Busy Doing Nothing

Well that seems to sum up the week so far. I'm no longer able to ride my bike. My knee injury has got worse, so after struggling home from work on the bike on Monday, I had to go by public transport on Tuesday. (Reminder to self- don't do it again! Public transport at rush hour is surely contrary to the Human Rights Act. It is cruel inhumane and degrading treatment is it not?). It was quite surprising how much activity you do whilst getting public transport to work. I thought it would rest my knee, but with the walking to/ from stations, all the steps, the changing trains etc, it made my knee worse. I made arrangements to work from home today (Wednesday) so took my laptop etc home with me on Tuesday night. It did serve as a reminder to me why I like cycling to work, even taking into account the risk of accidents, the rain and the cold etc.

The other reason for the headline describes the traffic last night in East London. I was going to watch Orient v Gilingham, but owing to some bloke on a building threatening to jump off, the police shut the A12 heading out of town from 14:30 until midnight. This is a 3 lane each way road and is the main road out of London to the North East/ East of London. It was closed from the turning near Orient's ground, so the traffic was gridlocked. It took me 2 hours and around 21 miles to do a journey that should be 7 miles and about 20 minutes. I only got to the ground because I have learned a lot of the back streets of London by cycling around them over the last few years. The traffic was still grid locked after the game and it took me 2 hours to get home after the game.

Its amazing that one person sitting on a roof can be allowed to cause so much chaos for so long.Am I being cruel in saying the "trained" police negotiators can't be very good if it took them around 9 hours to get the bloke to come down. Surely it would have been quicker to persuade him to jump.

The Gillingham team had to play in Orient's away kit as their team bus was stuck in the traffic. Also, when Gillingham named their team the obligatory 1 hour before the game, 3 of the players named had not arrived at the ground. If they had failed to arrive, Gillingham would have been forced to make 3 substitutions before kick off. The crowd was 1-2000 down on expectation because of the traffic situation.

So busy doing nothing seems apt.

As for my knee, I am going to the doctor's first thing on Thursday morning to see what they've got to say about it. I can hazard a guess that part of it is to rest the knee and not cycle for at least the next week. :-(

I need to spend some time trying to drum up sponsorship monies to www.firstgiving.com/peterbennett over the next few days.