Tales from a down-shifted family
- Making the most of modest means
With the temperatures dropping and the days shortening, I’m hoping the grass has finally stopped growing. Time, therefore, to give the robot mowers some well-deserved rest and recuperation and let them hibernate for the winter. That was my chore for Saturday morning. It was a grey, slightly damp, chilly day — but not too bad...
I’m sure I must have mentioned it here at some point, but Morgan is currently in Japan. After spending the best part of a year in Canada — working in the kitchens at a ski resort in Banff and then heading out to Vancouver Island — he came home for a year, and has now...
It’s been a week of new things — hot on the heels of a new bike comes a new car! Our previous car, a Hyundai Kona, was the first brand-new car we’d ever leased, and our first electric car too. To say we loved it would be an understatement. Obviously, the fact that it was...
It’s been years since I had a new bike, but having started doing some night rides lately, I thought it was time to rectify that situation. I’d been joining the night riders on my Whyte 901, which was fine. As a trail-oriented hardtail it was probably the perfect machine for the sort of rides we...
Afternoon on the beach
It might not be a huge distance, but I did at least manage to run along some of the coast path while on the Isle of Man. Last time I was there, I ran the short section from Niarbyl to Peel, so this time I started in Peel — at the exact spot I’d finished....
I somehow ended up coordinating the Plant Science Wales Meeting at work. Somewhat stressful, but it all came together in the end — and it meant a trip down to Carmarthen last week. It was a joint event organised by IBERS, hosted by the National Botanic Garden of Wales, and supported by the Learned Society...
Well, we finally made it to the Isle of Man this autumn. After an aborted trip a couple of weeks ago, when the plane turned around mid-flight and landed back in Liverpool due to the weather, we tried again at the weekend. This time we flew from Manchester to visit Anna’s mum, Pat. We drove...
You’d think that buying a new windsurf sail would be simple. Decide what size you need, find it online, buy now, done! Not so simple though, when you consider all the idiosyncrasies and requirements. Many tabs later, lots of emails and calculations, and still there’s no parcel on my doorstep. A Sad Farewell to the...
When logic, lust, and a little AI wisdom all point towards a new bike. Following a mechanical that stopped me joining a ride on Thursday, and the fact that my mountain bikes are now over ten years old, that old adage about the ideal number of bikes being n + 1 (where n is the...
Fitness / Technology / Triathlon
Fixing the Altimeter on my Garmin Forerunner 910XT
Monday, March 17th, 2014
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