Tea and Cakes and Inspiration
Friday, October 5th, 2012 07:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tourmalineWe had a change to the routine at work this afternoon, as a bunch of us in my team attended a lecture given in memory of our late Chief Executive, who died a year ago. It was held at Birmingham Botanical Gardens, and luckily a colleague volunteered to drive - as we ended up travelling through a few underpasses in Birmingham city centre and down Broad Street, I was quite relieved. The Botanical Gardens were very nice, although we didn't get to see a great deal, it was clear there's plenty to see on a more general visit.
The guest speaker was Karen Darke, winner of a silver medal at the Paralympics in the hand cycling time trial, and was fourth (fractionally behind team-mate Rachel Morris, they crossed the line joining hands & registered the same time) in the H1-3 road race. She talked about her life and career, about mountaineering both before and after she broke her spine, and about getting involved in paracycling and making the team for London 2012. While I didn't get to meet her properly (nor did I get to meet our late CEO's father or sister, nor some of the other people in attendance I would've liked to) I did see her Paralympic medal up close:
It's very heavy! I guess for people like Sarah Storey who won several medals, all the training for their sport gives them the serious neck & shoulder muscles necessary to wear multiple medals at once for more than a minute.
After the talk, we all had tea and cakes (ie coffee, a little sandwich and two little cakes in my case). The plan is for this to be an annual lecture event, and in a bigger venue next year as there were lots of people who really wanted to attend but had prior arrangements. I think today it got off to an excellent start.
The guest speaker was Karen Darke, winner of a silver medal at the Paralympics in the hand cycling time trial, and was fourth (fractionally behind team-mate Rachel Morris, they crossed the line joining hands & registered the same time) in the H1-3 road race. She talked about her life and career, about mountaineering both before and after she broke her spine, and about getting involved in paracycling and making the team for London 2012. While I didn't get to meet her properly (nor did I get to meet our late CEO's father or sister, nor some of the other people in attendance I would've liked to) I did see her Paralympic medal up close:
It's very heavy! I guess for people like Sarah Storey who won several medals, all the training for their sport gives them the serious neck & shoulder muscles necessary to wear multiple medals at once for more than a minute.
After the talk, we all had tea and cakes (ie coffee, a little sandwich and two little cakes in my case). The plan is for this to be an annual lecture event, and in a bigger venue next year as there were lots of people who really wanted to attend but had prior arrangements. I think today it got off to an excellent start.
