Xmas update

Happy Christmas.

In other news, it's been a more normal winter than the last few years so no snowmageddon down south. Up north (that's south speak for anywhere north of Gloucestershire, including Gloucestershire) it snowed quite a lot and got cold.

Still, care has to be taken when it's slippy. I had a minor but annoying crash on the bike path recently when I touched the brakes to avoid someone coming the other way. It was dark and on a twisty section of the path and I didn't realise I was riding over wet leaves. Needless to say even thinking about your brakes in such a scenario is not a good idea. At least I was on the deck before I had a head on with the other guy. Soreness ensued.

I sustained another injury after the Xmas party when I managed to stub my little toe. Twice. In the space of about 10 minutes. Both times it hurt a lot and that's usually not a good sign when you've drunk enough alcohol to anaesthetise an elephant seal. Then again, said alcohol probably contributed to the lack of motor skills necessary to avoid door frames and bar bells. As always there's a positive side to it: it wasn't the toe that got infected a month ago.

Training is hard at this time of the year. If you ride outside, the endless dark means you don't get much in the way of feedback. You think you're going hard but you're not. Or vice versa. And you have a bad week and you think it's all over, but it's just part of the training cycle. Thank goodness for some sunshine (or at least light and warmer temps) the land of Oz soon.

What else have I been up to? Not much, besides testing power meters, which has been useful. The calibration tests are going to be interesting. I/we also bought a dehumidifier which so far has been a bloody good purchase 'cos Liz hates the damp. Carrying it back from Argos wasn't such a smart idea.

I had some thoughts about economics but they can wait as they won't help matters. Easy to boil it down to "there are better gods to worship than Mammon". In even more other news, it's been a bad year for lunatic dictators, the latest being Kim Jong "I told you I was Il" (thanks to a George Takei fan for that one).

Finally, we still have a more direct route than we'd like into the bathroom downstairs. Call it a hole if you will. That flat has not been occupied for a couple of months for some reason. But I'd hazard a guess that any prospective tenants might be put off by the pile of rubble in the bathroom, aka the remnants of the ceiling. Still we've got a dehumidifier now so leaky pipes will be a thing of the past.