Day 1: Once More Unto the B[r]each

Today I set off with my old cycling buddy Rich on my second tour of the year. This time we're headed up to Scotland for the first leg of the North Sea cycle route.


Rich

Day one is a train journey up to Aberdeen. On the super advanced British rail network that takes over 8 hours, and naturally due to the high quality of the rolling stock, a whole carriage was out of service due to a fault. This meant hours of standing, shuffling about and generally enduring discomfort.

We met a few interesting people en route.
The first was a lady who was traveling with two bikes strapped together (one was a road bike, and it had a carbon fiber TT frame tied on to it, so they could be wheeled around on one set of wheels). We had a good long chat about long chat covering most elements of cycling, including her boy friend's Paralympic ambitions for 2012. She was reading a degree in East Asian studies, so we discussed some of the peculiarities of those cultures, and the demographics of the student population in that field. Unsurprisingly Anime, cos-play and similar activities are very popular, although our traveling companion isn't all that into it; she prefers bikes. She was also adorned with a wrist band from www.CyclePure.org; an campaign against drugs in cycle sport.
For part of the journey we discussed educational reforms with a couple of Drama/Performing Arts teachers.
Reading and Leeds festivals are this weekend, so we later ran into a group headed to Leeds with their weekend's worth of camping and giging gear in tow.
Towards the end of the journey we met a lady from Scotland who has lived for some 9 years in California. The different influences on her accent gave her quite an interesting voice.
There were several exchanges with myriad commuters about the conditions on the train, the psychology of rail travelers.

At Edinburugh the fourth train manager of the trip took over. He decided to have shout down the carriage about the way we stored the bikes. We went to have a look, and found there was no possible way of moving them, but this didn't stop him from putting out two more announcements over the PA. A short while later I caught sight of him walking up the train. I started walking towards him, and he immediately reversed direction in a manner that held a suspicious resemblance to someone running away.


Richard and I have also been making efforts to get reacquainted. Though things got off to a rocky start when Rich confessed to preferring Star Trek: Voyager over The Next Generation..

5 and a half hours into our journey the train started traveling along the cost (that would be the east cost, as opposed to the West coast where we started our travels).


Back on my travels

Its interesting to note that on my TGV journey, which was a similar length, I was at my destination long before the 5 hour mark, everyone had a seat and the air-con worked effectively. I'm starting to lean towards the view that French trains are better.


Aberdeen