It was windy as hell last night. You know when you’re tucked up in bed, nice and warm, and you can hear the wind and rain howling outside? That’s ace that is.

So anyway, I dragged myself out of bed this morning after a nice long lie-in, wandered over to my window and dragged back the curtains.

“Wow. It looks lovely out there. I shall be riding my bike this afternoon.”

After a bit of pottering about, doing nowt in particular, I got myself together and went out. It was horrible – I felt like I was riding through treacle. I rode slowly up through town, towards Leckhampton, dragging myself up as far as Undercliff Avenue before walking the rest of the way up. My head felt cloudy and I was struggling for any sort of energy at all.

I pushed the bike all the way up to the ruins and stopped for a rest. I was seriously tempted to just turn around and head for home. Instead I decided to ride Dog Poo Alley – which thankfully was free of the stuff – and head up the hill that way. I really felt like crap until I got out of the trees and up onto the top of the hill. It was bright, it was sunny and the view out over Cheltenham was fantastic. Its amazing how quickly my mood brightened there.

I carried on riding right on up to the viewpoint and my word was it windy up there, rendering it sunny, bright and bloody freezing. I elected to carry on as quickly as possible, riding across the top of the hill, dropping through the big dip and lifting the front wheel over the monster puddle. I love that bit of trail – just a pity I didn’t seem to have the energy to power through it today.

I carried on over to the top of the old slalom course and headed off down there. I rounded the first few corners, dropped into the tricky bit and then slammed on the anchors – three families with small children were walking up the trail.

Still, the rest of the run down went OK. I wasn’t really flowing but it was fun nonetheless. I had every intention of heading home after that but I spotted that Gary and Alex’s vans were parked up in the car park – so I thought I’d head up the hill and see if I could see either of them.

I met Alex about halfway up the tramway, and then Gary turned up in the quarry shortly afterwards. We stood around and chatted for ages, pondering the possibility of snow boarding holidays and perhaps taking the bikes out to Whistler for the summer, before wandering up and doing a couple of runs of the newest DH course. I took some interesting routes down, bypassing the bits I’m really not confident on at the moment. I ought to just bite the bullet and ride them again, but today was not the day.

With the light fading fast, I ended the day with a run down the old tramway – which was ace fun. I didn’t faceplant this time for a start. There’s one point where there used to be two distinct steps – they’re still there, I just hit them fast enough for them to appear as one these days. I wish I had that much confidence on some of the other trails.

Update: There’s now a gallery of the pictures I took on this ride.

That the evil printer is out to get me.

Not only does it have the ability to stone cold stop the machine from booting, but the ink on a freshly printed photo smellls foul.

Freaky, Wierd, Unhinged, Scary, Nutbar.

Here’s a selection of pictures I took over the Christmas period. You’ll find friends, relatives and turtles amongst other things. Hope you enjoy them. View the pictures…

I thought it had died. I really did.

It worked fine yesterday. It was working fine a few minutes ago. Now it won’t get past the BIOS splash screen! Oh crap!

I’ve taken the side off, I’ve made sure everything is properly seated, all the cables are properly plugged in — everything seems fine. It just won’t boot. Oh crap oh crap oh crap.

O.K. Calm down. What’s changed since last time I booted then? I’ve installed a new version of Java – but that won’t have done anything to the BIOS will it? No, can’t be that.

Think, think, think… Hang on, I plugged the printer in didn’t I? That can’t be it, surely? Lets give it a go anyway.

You are bloody kidding me? It won’t boot with a printer plugged into the USB port!? That’s ridiculous! Bloody computers…

This post was originally going to be about the ace bike ride Owen, Will, Dom and myself went for yesterday. I was also writing one about spending New Year with my family. I even started putting together a photopost – a collage of photos I took over the Christmas period (inspired by Smitten). Any one of these might yet become future entries on here.

But I decided to post a picture of the thing that my day has revolved around:

I seem to have achieved nothing but the consumption of most of these. But then I guess that’s what a bank holiday is for isn’t it? I have to thank the Westbrook family for these. It was an ace Christmas present.

Hello. How are we all then? Feeling a bit better this year? Good.

Now, I have this mountain bike. Its got some really very powerful hydraulic disc brakes on it, from the Shimano Saint stable. That’s got to be a good thing, right? Well, usually that’s considered to be a very good thing – especially compared to my other bike, whose v-brakes are just downright scary. But thats not always the case.

So there I was yesterday, pedalling like a ballistic missile down the trail, clattering through the roots, really really going for it, when SLAM!

An overhanging bramble bush grabs a brake lever. All of a sudden my very powerful front brake finds that its being applied – hard. I’m still going forwards, but my front wheel really isn’t going anywhere fast, except perhaps sliding sideways out from beneath me. And now I’m lying face down in the dirt and the bike appears to be on top of me. Someone behind me is laughing. Wha…?

I’m really not happy about that happening, so after getting up and making sure I’m still in one piece, I take it out on the rest of the trail, which quite frankly rocked. Its the best way to make sure it doesn’t knock your confidence too much.

Today I seem to have a nice selection of bruises all the way up my right hand side and various strained muscles. Not only that but I have a feeling I may have ruined my nice red RaceFace jacket – seeing pink bubbles in the bottom of the washing machine isn’t right is it? Bah. Oh well – what doesn’t kill me makes me stronger. Or something.

Oh and Grant – This was not some sort of karmic balancing for my not going up to Scotland to play on bikes with you lot. I was going to crash either way. I think I was due a good one.