Two weeks into no job!
March 16, 2008 at 7:09 pm | Bike, Personal | No comment
Well it’s been two weeks now since I quit my job, left my girlfriend and moved to my dad’s house as a staging area.
I’ve been trying to prepare for the trip as best as possible, I’ve been buying god knows how much stuff (my ‘preparation budge’ is disappearing faster than I’d hoped!).
The repairs on my bike are going to cost more than I’d initially anticipated, £391 vs £250, and that doesn’t include things like indicators (some cheapo ones off ebay are in order I feel!), that’s simply to get it legal on the road.
My dad’s been away on holiday in Sri Lanka for the past week (he got offered a job out there just a few days ago as it happens!) and he’s scheduled to be away for another week.
I’ve set myself the challenge of not buying any food while he’s away, so I’ve been keeping myself alive on couscous, rice, pasta and the contents of the freezer (which was 5 oven chips, a VERY expired pack of pork chops and a rather tasty seabass!).
Since Alex came round last weekend and we got very drunk I’ve decided to abstain from drinking for the moment.
While living with Kim I got into the habit of drinking every single night and as soon as I stopped I realised that I had become a bit of an alcoholic.
Every evening after about six I would viscerally crave alcohol; the first few nights after I stopped I would just sit at my computer thinking “I can’t have a drink, I can’t have a drink, I want a drink, I can’t have a drink”.
On the third night it felt like I’d spent a month without drinking and broke down and allowed myself to have a Gin and Tonic, fortunately we were out of Gin, but I made myself an &T anyway!
It’s been a week now, and the cravings have all but abated, but I’m still finding it very hard to get to sleep at a normal time, hopefully this will resolve itself eventually!
I’ve been trying to learn Italian for the past week using a program called “Before you know it” which is basically a large set of digitised flash cards.
The learning method of flashcards works very well for me, but it’s very limited, it covers virtually no conjugation and the creators seem to have forgotten all about nouns and pronouns!
Still, I feel I’m making progress, and even if I have to go back to the audio method of learning (which I really don’t get on with, I’m very much a visual learner) if I stick with it I’m sure to get somewhere.
My days seem to whisk by these days and it certainly doesn’t feel like two weeks since I turned my life upside down.
The time has been split between researching incredibly boring things (such as HT bolts, *yawn*) , learning Italian, reading and wasting time on the internet, the latter of which seems to take up a disturbing portion of if…
I’ve finally decided that I’m not going to take a laptop on my trip, I’m going to simply write (shock horror) using a pen and paper and use my MP3 player as a dictafone.
I’ve managed to get the fundamentals of my paperwork through, namely my health insurance and my Carnet de Passage, once I’ve got my bike back (end of next week) and fixed it up with the panoply of sprockets, brake pads, chains, fork seals and other (supposedly) disposable parts there’ll be nothing stopping me going!
I ended up going with Navigator Travel insurance, mainly because they were the only people that covered areas that the FCO (Foreign Commonwealth Office) recommended against travelling to, but also because it’s run by one guy (not a fly by night, I’ve checked!) called Richard who seems bizarrely enough to have something of a passion for health insurance and spent absolutely ages with me on the phone explaining the situation regarding FCO areas and all the other innumerable questions I had for him.
I finally got round to fixing my panniers (from the crash back in December lol), Kiwibob sent the hinges through last week and after using a car-jack to get it back into shape (see photo) and using some Quiksteel to finish off the edge that had cracked open, it was good as new!
