Ooops! I SPICED it again

Time for another attempt at a S.P.I.C.E event.

The mission this time: Go to the park. Where they have segways. Experience the future of transportation.... or not given they're actually illegal to use on anything other than private land.

First challenge: Go to the park. Easy! Tap postcode in sat nav, drive!

Oh, there's a nice lady who wants £5.50 to park my car in her car park. I think I've discovered where the national trust gets all it's money from. She gives me a glossy leaflet, and the hard sell. If I join the national trust today not only will I get my £5.50 back, and not have to pay if I come again, but I can also have a free ticket to tonight's concert. Hmmmmm.... who is at said concert?
Ah.... headlined by 'level 42'. National trust membership £50. Er... no thank you.

Next challenge: Meet at the segway van in the centre of the park. Define centre? Said park has lots of trees, so visibility is less than 100 yards.

Eventually I stumble on said van, for my bonus challenge! The other spice people are there. For reasons unknown they assume I am the segway man. er, no, no I'm not. So plz to stop asking me questions.

The real segway man arrives soon after, on a segway. It is explained that you stand on it, and how to make it move. I miss a lot of the explaining, as I'm too busy struggling with the compulsory (too small) head protection. Curse my big head!

I climb aboard, and it wobbles around randomly in a quite alarming fashion. I'm suddenly 12 again on a skateboard going down a big hill and trying to remember how to stop. We are told to experiment in going about said field for about 3 minutes. I move in circles at 0.5 mph. This is not too bad....

Segway man says "follow me" and blasts off at 12mph flat out. Oh. I follow more slowly. Plz to not let it be me that crashes first...... and it isn't! MS. overconfident hits a post with it. Yay! I'm not the first to fail!

Five minutes later and I'm actually feeling a lot better. It's quite instinctive, basically lean the direction you want to go. The more you put your weight forwards the faster it goes. Simples!

Segway man (the bastard) decides to make it harder. Right turn into the woods. Lets off road! Try not to hit things! Bastard!

Confidence comes back after a while, which is a good thing as he's had the idea of going faster around all these trees. The woman I'm following (Rose) is obviously not too comfortable at speed, but is attempting to keep up with SMTB.
It all goes wrong in that slow motion fast sort of way when Rose drives into a bloody great big tree at warp factor 5. I get a prime view of her being thrown off, flying thru the air into spiky bushes. Fortunately I don't make things worse by running over her as well. I get off the damn thing and express concern for injury. Eventually SMTB realises two of his machines are missing, and returns to see if we have stolen them.
She has a rapidly swelling knee, and is in shock but bravely/stupidly gets back on. We continue at more sensible speeds for the remaining 30 mins.

Post segway comes the final challenge: Food + talking. Very hard!
Makes note to self if I'm going to do this sort of thing I need some 'interesting' stories of how brilliant I am, and all the places I've been if I am to fit in. Nah, bugger that! Accept me as who I am, or don't.

Overall SPICE score: Baby Spice.

Epilogue:
Next day my legs ache a lot. I email Rose to enquire about her health. The end.

Heart of glass

Soon turned out to be a pain in the ass.

I am to embark on a journey into terror. I have booked an event with the SPICE people.

Date: Friday evening.
Place: York racecourse.
Doing: Socialise. Watch donkeys race. Afterwards 'concert' by Ms. D. Harry.
Dress code: Smart casual. Dream on dead guys!

If that wasn't frightening enough in itself, Ma Ma informs me Idiot Girl is going racing with the 'rite keg krew' soon.
Nah, it won't be...... but just in case, er, ask her when / where will you?

Yes, it bloody is! Idiot Girl and her spacker friends are only going to the very same event. Fear rating has moved to defcon one. Repeat, we are at defcon one! Full fear arsenal ready for deployment.

Fortunately Ma Ma had the sense not to tell Idiot Girl I am going too. No doubt she will be propping up the bar as no 'rite keg' is complete without excessive drunkenness. So if I avoid the bars I should avoid her.

I also have my own ticket, and a rendezvous point. So in theory if I spot the SPICE people, and they are obvious mongs, I can avoid them too and enjoy my own company. God, it sounds awful doesn't it?

On the bright side, as I am in York I may as well go early and visit the national rail museum. Yay for trains!



Oh, and can you find a link between Blondie and horse racing? Me neither.....

Top tips on how to behave at horse racing with a group of strangers and fear of the idiot girl are welcome...

Spice or niet?

I will in short order be asking for your valued opinion. I thank you in advance.

