Wednesday September 20, 2006

Blood Bike September 20th

An evening cut short.

I got a callout at 8:00pm to go to Weston-super-Mare General Hospital to pickup drugs for a patient in a nursing home in Burnahm-on-Sea. Both are seaside towns that have frankly seen better days. Think of them as the British equivalent of Asbury Park, New Jersey and you will get what I mean.

I got dressed in all my safety gear, hopped on the bike, turned the key and CLICK... Tried again and CLICK... Flat battery! I did a quick mental risk assessment and decided that the best approach for this non-urgent call was to do it on my own bike.

The call itself was pretty routine, it is only 10 miles between Burnham and Weston, but I got to try out the new high power spotlights that I fitted on my BMW R1150GS at the weekend. Very nice!

When I got the nursing home I was surprised to see that it was run by BUPA. BUPA is the largest medical insurance provider in the UK. As a charity worker I find it hard to reconcile doing free delivery work for a company that is hugely profitable. What made it worse was the attitude of the nurse who questioned why she had to sign for the items I was delivering and was quite grumpy that the drugs had taken so long to arrive. Talk about looking a gift horse in the mouth!

Back at home I hook the blood bike up to a battery charger and that is me off duty for the night. No vehicle, no callouts, time for beer - something I cannot normally do when on duty.

Time on the road: 1h35m, Mileage: 34, NHS money saved: £19 (US$35)

Posted by mikebelch ( Sep 20 2006, 10:16:11 PM BST ) Permalink Comments [0]