Finally I Got The Best Bike Lights I’ve Ever Seen.

I ride a bike. I’ve talked about that. I love cycling.

I used to ride mainly on the weekend. Saturdays and Sunday mornings about 8 am. It was a nice time to ride and it worked well, we got a bunch of people each morning and we rode in a big group, and it was a lot of fun. Very social.

I use a road bike. It’s way faster than a mountain bike and it just feels so much better to ride. It wasn’t cheap but it was worth it. It’s a pinarello.

But lately I’ve decided that I need to ride more and get fitter. It’s not good enough to ride a couple of times a week, I need to ride 4 or 5 times a week. That way I get to ride around 150 miles a week and that’s how to get fit.

I like riding midweek but there’s one drawback. It starts at 6 am. That’s 6 in the morning. It’s dark and it’s cold. Really cold. Some mornings it’s raining and I don’t go then.

I love riding but riding in the rain isn’t too good. It gets cold and I don’t like riding on wet roads. It can be slippery and I don’t want to fall.

But of course one of the other things about riding at 6 in the morning is that being dark it’s necessary to have bike lights. Lights are important. I had one cheap light and I had to ride down a hill one day in the dark and the light was so dark that I couldn’t see properly, and it was scary.

So finally I bit the bullet and bought some good lights.  Wow are they effective. Almost like car lights, you can see so far. I can’t believe how good the technology has got lately.

They use LEDs which take almost no power too. So it only has the smallest battery. It weighs almost nothing at all.

So suddenly my 6 am rides are much better now. I’m smiling.

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If You’re Going To Have Animals You Need Cows. Cows Are Great.

Cows are just great. I really like cows, they’re so gentle. Apart from bulls you can’t really find a nasty cow. Mine are like pets, the kids get to pat them and the kids like to take their hay out and feed them, and if you’re feeding them then they’re happy to be patted. They don’t quite sit there are like being patted, but if you’re feeding them…

Now of course it’s winter coming now and the grass is short and won’t grow much and so there isn’t a lot of it for the cows to eat you have to feed them hay. I plenty of hay. And that’s the time to pat them.

Now if you’re feeding your hay to your cows then that’s the time to pat them, but it’s also a bit of a drain. You have to feed them every day, without fail. Even if it’s raining you have to feed the cows their hay. If you don’t they starve for the day.

I deal with that myself. I like my holidays so Ive got to have a way of going away without leaving the cows to starve. So this is what I do.

I have various paddocks each fenced off. 4 in total. So when I have plenty of grass in the paddocks I lock one up and leave it with the long grass in it. Then when I go away I open the gate to that one and the cows discover that the gate is open and head in there.

And the cows aren’t silly, they know that there’s grass in there somewhere when they look through the gate so once I open the gate they’re right in there as fast as they can.

And then when the holiday is over I take the cows back into the main paddock, close the gate and feed them their hay all over again.

I feed my cows right after breakfast. They know when I’m going to feed them and they’re right there sitting in front of the shed in the mornings when I come out to feed them. They get their hay right in front of the shed. Usually 1 1/2 bales of hay for them. But on a cold day I give them 2 bales.

I gave them 2 bales of hay this morning as it was cold. But it’s getting warmer soon and the grass is getting longer, it’s growing. And that’s good because my hay is getting short, I have a shed for hay and it’s pretty empty.

My cows are happy now.

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Going On Holidays, Got To Take The Boat.

I just love having a boat. As it says on a sticker on my boat, life is better with a boat. It’s only small, maybe 11 feet, I can’t afford a big one, but a small boat is better than no boat. And it’s got it’s advantages, it’s easy to tow.

I took my family away last week. It was school holidays so everyone had the time off. We decided that we didn’t want to stay at home for the whole holidays so we decided to get away for a few days. 4 days actually, which was nice. It was great though it as raining and there was a really strong wind when we left, though that all went away after a few hours. And then the sun came out and it was really nice.

It was a nice place to go to. There was so many things for the kids to do it wasn’t funny. Kids need so much to do. So if you’ve got bored kids there’s problems, if you’ve got bored kids then they hassle you constantly for something to do.

There really isn’t anything worse than bored kids to kill a holiday. They get really grumpy and annoy me and as I like to read a book it’s no fun being hassled by bored kids all the time.

