Biking

I've just been watching the first two episodes on the Long Way Down set I got for Christmas. This is the one where Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman go from John O'Groats in Scotland, to Cape Town in South Africa, and something just struck a chord.

I really enjoyed their first trip, Long Way Round, which I watched on BBC2 and read the book to, and it got me itching to learn to ride a bike. However, this time, they talked more about "just going for a ride with my mates" kind of stuff and it really just made me want to learn to ride all the more, not just because its something I've always wanted to do, but also because my Dad's 60 now and still riding regularly (he owns a Suzuki GS500 2006 registration, I think, and a Norton Dominator 650NS or something that was reconstructed and originally dates back to the '60's).

He frequently goes on trips with his mates, taking the Dommi (as he calls it) if the weathers nice, or the Suzi when its wet, but hes never had a family member to go with as my Auntie has decided my Uncle is far too old to consider riding a bike (I think he's at least 5 years older than my Dad, not sure though). My brother's never really been too bothered about motor vehicles, he drives, but he see's them as more of a means of transport, where as I genuinely love them. I grew up on the circuit really, with many memories of my Dad taking myself and my younger sister to watch Motorcycle races, and I've sat in a fair few "nice" cars (a handful of Ferrari's and a Lamborghini Countach are the highest points) and sat on many racing bikes (including one of the bikes Kevin Schwantz rode during his World Championship winning season in, I think, 1994).

So, I've now got one thing in my list I want to do with my life for definate, and thats to go on a trip with my Dad. Even if its just to Matlock Bath just outside of Nottingham, which I've been to many times as a kid in a car, once on a drunken trip with some mates in a coach and once on the bike of my Dads previous Suzi which I really really enjoyed.

I know I can ride, to a degree, as I rode a 50cc Monkey Bike around a small dirt course when I was about 8, but that was a long long time ago no (I'm now 24) and it wasn't on the roads, plus it was only a Fifty. I'm not looking at anything big, but it'll still be expensive to do, and its weighing that dream against the practicality of learning to drive a car (something both Missus and I want to do), which in reality, should come first. My Dad's always tried to make me believe that he doesn't want any of us to learn to ride because of the dangers, but I still remember the pride on his face when he saw me on that fifty and really enjoying myself and can imagine how much he'd love to just go for a ride with his son, with my family and my Step Mum in a car behind so it can be a family thing too, and I'm just scared that, considering his age, that I won't get to do that with him even though, as far as I'm aware anyhow, he's in good health and not looking 60 years old at all.

Desktop update #3

I know I only changed it about a week ago, but found this one today after watching The Dark Knight for the first time last night. I'll go into my impressions of that tomorrow as its getting rather late now (waiting for Missus to finish what she's doing on Hatchlings on Facebook...)

Anyhow, this is what I'm using at the moment.

Colossi?

Found this via StumbleUpon, which makes a change from all the pornographic material that pops up whenever I click the little button on my browser. Now I like that kind of thing as much as the next guy, but sometimes it happens far too much...

Anyhow, I really like it when something like this piece of art pops up.



Makes me want to play Shadow of the Colossus on PS2

Pictures from Christmas

Heres a bunch of pics taken over the Christmas period.

First up are pics of our town centre's lights, these aren't all of them, just the ones that showed up best in the pics.







Next up are the only shots that didn't blur from Sprog's first Christmas show, she played a star and sang Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, unfortunately we didn't arrive as early as most of the other parents so ended up at the back.




Some pics of the carousel that was in town for the Christmas Market, Sprog and I are in a couple of these. We went on this after she finished school on her final day before the Christmas break and we'd taken her to see Santa, unfortunately not got a picture of her with Santa on the computer as they now only let you have a picture from the professional photographer. We got one, but as I've mentioned in a previous post, our scanner is now a glorified photocopier.

The visit to Santa was rather funny though, when asked what she wanted for Christmas, Sprog simply replied with "presents". Santa tried to get more information from her and she pointed to the sacks of wrapped gifts he had by his side and said "Those ones", the photographer found one that was labeled for her age group and put it on the false mantelpiece, and when pressed for more information again, she ended up describing the wrapping paper of the present that was set aside for her.

Still it was more succesful than previous years. Her first two visits involved screaming and or crying, whilst her previous two visits resulted in her standing nervously next to the big man and refusing to talk to him. Luckily we'd already picked her presents, which were already wrapped and hiding away in our bedroom.






Lastly, are photo's of Sprog opening up her gifts.













Lastly, before we headed off to bed on Christmas Eve, we had some wierd powder stuff that you add water to and it makes fake snow, so we put false footprints coming from the back door right upto the Christmas Tree and told Sprog about the "Magic Key" Santa has for house that don't have a chimney, and said the best place for him to park the reindeer was in the alleyway out the back which is why the lights don't work out there (obviously, that has more to do with hooligans than anything else). This is how it looked:




You can see our two dogs in that pic, the black one in the background is Jet, she's a crossbreed of near on everything, Mimi, the one closest to the camera is a Spaniel/Beagle cross who's parents were registered with the Kennel Club.