no Apples in this house..

I had a rocking weekend planned, a little gardening, a little house work, some good times with the wife and some bmx.. well 'best laid plans..' and all that, it went tits up on Friday night. I leave work a little early and head out to Winchester for gate practice and to ride with my mate Jason. Jason maybe 40+ now, but his gate and fist dozen pedals are like riding against Flemdog. He has a real snap and pull. We always have a good session together and push each other.

Well the track was in pretty poor condition, the rains have been monsoon like lately and have really battered the rebuild. All of the straights had stones sticking out, so we hooked up the dragger to the quad, but it took about 3 hours to clear the place. We had some good gates going on and then right at the end of the session I went to bump jump the table on the first straight. It's about 15ft long, maybe less, but I am getting close to clearing the whole thing from a manual. As soon as I took off I felt my calf muscle give way, man did it bring tears to my eyes. Felt like some bugger had just stabbed my in the leg. So that was the end of practice and my weekend plans. Saturday I spent the day on the sofa, with my leg wrapped in ice. It helped for sure, but it does cloud the issue of South Carolina next weekend. Hopefully it will be strong enough to ride, I don't want to drive 500miles for nothing, but it also means it screws up my training. I have been pushing hard lately, squats, jump squats and sprints plus gates once or twice a week. I have been seeing real improvement. I feel I am as quick now with flats on as I was a month ago with clips on. Maybe, I might take my cruiser to SC and just ride for fun as I am not necessarily chasing a cruiser plate.

Sunday I felt better, I bought a support for my calf which is really helping, so we headed off to Lowes to look at doors and bathrooms, exciting huh and then we went to Best Buy to look at new PC's. We had the whole Mac conversation again, but truth is, neither of us would use a Mac to its potential. We use the 'net, C uses the basic functions for work all the time and we down load pics and music. I think I wanted a Mac because it looks cool, but I am a numpty with technology, so better the devil you know I guess. In the end we got a nice HP system including a good quality wireless printer, a wireless router and a Dell laptop for C for less than we would have spent on a Mac. It was a wise decision. Here's the rub though, we transfered all the old data we wanted from the old pc to the new pc and guess what, first time we re-booted it error message "Drive D has insufficient memory" For fooks sake. It has 360GB and we only transffered about 60GB of photos, doc and tunes. Drive D is the image memory, I guess for back up and recovery. I am sure we can fix it, but honestly, just short of a grand and first time it boots we get that! Bill Gates needs a sodding great slap or someone does at MS thats for sure.. :)

Good luck to all the chaps from the UK heading to China for the BMX worlds this coming week. I hope DC and Marco can bring back some W plates in 25-29x.

Also check out Wan's and Northern Monkeys (www.nmky.blogspot.com) comments on Crewe Bmx track. I heard its scary. Step up or go home I reckon, people want it too easy. Last weekend I rode at Richmond, it was something straight from the 80's. I'd love a track with steep jumps and something to be scared of again, bmx is getting lame, tracks are for progression, if you can't ride it, find one you can, learn the skills and then move on to the tough ones. I wish the NBL or ABA would step it up like Crewe, even though I would poop my pants looking at the pics.