A tad of procrastination about to start – have work to do but don’t really want to do it so thought I’d muse for a bit here!  The sun is shining already and it is already hot, hot, hot at 8am!  Lachlan has gone mountain biking to the Craters of the Moon with Russ and Jane, Gus is watching Star Wars, Nigel is reading the paper and I am – well – procrastinating! We have had a lovely New Year – quite quiet – round at friends for Hogmanay, a few fireworks we saved from November and probably too much to drink!  Lachlan woke me up on New Year’s Day to go out for a  bike ride – I had told him that if he wanted to go he would have to wake me up in time with a cup of tea and get everything ready.  At 7.30 (after going to bed at about 3am) I awoke, looked at the clock and rolled back over hoping that he would still be in the prone position he usually adopts until about midday on a normal day.  I enjoyed the luxury of my bed along with a misplaced confidence that he wouldn’t be through to wake me until about three minutes past eight when my dreams were rudely interrupted!  No cup of tea but the car was packed and he was ready! Oh well, I guess I had been half thinking that a bike ride would be a good thing to do to bring in the New Year, despite really wanting to stay curled up in my cosy pit.  However, it was getting a little warm as the sun was already warm enough to penetrate the thick curtains of our bedroom and so I roused myself from my dreams and got up!  It made me reflect on mornings (long ago, now) in the bunk room at Bull Pot Farm, when I would stir groggily surrounded by a mass of snoring, festering bodies in smelly, festering sleeping bags after a night contributing to the “Scottish Fund” – there would always be someone full of the joys of the morning who would wake us all up and galvanise us into action to go caving (or on a tea shop tour!). I wouldn’t say that Lachlan was full of the joys of the morning, but he was certainly keen to go biking!  Anyway 9am saw us on the road to Te Aroha where we met up with Russ, Jane and Gerry and off we went.  It is a great set of tracks although we avoided the main upwards one!  I struggled a bit with keeping my feet on the pedals over the loose rocky stuff so now have shins covered with bruises!  I guess I should really get clip ons but haven’t quite got the confidence to make the change!  Lachlan took a tumble over his handlebars on a particularly steep bit that everyone else then decided to walk , and I managed to miss a bridge and ended up in the creek!  No lasting damage to either of us so all good.  The trails wind up the hillside and then you can enjoy the wind back down a bit like a rollercoaster, a few little gnarly bits thrown in for good measure and one or two triple XXX, which apart form the one Lachlan fell down were all negotiable even for me!  We came back down for lunch, and then went back again for more!  When the sun got too hot, our water ran out and Lachlan was struggling with a sore wrist from his tumble we decided to call it a day. A great ride and just like the the old caving days, glad I got out of bed for it and didn’t waste the first day of 2011 festering in bed!

Happy New Year everyone!