Bacon on a bicycle wheel...

I've got a busy few weeks - and even months - coming up.  Starting tomorrow when I need to send off my application to the Institution of Civil Engineers to sit my Chartered Professional Review.  I sit the review in October, but between now and then I need to decide what the future holds for me...

You see the powers that be have decided to close the Leeds office and make my role redundant.  I'm working remotely in a client's office so the next time I visit the Leeds office, I'll be there with a large cardboard box picking up all my shit... and a shedload of stationery.  Allegedly.  So what next?

I read in Cycling News today that Alberto Contador has severed his ties with Kazakh-funded Astana and joined Saxo Bank.  The magazine also reports that the Brothers Schleck (Frank and Andy) will be leaving Saxo Bank to ride with a Luxembourg-based team in 2011.  If anyone hears what team that will be, can you please let me know?  If I don't find another job in engineering (possibly through lack of trying) or I struggle to fund 6 months worth of travelling, I could be the Super Domestique to Frank's and Andy's grimpeurs in this so-far-enigmatic Luxembourg Pro Cycling team.  And then I could wake up and realise I'm still unemployed.

So I've been pondering some REAL options:

1. find another job in civil engineering in the UK - might be difficult.

2. find another job in civil engineering outside the UK - the opportunities are there, but it's a big move.

c. use my transferable skills to start afresh in another direction - which direction?

IV. take 6 months out and do some travelling funded by my redundancy package.

5. an epic bike ride for charity, writing about it along the way... I could use this to get my foot in the door at a magazine.

Plenty of research to do, but with breathing space until mid-November.  I'll be honest; 4 and V are my favourites... I need to let 'me' out for a bit.

No cycling this evening as I felt rotten when I got home from work... totally drained and for once I listened to my body and had a day off.  Out tomorrow though come wind or rain; ~2hrs either a long flat one or a short lumpy one  - that's enough for a weekday night, leave the long lumpy ones for the weekends!

I've written enough so I'll let you go.

Ben

PS. if the driver of the red Toyota Aygo happens to be reading; the accelerator pedal is on the far right and on the A628 between Ackworth and Pontefract you're allowed to do 60mph.  You won't save the planet by holding people up.