Still home and biking tons!

Two months in Scotland, in the dead of winter, did not suit me well.  From biking daily on the single track trails of rural Tanzania, dancing to the wee hours at least once a week, swimming daily in the Indian Ocean, eating questionable cuisine sparingly....I was in pretty good shape.  Now stick me in Aberdeen for the winter, working dark to dark, with eight hour classroom/simulator sessions and an hour and a half commute on both ends, while staying at a hotel with no gym but attached to a dizzying array of mall restaurants, and pubs.  Basically every menu in Aberdeen offered similar fare....heavily breaded fish and chips and burgers, and of course, beer.  I went from a svelte 184 Lbs, a weight I had maintained for nearly a decade, to a hefty 210!  Guess as you get older you've got to be more careful.  So back to Phase One of the South Beach diet, I'm already down to 195, but I've still got another ten to shed, biking daily on my new steed.  Not a single beer in well over a month.

My long awaited Norco Carbon Sight finally arrived, I threw it together in under an hour and I haven't looked back.  What a sweet ride!  I'm presently foregoing twenty plus years of SPD pedals to give flat pedals another go, as I've had far too many serous injuries from SPD related crashes.  It's taking some getting used to but I can bunny hop as high as I ever could, and I may just ease back into some of the trials riding of my youth.  I think SPDs for mountain biking are history for me.  Being home for so long has me bored.  I spent far too much time trying to find a suitable replacement cologne, as my old favourite Ralph Lauren Safari is unavailable in Canada.   I've been testing and smelling and sampling and to my nose at least (the one that matters of course, whether anyone else likes it is inconsequential), I've kind of settled between Acqua di Parma Colonia Leather (dark and well, leathery), Creed Himalaya (very nice, I could wear this everyday, but damn expensive) and Tom Ford Extreme (not the Tom Ford NOIR Extreme, I got the wrong one once but it's too flowery for me).  I'm thinking the light but very complex Himalaya for day time and the rather exotic and dark Extreme for a night out, and the Leather for anything in between.  I'm also thinking that I might like to try the Acqua Di Parma Colonia original, as it's over 98 years old and as classic as they come.  Very lemony and fresh when you first put it on, but if it was good enough for Cary Grant.....Yeah, I'm bored......

Just got word I won't be bored much longer.  I'll be heading overseas early July, back to a place I'm very familiar with.  Brushing up on my Turkish now.  Then word is down to West Africa, hopefully keeping me busy into 2016.......