London calling

I am sitting in a hotel next to St Paul's and it's pretty boring, the course I am on is all stuff I have done before, so I am frustrated by that, but I had dinner with Ben last night and a couple of beers which was really good. I hope he and H can come and visit us.Apparently J is settling back to normal life and sleeping better.I suppose London isn't as bad as i recall, but it drives me mad sitting in a room for 3 days being taught things I already know...

Getting over the jetlag

J slept until I woke him to say goodbye this morning as I am off to London for a couple of days. apart from waking at midnight, it was a good night for the little guy.
It seems that most of my work things have come together during our holiday and now that I have mown the lawn, it's almost as though we never left.
I am still short on the witty comments so I'll resort to the weather: it's very windy here today.

More pics:

Sharing a sandwich with Grandad (that is a bib, not a ruff)

All in the pool

Tired after dinner at The Dining Room with M

Back to the grind-stone

I am back in front of the usual PC now and not much seems to have changed, except for the fact that I have that out of body jet-lag feeling and have not eaten for a while.
I am not going to fool myself into thinking that the few readers of this blog are interested in anything other than photographs of J so I will just post some and worry about the witty social comment tomorrow. Enjoy!


Eating pizza at the Boulder Tea Rooms


Buying a lawn mower at Home Depot

Standing near the top of the Flat Irons (I have sneakily included myself in this one)

Sorry for the poor service...

As we don't have the cable for downloading pictures from the camera, i am afraid that will have to wait until we are home. In the meantime we are enjoying our holiday a lot, we have been up into the mountains to visit an old mining town (very high up, unpaved roads, no people and not much happening, but interesting). We have swum, hiked and shopped. Tomorrow we are off on another road trip into the mountains with J asleep in the back of the car (we hope) and then the final attack of the shopping mall is planned for the end of the week when the rain is expected.
This morning we hiked up a small mountain and on thursday our fancy new watches should arrive...
Sorry this is rambling, but so are we.
NORMAL UPDATES ARE DUE TO RESUME NEXT WEEK

Still having fun

We've bought a ruck-sack thing that J can sit in when we are walking so we went for a short walk this morning. He seems happy in it which is good. Yesterday we went to Boulder falls after a good breakfast at The Kitchen, but we are still basically taking it easy.
I hope to be able to get some photos sorted out at some point

Boulder

We have survived the journey and Boulder is a really cool place, the people are friendly and the atmosphere is relaxed.
Yesterday was a big shopping day and the bank was hit hard although we are now too cool to care with our new sun glasses!
Here are mine
Still on the cards are some hiking, biking and more shopping

End of term

The end of term is almost upon us, so I am thinking about packing, maybe this is the way to go...

Boulder baby!

Well there are just over 1½ days left at work, lost of loose ends to tie up and jobs to get sorted out at home and then we are off to Boulder.
The journey is likely to be interesting, but at least we are allowed to take some hand luggage above and beyond nappies and baby food although I expect that it will all be taken up with J accessories.
I am still agonising over spending a fortune on a watch with my bonus, I have permission from the boss, but I am just not sure...
The first one costs half as much as the second, but the seconds is SOOOOO much more desirable for so many reasons (it's a real moon watch, not a look alike cheapo version) and the weak dollar means that I will probably never get one cheaper.

Too busy...

...for this today.

Windows

Given the amount of money that we can save by stripping the paint off the window frames ourselves, I will mostly be spending all of my evenings this week with a scraper in one hand and a hot air gun in the other. The first of the 4 windows is done thankfully so progress is on track. I must take some before and after pictures.


Training will not be going well this week either then...
It seems that Heathrow is less panic stricken than last week so maybe our flight will be closer to normal than we had feared and finally I have my rearranged meeting with CVL today. Hopefully that will be a positive experience and we can then go on holiday with some idea about the timescales for any future career changes.

Autumn arrives early

Standing up allows a whole new dimension of mischief
Cold and wet here, thankfully we are off to Boulder next weekend for our well earned holiday! The rain has meant that we have not achieved much this weekend, including wimping out of a bike race yesterday. I simply couldn't face driving all that way to get wet, then get dropped... again!
J is crawling around like a mad-man which is fun.
Big(ish) meeting at the Business School this afternoon, so update on that to follow tomorrow.
Here is J with his Great Grandfather on a boat trip last week (before the end of summer as you can see)

Flying to the US looks like such fun!

Well we can only hope that the new rules concerning what we can take on the plane are relaxed a little before we fly next week otherwise we are in for 14 hours of travel with a 10 month old baby and nothing to entertain him at all!!!

