It's all so quiet

While yours truly took ten minutes from parenting the apprentice to make a well earned brew

 it all went very quiet. Too quiet.

 So quiet that the only sound was the whirr of the trains he was supposed to be playing with. So quiet that something was definitely wrong.

Sure enough. This is what happens when you leave a toddler unattended next to the draws that contain paints, glue, paper, glitter, lots of glitter, pipe cleaners, pom poms, sequins, puzzles.......

Mothers meeting

 Believe it or not

Daffodil has moved in the last 24 hours!

Don't move me!

 This is Daffodil, suffering. Not as you might think as a result of her encounter with a fence which badly damaged her front drivers side leg (the blue spray is the antiseptic) which has now thankfully all but healed and she has started putting weight on it. No she is suffering from a far more simple and self inflicted pain.

Tummy ache from scoffing everyone's breakfast after she found the door open to the tack room. Full to bursting by the time we found her!

Lunchtime special

 As yours truly has had a truly shocking week outdoor fitness wise due primarily to work, the demands of small humans and then falling victim to the lergy after playing Florence Nightingale to a houseful of sufferers over the weekend today was a day to put right some of the calorific damage inflicted by couch potatoing.

 The real alternative to work (meetings) provided the ideal window of opportunity, an early meeting over bacon sarnies then a four and a half hour break with a late afternoon meeting and an early evening one. Link that to location, take out travel time and that found me at 11am setting off up the biggest mountain in south Wales from the difficult end with a trusty Bernese Mountain Dog, Reuben, to keep me company. The micro lunchtime adventure made all the more possible by a weather window meant this was going to be a good few hours.

 Reuben, like is his owner, not a fit as he should be, but just before we hit the clouds at 850 metres he looked in fine fettle.

 Pause for obligatory photo on summit with obligatory summit clag spoiling views.

 Naturally once we descended the clouds departed to goad us, the far peak is Pen y Fan and the closer one is Corn Du, we are descending to the memorial at this point.

 Reuben had other ideas and decided to swink, its a kind of drink swim combination, see the dog blog for more pics of this mucky Berner in action.

 We paused to pay our respects to little Tommy Jones and then made hast to get back in to Gerry at the car park in time for the day to continue. Not long after this point Reuben who had been suffering from the most horrific gas let go and puked yesterdays dinner and this mornings breakfast all over the trail. One chap who I had been walking alongside for a bit of hill walkers banter almost passed out and seemed unduly keen to keep walking when Boo Boo (Reuben) let go at the other end. The devastating effect this had on olfactory systems is almost indescribable but lets just say it stung. Reuben pressed on while I made a vain attempt to bury his debris, thankfully he chose to drop this away from the trail and amongst some dead bracken. Once my eyes stop streaming and I could see again we left the mountain trail and headed along a lane headed in the vague direction of the car.

 Boo Boo by now had had enough and wanted me to fetch the Gerry.

 500 yards to go he decided to sleep but was coaxed back to life with the promise of a dog biscuit.

 But once we got to the car he did a complete Bernerflop and even the restorative powers of a Bonio failed to illicit a response. Our arrival at the car park coincided with the rain, which is now torrential and set to last for a few days. So the doofus had to be lifted into the Land Rover (55kgs of K9, not funny, thankfully only one stile the whole 7 miles) where he slept (and farted) for the next 6 hours.

Back at the ranch late pm saw him back to his normal self, if perhaps a bit less bouncy. Here he is playing trains. And farting. Still.

Same as it ever was...

Today Rock HQ was supposed to be visited by a small lorry containing a large sofa. The reason I know this was that I wasted 20 minutes of precious lifespan looking in shop for said sofa, paid for it, fought off enthusiastic sales pitch for extra insurance that protected the surface of sofa from the thrills, spills and general trauma of life with two small children and 12 large dogs, and in closing the deal made absolutely certain that the nice salesman (called Steve) understood that only a small lorry, the type used by supermarket delivery persons, would be bale to make it from the gateway to the world to Rock HQ's front door. He very carefully wrote it out in red crayon on the sales ticket and stapled it to the forehead of the warehouseperson.
So it came as no surprise that today whilst I was enjoying the real alternative to work, meetings, I had seventeen missed calls from a frantic delivery driver in an articulated lorry stuck in the lane. Suffice to say despite phoning Steve to enquire what he had written in crayola on the sales docket and confirming it said small lorry, the sofa has not arrived and we await further developments.

