My Monday team conference call started at 7:00pm and I fully expected to be interrupted, but Freewheelers didn't contact me until 8:05pm. During my conference call I was looking out of the window at the worsening weather, which by the time I got outside meant there was ice all over the road and thick layer of hail and snow on top of the bike. A friend called me to say that there had been several accidents on the edge of our village caused by people losing control on the ice. Two wheels and ice don't mix so I called the co-ordinator and told him I was staying put until the situation improved.
Later on things looked much better and a lot of the ice had melted, so at 9:20pm I set off very carefully on the bike.
My first call was to pick up blood samples and MRSA test swabs from West Mendip Hospital in Glastonbury (home of the famous Glastonbury Festival), to be delivered to the pathology and microbiology labs at Musgrove Park Hospital in Taunton. My second job, which I was able to combine to make just one journey from home, was to pick up a set of patient's notes from Bridgwater and take them to the cottage hospital in Wellington. We don't carry patient notes that often due to computerisation of the NHS records system (something that Sun is involved with) and in this case the records had incorrectly been delivered to Bridgwater.
The roads were horrible, I felt the bike slip underneath me several times. I also had to ride through a few hail showers - a deeply unpleasant experience on a bike. I made the deliveries OK though, mopping up the sympathy I got from the nurses at each hospital, and got home safely at 11:50pm. At each pickup and drop off I sent an SMS to the co-ordinator to let him know I was OK. When I got home I told him I wasn't going out again – it just wasn't safe.
Total time on the road 2h30m. Distance covered 87 miles.
