Monday's commute was miserable: more Boris bike woes

Monday's commute was miserable. In fact, most days are but Monday was particularly bad.

Not content with the fact that my train was 25 minutes late into Paddington (in other words it took twice as long as it should have done; due to '"congestion between Reading and London" - I have never understood how trains get stuck in "traffic", it's not as if you didn't know when to expect them!), I decided to continue on my journey to get fit and go green, and cycle from Paddington to work.

In doing so, I have decided that the Boris bike scheme is utterly, utterly useless. You may have seen my earlier blog post about it. I thought it a waste of time then but not being one to give up first time around, I decided to try again.

First, there are no Boris bikes at Paddington station. A major railway terminus, gateway to the West of England and Wales, connection with the country's busiest airport via the Heathrow Express...? You would have thought this was a prime location for people wanting bikes...? Apparently not. Anyway, I consulted my Boris bike app on the iPhone and went in search of bikes in Winsland Street. None left, although there were only 12 bays in the first place. Okay, onto South Wharf Street. None there either and now even further from the direction I needed to be in. Right. I walk 10 minutes to Southwick Street. Success, 5 bikes free. I eagerly inserted my key fob and waited for the green light. And waited. It flashed amber and then stopped. I tried again. Same thing. I tried another bike. Same again! Hopeless.

Something was clearly wrong. I stood in the street and tried to log on to their website. No data signal on my phone. I tried calling them. There was hardly any voice signal either (come on O2, I was in the middle of the capital for goodness sake). So with the fear of being disconnected at any second and after having negotiated several menu options I get through to... Yes, you've guessed it, a queue. "Due to heavy call volumes, we are currently very busy and will answer your call..." I waited and waited. At risk of losing what signal I had, I began to walk in the loose direction of work. After all, it was now 09:30 and I had left home just after eight.

I gave up on the iPhone app, having realised that it had stopped updating the availability of bikes at 09:05. I hoped I would come across either another row of Boris bikes or a tube station. I walked down Connaught Street and was nearly run over by a big black Range Rover and two Police motorcyclists: Tony Blair was on the move.

At Portman Square I realised I'd missed Marble Arch tube and headed towards Bond Street. "Oh joy!" I exclaimed (well, muttered under my breath really) - Boris bikes and lots of them. One final go, I thought to myself. And low and behold, it worked, the light went green and the bike was mine. Hurray. Off I pedalled.

Now Oxford Street is not exactly bike friendly. Having avoided the many buses which seem to pull out whenever they choose, I then get stuck behind them every 50 metres or so at the many red lights. Finally, there is the abyss of the Cross-rail works at Tottenham Court Road to negotiate.

Finally, I race down Kingsway, almost at work. Pulling into Portugal Street, I had hoped to drop the bike outside LSE's New Academic Building (I'm not sure what they will call the next new building... the "New New..."?). "Here we go again" I thought; all the bays were full. I cycled down the back of the LSE Library - full. Houghton Street - full. Where to next, I pondered? Off down past the law courts and finally a free bay but only because the Boris bike boys were out with their little electric thingy, loading some of the bikes up to move elsewhere. I docked the bike and walked back to work. Journey time to work was 2 hours, 5 minutes. Grrr.

You would think it got better this evening. I left the office just before 7 hoping to make a 7.30 train. Call me a mug (it wouldn't have been the first time) but I decided to cycle again. I mean, it couldn't have been any worse could it...?

Undeterred by the lack of a Boris bike in Houghton Street and at the corner of Aldwych, there were plenty at Convent Garden. I picked one up without issue and pedalled off into the night.

In the Mall I passed a load of flashing blue lights: two Police cars and an ambulance. Sandwiched in the middle was a little red Ford Festa. Then I spotted it, just a glimmer of metal reflected in the dim blue light - the mangled wreckage of a cycle. Oh dear and no sign of the cyclist. I hoped this wasn't a bad omen. I pedalled on.

Boris bikes are far from light and in suit and tie with bag strung over my shoulder, I found the accent up Constitution Hill hard going. The flashing front light offered little by way of illumination as I battled my way through the darkness of Hyde Park. Finally, I emerged out into the relative comfort of street-lit Albion Street and, avoiding a car attempting a multi-point turn in the most ridiculous of places, traced my way back along the route from the morning.