But the kids were happy over the weekend, thankfully. There were so many things that they could do, including jumping up and down on this huge plastic blow up thing, and they just loved that. That alone kept them happy.

And there was a games room and they played in there for hours. There was this huge tv and every night there was a kids movie for them to watch.

And of course the swimming pool. I can’t believe something as simple as a swimming pool keeps kids entertained for so long.

But back to the boat. I took it for a couple of reasons. Firstly because I wanted the boat along with us, but also because I wanted to take the kids bikes with us too, and I cant get 2 bikes into the car. But theres no problems getting 2 kids bikes into the boat. Theres stacks of room.

So the boat was great. We did a couple of days in the boat. One was on the local river just looking around, a little time spent sitting on the bank having lunch and giving the kids a swim. More swimming! And we could sit there in the sun and read our books.

And we did a day on the lake near us too. I bought one of those tyre tube thingies that you pull behind the boat and pulled the kids around the lake on that. They loved it and wouldnt get off. If you  have kids and love water youve got to have a boat.

So a boat is a huge bonus. Use it to take the bikes and have the kids entertained along the way. I’m really glad I took the boat.

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Ahhhh, It’s The Country Life For Me.

Ive already said how much I like living in the country.

But I didn’t talk about the birds. I like birds.

You just won’t believe how many birds there are out here in the country, millions. I get them sitting in the trees around my place. They have strong beaks and claws and they sit in the trees and pick off the seed pods with their claws and hold them with their claws and then break them open with their beaks to eat.

I love birds but it is a shame to see them damage my trees, and they do damage them breaking all the bits off. If you look under the tree you can see all the tree lying there. Well not all of it but a lot, there’s broken tree all around.

Mainly they’re parrots. They so colorful that I just love to sit and watch them sit in the trees. I even get them sitting around my veranda, sometimes if Im lucky I get them sitting right on the window sills. And they’re so colorful that I just sit still so I don’t scare them away and watch them.

There’s so many benefits of having parrots around the house that you just have to put up with the damage they do to your trees. I could just run out and shoo them away from the trees but I just put up with it.

Out here in the country is great. I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t get parrots in the city like I get out here. There’s no trees for them to eat and so you wouldn’t see them. And there’s too many people too.

And as I say I like all animals not just birds. Animals are so great to have around, as good as birds. I love them all.

What luck, I’ve just had one of those parrots land on a veranda post right in front of me now. I’ll watch it for a while. And it’s not just birds like parrots that I love to see around, I get plenty of animals too, and I think that animals around is hot. It’s like having nature right in the back yard. Animals and birds for me any day.

I’m not interested in going back to live in the city. There’s so many things that I love about it out here, not just animals and birds.

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I Enjoyed The Weekend Even Though It Was Raining.

The weekend is finished and it was great. It was so nice to get away. It was a little taxing starting so early though.

I got up at around 5 am, really really early for me. It was way dark and it felt like the middle of the night. Wow was it hard to get myself out of bed, but I got out because I knew that I had a good weekend to look forward to.

But I got up, headed over to my friends place and picked him up and off we went. There was quite a bit of stuff to load up and the car was packed to the rim and it took quite a while to get going, longer than I expected and as we were meeting other people we had a time limit.

And what can you do about weather? Raining. And for the last few months it’s been so great, warm clear weather, just my luck that when I go away it’s raining. Really annoying.

And when you’re camping in a tent the last thing you want is rain. Rain is the worst thing because when something gets wet it’s wet for the whole time unless it gets warm again. Luckily the rain was heavy but when we were putting up the tent it eased off a little. Some luck at least. And it was a long drive in the rain.

And the speed limits were all reduced, grrr.

But if you asked I’d have to say that it was a good weekend even though it rained quite a lot. I caught a fish which was a real bonus. I’m not the greatest fisherman although I do like it. And eating fresh fish is so healthy too.

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What Am I Doing This Weekend? Guess

Yeah, I get to go away this weekend. Im really looking forward to it.

Its with a friend. My family couldnt come along this weekend so I get to go away with a friend. My family would love to come, but they all have some ballet thingy to go to and theyre stuck going to that.

