Fresh Goods Friday 737: The Choose Your Own Adventure Edition

What are you looking forward to in the year ahead? What new places will you go, new things will you try – or learn? Maybe you’re getting a new knee? Did you finally remember to plant spring bulbs in autumn, and are counting the weeks until they bloom?Perhaps there’s a grandchild on the way, or a new routine in your work life.

There's a lot of age assumptions in that paragraph. Should I be insulted? 😀

Hope you all have/had/are having a great holiday period 🙂

Good stuff for me... after a couple of years of ongoing house renovations while we're living in it, much of it DIY, all the major stuff is finally over. Now I can concentrate on bits to make for more comfortable living such as building cupboards, fixing up the garden, finishing off the decorating etc... light at the end of the tunnel and the house is getting towards what we were dreaming of 🙂

I'm in the Falklands at the moment with scant opportunity to cycle so when I get back in a month I'm going on a little tour from Devon to Liverpool docks to take the ferry over to Ireland to see my daughter at Uni. I haven't toured for years so I'm very excited.

Not a new knee, but hoping to get my left knee repaired soon following an innocuous fall near Penmachno at the end of October. Ruptured my ACL, badly tore an MCL and damaged the Meniscus, a "holy trinity" of knee damage according my mates wife who works in A&E. Waiting for an Arthroscopy operation to repair what they can and plan a way forward to hopefully get to a full recovery, fingers crossed.

As we oldies know, life is like a toilet roll: the closer you get to the end, the faster it runs out. Lots to do.  West Cumbria, riding from Rowrah to Black Sail hostel and back. And maybe to the cairngorms  first time in years, to ride the Gaick. And closer to home, planning to hit the quarries and when I am 70 to climb the routes I first climbed at 16.

My first plan for 2025 is to try and keep up with the threads on STW, rather than finding interesting ones days (or sometimes weeks) after the last post 😉

Following that I might try and get out off road on a mountain bike for the first time in over 12 months. My usual possie of riding buddies have all stopped completely or moved over t just road riding (something which holds no appeal to me at all) so I'm going to see if I can track anyone down relatively local to me who may be up for social, definitely not competitive or fast, rides, with the focus on social.

Other than that, I hope to stay relatively fit and healthy for another year.

I wish you all good health and happiness in 2025 and here's to a more settled year where we can all get out and enjoy ourselves!