I decided to play safe and drop the bike at Southwick Street, where I had fumed only ten hours earlier. Except I couldnt. The bays were all full. This had bode well. I was 10 minutes walk from Paddington so assumed it would get worse. It did. All the bays in the vicinity were full and I wasn't the only "Boris biker" looking for a bay either. I have identified the fundamental flaw in the scheme: bikes clearly travel in the direction of the commuter and with the limited number of bays near a major commuter-hub, the scheme simply can't cope. I consulted the map in South Wharf Street and found another bike park further up the canal. Finding it proved almost impossible. I navigated around countless one-way systems, building sites, temporary roads and eventually found the bike park and a free bay. And then the walk back to Paddington Station. Despite a new and helpful bridge across the canal, I still had to retrace my steps down London Street, walking parallel to the track, right back to the main entrance of the station. The result: I'd long ago missed the 7.30, got there just as the 7.45 was pulling out, and raced to get on the 7.48. Unusually, I did get a seat, sinking my sweaty body into the back rest, iPhone in hand, writing this, when I heard over the PA "I am sorry but we are awaiting the driver on a late-running in bound service and will be late leaving this evening..." Typical.

I got home at 8.50, too late for the gym. I have got to find a better way. Perhaps I should try motorbiking again. At least I would be in control. Although you now have to pay for parking in Westminster. If I could afford to I would sit in my the sumptuous leather of my Jag, only there would be nowhere to park.

Oh well, what will Tuesday bring?

Isolated - 3 days with no phone nor Internet connection

I breathe a huge sigh of relief as I fire up Safari and see a Google search page appear. My Internet connection is working again. Life continues.

Last Saturday I went to make a phone call using my landline - something I only do at the weekends because I get free calls then. I use my mobile at all other times as I have so many inclusive minutes in my tariff that it would seem silly not too. Except of course when I can't but more on that in a minute. Anyway, back to making this phone call... The line was dead. Nyet. Nada. Now I have one of those fancy Bang and Olufsen cordless phones (a gift from my sister I hasten to add). I assumed it must be that the clever phone wasn't working, so went in search of my trustee old "plug the wire in and lift the handset" kind of phone. Nope, that didn't work either. Hmm. I tried all the sockets in the house. All dead. But my Internet connection was still okay - I have broadband supplied by O2 but dependent on my BT landline of course. I rang my father, as I usually do when i have problems of a technical or electrical nature. He'd know what to do. His suggestion was that I try unplugging everything and starting again, in case one device was causing a problem. That sounded perfectly sensible and was precisely what I did. Of course this was the point at which my Internet connection went the same way as the dial tone. Dead. Oh dear. Now I had nothing. By this time, I was running late for an appointment and had to head off out. As I emerged from my side street I became accutely aware of a number of BT Openreach vans parked up on the side of the road with men working at one of the those green boxes (look here if you ever wondered what they were for). Coincidence? I doubted it but hoped that whatever the problem, they would soon have it fixed.

When I returned later that evening there was still no phone and still no Internet. The first place I turn to for help (and I suspect a lot of you do too) is the web: usually Google.  Life with no Internet was going to be tough. Of course the more astute of you (and those who know me) would have commented "but what about your iPhone or you iPad... can't you use those?" The iPad is wifi only - I couldn't justify the extra expense of a 3G enabled one and then there is the whole issue of a mobile data tariff. And the iPhone? Something happened back in September whereby the O2 signal strength in my area of Reading plummeted from 4-5 bars to often only one. 3G is similarly noticeable by its absence. In fact I frequently drop calls made from home on  my iPhone. I'll leave it to you to ponder whether it's the phone or network. Either way, it's not that useful. In fact, it was the whole reason for getting one of these free-call packages from BT. (Oh, by the way there is a sting in that tail... I received my phone bill the other month having used my landline to make a couple of local calls outside of my "free time" and was charged at more than £0.20 per minute!)