It’s forecast to rain this weekend unfortunately so I’m planning to take the big canvas tent. It’s big and bulky and heavy and I have a much lighter smaller tent, but if it’s going to rain I’m taking the big heavy tent.

Theres going to be plenty of driving first, we leave at around 6 am Friday morning, so we get going really early. Really early, I dont like to get up early.

But it’s not that much of a drama getting up early if you’ve got a holiday to get up for. And I’m looking forward to it so it’s not that much of a problem.

I hope the car does ok,  its not really old but its not new either and Id hate to think the car let me down and didnt make it.

I broke my old fishing rod a while ago and I bought a new one this morning because I plan to do some fishing on Saturday. Saturday is planned to be a free day and so I’m off fishing. And so I needed a new rod.

My old broken rod was one I made a long long time ago. I bought the fiberglass blank and all the runners and made it all myself and I’ve used it and used it. I was pretty impressed with myself that I managed to make my own fishing rod.

Ive used that fishing rod for a lot of years now, and it was a sad day when I broke it. I dont even know how I broke it, I was just walking through the trees and suddenly I noticed the tip of the rod broken off hanging in its own. Boy was I pissed.

It wasnt worth a lot but it was to me. I mean I made that rod myself. And I broke it. So today I went back to the fishing shop and bought a rod.

And I couldn’t believe. 25 bucks for a new fishing rod. They certainly aren’t expensive now to buy. But the new one isn’t the one I made. I’d rather my old one than a new one.

So there’s the news about my weekend to be. It won’t rain will it and I will catch a fish won’t I?

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I’ve Started Cycling And I Really Enjoy It Now.

I found cycling relatively recently. I was getting unfit and I didn’t want to be unfit, and I was getting older. I knew I had to do something.

I tried swimming. Can you believe how boring swimming is! Up and down a pool, hour after hour. Well actually it was probably never longer than 20 minutes but it felt like hour after hour to me.

Underneath you there’s a black line and you just watch that black line, there’s nothing else to do other than swim of course. It’s really boring and I just couldn’t keep at it.

If you really want to get fit you  need to swim at least 4 times a week, probably more. And if you find something boring then you’re not going to do it 4 or 5 times a week and keep at it are you?

And that’s doing at least a half hour. You need to swim for at least a half hour to get enough exercise and it just feels like such a waste of time.

So once I knew that I hated swimming I had to find something else. I also didnt like running either, so that was out. But one day I thought about cycling.

I didnt have a bike although I used to ride to work many years ago. My old bike was up at the shed  but its so rusted that its unusable. I knew I had to get another bike. And a new bike isnt cheap.

There’s a cycling club near me so I went and talked to them and found out that they were starting a new group of recreational riders and so I figured that the universe was telling me that it was time to buy a bike, that it was the perfect opportunity.

So I joined the group and got cycling. I loved it. They did long rides and short rides and I did them all. But after while I started to get a little frustrated with the pace of the riding.

I’m not exactly young but despite that I really felt that I could ride harder than the recreational group did, that it was a good social situation but I wanted to get fit and do a workout and it was too slow for my liking. So I started riding on my own to get a faster ride in and workout more.

So after a while riding on my own I found that it was nice to ride hard but a little lonely. I was getting a workout but on my own. So I made some enquiries and found out that there was a riding group that rode out of town a few days a week that used road bikes and rode hard. It went sundays and I decided to go along.

But the bike that I had already bought was a half mountain bike and half road bike, called a hybrid, and so I had the wrong bike again. So again I had an issue with no bike that would do the job, but by then I knew I really liked riding to I bought a road bike and joined the Sunday group. They ride pretty fast and sometimes I keep up, occasionally I don’t keep up.

But of course its a hard workout, exactly what I need. Read more

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No More City Living For Me

I live in the country. I love living in the country, Ive been here for quite a few years now and I wouldnt live in the city again, though thats where I grew up.

Theres so many things in the country that you just cant get in the city. For example I love to cycle. It keeps me fit, and I know I need to keep fit. It gets me outdoors and I love the outdoors.

I ride past so many wonderful things. I love to see cows in the fields and I see sheep and other animals as well. I even have my own cows and they give me calves which is great too.

