Jinrikishaw

The staff 'Thank You' party

So last night we had the staff 'Thank You' party, a chance for all of us to get together, have a curry and a few beers and for me to say thank you to them for all of the hard work they do.
Predictably everyone had too much to drink, mocked me for how much hair I've lost this year and generally had a great time. The downside of that is of course that Luke looked like this this morning.I think with those glasses people might think he's trying to catch children in his cage..

wu wei

So I've been back from the Do lectures for a while now
and since I've been back I've been really busy doing things; foraging for wild food, making bread, getting involved with things, motivating myself and generally getting my oomph back as it had mysteriously disappeared (and I didn't even think it had).

One thing really stuck in my mind from the lectures. It was the feeling I had after Alastair Mcintosh spoke. You can see his talk here and if you do one thing this week I suggest you watch it. Make a brew, take 40 mins out, alone, and sit down and listen. It totally changed my view of where we are with climate change, what will happen, how we will change it and how our mindset should be in relation to it.

So I'm much more optimistic about things now, and I have realised I don't say thanks to the staff enough, so tonight I'm taking them for a curry and a few beers to say thank you. Thanks for the hard work, for believing in what we do and for giving it their all. Not sure I'm ready to tell them that though..

Oh and thanks to Nick Miller for the food festival tickets, we had a great time!

Test blog

Free bikes, free cider and bike polo!

A treat awaited me this Saturday when I arrived at work, some lovely soul had seen fit to 'donate' two bikes to us..Sadly I don't think there's much we can do with them but we will take them down to SPOKES who will recondition them and hopefully sell them on to someone who can make use of them. Who knows maybe they might be perfect for a spot of BIKE POLO now that we have the mallets all we need to do is get some beers and a court and start playing hard and hopefully by the time we're up to speed and playing well the apple juice we pressed on the weekend will have turned in to cider to reward out efforts!
>If you could see the press in more detail (which was expertly built by Pedicabs handyman 'Big Tone') you'd see that the central bucket is made of bike rims, it did a fine job and by summer next year we should be on for some home made 'Vintage'...

Don't just stand there, DO something

So since I put the 40.1mph on the clock I've calmed my riding down a bit, still the same daily occurrences with other road users, all of us battling for the award for 'most important road user' but all in all things have been steady.

Last week I had the opportunity to go away to the Howies Do lectures. Those of you who know us, or read our blog will know that Howies are very good to us when it comes to kit for riding in. Each year they donate a percentage of their profit (1% - they call it an Earth Tax) to creating a series of lectures to help folk out. We were invited last time but sadly couldn't make it as we were launching our company! This time there was no stopping me, it was a fantastic opportunity and I met some amazing people.

Apart from some amazing lectures in a wealth of subjects THE DO LECTURES there were some amazing people there. Each of them with their own 'Do' and a passion for making a difference. It was a very refreshing chance to speak to people with plenty of drive and energy who were doing some amazing things.

One of the lectures was about the campaign for real bread, a chap dedicated to getting people to make their own bread. Sounds daft but in fact it was incredible. Learning about what's in bread and why it's like that (to meet demand that sort of thing) and why we should make bread, share the skill and pass the knowledge on. It reminded me that I used to make bread, so for all of you out there reading this, here's a recipe to try:

450g of flour (in the super market you'll see all sorts of flour for
bread making, but pretty much you can use anything)
2 heaped tea spoons of bicarbonate of soda
350ml of beer
150ml of water
large pinch of salt

It's easy - preheat oven to 200
Sieve all the dry ingredients together, add the beer
See what it looks like, add the water bit by bit if you need to
Don't make it too wet, or too dry
It'll end up as one large bit of dough
Too wet add more flour
Too dry add more water
I do the whole thing in a large food processor

Dust a surface with flour and shape it how you want, I put mine in a loaf tin but you can just whack it on a floured baking tray
Put the whole thing in the oven for 30 mins then turn the oven down to 180 for the last 20 mins

Take out the loaf, tap the bottom, if it sounds hollow its done, if not put it back in. Mine usually looks something like this..
So all in all I had a great time at the lectures (next week they'll all be online) and returned to work refreshed. This week has seen a few changes but really the thing I'm most keen on is letting all the staff know how good they are and that without them we wouldn't have a company this great.

Have a good weekend, happy baking.

Will

Finally 40!

Well it took longer than I thought it would and now I can hang up my gloves safe in the knowledge it's possible!

I started faster, put more power down earlier, kept the power on, tucked in and more importantly braked much much later.