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You may remember me saying yesterday that I was taking the daughter bed hunting at Ikea in Southampton. Well she did not buy a bed but we came home with a small table, desk chair and a large blue bookshelf and a packet of the famous Ikea meat balls!! After seeing the cost of the beds daughter decided to keep the old bed and buy some furniture for her bedroom. Currently on day 4 of clearing her bedroom………..don’t ask

Despite the clocks changing earlier this morning, I was up and out early on my bike again. Decided to do the Throop loop, remembered to stretch my knee this morning. I was expecting mud and was not disappointed, certain parts of the route were very muddy. At one point I had to negotiate small group of cows (5 cows don’t seem to be enough to be called a herd) that decided the best place to sit was on the path in front of the gate out of their enclosure, fortunately they were not to bothered about some idiot with a mountain bike walking through ankle deep mud!! I was pretty worn out by the time I got home, guess that the mud and the fact that I am still getting back into the swing of riding.

I must admit the weather has been better than I expected this weekend, when I looked earlier in the week it was forecasting rain for the weekend, but apart from a few small shower late yesterday afternoon and the same again now, it has not been a bad weekend weather wise.

6:30am and I am off for an early morning ride, regularly readers of this bolg will know I have been trying to do this early morning ride for a few weeks now and for one reason or another failed to do so. My brain was ready for the ride as I was awake at 5:30am but I decided not to get up until 6am. Got everything ready jumped on the bike and almost woke the street as pain shot through my knee, I had forgotten to stretch my knees before I got on the bike fortunately it was only a short sharp pain and subsided within the first mile.

I decided to ride the heath this morning, as I only wanted to do a short run as this was my first ride in two weeks. Started well, got up the long drag to the main road without to much of a problem. The first section of the heath was in a better condition than I had expected considering the rain we have had, the condition on the rest of the ride were what I had expected – mud. It was not long before I was wondering where my energy had gone, my legs were like lead. I had already to decided to take a the short route home. This saved having to try climbing a large hill which I generally have to walk anyway. But I even had to walk up the hill on the short route which I normally clear with ease. I’m just glad I decided not to ride the other route I was considering this morning, the Throop loop (22 miles), I thought about riding this as the weather tomorrow was looking iffy.

The other reason I was out early is we have to go bed hunting for the daughter and she wants to go to Ikea in Southampton, oh joy………………..

It was a tough one to make, for many years my main hobby was traction kite flying, I enjoyed it a lot, it was the first hobbies we did as a family. But over the past few years it has got more difficult to get out and fly. There are less sites where I can fly, my nearest beach I can fly at is 2.5hrs away in north Devon and many of the events I used to enjoy are no longer running. At the same time as I was flying less I wanted to update my equipment, but it is hard to justify spending a couple of thousand pound on new kites when I only to use them a handful of times a year.

So last weekend I made the decision to leave the sport. The decision to sale all my kites and equipment was a tough one to make, I have been putting off making that decision for a while now. I came close to it this time last year but decided to stay with the sport hoping that I would be able to get out and fly more often. The start of the year (2009) started well with more flying done, but the chances faded away as the year went on and the kites equipment continued to sit there gathering dust.

So I made a list of my kites and equipments earlier this week and posted it on one of the kite forums. I then realised I had made one of the most basic errors, I had no photographs of the kite or equipment. While I have photographs from over the years showing my kites etc. flying, but the norm when you sale kites is to take a few close up shot of the kite on the floor to show the condition of the kite, so that my weekend job (with a forecast of wind and rain!!).

We are going to keep a couple of kites so that we can have a play and I will still pop along to my local field and do some photography so I am not completely leaving the scene.

The picture above was taken by the wife in July last year on my last but one trip out in the buggy at our local field.

My intentions are to concentrate more on the mountain biking now. Once the wife has recovered from the knee injury she got on her last ride (or should that be crash) a couple of weeks ago we shall venture out into the locals countryside and do some more exploring.

Weather permitting I will get out on the bike this weekend, either way it is going to be a mud fest……

Despite the fact that I suffered from man flu (still am) and wandered around like a bear with a sore head, despite the fact that I did not do the early morning ride (twice!) and despite the fact that I did not ride at all over the weekend, the first time in 6 months, it was a good week. Why? well it seems that eating a couple of large cookie, scoffing some of the kids sweets and eating my own a large packet of Liquorice Allsorts, I still managed to lose a pound on the scales to night, so yes it was a good week.

To be honest I was surprised, I was hoping to maintain and expecting a pound on so a pound off was a bonus. 18st 6.5lbs at the moment, lightest I have been for a long time but no where near light enough yet. Not sure if I will make the 17st 7lb mark by early May as I had hoped for, but I am still going to press on.

I felt this week has been that good that I should post a tranquil type picture to offer the post calmness and serenity…………..yeah right!! I took this picture a couple of years ago in the woods on the other side of the local heath that I often ride, I think I got the sun star more by luck than intention.

I must admit it has been several month since I took my camera out (proper digital SLR, not a compact). But I find with the cycling it is to dangerous to carry the camera for free of falling of the bike hence the reason I normally carry a compact around with me when I am riding.

In the past much of my photography has been kite sports related (another one of my hobbies) but since taking up mountain bike riding I have not really got the camera out. Hopefully as the better weather rolls in I will get the camera out.

As forecasted, it rained relentlessly on Saturday. My intention of staying in bed all day went out the window because I was required to be the family taxi driver. Had to drive the wife into town early and then sit there watching the rain fall as we had arrived early and there was no where for her to wait.

OK so I will have a lie in on Sunday, did not go to bed till nearly 1:00am, that should make me sleep and it did, until 7:20am when I woke up, completely wide awake, I got up at 8:00am. At least today it was nice, sunny and warm.

On Friday night, in the vain hope that I might just ride this weekend I decided to fix the puncture I found on Tuesday morning. That was easy enough, as I was about to put the wheel back on the bike I noticed, well felt, that the front wheel was not spinning smoothly, a quick loosening of the axle indicated orange grease…………that orange rusty coloured grease. I picked up some grease on Saturday but due to one thing and another I did not do the hub bearings until Sunday morning. Unfortunately once I had cleaned, greased and reassembled the hub it did not feel much better than when I took it apart, will have to keep an eye on that. The only riding I did was a couple of short runs up and down the pavement just to make sure things felt alright on the bike. I think had I done a short ride to day I may not have been to bad, my cold seem to be going but then I thought that around Thursday but it still here.

I have now got a pair of tyres for the sponsored ride at the end of April, got a second hand pair of Continental Sport Contact. these have hardly been worn so should serve me well for the one ride.

I decided to make the most of my enforced lay off and the good weather this morning to do a little gardening. There were a couple of large bushes that were slowly encroaching on to the drive so it was about time for a short back and sides for them. Spent an hours cutting them down to size and a further hour clearing up the mess. We could not go anywhere as I was waiting for the above mentioned tyres to be dropped off so at least I put the time to good use.

We had been promising the son that we would take him to Throop Mill to feed the ducks for a few weeks, so having an hour to spare once the tyres had been dropped off this afternoon we thought it was a good time to feed the ducks. Now for the past couple of months I have cycled past this mill on my Sunday morning ride there has been loads of ducks there. We got there late afternoon and it looked more like a duck feeding massacre had taken place. There were more pieces of bread floating on the water and laying of the bank side than there were ducks, even the seagulls were not interested. I can’t remember the last time we threw the bread in the bin on the way back to the car. We past a dad with his young son on the way to feed the ducks, I did not have the heart to tell him the ducks were not interested.