Having cows and calves around grounds me. It makes me love nature, it makes me see the cycles of life.

Its Summer right now and its hot. Weve had some really hot days lately. Now of course if I lived in the city it would still be hot. But here I see the cycle of the seasons so well. I feel more at one with the seasons and with nature now. I see the grass wilt and die when summer comes, I see the grass regrow and get green again for winter. It see snow, I see drought, I see rain.

I see the leaves of the trees turn different colors, there’s so many wonderful colors. I see the new trees growing underneath the old ones when the seeds germinate. I see the old and the young, I see the new and the not so new.

All of these things cycle, just like I cycle. They go round and round and I really see what the seasons are.

If I lived in the city I mightnt even have a garden. I mightnt have a tree at all. I might have a lot of concrete, I might have pavers and a BBQ, but I mightnt have a tree or a blade of grass.

Apart from the temperature I mightnt even know what season it is.

Personally I think it’s sterile in the city and of course that’s just my view, not everyone thinks that.

Of course my family lives in the city and they love it. My brother is a doctor and hes single, so he likes the social life of the city. Theres things to do there that hes into, and it suits him. But the city is not for me.

I’ve lived in the city for a long time, I grew up there and I really feel now like I’ve wasted so many years. Now of course I didn’t waste them I had my time and I lived my life but it feels like wasted time. I should ask my brother if he’d like to live in the country, it would be nice if he lived nearby. But even if I suggested it to him I doubt that he’d move here. Read more

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Don’t you love days like today, I do. It’s just as I like it. Warm but not too hot, (I hate heat). And there’s no wind and it’s just ideal. I love it like this. I’ve been out in the car today and I’ve been feeling good. I drive along looking at the views and I love it here where I live. I see cows in the fields and happy people.

But what is a perfect day for me may not be a perfect day for you. Perhaps you’ve had some really bad news or maybe you’re sick or maybe you just don’t feel yourself today. It’s all different for you than it is for me.

Now of course thats my interpretation. For many people today might be a terrible day. Perhaps youve just had some bad news for example, or just feel bad. Maybe youre trying to do something that isnt working out. Maybe you just dont feel well.

So I wonder what it is that makes it such a nice day for me and what it is that might make it such a bad day for you. It’s not about the day itself is it? It’s the same day for me as it is for you. I see the sunshine, maybe you don’t. I see the cows in the fields but maybe you don’t even notice them.

Maybe you see terrible things in the day, all bad, darkness. The best day for me is the worst day for you.

But you might see the horrors, you might see the all the bad things, you might see the darkness. My great day is your worst.

Its all in our head isnt it? Our minds tell us whats a good day and whats a bad day, because we filter all our experiences through our minds. Every experience we have is filtered.

Even if you have the same experience as I do you may well see it totally differently, depending on how its filtered by your mind. You might drive through the same countryside as I do. You might see the sun, the cows, the kids and so on, but your mind may not even register them. Your mind might just be seeing the downside to everything.And thats because your mind filters everything according to past experience. What has happened to you in the past is all recorded in your mind and it tempers every future experience. So even though youre seeing the same sun, cows and kids as I am seeing your past experiences are different from mine and so your mind uses the  past to filter what youre seeing now. Read more

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Do You Love Writing? I Love It

I just love to write. Since I was young Ive loved to write and I still do. I remember when I was about 10 or 11 at school I wrote story after story, my teacher was stunned that I could write so much at such an early age.

When I got older I did a degree in the Arts but never concentrated on writing, and now I wish I had. If I had my time all over again I would take my time to study what I loved to do then and still love to do.

It’s an interesting question about whether I could ever have become good enough at writing to make a living from it. Who knows. But if I had the chance then I should have tried, after all if you don’t try you never know if you can really do it. I should have tried.

I’m quite convinced writing is a skill that can be learned. Of course not everyone can learn it because there’s other important things as well. For example I think it’s essential that you love to do it. That’s like anything. If you don’t love it you’re unlikely to keep at it long enough to learn the skill.

If you really love it then you’ll take the time you need to take to develop it till you’re good at it. It really will take time but I’m sure it can be done. You need to work on it every day but if you love doing it then that’s no problem. Every day is fine. Read more

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