A pint of beer and a siege please...

Yesterday I took the Mrs. on a trip to the New Forest to get some fresh air and get out of town.

First things first we stopped off at 'the Oak', a 19th century pub in the hamlet of Bank, just outside Lyndhurst. It's listed in CAMRA's Good Beer Guide so it's purported to serve a decent pint of real ale. And decent it was too... a pint of Stonehenge "Great Bustard" and a fat doorstep sandwhich for lunch.

Setting off again toward Highcliffe in Dorset, where I once lived when I was really young, we followed a cop car into town - he had his lights flashing but no siren then turned off into a housing estate and that was that. Or so we thought...

We spent a few hours in Highcliffe, bummed around, drifted along the beach, had ice cream and stuff and then jumped back in the car to go home.

As I drove through a housing estate, looking for my old home and taking a pretty random shortcut, I got us lost and then saw a cop car parked at a junction. Joking that he'd help us with directions, we noticed that there was another cop car, then another... then there were all the residents of the estate standing at the kerbside and then more cop cars - they were EVERYWHERE.

We counted a good 10-20 or more police cars, vans, ambulances and armed police too. We've got used to seeing them at the Airports now, but guns in a quiet residential area... whoa!

It turns out that it's a guy taking a baby hostage with nail-gun, but but don't trouble yourself with thinking about it, looks like it's all over.

Other than that it was quite a pleasant day :)

Nature never ceases to amaze me...

I'm a guy who loves his technology - I have two great cars, love my computer and the Internet, enjoy hacking around on my mountain bike and BMX and generally have an appreciation of all things electrical and mechanical. But nature...

...mother nature just tops it all. So much for the blue skies, it's been very grey this last week. And today it rained again, but amidst the grey one thing amazed me... a rainbow. Infact, look closely at the photo and it's actually a double rainbow.

To think that sunlight refracted through rainfall can produce something so beautiful still astounds me. It also reminds me that I really must find time this year to have my first holiday and maybe check out the Northern Lights.

Next time it rains and the sun comes out, maybe just take a little time out to look at any rainbows :)

Grey sky, Yellow bike

Skies are grey today so I can't go out on my new BMX. I bought it last week - a cheap 'n' cheerful GT Performer in the late summer sales. I wanted a Lime Green GT Zone one but they were all out of stock :( So I settled for a sunny yellow one instead. I haven't had a BMX for a few years and I figured it would help my MTB cycling and be a laugh too.

Funny thing is that I took it out for a blast at the ramps in the woods (just a few hundred yards from my home) and hit the deck on my first run-up LOL. Ended up with a bloody arm and badly bruised knees and legs (hit some metal-work on the way down). Now THAT's what it's all about.

EDIT: 10 October: OK, I forgot to mention this - it wasn't just a bruise on my shin, ends up I took a chip out of the front of my shinbone. BIG lump there now. Anyway, it would have been cool to go down the A&E, get an X-ray and post it here for all to see, but that would have been a complete waste of time apart from getting a cool x-ray pic. What would else would they have said other than, hey, you got a chipped bone? Also my "little" bro did the same last week - he clear one ramp, scuffed the 2nd and landed his bike on top of him at the 3rd - he broke his collar bone.

Time to Settle Down (yeah right) ...

Having drifted the web for the last 6 years I thought it about time to find myself a good blog, settle down and find myself a place I can call home, maybe raise some permanent data to provide for the future...

...I've been posting all sorts of stuff all over the place and, like all restless minds, find myself scribbling thoughts here and there, adding, editing, deleting, modifying, forgetting, ignoring...