So, no phone, no Internet. I rang BT. Or a tried. You can't ring a free-phone 0800 number from a mobile, or at least not for free. O2 told me to drop the initial 0 and dial again, pointing out that I would be billed for the call at my standard rate. BT then suggested (having apparently noticed that I was calling from a mobile) that I should redial using an 030 number. Why didn't they print that in the back of the BT bill too? Having pressed 1, 1, 2, 1, (or some other combination) plus entering my home number and my mobile number, I eventually get to "speak" to a machine. The machine tells me it was going to check my line and I shouldn't hang up. Okay, I don't. But I did have to listen to recorded messages telling how much I can do via the Internet. Except I couldn't of course - I didn't have a phone line! Finally, the machine concluded that I did have a fault "somewhere between the Exchange and my property" which would require an engineer to sort out and would take 3 working days to fix. I opted to receive updates by SMS and wondered how I would cope for a full four more days without the Net (Sunday not being counted as a working day). My iPhone chimed (text messages seem to come through okay) and the text from BT said that my fault would be fixed in 10 days and not in the initial three!! Now I began to panic. I opened a bottle of wine and sat down in front of the TV.

I've not been viewing much broadcast TV. There never seems to be much on. Or at least not after the News at Ten, when I finally get in from work and the gym. I'd become accustomed to BBC iPlayer/ITV Player on the PS3 and to downloading/renting content on the Apple TV. Neither of these now worked, of course. In fact, I became accutely aware of just how much I depended on the Internet. No access to the Remote Desktop at work (and I've been trying lately to reduce the amount of stuff I print out so it's all online only). No online banking. No chatting to friends on MSN/Skype. No looking up those random thoughts on Wikipedia. Life seemed suddenly very dull without the Net. I got up and raided the DVD drawer instead. Fortunately, I had a collection of BlueRays given to me for Christmas that I'd not yet watched.

Sunday was a day spent on my motorbike. I coach bikers to help them pass their advanced bike test via the Thames Vale Advanced Motorcyclists - one of the biggest bike clubs in the country. Needless to say it rained later in the day and I got drenched. On Monday I was back at work and fully connected again. The iPhone and iPad apps were duly updated, Twitter feeds refreshed and life returned to its normal digital self. I was out Monday and on Tuesday received a wonderful text message from BT - all had been fixed, apparently.

I raced home after work with the expectation of being connected to the outside world again. And sure enough, I had a dial tone. I rebooted routers, wireless hubs, plugged back in clever phones and restarted Apple TV, PS3, laptop and all the other connected devices. Did it work? No!!! Bizarrely, and I've still not worked out why, only the left hand phone socket of the double-sockets I have in each room now works. I swapped the socket that my ADSL router plugs into and it all came back to life. On the basis that it all now works, I've decided to leave well alone. I don't need that many phone sockets anyway!

Walk, don't cycle - it's quicker! (My first time using a Boris bike)

So last night I thought I'd finally try a Boris bike. Actually, I had tried to use one before but my membership had not registered properly as the day after I got my new 'fob' the light wouldn't 'go green' and release the bike. I forgot about it with the bad weather before Christams and remained a 'Boris virgin' until now.

It was only supposed to be a short ride. No seriously, I just wanted to get from the LSE in Houghton Street to Waterloo station. I normally walk and it takes about 15 minutes. Last night I thought I would save a bit of time and take a bike. My key fob worked flawlessly this time and the Boris bike was mine. I strapped my bag to the front (note to self: Gucci may not be the ideal biking bag... especially with a bottle of wine in it!), raised the saddle (I'm a lanky lad), and set off.

The ride across the bridge was uneventful and I arrived outside Waterloo station a few minutes later. Terrific. Now where to leave the bike? I soon found the row upon row of Boris bikes outside the station approach. But not a single docking station free. No problem, I thought... ride around and find another. Surely, there must be loads of docking points in the vicinity of a major railway hub? I soon found one south of the station, just off Baylis Road. But they were all full too. So I went to the docking station, inserted my fob and secured my additional 15 minutes of free riding time. Looking at the map nearby showed there was another docking point back up the way I had come in Stamford Street. Off I pedalled.

Of course, I hadn't realised that Stamford Street was closed to traffic eastbound, so a bit of walking and some pavement pedalling (I know, I'm sorry, but by this time I was more than a little frustrated) led me to the next Boris bike park; which was also full! To quote a certain grumpy old man... 'I don't believe it!'

Finally, I find a single spare slot at a bike park down the back of Meymott Street. I park up, leave the dreaded Boris bike behind and walk to Southwark station where I continued by journey by tube.

So my "quick ride" actually took me 40 minutes, 25 minutes longer than had I just walked to Waterloo.

The moral? Walk don't cycle. It's quicker! (At least on a Boris bike)