It's not been going well with the spice thing. I did the new member's night, which was teaching granny to suck eggs on how to use the interwebs. I then booked "secret tunnels of Manchester walk", "cycling in York" and "crazy golf + laser quest social night".

Manchester, I cancelled (Unexpected hospital appointment)
York, I cancelled. (I assumed you could get there by public transport before noon. WRONG!)
Golf, they cancelled. - Only 3 people wanted to go.

I'm now thinking about giving up Narrow boat day. Or chug chug chug up a canal.

Pros:
Cheap.
Forced to interact with small group (10) for full day.
Potential for pretty countryside.
Relaxing.

Cons:
9 am start. but it's 2 hours drive away. Or 2.5 hours on a train. So really 6am start.
Forced to interact.
Confidence is high for alcohol to be involved, and the 'joy' of explaining to people I don't need to drink to have fun. (For reasons unknown I always get in my head a bit of "we don't have to take our clothes off to have a good time, oh no.", but that suggests cherry wine, so doesn't really help. Stupid brain).
High probability of being wrong class.

So, the question people on the other side of the planet where you prolly don't have canals, yes or no???

Long way down

Saturday! A new SPICE challenge. I'm booked on the "York minster hidden tour".

First problem:
The instructions say 'meet your contact Ian at the entrance to the minster'.

Er, there are approximately 80 people that could be classed as near the entrance. In groups of various size, who keep coming and going in a tourist sort of way. True, I can discount 50% of them if I assume Ian isn't Asian. This isn't going to be easy.

A woman walks past holding what looks like a printout with their logo on it. Said woman then meets a random man. I phone 'Ian'. Random man goes to answer his phone. QED: he is Ian. Just to be sure I say "Are you Ian?". He is. Woo!

Problem 2:
We are now all to go for a 'free' cup of tea. I am stuck with the world's most boring man. He likes skiing. He has nothing else to talk about. I resort to watching out the window at the passing people.

Tour starts. We descend into the vaults with mr & mrs earnest our tour guides. It's all a bit difficult as I think they assume we know anything remotely about how said place works, and it's history. Personally I'm professionally ignorant, as I know 2 things. 1) it was on fire in 1984. 2) I've never been anywhere near it before as parents too tight to pay.

The tour gets more deep, as we are shown hidden bits. That's a bit of 12th century wall, followed by excited description of it's building technique. Yes, it could be said this part was a soupcon dull.

Final problem:


Clicky to get the big picture. Observe how tall the person is at the bottom. Now note how there are smaller windows above the big ones. Yes, they took us up there.

Yes, there's bugger all in the way of stuff to stop you from falling down. (a 3 foot high crappy fence).
Yes, after being warned not to have lose items I dropped my phone. Only onto the ledge, so no one died, but rather embarrassing.
Yes, I got a sudden U2 earworm.... hello, hello, I'm at a place called vertigo... I'm normally fine with heights, but was feeling dizzy for some reason. Better to be back on the ground.

Final score:
Maybe a four. Interaction was poor, but no one died....

Bugger

So I stop working early, and even go so far as to attempt to make myself look civilised. 20 minutes to go before I'm due to go out to the spice new members night I check their website for the Nth time, as I'm paranoid like that.

Good job I did, for it says 'cancelled' in big letters. No phone call, or email to tell me. So if I wasn't paranoid they would have got me.

I am rather annoyed actually. They've wasted my day, got my money, and does this sort of shit happen regularly? I was considering events 2 hours drive away, but if this is how they play it... well, bugger that for a game of soldiers. Will have to await their response to my dude, wtf? email.

I give you lazy blog, for it makes me feel better:

Spice

I've now joined S.P.I.C.E (special programme of initiative challenge & excitement).

New me: ahead, warp factor five mr. Sulu!

So far I've booked 3 events.

1)Make This Year 'The' Year
A 5 hour 'workshop' on attaining your goals, and other medieval underwater basket weaving type topics.

2)Observatory Visit
Or pay to go and look at the stars. I've always been interested in space, but rubbish at it, so could be educational. Or cloudy.

3)New member's social
Meet other new members. Buffet (food + people simultaneously? Sounds terrifying). Further pimpage from them to do more activities.

Also considering the tank paint ball one. Well that or 'drive a steam train', but you get half a day with tanks, and only an hour with a train for the same money. Both are cheaper than 'indoor skydiving' where your £100 gets you FOUR minutes!

Think I'll see if I survive the first round before booking more things. This could be the best or worst thing I've ever done.