A man has needs...

...and currently those are
Winter shoes (on order stock "expected soon")
Winter socks (nice merino ones I think)
Mud tyres (on order)
Windproof jacket (to replace my aged aldi jacket, altura reflex?)
Winter gloves (errr..)
Better fitness and a healthy dose of MTFU :-)
Royal mail strikes won't be helping with obtaining some of these items but I've not got time to physically go shopping.

Tonight's gonna be a good night

Weather was decent yesterday and I was looking forward to the planned night ride, cracking night for it, clear and mild and rivi was heaving (well for a weekday night) high powered lights everywhere. Nice little route including down wildeswood twice and back up it once and some cheeky stuff I've not done in ages. Was a bit wet but nowt too bad, the kennel run had mud but not too deep and not too slick, just thick enough for comedy handling, good practice :-) Wildeswood is standing up as well as ever, just some mud on the high speed corner before going under the trees to give you a bit of a scare. Only 23miles, felt like more, legs were achey afterwards, it's taking a while to get used to commuting again.

That Monday morning feeling

Got up and out on time this morning, chain was clunking a bit, thought it was the freewheel bearings getting sloppy and the chain not meshing properly but on closer inspection it turned out that an outer chain plate had broken - ah, not good. Back home then, pinch a couple of links of new chain and sort it. Quick fix but all the messing about delayed me by 45 mins by which time the traffic was a lot busier than normal, good job it's half term or it would have been even worse. Still not managed to get my hands properly clean.

Oh yeah and I'd forgotten but my pompino is over 12months old now. It's been OK, new brakes(cos I can't be arsed setting up cantis), tyres and BB is not bad going (Yes that humvee destroyed my back wheel too but thats hardly "wear and tear" is it?)

I R Big Jessy

When Charlie was born he was too lazy to feed so he became jaundiced, this required an extended trip to the hospital and quite a few blood tests, this involved cutting his heel then depending on the nurse doing it gently coaxing some blood out or bending his foot so far up towards his shin I thought his foot would break. Anyway thanks to this I now know the most gut wrenching thing in the world is listening to your child cry from genuine pain (as opposed to crying cos they are hungry, hot, cold, dirty or just plain bored) Anyway I was trimming Charlies nails last night, he keeps trying to scratch his face (can you see where this is going yet?) as I clipped his thumbnail he started crying, looking down I saw I'd caught a bit of skin and made a small cut on his thumb. Aaaargh! He stopped crying pretty quick but that didn't stop me feeling like a crap dad for the rest of the night. Kids are painful - oh and I'm never cutting his nails again.

Back on the horse

Rode into work today for first time since fatherhood began, lovely way to ease me into it again, bit wet but not bad and cold enough so I could actually wear my wet weather gear but more importantly NO murder attempts, which was nice.

Good/Bad

Awesome my fave online game ever* now available to everyone with just a browser plugin, not actually got chance to play a match yet but did a little of the training and it looks like the real thing.

Not so awesome Ti 456s for only £800, on one are tempting me with their top dog hardtail again.
Want? very much so.
Need? erm...?
Must resist.

*well ok the only one I've ever played much

Ride, rest, ride, rest blah blah

Out for a night ride last night with Junkyard, Si and Trio, wasn't bad despite it being nice all day and raining as soon as I left the house. Was very mild so we were all a bit hot, but thankfully no wind. Misty at the top of winter hill, we had planned (OK I had planned) to do belmont descent then back up and down the steep bit to belmont old road and lead mines clough. A few flats on belmont and nobody fancying riding back up mean't backup the road instead and as it was getting so late no LMC either. Decent ride tho, good laugh. Have done a few more rides but to be honest nowt spesh happened and it was same old rivi/winterhill/darwen so nothing to write about, not sure I can even be bothered to map them out. Back at work now so normal service should be resumed shortly :-)

Ooooh!

Don't kids pull funny faces, Charlie looking very photogenic :-) I do seem to spend a lot of time laughing at him.

Ooooh!, originally uploaded by D0NK.

Pain is just weakness leaving the body

Cool! In that case I just got rid of a metric shitload. Got out for a few hours today, did pretty much the same route as my solo nightride a few weeks ago but added the ice cream run and the rocky singletrack downhill on darwen moor we did on the STW route way back in spring, no wonder it was carnage, it's pretty tech. Ice cream run was a lot smoother today, dry trails, daylight and being on my kinesis meant it was something to enjoy rather than just hang on and get down it in 1 piece. Bonked pretty hard on the way home, was expecting my usual pre-ride big bowl of porridge to get me through, I didn't take any food, bad move. Necked a gel on darwen moor to perk me up but when that ran down I slammed even harder. Pedalling back home was really quite painful. Time to gorge on tea and cake :-)

Foul

Wednesday saw my first proper offroad ride since Charlie put in an appearance, I was quite excited about it, was suffering from ride deprivation, last week a fellow rider (who will remain anonymous to save his embarassment) text to say the trails were dry and in a good state, I had to resist calling him and in a premium rate phoneline style asking, "how dry are they? Are they hard? Are they dusty? Do they...*whimper*...flow?" Ahem, anyway wednesday came and what an awful day, was miserable raining all day. I set out to meet the lads at 6 and it was chucking it down so I was pretty soaked by the time I got to the barn at 7. Oh yeah and I was dying on my arse climbing barrow bridge and winterhill, 2 weeks is a long time to be off the bike.
Simon, Junkyard, Grumm and me set off from the barn, Simons first night ride and Grumms first ride with us. Trails weren't actually in back nick at all. Rivi and wildeswood were cool then the track down the back of the houses to school climb was ace, perfect nightride trail, mediocre in the day but the limited light and no speed limit with 0% chance of running into walkers makes it great. Back up rivi and then ice cream run to finish. Me and Si stopped halfway down with Grumm and jonny no where to be seen for quite a while, Grumms light was dying so Junkyard knowing the trail well swapped lights with him and edged slowly down the trail, fortunatley we were close to the cars so didn't take long. Pretty good despite the weather, hopefully Si and Grumm will be back for more.