Nothing doing

The jobs list got hammered today, the usual routine where money was stuffed into the mouths of various equines, the multi gym was sorted out thanks to Google, electric wires were fixed to walls in the new conservatory without blowing yours truly up, recycling sorted and loaded into Gerry, the new utility room was emptied, mopped then refilled with a brilliant new Thomas the Tank Engine layout which is where it went all a bit Pete Tong and from that point not a lot got done apart from helping the apprentice sort out train crashes.

Changing rooms

 A couple of weeks ago I was given a multi gym torture machine, you know the type of contraption that you sit on and your limbs can be hurt in a variety of ways as you press, pull, lift or drag weights about. As the planets must have been in some bizarre alignment on the same day my beautiful and of so patient wife also made the offer of allowing me to convert one of the stables into a gym, she actually said play room but I knew what she meant. But the day after the whatever it was going to be became a bale store. Again. But today that all changed. Once all the heavy metal and toys were removed, so were the bales.

 As this was going to be relatively animal free zone for a while attention turned to the six years worth of spiders hanging around.

 This turned out to be a horrific task as enraged arachnids the size of tennis balls fell from the ceiling when persuaded to by a yard broom. I also discovered that the light was defying gravity thanks to the electric cable, the plastic housing had cracked for some reason so was detached from its mounting. A quick repair with baler twine sorted that and pretty soon the roof was almost clean.

 Naturally my little helpers were on paw, here is Spotty making sure the exercise bike stays where I left it.

The bales were put in the proper bale store, and the run way cleared. Chester was evicted from his stall while that had a clear out, but the spiders were left alone, there's only so many you can upset in one day.

By end of play Chester was back in the warm and dry with hot and cold running hay

While in yours truly's stall things look like a cross between a stable and junkyard with the multi torture kit assembled but as there were no instructions I have no idea how the various pulleys, wires and chains all link together to make it more useful than a seat. 

Get it right

Having decided that cycling is a good thing and wanting to reduce car use as much as possible yours truly decided today that as he was passing a real bike shop, as opposed to a virtual one, or one with a great big orange and black sign over it, or even one that was a pub with a troll behind the counter, it was time to venture in and try and buy a saddle. This was, as it turned out, not an easy task.
Since the last epic challenge (167 miles in 13 hours including stops) when all feeling was lost in a very important place just in front of the saddle, less cycling has been managed due to some intense pain when turning the pedals in the family department. Medics have almost decided that I am not a malingerer (scans, blood tests etc all clear) but unless a kidney stone has lodged somewhere low down and so far unseen then the root cause has to be lifestyle which boils down to cycling. Doc asked if I would consider giving up, but as it combines several of my favourite things like personal challenge, physical exercise and bacon sarnies he was on a losing wicket. Would I consider cutting down, well I have, but as I am planning to increase to a 480 mile man test with 28 miles of mountain running all in 72 hours next June to raise money for Myeloma UK, then no chance.
Hence rethink on apparatus of bike, a new saddle for a start. Super salesman, a not Steve, a Clive, leads me through the serried ranks of gleaming carbon racing steeds to a back room where I am fitted for a saddle.
This involved sitting on a gel pad for 20 seconds leaving an impression that is measured by a lazer and from that my ideal saddle was computed. While we waited he pointed out that my lovely stock racer is a medium frame which suits my dwarf like inside leg, but the length of the frame did not suit my longer than a dwarfs back while my wide chest was totally unsuited to the narrow 42 bars that come as standard. Couple that with my inability to straighten my left arm so lack of reach, compared to my right, then my left shoulder higher than my right due to two collar bone breaks, it was he gravely pointed out, not a surprise that I, in his view, was probably unable to pee straight after a bike ride. The computer suggested a type of saddle, he found it, it had a sort of strange tilt bit at the back to straighten my hips, but refused to sell it until I brought my bike in, and cycling gear, so they could strap me to a test rig to make sure it was indeed the right one. So one day next week I am going to be wired into the matrix and videoed, analysed and my riding style pulled apart so they can fit me with a new perch. Its suddenly got very serious this cycling gig.