Spring is here with a vengeance now. The snow line is rising up the mountains, and the ski hill is not the place it was only a month ago. Cath is out in Elkford, “centre of the wilderness” climbing a huge hill on her road bike. We were there looking at it a couple of weeks ago. The road (to Fording Bridge Mine) is about 25km long, and rises something like 600 metres along it’s length, most of that rise is in only 4 or 5 km, so you can imagine, it’s very steep in places. Once you get to the top you really feel like you have gained height as you go from huge pines and firs in Elkford to high alpine at the top – small trees and alpine meadows full of deer and huge herds of elk (it’s not called Elkford for nothing)!

Hopefully (cougars notwithstanding) Cath’ll be back about 3pm so that we can go to a friend’s party in town – Cath’s already baked the cakes for it, so it’ll just be a case of getting changed.

Myself, I’ve been off the running for about three weeks. It started with a bad knee, so I got on the bike instead, then Ian came over, and we wanted to dedicate our time to him, Alex and Kate. Then it was my birthday, and I managed to get a dose of food poisoning that lasted nearly a week (keeling over, that sort of thing), and finally I did my back in – *lying down*!!!! How exactly does that happen?? How many excuses do you need? Well the good news for me is that after a rather marvellous massage from Cath, I’m now sorted. On my actual birthday day I wandered into a running shop and bought a pair of trail shoes (try running with stomach cramps!) so yesterday was the first chance I’ve had to put them on and do some damage with them. Surprisingly I felt really good, and even better, so did they, so looks like I’m up and running again, as it were.

What else? Well  (my bro) Ben’s coming over in about four weeks time, so we’re really looking forward to that, and if he keeps his nose clean and doesn’t get a criminal record before the end of the month we’ll take him over the border into Merca for a sloppy burger. I’ve also warned him that he needs to buy hiking boots as there’s every chance his  shoes won’t be able to take the pace at the places we’ll be taking him to!