Off to Leeds!!

Today had been full of highs and lows. I had been looking forward to our bike ride but it almost didn't go ahead. I was up early to be dragged around Homebase and made it back in time to meet my friend. Then I spent fifteen minutes running round like a headless chicken trying to find various bits and bobs - coat, bottles etc - and finally we were to be on our way. My tyres needed pumping up a bit from when I fixed my bike but then disaster struck. I burst the patch for the puncture. So I went through the palava of removing the old patch and putting on a new one nly to have the same thing happen again. Deciding that the puncture was probably too big to repair, I found my spare inner-tube and proceeded to change it. Guess what happened? I pinched the inner-tube re-attaching the wheel - as I always do - and had to repair that puncture as well. Finally I got it back in the wheel and it pumped up with no problems. We were about an hour behind schedule now and I was in a pretty foul mood; but the sun was out and that cheered me up slightly. It took a further 20 - 30 minutes to get to the canal entrance after having to cross several busy roads (neither of us had helmets so we thought it would be better to stick to the pavements). We then had difficulty finding the canal entrance but managed to find it behind a pub. We were off - or so we thought, 30 seconds later my tyre burst again. Thanks to my friend and a helpful fisherman, we found a bike repair shop just over the road from where we were, the man in the shop was very helpful and told us it would take him about an hour to fix, and that he would replace the inner-tube with a new one rather than repairing the puncture. We decided to have lunch whilst we had the hour to kill and spent most of that time fending wasps away from the coke. The hour passed pretty quickly but just as we were about to leave, it started spitting and within a few minutes, the heavens had opened. By now however, nothing was going to spoil our day and we persevered (by this I mean we hid in the tunnel until the rain died down a bit). It didn't take long, and after a short stop to watch a barge going through the locks, and giving my friends a quick lesson in how they work, we were off again and soon arrived at our planned destination - another pub. We had a quick drink and a bit of a rest, conscious of the huge grey cloud that loomed above. Just as we decided to make a move again, it began to rain. Again. The trip back was less pleasant, and we just kept battling on through the rain which decided to stop just as we got to the end of the canal path. Typical. From there it brightened up bit but by the time we got home we were all very muddy and very wet.

Leeds!

The time is here at last! Tomorrow I will be waking up at a frankly ridiculous time in the morning to make my way up to the festival. This is quite special for me as it is my first taste of a music festival, I know it's not quite the same as going for the whole weekend and seeing the line up, I would loved to have got weekend tickets and seen all of the bands on offer but sadly I will have to make do with just going for a day. Hopefully, everything will go smoothly and I will get to see everyone I want to see and nothing will go wring but short of some sort of miracle, the likelihood of that actually happening is very very slim. I'm pretty sure I'll forget something, hopefully not my ticket but something, and then I've also convinced myself that I'm going to get lost on the way up as well. Thankfully I have 2 other passengers in the car to direct me otherwise I would be really panicking.

List of the bands I'm hoping to see:
The Joy Formidable
Passion Pit
Vampire Weekend
The Gaslight Anthem
Bloc Party
Radiohead
La Roux

Then I will be heading down to Sheffield for the night, saves me driving all the way home because I think I will be fairly exhausted by then.