5 AWESOME Things About Me...Part 3

More stuff about me to make you want to be me!

3.  I have Bobbed with the Latvian National 4 Man Team.

This is not as rude as you think, it is just as painful as you imagined. 

While  away in Latvia I had the opportunity to travel around the country a little, and what a beautiful country it is. From the open wild coastline of Jurmala with its old Russian timber summer houses to the Gothic wonders of Riga on to the stunning forests and mountains of Sigulda where the Latvian national Bob-sleigh Team trains. The town of Sigulda is well known for its ski-ing (if you come from Sigulda that is) and for its amazing forests, inhabited by wolves and bears and other animals that will eat/kill you as soon as look at you. Talking of bears the Bob-sleigh team consists of three huge wild (very drunk) Vikings and a little chap at the back who works the breaks.

Hey guys, wait for me!!

 After a mamoth drinking session in a local bar one evening with "the guys", they persuade me to have a go down the run with them in the morning as they are supposed to be in training for the Olympics. Having tried to impress them with talk of my sporting prowess I couldnt really get out of their "invitation", so with the worst hangover of many years I find myself stood at the top of a frozen mountain, temp somewhere past -15 and wearing nothing but a spray on Lycra suit(strangely exactly the same purple colour of my frozen skin) that leaves NOTHING to the many onlookers imaginations. Braving the whistles and taunts and the odd cow bell I huddled with the guys and was told "after 3 run as fast as you can and when we have all jumped in make sure you get yourself in at the back" I nodded and they shouted some kind of "BooYah" or the Latvian equivalent and then I was slapped hard on the ass and told not to once in the Bob not to lift my head above the guy in front and try not to butt him because it really hacks him off. I then realised that this was the sum total of training and in less than 5 seconds I was going to experience the scariest on the job training ever!

 "Viens...Divi...Tris" and we were running, I for my life. I saw them pop into the Bob ahead of me and tried to match my stride to make the leap myself, not quite getting the pattern right I had to take two extra strides that meant I could feel the Bob getting away from me. I put all those fast twitch muscle bundles to extra work just praying that last nights alcohol hadn't destroyed them and made an extremely ungainly leap into the back of the Bob. Unfortunately for the guy in  front of me I managed to kick him in his kidney and rip his suit with the spikes on the bottom of my shoe, being the polite British boy I tried to apologise and promptly head butted him in the back. Now the art of Bob-sleighing is to know the course, become one with the course, caress each bend and turn and feel your way down the course. I on the other hand rattled around like a bean in a tin can. after turn three I opened my eyes, BIG MISTAKE. There was just a white and green and blue blur as sky and trees and ice merged, what I thought was up was down and what was down was up. All I could hear was the clatter and chatter of the ice( it could have been my bones) and a feeble whimper that echoed inside my helmet. At one point I did manage to get my bearings and contrary to all my training(15 seconds) I lifted my head to take in my surroundings. This was the most stupid thing to do EVER!!! We were travelling at 90mph on a sledge in a frozen tube going round corners at over 90 degrees to the ground what was I thinking....I tell you what "DEAR GOD SAVE ME PLEASE"!!! My neck snapped back and was only stopped by the back of my helmet burying itself into my shoulders! There was no way I could get my head forwards, "luckily" for me this was remedied by a small devious little bump about 2/3 the way down which throws you up 6 inches off the Bob-sleigh and you are weightless for a few seconds "pulling negative g's" (oh get me, all technical) only to be smashed forwards once again back to the relentless plummeting. Needless to say I once again head butted the poor guy in front of me who let out a little yelp(unless that's how Latvian's swear?). The longest 1minute and 45seconds of my life later all I could hear was screams of "PULL PULL PULL PULL DAMN IT!!" and I realised they were shouting at me to pull the brake and my career as a Latvian Olympic Bob-sleigh Team member had come to a slippery slithery end. It took quite a few seconds to come round once the Bob had stopped and the others had piled out shouting and "Boo-Yahing" and slapping each other on the butt, I on the other hand could not move, my back was in complete spasm and my legs were jelly. They dragged me out the back of the Bob and I lay on the ice curled up in the foetal position for what seamed ages as they all looked over me laughing, the guy in positioned in front of me examined his now torn and bleeding back and I swear there was a chip out the back of his helmet where I had kept hitting him, but he took it all in good spirits by yanking me to my feet and giving my the biggest bear hug of my life, cracking my mixed up vertibre back into some sort of order. The team captain said we had set the best time in days and that I must be fearless because the regular breakman applies the breaks 5 or 6 times down a run and he hadn't felt them once.....What!! Now he tells me!

This is the the actual track, you start top centre and ....well you follow it round.

If you come off the track and arn't killed then there are bears in them woods! 

 This is not the team or the track but it kind of give the feel of what you go through....minus the screams, bone cracking and Latvian Swearing!

Part 4 to follow....

5 AWESOME Things About ME ...Part 2

Here's part Two

2.I think I am obsessed with my hair.

 I dont mean this in a girly kind of way like I wonder what it would look like if it was blonde or permed or whatever else you girls do with it, I mean that a number of significant events in my life have been to do with my hair. Now when I was young I sported a loose afro something like my hero on the right

I think that primarily this was the only style my mum could manage and even then I had to pat my hair round to cover the bald patches. Adults used to comment  "OOOH you have lovely curls", yeah whatever! Kids on the other hand are not so kind. I lived in the middle of nowhere in North Wales and this was not known as a racialy tolerant community, hell they even hated the white English let alone a little black boy so this is what the other kids used to call me(amongst many other things), and to be fair they probably were not a million miles away.

