Mange tout (rodney)

Mental note: must post more.

Things have been so busy lately that I have been having trouble keeping it all under control, let alone blog about it.How do others do it? hmm. Anyway a load of good things have been happening, and some not so good.But i shall focus on the positive!

- Ran the Brighton half marathon in Feb with work colleagues and we all did a fine job - coming in under 2 hours. This was our first event to raise Monday for Amani childrens home and our Mount Kilimanjaro climb in September. I have a long way to go in raising a respectable amount of money for this, so along with my absent posting I resolve to tackle this as soon as time allows.We are well on the way to organising the climb, now we just need to come up with some good fundraising ideas.

- My elder sister finally got married in March. An absolutely magic occasion. Unfortuntely all my pics came out a bit red eye though.

- Three of went back to Tignes again to visit our friend Dan and had a grand time. Perfect conditions (not a cloud!) and good times had by all. I even popped a few rails this time around and no injuries. A cracking shot of Dan and Morlo on the glacier up in Val d isere and a few more here at flickr

Incidentally, I won a pair of snowboard boots this week. After coming home slightly worse for wear I found this great big box from germany with my name on it...and could not for ages work out why I had been sent a very nice pair of Deeluxe boots. Finally got to the bottom of it - from a competition I entered when we went to serre chevaier at New year - great, ebay here they come and I can get a new jacket!

Also outdoors related a bunch of us have been riding up on the south downs a lot - all in preparation for the Randonnee challenge in July. This is a 100 mile offroad route along the south downs way [winchester-eastborne], that, gulp, has to be completed in 12 hours. I blame Jim for not pointing out to me that it was actually off road when I agreed to do it. Anyway, we all have shiny new bikes, I am currently loving mine. I marvel at the hydraulic brakes a lot, how sad. Jim's been posting a lot on the ride stats, over at his MTB Diary blog . Seriously good fun and I am massively enjoying seeing the countryside all around Brighton more.

Other things that popped up over the last few months were the welcome arrival of my shotgun license..so I can finally pick one up, and looking forward to our clay weekend down in Devon soon. We also had the first of this years workparties on the farm in preparation for next season. Hard work but good fun, but keeping an eye out for 1. chainsaws and 2.falling trees I have realised is crucial.

Also welcome was the opening of a new skatepark at hove lagoon - 2 mins from the house! So me and Ross have been sneaking down there when quiet and having a blast. Super smooth surface, nice hips and a mini which I am slowly getting the feeling back for. Mostly i just like bombing it around and doing large squeaky powerslides.

So I am now resolved to making this blog a good diary of all the fun things you can do around Brighton in what can only be described at the moment as glorious spring sunshine. Its now been a year since I moved down here - its gone so fast its been a blur..but a fun packed one and long may that continue.