Numbers mean a lot to me. Dates, ages, numbers.
In the early days of bike computers - remember those, often with a wire going down the fork to a magnet which linked to one on the spokes, and with a cunning circumference measurement input told you how far you'd gone, how long your journey took, what your fastest speed was etc. Basic stuff. In those days I had a spreadsheet for my commute to work. I could see that I was getting quicker, and it was satisfying. There were graphs.
I like Strava, it deals heavily in numbers. How fast I did the same segment a year ago, two years ago, the dips and troughs of when I'm going quickly and when I'm not.
The Jawbone is another number generating device. How much sleep I'm getting, how much of it is sound. How many "steps" I take per day, how I compare to the average population of over 40s. It has graphs too.
Disappointingly, I'm now playing a numbers game with the bathroom scales. It's not one which is giving me a lot of joy, other than the relief of seeing the numbers coming down. I don't like what I'm seeing, either on the numbers front or above my waist band. It makes me unhappy. I'm about 10 kilos over the weight I kind of like to be - and that's not really about numbers, that's about feel and appearance. However, I am less than I was, and I'm on the way down.
Tuesday 26 May 2015
Thursday 21 May 2015
Big numbers
It is a big numbers kind of a year. This is indeed somewhat bewildering.
Here I am, with these unbelievably clear memories of 2005, ten years ago, with a completely different life. Well, ish.
Ten years ago, for example, I know without looking at the calendar (which I probably still have somewhere because it's a curious relic of unbelievable, unreal activity) that this was the time when Dave's radiotherapy course was nearly complete. I mostly remember because our wedding anniversary was on 17th May and I remember spending it driving to Christie's hospital, parking, having a cup of tea in the canteen, waiting, waiting and waiting, then driving home along the M60 and not doing very much else. That was a decade ago.
Yesterday I remembered other things. I remembered meeting my fella for the first time. It was the three year anniversary of us meeting, curiously, a date memorable because on the ride there was birthday cake shared by his ex girlfriend. So when we went out yesterday with his ex and her husband (for indeed they are newly weds) for a bike ride and a meal it was this interesting celebration. First and foremost her birthday but clear in his and my memories it was also oddly our anniversary, with the bike ride starting from the same Hayfield car park in which we'd met.
And here I am, in a different house in a different town, with a different(ish) job, a different fella and a very different life to ten years ago. No longer do I spend weekends and weeks doing voluntary Canal Restoration and the weeks in between planning, preparing, sorting out details of equipment, permissions, work schedules, people, transport, accommodation and food. I mostly spend them riding my bike. Occasionally I walk up a hill. I am still in a state of wonder at living in the High Peak.
And this year, my age hits a big number, I hope. I expect to turn 47 in August. We all have every reasonable right to expect that, to hope for that, to be reasonably complacent about making it to 47. Dave, though stopped two days short of that. So, to me, to be alive at the age of 47 will be something quite quite special.
Here I am, with these unbelievably clear memories of 2005, ten years ago, with a completely different life. Well, ish.
Ten years ago, for example, I know without looking at the calendar (which I probably still have somewhere because it's a curious relic of unbelievable, unreal activity) that this was the time when Dave's radiotherapy course was nearly complete. I mostly remember because our wedding anniversary was on 17th May and I remember spending it driving to Christie's hospital, parking, having a cup of tea in the canteen, waiting, waiting and waiting, then driving home along the M60 and not doing very much else. That was a decade ago.
Yesterday I remembered other things. I remembered meeting my fella for the first time. It was the three year anniversary of us meeting, curiously, a date memorable because on the ride there was birthday cake shared by his ex girlfriend. So when we went out yesterday with his ex and her husband (for indeed they are newly weds) for a bike ride and a meal it was this interesting celebration. First and foremost her birthday but clear in his and my memories it was also oddly our anniversary, with the bike ride starting from the same Hayfield car park in which we'd met.
And here I am, in a different house in a different town, with a different(ish) job, a different fella and a very different life to ten years ago. No longer do I spend weekends and weeks doing voluntary Canal Restoration and the weeks in between planning, preparing, sorting out details of equipment, permissions, work schedules, people, transport, accommodation and food. I mostly spend them riding my bike. Occasionally I walk up a hill. I am still in a state of wonder at living in the High Peak.
And this year, my age hits a big number, I hope. I expect to turn 47 in August. We all have every reasonable right to expect that, to hope for that, to be reasonably complacent about making it to 47. Dave, though stopped two days short of that. So, to me, to be alive at the age of 47 will be something quite quite special.
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