New wheels?

There's the possibility of the Cycle to Work scheme being started again in my work.  I'm seriously thinking about a second bike.  The one I currently have (Giant Escape M1) is a great bike, and I'm not looking to replace it.  What I want to get is a mountain bike that will cope with off-road/trails.

The Pollok park mountain bike trails are 10 minutes from my door.  I want to go play on them.  There's also Mugdock park, and any number of other places where I could potentially remove myself from the gene pool.
Then there's the pleasure of simply cycling along forest trails that my current bike would be very uncomfortable to use on.

I'm not kidding myself that I'll be dropping off tree trunks and jumping over things, I'm 48 this year. BUT, that doesn't mean I have to get a "sit-up and beg" bike and cycle sedately along at a snails pace either.

Then there's the fact that Glasgow's roads are so riddled with potholes that a bike with (at a minimum) front suspension is probably a seriously good idea.

(I've also looked into whether it's possible to cycle the West Highland Way.  Apparently it is, although there's some parts that would require a dismount.)

2014 -so far so good

Yeah, ok, it's only 7 days old, but so far 2014 is ok.

The return to work has been pretty easy so far, as there's no students about yet.  They should be about from tomorrow as the exams are starting, but since I'm not involved with them in any way, that's not an issue.

Had two karate classes so far.  One was an hour and a half of kata, which was utterly exhausting, but very very rewarding.  I really like doing kata, especially when I've got a mental block about a part of a new one I'm learning, and then get over it, as happened tonight.  Tomorrow is the first Wednesday lunchtime class of the year, so it'll be good to get back into that, as it's a great way to get through the middle of the week, especially when it's a hard/trying/tiring week.

Anyway, resolutions that I've made are all do-able ones.  There's a couple of exercise targets I've set myself - climb at least one munro, cycle to work as often as possible - and the others are just to do with clearing out stuff I no longer use/need/want, and not replacing it with other junk that I don't really need.

Also, this is the Chinese year of the horse, and that's my birth year, so it's supposed to be a lucky/make or break year for me, so fingers crossed it's a good one.  I'm planning to make the most of it and try to have a positive outlook on things.  I allowed the negativity of others to turn me into a moaning git last year.