Defence Mechanism

• Starting the day with Muesli topped with breakfast sprinkle and honey. Orange juice to drink. #
• The internet isn’t generating enough new news quick enough! #

On a diet right now as I need to shift a few pounds. I’m eating less and exercising more. No more lift to the third floor for me!

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Busy, busy. Working, working and cycling. What you doing?

Oh, yeah. Also updated the ColorToy page. Have a nosey.

Christmas is a time for giving. But I got as good as I gave this year. Here are some of the awesome gifts I received this year.

• Logitech VX Revolution Notebook Mouse
• Howies NBL Base layer. 100% Merino, very nice.
• An “I’m Banksy” T-Shirt
• Howies Classic T-Shirt
• A Build Timecode series T-Shirt, 7′29″ New Order - Blue Monday
• Game Vouchers
• A bottle of Châteauneuf du Pape and a Gerwurtztraminer
• Marvel Zombies Book
• A Spork
• Chocolate covered marzipan
• Box of luxury biscuits
• Cold Hard Cash

How’d you do?

Just a heads up. Oddbins are selling cases of genuine imported Staropramen, in 330ml bottles, for only £15.99. That’s just 67p a bottle! This is the decent Staropramen, not the crap that’s made in Edinburgh. Buy now!

Well not quite, but it’s approaching fast so it’s time to get the Christmas list online. This year I’m harnessing the power of Web 2.0 to compile my list of wants. I’m using del.icio.us to tag suitable presents with wishlist and using the notes feature to specify sizes, colours and other details. I then use the linkrolls feature to pull out all the links that have the wishlist tag. It all works pretty well.

Dave’s Christmas List.

And before anyone comments, yes I know a £1250 mountain bike frame is a bit excessive for a Christmas list but you never know…
I forgot to mention you can even subscribe to my wishlist via RSS if you want to be updated when I add anything. How awesome is that?

Last Sunday there was a brief respite in the rain so I decided to head out on my bike to the local mountain bike trails. Despite the fact that wasn’t raining there was still tonnes of mud and big deep puddles. It was great fun. Covered in mud from head to toe.

On Saturday I went mountain biking in the Carron Valley Trails. I had tried, unsuccessfully, to go riding on the trails a few week ago but I discovered that the trails are not in fact 20 minutes from Glasgow (as it says on their website) but more like 50! The last time we got there too late and the sun was beginning to set. Not the best time to cycle into a forest! However this time I went in proper daylight.

After getting organised, pork pies, tracker bars and my new Camelbak, I set out. The first thing you see on the trail is the reservoir dam, quite impressive. One of the other things I noticed was the gigantic truck coming down the forestry road towards me! Luckily it was moving pretty slow and there was plenty room to sit off to the side. A lot of the trail is made up of forestry road which initially I was a bit annoyed about but cleverly they’ve mostly used road for the uphills, making it easier, and almost all the downhills are fun trails through the trees.

Shortly into the trail you get a cool view over the reservoir which is drinking water destined for Glasgow. Pretty impressive view.

About the highest part of the trail is the entrance to the Eas Dubh section which is a fun technical downhill. It was a tad slippy as it had been raining a few days before but stil fun.

The next section is called Birlin Boggins, it’s a fairly straightforward trail through the forest. Nice enough though.

After this section you end up crossing your initial path, this time you cut left and down into the Breech and then onto Full Bore. These sections were great fun and a chance to get some real speed up. After those sections we’re back onto the road for a relativly easy uphill to the Funpark section.

The funpark section where there is plenty table-tops, doubles and big berms. I managed to get air over a few of the doubles but being relatively new to mountain biking I decided not to go mad, that and I was on my own.

The fun park is the end of the trail. It only took me about 40 mins to get round it so I did it again!

To sum up Carron Valley.

The pros:

• Good fun downhill sections.
• Easy forestry road uphills.

The cons:

• Not 20 mins from Glasgow as advertised.
• No facilities. A car park is all you get.

Busy playing on my bike at the moment. Normal service may, or may not resume.

Given the problems with knife crime in Scotland this isn’t the cleverest headline.