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PCH Day 1 – London to San Francisco

| Blue

After a comfy limo dash in the morning we were soon enjoying champagne and plant-based curries before our flight in the British Airways B gate lounge at Heathrow Terminal 5.

T5 B Gate Lounge

Cheers!

A short while later, we were on the plane and just as I’d got everything in its place (and a place for everything), Alison demanded we swop seats.  Citizen’s Divorce already enacted.  And I wondered where all my demons should go…

Demons!

Demons!

Cheers!

Cheers (again)!

Once we landed at San Francisco it was off to collect our pre-booked car from Hertz.  An absolute nightmare it was too with Hertz, ?who didn’t have our car when we arrived. After an hour’s arguing with them, they palmed a Florida-registered 5.0L V8 Mustang convertible off on us instead of the Camaro SS Convertible we’d ordered and indeed emailed about earlier that week.

Once we eventually got to the Riu Plaza Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco, it was time for a gin and kebab as it was 5am UK time.

Gin and Kebab

Gin and Kebab

PCH Flights – London to San Francisco and San Diego to London

| Blue

British Airways were being a nightmare before we were due to fly: despite booking our Business Class flights many months earlier, a month before flying, BA emailed us to tell us they’d cancelled our flights from London Heathrow to San Francisco.

When we’d been trying to fly out to Corralejo to move into our place out there in 2020 and 2021, the UK and Spanish governments had been opening up and locking down and easyJet were cancelling flights, so I’d become adept at moving flights and amending travel arrangements, so I was straight back online to look at alternatives, finding that BA had flights later the same day. Not ideal, but beggars can’t be choosers.  I changed the car reservation with Hertz, the limousine booking with Addison Lee and sat back to make sure our COVID-19 PCR test bookings would also still work.

Later the same day, British Airways then cancelled our return flights from San Diego to London.  This was more of an issue, because it meant I had to extend the car hire and the hotel.  The first would not work, and the hotel? Not so much as it was fully booked, so we decided to leave the car hire as it was and book ourselves into a hotel near the airport for the extra night to suit our flights home a day later. Thankfully BA ended up paying for the hotel as compensation for the flight delay.

December 2022 Stats and 2022 Summary

| Richard Morris

Well most of December 2022 was spent on the Schwinn doing FulGaz challenges but we flew out to Fuerteventura at oh-dark-hundred hours yesterday and today I finished off the year with a real-life 15km road ride on the MTB. So here’s December’s stats showing the 650km overall distance:

December 2022 Stats

December 2022 Stats

That means that 2022’s stats overall are:

Activities: 306; Distance: 2,960.23 km; Time: 194:39:42; Calories: 122,924.

As for my weight, well it’s too late to measure like for like today because I’ve had coffee, freshly-squeezed orange juice and croissants out in the garden this morning, but yesterday’s weight was 88.3kg.  That’s down by 9.6kg (21.2lbs or 1½ stone) from New Year’s Day 2022 when my weight was 97.9kg. That’ll do, pig!

November 2022 Stats

| Richard Morris

Well thanks to that utter shitshow that is Brexit, we had to fly back to the UK mid-November so as not to outstay our welcome in the EU.

This meant that there was a switch from the longer real-world rides I was doing on a relatively heavy mountain bike back to indoor cycling on the Schwinn, so it was back to using FulGaz again.  I’ve mentioned I decided – very rashly – to do their “LEJOG Challenge“, so the mileage (and time in our gym) has risen a tad…

This month’s total therefore is up to 554.59km.

My weight at the start of the month was 91kg and at the end it had surpassed my first goal and stood at 88.9kg.  This is down from 98.2kg as recently as mid-August (1 stone 4lbs weight loss).

FulGaz LEJOG Stage 1: Lands End to St. Ives

| Richard Morris

As I mentioned in this post, I’m doing the Land’s End to John O’Groats challenge on FulGaz and this was the first day and first stage:

One small problem: although the 20-stage challenge runs until February 2023, I won’t be near the Schwinn to ride it after Christmas as I’ll be back out in Fuerteventura then. Ah… Looks like it’s going to be a tad intense.

FulGaz LEJOG Challenge

| Richard Morris

If you’ve been checking in on this blog with my monthly workout stats and/or following my latest individual workout activities over here, then you’ll know that while I’m in the UK, I tend to just use our Schwinn 800IC static bike and I’m pretty much settling for FulGaz as my preferred workout program, given its “adaptive” video rides.

I’ve received an update from FulGaz today about the “LEJOG Challenge“: Land’s End to John O’Groats over 500km and 20 stages, most being over an hour and some like Hardknott Pass being a little bit ‘bumpy’ too…

Still, what could possibly go wrong?

The Cookaway

| Richard

So I mentioned that this mob had used The Email Bureau to send some spam to one of my work email addresses.

Having failed to find a contact email address for them, I went onto Trustpilot to leave them a review:

Spam on the Menu?

They must be struggling, because why else would they decide to employ the services of those spammers, The Email Bureau Limited, to send me spam today?

Edit: I’ve emailed them a screenshot as they denied spamming me…

Edit: they’re now whining that the spam didn’t come from them, but they still fail to mention that it was their campaign, paid for my them, presumably? If not, are they suing The Email Bureau Limited? No, I didn’t think so…

They responded:

Update – Thanks for the screenshot Richard. I’m afraid this is not directly from us and you should pick this up with The Email Bureau to get them to take your name off their mailing list. I see you’ve provided a similar review re spam email to 3 other businesses and I wonder whether you are on a mailing list that you need to get delisted from. We haven’t emailed you directly and you are not on our email database so we cannot even remove/unsubscribe you.

Best wishes
Team Cookaway
———————————————————————–

Hi Richard,

Thanks for getting in touch.

We have no record of you in our order or email systems and have not activated anything with The Email Bureau.

We have sent you a request via Trustpilot to provide further information so we can investigate your claim properly. Please do get in touch via Trustpilot or directly through our website so we can look into this matter.

For any such issues, we always appreciate if you can contact us first and allow us to respond before leaving a negative review especially when we have no record of any prior communication with you.

Many thanks
Team Cookaway

At no time do “Team Cookaway” deny that this was their marketing campaign. The closest they get is the “we haven’t emailed you directly” bollocks. No, you paid someone else to, you bunch of fuckwits!

 

October 2022 Stats

| Richard

We flew out to our place in Fuerteventura again on Saturday 1st October and after the weekend I started back with the real-world cycling on the Monday, having decided to up the ante a tad with my distances and to make sure I was following my consultant’s orders to do at least 30 minutes a day.

I’m still pleased with the result: 331.33km this month (including walking).

October 2022 Stats

In other news, we’ve gone a bit keto with our diets and the results are promising: I weighed 93.3kg on the Garmin Index S2 scales we have here at the start of the month and today I weigh 91kg (up 0.5kg from yesterday morning, which was a new low since the crash and muscle-wasting in July 2019).