I've been offered a job pending reference checks. It's a good job, 4-6 weeks with excellent pay and lovely offices. A fair hike out of the city which means driving and therefore no incidental exercise, but I can work around that with gym workouts and such.

The sticking pointing is the 'pending references' part of it. My supervisor from last job has, as they say on 24, gone dark. I rang him just the other day because my temp agency, after sending me out on a week's assignment, decided they should do a referee check. He was happy to give me a reference and his phone was working just fine. Now he's out of contact! Argggh.

My plan B reference has left his job so I called plan C. He's on leave until Tuesday! Oh noes. Oh, did I mention they want me to start on Monday or Tuesday... mmmm. Well Tuesday now. It's a worry. To make it harder, my old supervisor only works part time so is hard to contact except by mobile. The plan of attack now is to ring the switchboard on Monday and try to track him down. Failing that, I'll see if I can get someone else there to give me a reference.

The other thorny issue is that I've agreed to do 2 weeks temp work starting Monday. Oh noes! Now to put things in perspective, the new job is 2-3 times longer and pays 150% more than the temp work so it's no contest but if I have to pull out of the assignment, I reckon the temp agency will take me off their books. Again, in the grand scheme of things, no biggie. There are so many temp agencies out there. But I hate letting people down with a passion. Still big bucks are big bucks.

On to sunny things - since my legs felt ordinary, I skipped my long run today. I'll make it up tomorrow. Instead I went for a bike ride. Yah! I went along the Merri Creek trail, thinking it's really flat. It's not good when being confidence-lacking bike rider to suddenly realise you have on one side of you a massive drop down to a rocky creek bed! But I did okay. The score so far:

Bike rides: 2 Bike accidents: 0

Woohoo! I did adventurous things too like riding on the flat without the brakes on and riding down little hills instead of walking. Some of the hills I walked down but then again, I walk down them when I'm running cos they are so steep. Oh yeah, and went I see a pothole, instead of thinking 'yikes, I'm going to crash!', I think 'yikes, this will kill my butt!'

Kathy: I was going to say my bike doesn't have gears but maybe it does. There are some lever things near the handlebars. Are they gears? Stop laughing. My last bike was my purple Malvern Star when I was 10. I'm still trying to deal with handlebar brakes instead of pedal ones.

Is it wrong that I can run faster than I ride? Oh well better to be slow than have a broken collarbone.

Today I checked out the website for the Great Victorian Bike. Yeah, I know I've only actually ridden my bike twice but it's not until November. I can train a lot before then and it's a nice week's holiday. I'd like to do it if I can get my friends (and champion tent-putter-uppers) to come with me.