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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.

One of the last rides in my buggy

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……