A Day

7.45 am. beep-fucking-beep. Find my phone... snooze. Repeat until 8.03. Finally my brain realises I have to get up and drag myself from slumber. Peek through the curtains to check the weather... lately this has been a depressing start to the day, wind and rain being a dominant trend.
The hunt for clean clothes begins, it's all about looking good after all... Next on the list, coffee. My lifeblood. Without my beautiful cup of coffee in the morning I don't think I'd ever be able to leave the house.
8.45am Bag on, radio on, call into base. Never really get any work at this stage so it's out to the garage to clean my bike. Then roll towards town. By the time I get to the base I'm generally awake and have had a couple of run-ins with pedestrians/motorists/swans. Time for coffee number 2...
First runs of the day are generally fun unless it's pissing rain, in which case I'm bitter about every job for a while. Cruising around Dublin 2 early in the morning is fun when the sun is shining and everyone else is making their way into their office space for the day.
11-11.30am Coffee number 3. This time with a cigarette and a pastry of some sort. This is generally the first food to pass my lips. I'm rubbish at eating in the mornings and it's only around this time that I can stomach any food. Enough to keep me going till lunch, and stave off the grumpiness that generally approaches around this time specifically because I haven't eaten anything up to this point. I like having coffee around the docks, it's sweet to sit by the river and look up towards the city. Dublin can look pretty at these times.
1.30-2pm Lunch. These days it's only about a 30 minute lunch, which consists of eating some overpriced excuse for a sandwich from Leeson st. I hate queueing with a passion so I just find the place with the smallest one and take whatever I can. A few minutes to digest and it's back on the road, a muffeled cry of 'Next!' from my base controller telling me to get my ass in gear.
I suck in the afternoons. For some reason I do way less work later in the day, I don't find it as much fun. There are more people on the streets and therefore more chances of hitting someone/being hit.
5pm Work begins to slow down, or I start hiding from work. The streets get crazy at this time with people leaving work. Town becomes a nightmare to ride around. So many cars, so many pedestrians, all in a rush to get home. This part of the day always makes me a little angry. I feel like 'what are these people doing on my streets? Where were they all day? I was here, working, this is my space. How dare you just come out of your office and assume you can walk out in front of me/not indicate/open your door in traffic. I've been out here for 8 hours, this is MY space, these are MY streets!' So it's a bit silly, but hey I can't help the way I feel sometimes.
6pm Hometime. The sweet, sweet click of turning my radio off for another day. Bye-bye base controller, bye-bye city. Leaving the streets behind for the evening, satisfied with a job well done. No crashes+no fuck-ups=job satisfaction. Ride home with the wave of commuting cyclists, taking tows from those who think they're really fast and wanna beat the messenger. That's fine, I'll draft you all the way up the canal, makes my ride home a lot easier. In the door for coffee number 4, at least. Internet on, feet up, assume the position. If I have the energy to change my clothes first I will as it makes me feel like a new person to get out of my work clothes. You actually feel like you can do something constructive with your evening if you're in new clothes by 7pm. Early in the week i just chill though. A bit of work on the CMWC, some emails, some myspace. Followed by an episode of CSI or somesuch... Easy on the brain.
By 11pm I'm fading, eyes getting heavy, time to hit the sack. Attempt to get clothes ready for the next day, charge my radio, but mostly forget. Crash into bed with some soothing tunes and away we go to dreamland for a while... only to be shaken from my reverie by that incessant beep-fucking-beep...