Being Outside

 

They say the you never forget how to ride a bike. Well this is how I know that I am special. Rules like this actually do not apply to me. They told me this when I became a youthworker, age 18, on motorbike training day. That was the day a friction burn from a spinning motorbike wheel melted a load of elastic from my trousers right into a big wound on my leg. I had a BLUE wound. So that put me off listening to people who say 'Don't be silly, of course you can ride a bike'. They clearly do NOT know anything. However, being married to a Bradley Wiggins wanna-be means there is huge disrespect for my nervousness and some days I just have to be brave and try anyway. Today I woke up in the right mood for this. I read Zest magazine with a huge glass of water. Nothing can make you feel more like striving to be healthy and adventurous than this combo. (particularly with the guilt of fish and chips for tea last night) so I suggested we went for a family bike ride after gardening club. What a beautiful part of the world we live in... the above photo proves to me that its good to be brave more often.

 Gardening club today was lovely. The spring weather is such a surprise and its made me realise I have been plodding on through the days expecting an eternal winter. I love the snow but I'm glad its gone. So today we prepped a few beds to plant sweet peas. That makes it sound like I know what I'm talking about, maybe? Nope. Its all very new to me and we're just reading instructions on the packets and hoping something might grow one day. 

  Next we put the potato seeds in the veg patch. I'm least confident about these as they actually look just like potatoes - they are in fact potatoes. If we end up digging these same potatoes up and eating them in a few months I'll not be overly impressed. I'm hoping there's more to the magic than that!?

Our exciting garlic progress! That IS magic. Those green bits were definitely NOT there when we put them in.

And then we headed out with 4 bikes into this! Elijah thinks he IS Bradley Wiggins - so Joel has to be Chris Hoy. I am Victoria Pendleton (I am older and have brown hair) and Holly gets to be Laura Trott. Bradley Wiggins is ALWAYS in front even though he has very little legs he is very competitive when on a little red bike. It was very beautiful. We rode 8 miles and because Joel made my bike out of parts of about 3 old broken ones it is very hard to peddle meaning I'm sure I burned off 3x the calories. I fell off once trying to scratch my nose and my bum kills but otherwise I was brave.

Home for a hearty chicken and veg stew and now cooking up a huge squash soup for lunches. 75 happy points :-)