Bike maintenance

I phoned James, the bicycle repair man, again, to ask if he would have time to fit me in for some bike maintenance. I had been feeling some wear and tear manifesting itself. Sometimes the gears slip, and the brakes are losing their effectiveness. He said he had only recently done maintenance. And that was true! Four months ago I had brought the bike in. But that had been after only three months since the previous round of maintenance, and he had mistaken the resulting wear and tear for that incurred over a whole year. So if I can do that in three months, I can certainly do it in four. If I have to be in the office every day, I cover some 130 km in a week, with 2.2 vertical kilometres. If you do that for four months in a stretch you end up with some 2500 km horizontal and 42 km vertical. Quite a lot! But either way; he could just fit me in before Christmas. 

I brought it in, and James figured he wouldn't manage to have it done before the next week. But he would phone me.

The next day I had a brainwave. I don't like the pedals on that bike, because they are not grippy enough, and you can slip off. He now had the bike in his workshop anyway; could he just replace them with something more grippy? And he could.

Two days later I got a text message. It was done! I could pick it up. That was great! I could tell he had put on new brake pads. And it had a new chain. And he said my mud guards were on the way out. I might have to look out for replacements. 

The bike was also very clean. It always is when I collect it! James always pressure-washes it before he starts. And this time, probably because of it being December, it was extra muddy. July just doesn’t have the same mud credibility. 

James seemed to think it was a bit beyond the ordinary, though. He said he had collected the mud from my rear mud guard only, put it in a pot, and planted a spider plant in it. He said it would be ready to be repotted next time I would drop by! I will surely check in on the plant. I would in all likelihood be bringing a new load of potting soil for it. But that actual day, I rode home on a smooth and clean bike. Lovely! 

The plant

Clean bike

Climbing quiz

I haven't climbed in about 100 years. Or maybe more precisely, since summer 2022. The last thing I did with the climbing club was, I think, more than a year ago, attending the AGM. That was in the Beacon climbing hall, and we did the AGM, but we didn't climb. 

I was going to be back, in the same climbing hall, and again to not climb. One of our members had sent an email around saying there would be a quiz, and it might be fun to join as the club. That sounded like good fun! I travelled up with Charlotte. We were the first ones of the club.

We caught up a bit, and looked at the climbing, until the other three arrived. We were complete! And not much later, the quiz started. There was a picture round that you could already do; you were just handed a piece of A4 with eight pictures on it you were expected to recognise. We didn't do very well. It was: a picture of an animated television show that didn't ring a bell with any of us, a childhood picture of someone we figured would've grown up to be a professional basketball player, a childhood picture of James Hetfield, a picture of someone the others decided was an 80s British racing driver, but they couldn't think of his name. Then a flag, the snowman from Frozen, a still from a movie, and an old picture of a young man*. This snowman was easy; we all knew his name. I think I was the only person who recognised James Hetfield. I had my use! And then we submitted some guesses for the rest. This was not an auspicious start.

The James Hetfield picture 

Then the other questions followed. Most of them were general knowledge. There also was one round that was sport, and another round that was climbing. I was absolutely totally useless in these two rounds! I think I did best in the music round. They just played some intros and we had to guess the song. We didn't know them all, but I remember born slippy, no surprises, still D.R.E, für Elise, and firestarter. So basically, the 90s and Beethoven. This quiz was clearly not aimed at a young audience! Which suited us fine. I am sure I was lowering the average age of our team.

When everything had been asked, we swapped answer sheets with a neighbouring team, and we marked each other's work. We hadn't done very well. That's okay!

In the end we had a shared third-from-last place. I'm not quite sure how many teams there were; you can’t easily get an overview of that café area. But quite many teams. By the time the scores were announced it was 10 pm, and we all wanted to go home. I had had an actual beer; this was a wild night for me! I had been thinking we should take a team picture, but I was so busy wanting to go home, and having to go to the loo first, that I forgot.

