Absence

Well, I've been away a while and what a 7 weeks it has been! There have been plenty of visits to muddy fields for mountain bike races and venue recces, I've been up and down and backwards and forwards across the country, sent hundreds of emails and made dozens of phone calls to strangers.

I've started a new job; I've run my first mountain bike event and launched Britain's first 100 mile mountain bike race; I attempted to walk Offa's Dyke and failed miserably (more on that at some point) and had a sense of humour failure getting a quad bike stuck in 3ft of mud in the middle of nowhere at sunset.

Then there have been those surreal moments, like having an 8 hour conversation that finished at sunrise with somebody I barely knew. I spent a day at the Victoria and Albert Museum looking at 400 year old works of art; I saw Rowan Atkinson play Fagin (with a hint of Mr Bean) in Oliver! in Drury Lane, laughed a lot and sang every word of every song. I didn't go to Mountain Mayhem. That's right, I didn't go to Mayhem, for the first time in 9 years.

Sadly, the one thing I haven't done is ride my bike. Partly due to a rib that simply refused to stop hurting, but also I haven't had the time or motivation. I'm not in love with mountain biking at the moment. The fates have joined forces against me and I'm just not having a good year.

I've had this feeling before though, not just with mountain biking, but all the sports I've played throughout life and I find it's better just to give it a rest for a while and do other things. The feeling of wanting to go for a ride soon comes back. Trying to force a ride at this stage, knowing I'm not fit, that I'm not going to enjoy it and I'd rather be doing other things, is futile and will ultimately make me less motivated to ride and prolong the down time.

So it's a while longer off the bike for me, for no other reason than I don't fancy it. But as Dodger once said "I'll be back sooooon!"

I Think I'm Gonna Like It Here!

What a lovely weekend: relaxing mornings; fresh coffee; some tidying up; some DIY; tasty lunches; productive afternoons on the computer; freshly cooked, homemade dinners; stress free evenings listening to music answering emails and tidying up the desktop; early nights. This is a life I could get used to, and I so easily slipped into it. I even managed to get an Easter ride in and treat myself to a Cadbury's Buttons Easter Egg.

Just three more days of work left and then I can take it easy for the Summer. I should even have time to work through my things to do list whilst finishing off the house and taking long rides in the sunshine. I'm so excited to finally be finishing this chapter of my life and starting the next one - and I've only got a few days to wait!

Life is already better and care free. There was industrial action on the trains today and though I'd made a special effort to get to the station early, I still had to wait half an hour. I didn't care. The train was packed with Easter day trippers, I couldn't sit down. I didn't care. The exit barriers were too busy and I kept getting rammed in my ankles by pushchairs. But I just didn't care. Traffic in central London was chaos. Oh well, I didn't care. I sat at one set of traffic lights on Shaftsbury Avenue for almost 15 minutes - traffic wasn't moving and an ambulance was trying to get through, even though his lights were flashing and his siren was on, there was one female driver who would rather sit at the front of the queue doing her makeup instead of pulling forward out of the way and lose her hard fought place in traffic. At this point I did care. I wanted to find a large blunt object and throw it through the window, hitting her on the head and scarring her just above the beautifully mascara'ed eyes, so that she would never do her makeup in traffic again, and would pay more attention to the emergency services around her. (Not that I spent every second of the 15 minutes thinking about this you understand, I seem to have a gift for instantaneous creation of mythical scenarios - particularly if they're on the slightly evil side.) The rest of the day was delightful and care free.

Roll on next weekend!
(And yes, I did spend an afternoon on the sofa watching Annie. Admittedly it only just makes it into my Top Ten favourite musicals, mainly because of the annoying little ginger kid, but it has its good points and there are worse things than snuggling up on the sofa with a steaming hot cup of tea, an Easter Egg and a feel good musical.)