Chaos came to visit...

...thankfully I was at work!
J and some small friends found the bookshelf yesterday and had fun clearing the shelves off, next job is to teach them how to put things back.

Newspaper also holds a deep fascination with him so we are having to be increasingly careful where we put the unread ones as he is getting pretty adept at reaching things himself. We are looking forward to our trip to Colorado in 10 days, but the prospect of 15 hours of traveling with the hyperactive mini-wrestler is getting increasingly daunting as it seems that BA have banned all hand luggage on flights from the US meaning that there will be NO toys or distractions for us to use to entertain him during the short 9 hour hop from London to Denver!

The next step...

J seems to have taken to crawling pretty well and is climbing up the furniture with increasing ease and confidence so how long until he is trying to walk? My guess is another month or so before he tries his first steps, but it is truly frightening how quickly things change.
My back is aching again, I think it is related to the tidying up in the basement so I will be careful to avoid doing that again. Biking home from work last night was purgatory for the last 20 or so kilometers. (This represents the beginning of the excuses for the bike race at the weekend...)

Crawling mania

Our sunflower is coming along nicely (actually I can take no credit for this)
Last night I finally completed the arduous task of building the shelves in the basement and getting the boxes off the floor, it's not interesting, but the basement now looks pretty big when there isn't a layer of crud all over it.
J is making his way all around the house, it is easy to know where he is as he shouts continuously when he is crawling announcing his movements. We have tidied up a lot of things, but we are dreading the moment that he finds the bookshelves and magazine rack thing. The study and bathroom doors now have to be kept closed as well.
Sorry this isn't very interesting today is it? There should be some new pictures in the next day or so, but I am biking home today so the computer is staying in the office. When I am working at home there is sometimes a little help available as you can see...

... and he's off!

We have had a very busy (and sleep deprived as ever) weekend. J has taken to standing himself up with just about anything he can get hold of intent on clearing any baby height surface of papers and electrical equipment. This is itself has not been such a problem so long as he was out of reach of the tables, sofa etc. However, on Saturday morning he learned how to crawl and is now whizzing around the house making a lot of noise. We are lucky so far as he cannot get over the door steps, but as they are only 1cm high, I don't think that will last for long.* I'll get some crawling pictures up as soon as I can.
Along with feeding the lawns, oiling the bench and doing other DIY type things, we have been bed shopping this weekend so we will be getting new beds delivered when we get back from Boulder. Hurray for that, now all we need is a baby that sleeps better!

*Update: He managed to get over the step this morning

Only 20 weeks until Christmas

Seeing as Christmas will soon be upon us (or at least the decorations) we have booked our flights to Blighty for the festive period, thankfully bagging a bargain on the way.
The toy shopping was pretty unsuccessful, all I got was a frog glove puppet and a barking vibrating dog thing, we'll have to keep our eyes open for other options.
I have so far resisted the temptation to purchase any shiny bike bits, only time will tell if I can hold out until the urge passes. Perhaps all I need to do to overcome my desire to upgrade my cockpit is to cut the steerer tube to the right length. (Note that this is not rude to those who understand bike gibberish although it may seem as though it is to others)
Finally here are some pictures of the royal visit.

This is what happens when you can only realy move backwards and don't like confined spaces.

Toy shopping

Having sat with J on my knee for 20 minutes yesterday, I am now more acutely aware of the challenge that we will face during the 9 hour flight from London to Denver. As a result I am off to the Toy Shop in the way home this evening to find some suitable distractions that are:

• infinitely entertaining and interesting
• Silent
• Inexpensive
• Small enough to carry
• Educational
• Inedible

I am not too optimistic of ticking all the boxes, but I will try. Perhaps it will be somethinglike this!

I am also fantasy bike part shopping to fill time at the moment, I am getting carried away longing for carbon fiber goodies such as integrated handlebar/stems, wheels and of course seatposts...

Bye for now...

It was a sad morning this morning, we had to take my mum to the airport and say good bye for a few months. We haven't made any plans yet, but we hope to see her again in the autumn. She has had a wonderful affect on young J who has suddenly taken to sleeping through the night. It was lovely to have her staying and we have enjoyed the last week, I hope that we can do it again soon. ( I am not only writing this because I know she will read it). We enjoy having visitors, especially when they help with the washing up.
Yesterday was fun, we visited an old house somewhere and had a picnic. I am afraid that is all the information I have about the house other than that we had to wear blue plastic things over our shoes. There is something that happens to me in old houses, I suddenly become a bored 10 year old and cannot get out fast enough.
Pictures will be posted tomorrow as they are still on the camera.
More exciting posts to follow tomorrow...

