Thursday 3rd December 09

A good day.... I got up in time to make my muesli and have breakfast and take my damaged trailer to Cycle Heaven (I managed to break a couple of spokes with a badly aimed attempt at a narrow bridge... the wheel slipped off and I kept going, buckling the wheel). I delivered that and then went to see Pauline, to give her a few more logs and to get my regular bottle of Port, my annual present from her. Mind you, I haven't actually finished last year's bottle yet! That's how little I drink...

But lovely to see Pauline. She had some very good news for me, potentially very good news but I promised to keep it completely confidential, so oh, blog readers, you will just have to wait. But I am very happy.

I then went to the bank, was surprised how little money we have, went to the building society and took a wad of notes round to pump up our account. Then back to the bike shop... and the chap assigned to my wheel was still wrestling with it, so I said I'd collect by the end of the day.

Cycled home and sorted out a large pile of envelopes for composting and put some cheques in the post, assorted memberships (Chartered Institute of Environmental Health, Equity, Garden Organic).

I finished making the tomato soup in the afternoon, and washed up and did bits and bobs of housework, plus computery stuff.

Then at 4pm, back into town to pick up my trailer and popped into see Dylan at Millers Yard to pick up his unwanted orange halves and chat about York Green Festival. We had a lovely chat and I got a second piece of very good news... but again, this is embargoed until it is ready to be made public. I cycled away happy but with a very heavy load of compostables.

I had soup and an avocado sandwich for tea, and then looked at my emails to try to find out where this evening's York in Transition meeting was. No mention of the venue whatsoever! It could be St Nicks or it could be The Stables, or even someone's house... i cannot remember and it isn't in my diary nor is it in any of the email communications... So I stayed at home and watched an excellent programme on BBC1, called The Human Power Station, a Bang Goes The Theory Special. This is available on iPlayer for a week... it's a must watch! The experiment was to install an average family into a house wired up with cameras and all the normal mod cons... and to ask them to live normally for a day. However, they didn't know that the house was switched to being powered by a bank of 80 cyclists, each on a stationary bike with a dynamo, capable of producing 100 watts if going normally, or up to 200w if pedalling really hard. The cyclists could see a dial with how much was being used versus how much was being produced... and it is a very exciting and interesting result. I loved it anyway, and decided to start a facebook 'fan' page:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Human-Power-Station-Bang-Goes-The-Theory-Special/216787805126?ref=ts

So, a happy and productive day, despite my foolishness in breaking a wheel and having a reasonable bill to have it repaired.