandegla is close and the downhill sections are swoopy and jumpy, jesus, what do you want?

Anyway. I nipped down, got there at 9, sprinted out and put in a quick first loop of the black. Not a massively quick loop admittedly, 1 hour 10 minutes. In my defence it was incredibly slippy and even at that time was crammed with slower riders who got in my way a bit and I did have two small quickly fixed mechanicals not to mention a few minutes on a callout. But I know now it can easily be done in under an hour assuming it’s dry and empty.

Then I did a slightly slower loop. Halfway up the big climb a chap passed me so I speeded up and tagged onto him. He was very quick though and left me a while later. Never mind, time for some jumps. I caught some proper air this time round, even crossed up right in between some lads chatting on top of a jump, that was cool. And I stopped for some tangfastics. Got back to the car and watched a guy in a 4×4 reverse into someone’s car and drive off like a cock without even checking, another idiot in a car that’s too big for him.. No damage done though. I was going to stop for some food and a hot chocolate but decided to just leave in the end. Not a bad day out and two laps gave me over a thousand metres climbing.

180 quid! That’s for a fucking quarter. An immediate sit down chat with the wife was in order. This could end in fisticuffs so I kept the table between us.

Her brother has been seriously ill these last few months so she’s been making constant phonecalls to her family and friends during the day. Also it turns out her mobile phone bill has been 20 quid a week!!!

Right, time to sort things out then. There must be packages that deal with chatty people like her. Bit of research and it turns out that indeed there are. Virgin looks pretty good and we can get cheap broadband (no bittorrenting though) and a mobile phone with that one. I spend a couple more hours looking round the internet and virgin do indeed look like the best deal.

“Are you playing on that computer again?”, my wife enquires.
“I am trying to save us from your dirty phone habit”, I explain sarcastically. Honestly.

I’m just about to hit the button to commit us to Virgin when I decide to quickly check out BT’s offers.

Right there, on the front page, is an advertisement for all day, every day, free calls for 5 quid a month!!! Pardon? I rub my eyes and check again, yep, 5 quid plus line rental and that also gives you half price calls to mobiles. Hang on a minute, why the fuck am I paying through the nose for BT when they offer the service for a fraction of the cost? They continually phone us up trying to pass some bollocks new service onto us, why haven’t they once phoned up to say, “Simply by clicking this button on our website you will save 45 quid a month.”?

Bastards! I’m almost tempted to go with Virgin anyway just to teach the cocks a lesson but common sense takes over for once and I realise the deal is better than Virgin’s. Stick with my current provider for broadband, find a different mobile phone for the wife and go for BT’s all day every day package.

BT, the only bee that can sting you more than once.

Just got to sort out my ISP now who continually send me empty emails and emails saying “You have reached your monthly bandwidth limit, we will now charge you an extra £0″. Oh, and the fuckers never gave me a static IP like they said they would. I hate them too because their customer service blows goats but they’re ultra reliable and the speeds are pretty good for me.

Bike: Chameleon
Distance: 26 miles

Nothing more than a quick blast to test out my new GPS. I worked all morning so as soon as I closed my laptop, I grabbed my GPS, grabbed my bike, split.

It wasn’t long, it was wet and cold, it was a ride I’ve done a thousand times. Just local. The tops were cloaked in cloud so my glasses steamed up constantly. It had too much road. There were too many people up Rivington…

AND IT WAS FREAKING ACE!!!! Just one of those rides where it all just works right. Loved every second of it. The recent rain has made everything sloppy and muddy, got covered in crap. I rode up to the pike and within seconds of me getting there everyone else left and in the thick cloud I became the only man on earth. I looked around, munched on some tangfastics, took a slug of whisky and then rode all the way home, seemingly on a constant downhill (It’s not far off constant downhill anyway but I didn’t notice any of the pedally bits). Great!

GPS worked great too. Very accurate and the batteries have only dropped one bar which is way better than my old GPS.

Feck, feck, feck! That’s one less feck than how many days I went without getting any real sleep. I think that was the wosrt one ever. First night was just normal, ho hum. Second night, that was pretty grim. Spent the night getting up, having a cup of tea, back to bed, get up again. Couldn’t settle down. I was up at about 6 and went out for a ride, that was a bit weird but I got back completely shagged, mentaly and physically. This was going to be the best sleep ever. It was still 2 in the afternoon but I didn’t care, if I could just get one hour in before my son came home from school, it’d be sweet. But no, just lie there. Get up, carry on as normal. The world is pink around the edges now, and jerks a lot.

Gets to ten that evening and I’m showing no signs of dozing off so I make a decision normally poo-pooed by those who ‘know’ what they’re talking about say is a bad one, I decided to get some beer down my neck. Oooh, that feels good. I follow it with some more beer, and some more.  Repeat till about 1 in the morning. I go to sleep too, till about 3. Bugger.