HE SLEPT THROUGH!

After exactly 9 months of regular night time waking and crying, J finally slept through the whole night last night from about 9:00 until 05:45 this morning!
The weather has continued to be fantastic here, we went to the glassworks at Holmegaard yesterday to see the new visitors centre (average really considering you used to get a guided tour for free and now you pay 80kr to show yourself around!), but we did get some new wine glasses.
Now that J is sleeping, we are considering getting ourselves a new bed so that we can sleep better too...

Oh no, not again...

I am extremely disappointed to hear about Floyd Landis's A sample testing positive, if it proves to be a correct result and that he did take testosterone before stage 17 then I think he will have to have the Tour win taken from it and that could be the beginning of the end of pro bike racing as we know it. The media interest will go ( it is already waning) and the sponsorship money will soon follow. There does seem to be some hope that Floyd's result is a false one and many have been cleared in the past following this kind of result. I really hope that this is not the going to be the third consecutive Grande Tour tainted by doping...
On a much happier note, here is J in his Hawaiian outfit.

Argh!

Isn't it annoying when you make an effort to get to a meeting and then it is cancelled? I have dragged my sweaty arse into the office today for a meeting this afternoon, only to have it cancelled at the last minute. The result is that I am stuck in CPH until about 10:00 this evening waiting for my mother to arrive at the airport. It is also very hot in here.
I have just installed some widgets on my desktop from Yahoo though and they seem pretty cool! I now have an analogue clock, weather forecast and check of my yahoo mail account floating around the desktop ( I can also have a picture frame that runs through my photos and an Outlook link to to-dos etc)
In the meantime, here are some feet.

Working from home is great

I have been mostly working from home for the last couple of weeks and it is marvelous. I can get out of bed and be on-line in a couple of minutes and also save at least a couple of hours of commuting time each day. There are drawbacks, it is more difficult to get things done when you don't see your colleagues, but as most of them are on holiday it doesn't matter.
Other exciting news is that I had a message from someone I have never met before meaning that my global audience is growing. ( I think she was in the US based on the comment that her husband watched the Tour in the mornings)
Anyway, to keep the regular reader happy, here is another picture of the little guy helping to unpack the new phones... (won't work now, I'll put it up later)

Withdrawl symptoms

Unfortunately for us viewers, the Tour de France is finally over. Floyd won a deserved victory and at last someone other than Lance has one, I was never a huge fan and now that it seems that Jan Ullrich will never do it again, i am happy that it is someone like Floyd could do it. What a nice guy and what a great collection of sunglasses!
Anyway back to the usual update pictures of the family to keep my mother (who is not remotely interested in cycling) happy.

Amazing Floyd

Floyd made an amazing come-back yesterday, the likes of which has not been seen since the days of Mercx. In a move requiring such balls that it is a wonder he can ride a bike, Floyd attacked with 150km to go and basically whipped everyones ass. Fantastic.
However, as only my mum reads this, i should note that everyone at home is well etc etc. We are looking forward to seeing her next week and I hope that by then J will have overcome his latest round of sleeping problems...

Meltdown

Well yesterday Floyd had a shocker, he died on the last climb and basically lost the Tour, he ended up going at my pace. What I really like though is his attitude, he is so honest and down to earth when he explains what happened, you can't help but like the guy. Denmark are no doubt celebrating Rasmussens win which was pretty impressive to say the least.
Today should be exciting too and I really have no idea who will win, but I suspect that Michael Rasmussen will have another go on the last climb if he is there with the leaders...

Sitting, but not sleeping

Well J has now learned how to sit himself up from lying down and he is increasingly communicative and fun to play with, but he is still unable to sleep for more than 4 hours in a row and stay alseep after about 05:30. At the moment this is not really my problem as i have the "work clause" which allows me to sleep through the night time duties, but it won't be long before I have to step up to the plate and deal with him in the night when we are both working again...

It was great to see the stage of the Tour going up Alpe d'Huez yesterday, it reminded me of the painful hours that were spent riding around there last year, I don't think there is a better place in the world to ride a bike on the roads.

Wireless world

I went a bit mad in El Giganten on the way home last night so we are now fully wireless and I am sitting here with 3 laptops switched on and connected at the same time. We also now have 3 cordless phones dotted around the house. The main reason for this is that the smallest member of the household is more than a little interested in all things with wires and he is getting better and better at moving around and pulling himself up on and with things.
More interestingly though today is the best stage of the Tour de France and I am working from home! Hurray!

