It was a fraught week on the build up to freewheel with lots of things going wrong. Firstly I lost my mobile phone in a cycling related way – in constantly checking my map I had managed to pull my phone out of my pocket so it is now languishing somewhere on the streets of south London. However being without a phone was nothing compared to the events that unfolded later on in the week.
I thought I had found a place to store the bikes so that we could collect them on Sunday morning in time for Freewheel, however that fell through and I started to descend into mild panic. However thanks to an amazing colleague at the Refugee Council, Helen, and her brilliant husband we arranged to pick the bikes up in a van, store them outside their house over the weekend and then drop them off outside our office first thing on Sunday morning. Phew!
No sooner had this problem been solved than another one presented itself. We ordered special t-shirts to wear on Sunday and to be delivered on Friday. By 4.55pm the t-shirts still hadn’t arrived so I had to go to the depot in Bermondsey at about 7pm to pick them up – they couldn’t be redelivered to my house on Saturday as I was having to go to Croydon to pick up my replacement phone.
So, the bikes were fine and the t-shirts were fine my only problem now was how to get myself, my bike, 30 t-shirts and a rucksack full of tools and waterproofs etc to Brixton for 10.15 on a Sunday morning? Fortunately a friend offered to give me a lift, only to call up on Sunday morning at 9.20 to say that her battery was flat. Eek! In a mild panic, after a sleepless night going through all the things that could go wrong, I had to push the bike the 25 minutes to the train station – I have never walked so fast and just made the train into Brixton.
Vanessa
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