Friday is a strange day indeed. I’m in workand I’m doing stuff but it’s all auto-pilot, nothing makes sense, the world is wibbling quite a bit, like the start of a migraine….but different. I drive into Manchester, some things stand out like they’ve been painted bright, other things are dull. Some things move fast like a bullet, other things stand still. And EVERYTHING IS LOUD! It’s a long day too, I don’t get home till about 7:30. Go straight to bed, sleep for a whole 20 minutes.

Today is the day my brother in law is coming to stay with us with his constant hacking cough, that’ll make sleep easy. Also, the stupid little shit next door decided to fire up Guitar Loser at 2 in the fucking morning and then sing loudly to it like one of those mentally retarded people who go on Pop Idol and actually think they’re good. I get up and check outside, there are two works vans there, he has one of his mates round so any confrontation will no doubt turn into a drunken brawl. Back to bed, lie awake.

Saturday was a day of hard, hard graft. I make 4 trips to the tip with all the crap from our garden and shed, move a load of sand and cement and paving slabs from the from of the house to the side where they are apparently less messy, drive over to Bolton to get some bike bits, clean up the house including two loads of dish washing, strip down my Lemond including hacksawing the stem off to save me having to de-tape the bars (stems are harder than I thought), go shopping, make tea for us all, wash up again, run round like a blue arsed fly for two people who are perfectly capable of getting up and doing stuff for themselves (dunno, must be genetic) and finally get to sit down with a beer about 9. Look round the living room, my wife and her brother have both fallen asleep on the couches. No chacne of watching TV or playing on the XBOX then.

Upstairs to the computer, leaf through the pile of DVD’s I’ve got that I haven’t watched yet, find Dogma, watch most of it, cry when it starts to go fuzzy about twenty minutes from the end, clean it, still screwed. Go to bed, I actually feel like I’m going to get a good nights sleep tonight I think as I start to doze off…..

COUGH COUGH COUGH

/Muffled “It’s the final countdown da na na na!”

I know where my crowbar is, I’ve been using it today, I could resolve this issue right now with two carefully aimed blows and sleep like a baby. And the worrying thing is, I spend some real time contemplating this.

I did finally sleep, a whole 4 hours I think, that’s much better.

Bike: Crosslight
Distance: 91 miles

I had this crazy idea, and I understand it was crazy now, to ride around rivington doing the same loop until I’d climbed 3000m in total. I found the loop, all road to make it fast, rode up there this morning and did the first loop quickly. Checked my watch at the end of it, 45 minutes (for 300m climbing) , 9 more loops like that…? No way, sod that, I’ll just go for a ride.

So I headed off towards Preston, the idea being I would ride down to Southport and pick up the TPT, offroad it to Warrington. Of course, I forgot this bike makes my back hurt on long rides. Not to mention it being frigging cold and by the time I got to the TPT I was feeling seriously unwell. I’ve not slept for three days so that will explain some of it. I decided to bug out and find the quickest route home. It’s still a bloody long way mind once you’re on the TPT, and seriously hard work. Did it all on three eccles cakes.

Got home feeling sick, caught the builders standing around doing fuck all, went in and made myself a cup of tea, showered, tried to sleep….nope. But that’s another story.

Bike: Chameleon
Distance: 36 miles

Nice ride. Set off a bit late but it was sunny if a bit nippy. Ground was iron hard and very fast. Got to rivington, powered up the AICR nicely despite it being caked in snow. Everywhere was icy as hell…errrm that doesn;t make much sense but it was very icy. Loads of people about, loads of cyclists. Up to the Pike, met Matt at the gate for a quick chat. Back down, minced down the ICR (no idea why, just lost a truck load of confidence at the first corner and couldn’t keep my feet clipped in after that) and got passed for the first time ever by a whippety looking chap. That was a bt embarrassing.

I was going to do some big riding over great hill or something but decided to just go up Lead Mines Clough where there is proper snow on the tops, 6 or 7 inches in places. Back down to Anglezarke, Healy Nab, farm tracks to Adlington, canal back home. Glad I didn’t go for a biggie cos I completely bonked on the way home, completely. Proper running on empty (but then I went out with nothing to eat and took nothing with me) , almost collapsed when I got home and ate two massive cheese butties, three cups of sugared tea and then slumped in a chair for an hour until my body recovered. Finish off with rear hub strip down, pawl de-muck/regreased, rub with a rag.

Bingo. Riding is ace when you only do it when you want to.

Bike: Chameleon
Distance: 29 miles

The forcast said lots of snow. That was a lie, it wasn’t much at all. Still, it was enough to scupper what I had planned (huge massive climby route) so I got the Chameleon out and nipped up Rivington. Rivington was treacherous  at the lower levels, just sheet ice with a coating of snow on top. Proper death trap stuff. Went over a couple of times. Still, excellent fun only marred by my wife calling me and asking me to come home for various reasons.  Still had a right good time though.