Gone fishing

Yesterday was a fabulous day in Denmark, the sun shone and it was hot. I was lucky enough to be invited out with Lars, Jan and Bent to go fishing in Jans boat at Reersø. We took a few cold beers and a load of fishing stuff and headed off into the sun. Having never really fished beforeIi was amazed thatIicaughtt the first one, a horn-fisk (long thin thing) and 3 of the 15 or so flat plaice like fish we got (called a skrubber or something in Danish (apparently it is Flounder)).
Jan did a great job of cutting the heads off and pulling in the insides out and when we got back (2 hours later than planned), Lars took the fins and leathery dark side skin off.
Moving on a couple of hours, we had fantasticfreshh pan fried fish with chips in the garden at home at last.
J didn't seem so happy to be home, he woke up drying every halfhoure during the night despite being in out bed. We guess it must be his second tooth coming through...

"... and simultaneously they play music"

I really like Germany, I had forgotten what a nice place it is. The other thing that I had forgotten is just how funny the Germans are without being aware of the fact. On Wednesday evening a group of us were taken out the dinner (rather nice suckling pig with bacon dumplings) and a few drinks in the apparently infamous Reeperbahn in Hamburg Towards the end of the evening we were walking along the side of the harbour to one of the beach bars (an artificial beach with a bar), when passing an old warehouse building Gerhard pronounced that "at the weekend you can see thousands of people here drinking beer and simultaneously they play music" Perhaps this loses a little in the re-telling, but I thought it was rather funny.

Not much happening here

It's been a dull day working from home and waiting to take the train to Hamburg this evening. I feel like I should continue to make posts even when I don't have much to say! It's a shame that it isn't an interesting stage of the Tour de France today either.
Maybe something interesting will happen in Germany...

Back from the edge

The edge of the island that is! I am home alone again and unfortunately there is an air of old mother Hubbard about the house. I had sour(ish) milk on my breakfast and cereal for my tea last night.
I have also done something to my back so I am struggling somewhat. Getting out of bed was tough, putting socks on was tough etc etc. I hope it gets better quickly. I think it could be related to the fact that I have cycled hard for about 60km each day since last Thursday and on Saturday I lowered my handlebars a little. Maybe they're going back up again tonight.
Pictures of the lovely weekend spent at the beach will be duly posted when the wife returns with the camera!

Home alone

M and J are going to the beach for 10 days or so with her parents, I am joining them for both weekends, but that does mean that I will be home alone for 4 nights ! (I am going to Hamburg for 2 nights next week)
It is not often that I get to do this so the plan is as follows:
Thursday night - ride bike then clean and service it
Friday - hopefully work from home and then spend a few hours riding to the beach
Saturday - relax
Sunday - spend a few hours riding home again
Monday - work and who knows what else
Tuesday - work from home, short bike ride then take the train to Hamburg (this is very exciting and will no doubt feature largely in another dull post
So that's it really.

Elephant Man

I was stung in the middle of my forehead by a wasp whilst cycling on Sunday so yesterday I had a forehead that was somewhere between John Merrick and a Klingon. Thankfully today it has subsided a little.
It's dead hot here!

Quality Time

Well I think that's what it's called, Jeremy and I were home alone yesterday afternoon whilst Mum went to Copenhagen. It was a pretty hot and sticky day and to be honest I don't know how she ever gets anything done when she is home with him. It was fun, but he wants more or less constant attention.
For her part it seems that Mum had a good time escaping to CPH, although she singularly failed to achieve anything on the shopping front despite having carte blanche to buy anything she fancied and the sales have just started!
Then at the end of the day he falls asleep in some very strange positions...

Weekend at the beach

The weekend has been lovely but there have been a few disappointments to go with the exciting developments. Friday saw the sad removal of Jan Ullrich and other from the Tour de France, I am not really sure whether it is fair to apply a guilty until proven innocent rule, and I suspect that the expelled riders are not in the minority when I comes to drug use...
Saturday saw another sporting disappointment with England out of the World Cup. I knew as soon as it went to penalties that we would go out, but that is football and it doesn't really matter as the Tour is on now!
On a more positive side, Jeremy is now sitting really well on his own so he can entertain himself better as you can see.
He also has his first tooth that can clearly be heard when he tries to bite the side off a glass when drinking.
So all in all, the weekend was good, sunshine, beer, swimming in the sea, cycling and relaxing.