Friday January 30th 2009. Launch -76 days.

You have good days. You have bad days. This was not one of my better ones. It ended with my first important crash with the bicycle and one that left me shocked and shaken but, fortunately, without worse consequences than that.

It’s Friday. It’s been a hard week. And I’m tired. Things started badly by oversleeping a bit… I just didn’t hear the radio when it came on. But an accelerated departure allowed me to arrive by 09:30. We ended up starting with a working coffee: there was plenty to discuss and it was anything but wasted time.

Once in my office, part of my job description is to do the sort of low-level administration that takes the load off our Operations Manager and allows him to concentrate on what is really important. A lot of it is actually quite interesting and requires an eye for detail and some organisation. Today was no exception: compiling work rosters, updating the information on the notice board, answering questions from the team, organisational tasks, acting as a sounding-board… you name it, I do it.

Meanwhile, I got involved in an exchange of e-mails with Flight Dynamics at Mission Control. On Wednesday there had been no opportunity for a discrete conversation. I called my counterpart at Mission Control, who I get along with very well and described the problem. He made some suggestions and put me in contract with the right person from Flight Dynamics. This morning the engineer from Flight Dynamics answered with an extremely helpful email, so we agreed on what to do and when. It’s also agreed that the plan is top secret: reactions won’t be authentic if people know what is going to hit them and so they won’t be so prepared when the real thing hits them during the mission, as we know that it will.

After that things went downhill somewhat. Some rather optimistic noises had been made about getting promoted to reflect my new responsibilities (it was offered, I had not asked at any point). It turns out that, having talked to the administrators of my contract, there is no realistic possibility of any kind of promotion. Having got my hopes up, this was a blow to my morale. However, in a crisis, with unemployment rising, anyone should just be damned glad to have a good job although, at the back of my mind is the knowledge that if that rocket blows up on the launch pad, unemployment will be swift.

The afternoon was rounded-off by a master class in how our systems work so that I can start to get ready to take them on. It was tough going and, as I was tactfully told, we have barely started. Fascinating, but tough. Question: am I really up to this task? The answer will come soon enough.

Despite feeling really tired and somewhat depressed, I ended up leaving work quite late – after 20:30 – for various reasons. Being on a bike you feel vulnerable, so I will not leave in twilight: I either leave when I can arrive in daylight, or only just after sunset, or when it is completely dark and so lights are effective. I have good lights both on the bike and on my high-visibility helmet, wear a high-visibility jacket and armbands and a blinking red light both on back of the helmet and the back of the bike. The rule is that other road users need to be able to see me and to have no excuse not to see me clearly. With a wide hard shoulder for the bike on the stretch where there is a lot of traffic, there is only one really conflictive point on the route where I have to cross a busy traffic stream onto a roundabout to get onto that road. Anyway, last night I was a couple of kilometres from home, going up a moderately hard slope when suddenly two cyclists appeared in front of me coming the other way. They were side-by-side on the hard shoulder, had no lights and were wearing dark clothing and going against the traffic. I had no time even to reach for the brakes before going into them. I was flung over the handlebars, into the road, but fortunately there were no cars passing at that moment and made a good landing and, of course, not being Lance Armstrong, was not going so fast at the time. And of course, they had no idea why I had not seen them! Idiotic behaviour, which was a danger to themselves and to other road users. If they want to kill themselves, that’s their decision, but don’t try to kill me at the same time.