 Later as I hit late teens and started to want to attract the attention of the laydee's I took to having a range of 80's hair styles from the flat top, hi top all the way through to the greatest disaster that was the Jerry Curl.

  Now no longer living in North Wales but in the throbbing metropolis that is Manchester I was able to get my hands on "product". You could find me down on my local market on a Saturday morning getting all kinds of gels, lotions and mouse to make my flowing locks shout "Come and get me laydees, no no no not you with the naked flame". Unfortunately this crime against humanity continued for a number of years and even into my late teens when I was at work, so what, that's nothing you may say but, I know that I have at least one follower of this blog that knew me then as we worked together, I have not seen her in over 20 years BUT I am cringing as I type because I just know she will be nodding and shaking her head remembering the state I used to turn up to work in. One such time I had been to a party on Friday night and wanting to look my best decide that wet look gel just wasn't cutting it by itself so what could I add to give it a little extra Pop.....hhhmm yeah that would do it .........GLITTER. I hang my head now but at the time it was H.O.T 

The worst of that little experience was that I didn't get home until 4;30am and had to be out for work that morning at 7;30 so instead of having a shower and washing my hair then, I thought that I would wear a swimming cap to bed so that all the gunk wouldn't get rubbed into my already pimply skin. Great in theory bad in practice because when I woke up I had a groove around my swollen fore head and no matter what I did in my severely hung over state it just wouldn't shift. All day at work people were asking what was up with the line on my fore head and then they would look at my hair and say "You've got glitter in your  hair haven't you?"

 Now my hair is short, real short. This is for two reasons    a) Its easy and  b)  If I let it grow then I have a 6inch centre parting!!(no surprise with all the crap I have put it through)

Holy crap is that me!!

I was going to say you may want to go get a drink and a bite to eat now, but after that last image....I bet you sicked up in your mouth, no?

5 AWESOME Fact About Me...Part 1

As requested here's some AWESOME.....(gently cupping balls just in case)

 As something of a newbie to these here parts I would like to take this opportunity to enlighten you all as to some AWESOME facts about me. Now These are in no way a sum total of my personality but they probably go a long way to explaining who and why I am.

1. I once fed elastic bands to my friends dog.
Why? Well I guess for a number of reasons but mostly so that we could twang the bands as the hung out of its ass. I know its not big and I know its not clever but when you are 13 and at your mates house and its raining and you are waiting like 40 minutes for "Jet Set Willy" to load up on his ZX Spectrum after its crashed umpteen times, you kind of get bored and barring setting fire to his house then torturing the stupid dog was next on the list. My friend, lets call him "Nick" 'cos that's his name after all, was a couple years older than me and had a big old smelly black Labrador that sat about wheezing and farting and making unwanted sexual advances on you , a bit like James Brown I suppose. The dog was called Lonely and was the apple of Nicks mums eye, she loved this dog, she doted on it and was convinced that we were trying to kill "her baby". Now for me it was just something to do, but for Nick it was sibling rivalry, so at each opportunity we found more and more ways to "get" it. We had locked it in a cupboard for a day, we hog tied it with Nicks mums tights and we eventually got round to the elastic band prank. Oh  how we laughed as we chased it round the garden wearing washing up gloves grabbing and twanging at the elastic bands. The poor thing wheezed and span and blundered about howling like a banshee. Looking back on it now I know it was wrong, I know we should have known better and I do not condone animal cruelty but still I can help but chuckle.

 +

= PAIN!

Part Two To Follow.....

Like the best Bacon.....

the rest of me is to follow...

Yeah Baby 

Rant Rant Rant Ka-booom!!

 I know its crazy isnt it..... over three weeks to get some blackcurrent juice out of  a laptop! I think they are way too busy looking at my photos and lists of unpublished blogs, probably saying things along the lines of "lets save the cyber world  some time and just bin the damn thing".
 Well after half a dozen phonecalls about how slow they are and how they need to get on with things instead of playing World of Warcraft or whatever those geeks do I was informed that they had done all the "in Warranty" repairs and that I needed a new battery as the old one had burnt out( yeah I know how it feels). Now the thing is this is the second battery in 12 months so with any stretch of the imagination its not old but they are saying that its general wear and tear.They also inform me that as the original battery was bought over 12 months ago it is now out of warranty and I would be liable to pay for a replacement.
   O.k, after a "spirited" exchange with a young girl in customer service it turns out that the warranty runs from the date of the original purchase not the date of replacement....??? I would have thought that the warranty assures that the product is covered for 12 months and each replacement would have a further 12 months cover as each is a new(not recon) product. Not so.
 Having been given an estimated replacement cost of £12.00 I thought its not worth the aggro, just get them to send a new one out and all will be well in the world.......oh how wrong could I be! The actual cost of replacement came through on the bill as .......£130.00 (WHATTTT!!) I checked online and the cost of the very same item from HP was £45.00 and a generic on E-bay was £27.00.

Hmmm now what should I do? yeah thats right tell em to "shove it where the sun dont shine Buddy!!".

Now isnt this the sort of thing that winds you up? It gets me so mad.

 So after a lot of tooing and froing I will be reunited with my laptop very soon, and dont you just know that they will have wiped the hard drive as a part of the repair(vengeful act).


Post brought to you by the power of "Moms Computer"

P.s just you wait till I am plugged in once more I'll be "blowin up yo readers".

unplugged