I was glad I had gone. In between thinking about stuff such as which female team has won the most football World Cups, and who invented the leap year, we had some useful club discussion. We have pretty much stopped being a climbing club, and are now a general outdoor/sport/leisure club. The club has been paddle boarding! And I am not attracted to that, so I hadn't joined in. But our plans were doing more things that don't involve actual climbing. There was some mention of the Anglesey coastal path. If we are going to go do that, I will join if I can! It's just nice to sometimes do that's sort of thing with nice people! Maybe next year this club will feature a bit more prominently on this blog…

Ps the answers, as far as I can remember: no idea about the TV series as I had never heard of it, LeBron James, James Hetfield (of course), Nigel Mansell, Mozambique, Olaf, Cloverfield, a young Stalin. 

Just some fossils in a wall

I mentioned my second University Senate meeting in the previous post. This time it was in Pontio. When I walked towards the door I was distracted by some beautiful fossils. I had been aware from it having been built that the stone used is full of them, but it is a big building, and there is always something new to see. And they were so gorgeous I figured I share them here. 

Probably an ammonite 

Solitary coral

Gastropod?

Politics and the university

Anything to keep foreigners out. Rich, white, Christian or atheist foreigners are fine, of course. I suppose they also should be cisgender, straight, and able-bodied. Come to think of it; if they are rich enough, they don't have to be white, Christian, or anything like that. If you are some Saudi oil billionaire you can just come in. People who actually contribute to society should stay out. They have the duty of being the scapegoat for everything that's wrong with Britain.

The Tories are desperately trying to hang on to power by being unpleasant to foreigners. Now they have decided on a whole range of measures to keep legal immigrants out. The most striking measures are that you can't have a foreign family member join you unless you earn at least £38.700 (it used to be £26,200), and that care workers (who have absolutely no chance in hell to earn that amount of money) can't bring dependants with them at all. 

I'm sure this policy will work. Fewer perfidious foreigners will come in. But wtf do they think they will achieve with this? Will foreigner-bullying give them an election victory? Very unlikely. And even if it does; how much damage will they do before that? How much misery will they cause to people who, in this international age, have started a relationship with someone of a different nationality and residency? How many children will be separated from a parent because the parent cannot afford to be with them?

Additionally, the radio was full of people who run care homes, who said that they would have to close when this measure would come into force. The government says they should recruit within the country, but they said they had tried, and it doesn't work. They also admitted that if they just offer a higher salary, they would, but there is no state support for doing that. And I am sure there are a few rarefied care homes for rich people who do offer that kind of salary, and I am sure they would be able to recruit, but that would mean social care would be only available for the rich. Which would be exactly what a Tory government would want to happen, but it is also deeply awful. And if the state isn't supporting you, and your clients are not filthily rich, you just can't offer the sort of salary that would be needed. So you'll have to close. And where will the residence then go?

Another issue is that, largely again for reasons of government decisions, British universities heavily depend on income generated by overseas Master students. UK students already pay a fortune for their education, but international students pay almost twice as much. Universities are practically bludgeoning each other's heads in in order to secure the highest number of international students. And now the government has just decided to actively discourage anyone to show up. Great.

That was another meeting by the University Senate; my second. A lot of things were discussed, of course; student recruitment, the financial situation, student satisfaction, the whole lot. But also, of course, the new policies, and what it would mean for us. Given that they had only been announced two days before, the university hasn't had much time to contemplate things. The person who spoke about the situation did sound confident. But we'll see how this pans out! This could be really big. But I also think that the government will realise that toppling over universities might not be a very good election strategy. I really hope they reconsider. And I also really hope it backfires, and our next government will be Labour. Who, hopefully, would have the wisdom to bin these policies as fast as you can say "xenophobia"…

A random job ad for a lecturer from the University job vacancy page. Someone who gets this job on the lowest space scale might be full-time permanent academic staff, but still not earn enough to have a spouse come over!

Icy roads and summer tyres

I mentioned it before! I don't like riding to work on spiked tyres. More than 99% of the road will be asphalt; you would only need the spikes for isolated patches. And it's worth it if you don't fall over and break your collarbone; that's a big win. But it does mean that almost 100% of the road you are riding around with an enormous extra amount of friction. And it really is hard work!

