Freezing

Its been cold. Here in my part of Cheshire, it started with sleet, then the temperatures dipped and we got a dusting of snow on top. On the first morning as I walked to de-ice the car, my feet crunched straight through the crisp snow on top and into the semi-frozen slush beneath. Then things got colder and everything compacted. I tried to build a snowman with my daugher but the snow refused to stick together, just crumbled into tiny icy crystals and fell apart in your hand. We gave up and just started smashing up the large ice-cubes that had formed in various containers that had been left out in the garden. A washing-up bowl produced the largest cube, that was still liquid in the middle. Took quite a bit of smashing that one, but gave us some cool shards with big cavaties in the middle where the water still hadn’t frozen. The beach buckets produced lovely little ice-castles. On Sunday we went north and found some fields where there was still some decent snow, and had a good time sledging, snowball fighting and drinking hot chocolate. Today has been warmer and most of the snow and ice has disappeared, hoping that the forecast sunshine does arrive at the end of the week.

Musk / Starmer

I think I was definitely ahead of the curve on the “Elon Mush is a bell-end” realisation but I’m not sure I ever expected him to end up where he appears to be now, frothing at the mouth with right-wing talking points. Taking up the cause of people like Tommy Robinson and lunatics who go round with hunting knives and copies of Mein Kampf trying to initate riots at mosques. He seems to have a real animus with Keir Starmer and the Labour Goverment in the UK. I can’t quite make head or tail of it. Is it some genuine attempt to undermine a foreign government that is not right wing / authoriatarian / plutocracy friendly? If so is it because he genuinely feels that is a “danger to people’s freedoms” or just that he fears it will somehow curtail his power in some way? I dunno, none of it really makes much sense. Maybe it is just divoced dad, mid life crisis, too much ketamine and twitter energy.

Regardless of the motivation, it’s quite an anxiety inducing situation for the worlds richest man and someone in the inner-circle of the incoming preseident to have such an animus towards our govenment. This would be less bad if the conservative opposition and large swathes of the media were not more than happy to amplify the musk agenda. I’m sure there used to be an idea that the job of oppostion and media is to hold the govenerment to account in the service of the people, rather than just “do anything to make life awkward for the PM”.

Just realised I’m discussing the week’s political news and I haven’t even touched on the US preseident elects threats to annex Greenland. Feels weird to be writing that sentance and it’s kind of too mind blowing to comtemplate, so maybe I’ll just leave it there.

Cycling Diary

One of my 2025 goals was to cycle more, so with that in mind, lets have a recap of my current fitness and recent activity.

• Zwift Weight: 72kg
• Actual Weight: 76kg (what can I say, it was Christmas)
• Zwift FTP: 207
• Actual FTP: Lets say 190
• Rides this week 3, totalling 1.5 hours, ~40km, ~700m elevation. All indoor / Zwift.
  
  Been quite happy just to get back into some sort of semi-regular routine tbh, though it has made me realise how much my fitness has dropped off since the end of November when I was doing regular Zwift time-trials. I tried “Emily’s Short Mix” workout and was unable to complete it, so I know my FTP has dipped. But still, its a start for 2025, will try and ramp things up a bit this week. Struggling with some elbow pain though, for which I’m going to go get some physio.