bread drought

We're in danger of suffering a severe bread shortage. We were getting to grips with the new bread machine (despite suffering local ingredient supply issues re yeast and strong flour). The slightly different ingredients meant we were having to play around with quantities and settings but we were (im)proving nicely until disaster struck yesterday - broken bread machine.

Russel Hobbs have been contacted but getting it fixed will probably require us sending the thing back to the UK which is going to be a pain (and expensive).

On the plus side it meant I had to make bread by hand yesterday which was satisfying, though didn't turn out too well as the ingredients and quantities were for the machine. I would love to make fresh bread by hand every day but am somewhat lacking in time.

Bike club

The first rule of bike club is...you do not talk about bike club
The second rule of bike club is...you always wear lycra and ride around fireroads early on a Saturday morning.



It's the second rule that is giving me issues currently. No, not the lycra bit - I've got used to that now. The "getting-up-on-Saturday-morning-at-the-same-time-as-during-the-week-when-I'm-really-tired-and-just-want-to-stay-in-bed-plus-it's-really-cold" bit. Last weekend we managed to get up in time and go on our first club ride in 2010, and obviously it was really good. It always is when I manage to haul my ass out of bed but it doesn't make it any easier the following week. In the back of my head I know that I can go riding in Casa de Campo whenever I want and so I lack the urgency to get up and go out with the club.

The fireroads issue is possibly trickier. The people in the club (and other riders I see round Casa de Campo) love riding on nice wide fireroads so they can have a chat with their mates; they usually go out of their way to avoid enticing sections of singletrack which should be calling them and beckoning them with open branches but they just don't seem to feel it. I say "usually" though because last weekend's ride in El Pardo was a pleasant surprise: Luis took us through a couple of nice sections of singletrack which I must try to remember. I'm not a regular visitor to El Pardo (one of the reasons we made an effort to go to the ride) and I'd like to get to know it more. It's a huge park to the North of Madrid which used to be Franco's private hunting ground (and the hunters are still there and were very close last week!). I went with fontmoss one freezing cold morning last year but not knowing our way round meant we didn't get the best out of it (though we did get lost and chillblains).

Tomorrow's ride is in El Molar (which has some fantastic restaurants built into caves there) and I'm already convincing myself that it's going to be too cold and I shouldn't go. It depends on Sandra too obviously - she's going to have to work at some point this weekend (1st job) and might come into the office tomorrow morning, leaving me with the option of a) staying at home on my own and trying to go back to sleep after Sandra has left or b) going on the ride, in the (predicted) snow. Decisions....

As for the amount of work Sandra is currently doing...that's worth an extra post all to itself.