When it got cold I kept going on my normal tyres. I won't put the spiked ones on unless I am absolutely sure I need them. But one of these days, there was more black ice on the road than I expected. I had to be quite careful! But it worked out in the end. And I biked back the same way; I knew I had to be careful because I had seen on the way to work where the ice was. Not all of it was gone. But I managed to negotiate everything successfully.

It got warmer again. And then cold again. Again I set off my normal tyres. And again I had to be a bit careful. And all went well until I got to the stretch of the road that had been the worst the previous time around. And this time, it was worse than that! Quite some sheet ice, sometimes over the entire width of the road. Quite often you might be able to escape the ice if you move to the middle of the road. There's not that much traffic there; one would expect to get away with that. But that day it just wouldn’t do.

This time I chose on several occasions to just walk. It just looked so slippery! And at one point, I only _just_ managed to keep my bike (and myself) upright.

I only just managed to make it in time for my 9 AM meeting with a dissertation student. And luckily, this time I had to bike back from main campus, so I took a completely different route back. And it had got a lot warmer in the meantime as well. The coming days had predicted rain. To be honest, I hope I don't need the spiked tyres this winter. But it's only December and I already had two icy days! There probably will be a lot more to come…

MSc student

Sometimes I don't quite get around to blogging about certain things. At the moment, I have a Master's student. She was allocated to me in September, but at the time I think I was quite distracted by things such as our fieldwork. So I don't think I mentioned it at all!

The project she is doing sort of builds on from two earlier projects: one project that another student did quite a number of years ago now; I had to hand this student over to a colleague, as during a crucial part of the project, I was off on sick leave because of my RSI. This student basically tried to figure out if foraminifera are good indicators for pollution in estuaries. She compared estuaries Parys Mountain (biggest copper mine in the world in the late 18th century; the site also contains lead, zinc, and silver) drains into with the Cefni, which has no mining of note in its catchment area, and where we do our September fieldwork. 

The other project was nothing to do with me; that was something having to do with pollution only, again from Parys Mountain, but this time not related to foraminifera. That was Lydia's project. She went downcore. And she found clear fluctuations in the amount of mining pollution. Would you be able to see changes in the foraminifera assemblages as well? The other project had proven that at least at the surface, you'll find forams and very polluted sediments. 

For now, she is focusing on using Lydia's samples to get an idea of how many forams are in there in the first place. When we have a clear idea we can either go into the field and get her own samples, or we will have to sit down and redesign the project, because there just aren't enough foraminifera to go around. But luckily, this is a joint project; I am doing this together with my geochemical colleague David. If there aren't enough forams I am afraid there might be some more emphasis on his side of the project! But let's first see what these pilot samples yield. Many, I hope!

The first foram found! Pic by my student.

Trying to renew my car sharing scheme membership

It was only last year that I joined the local car sharing scheme. It feels so much longer. But with it being more than a year ago now, I did come to the point where the scheme wanted to check my situation. (I wanted to drive to Chester in the shared car but couldn’t.) Once every year, British drivers are asked to log onto the DVLA website (the body that issues driving licenses) and get some code with which the car sharing company could check if they had committed any disconcerting number of traffic offences. People with foreign licenses can’t do this.

I phoned the company to ask what my options were. They said I should go to the post office to have my license verified, so I went to the local supermarket as it has a post office counter. But they said they didn't provide this service, so I would have to go to a real post office.

There is a post office in Menai Bridge, but I didn't go there for a while; I was busy marking. But as soon as the marking was done I popped in, and ask them if they could sort me out. They had no idea what I was talking about. I showed them the webpage where British drivers can go, and they said they did not provide a similar service. I had to go back and phone the car sharing company again.

They said it was not a case of checking for traffic offences; they said I just needed it verified. That the post office can do. So the next working day I went back. I got that sorted, scanned the resulting form in, attached the other sources of information they wanted as well, and hit "send". And then I just had to wait. But not very long. 

The next morning I already had a reply. It had come in the same day! But after my bedtime. These people have strange working hours. The message welcomed me back, and said a new card would be sent to me. Can’t they just reactivate the old one? But ok then. As soon as I have it I will be back in business!