Gary and Luca came over to Banchory on January 1st and all 5 of us had Jo's traditional steak pie dinner and we also belatedly celebrated Luca's 12th birthday last Sunday:
It had been a slow day for Jo and I as we had been entertaining the Kilgours and the Masons in to the wee small hours. As per usual, I had taken a team photo - it has to be one of the worst ever - so bad, I took it twice, without any visible improvement:
To be fair, I think they were all mid-song when the camera timer kicked in.
Unusually, we're 3 days in to our New Year and we still haven't spoken to Kelly or Lucy - or, for that matter, Dawn or Barry. We must make amends soon. We might get a chance to catch up with Barry and Helen in the next few days as they're taking a short break at the Crieff Hydro, so we might pop down to see them there.
After all the excesses of Hogmanay, I had to give my liver a rest on January 1st and I was then able to go out for a decent cycle on the 2nd - although my phone battery let me down mid-trip, so my Strava stats haven't made a good start to the year. Given that it's winter and we live in the North East of Scotland - 57 N, the same latitude as south Alaska - the weather has been great for getting out and about. It's been moderately cold (-5C early this morning, the coldest yet this winter) but it's been dry and sunny with very little wind - excellent cycling weather.
Strava collates my hill-walking and cycling stats and then sends summaries at the year end:
In addition to that lot, I get my daily steps on the i-Phone and I was having a really good year, keeping my daily average over the 10,000 steps mark until the latter end of the year when my activity dropped off noticeably:
A valiant effort, I think - must try harder in 2019 - a year which I hope will also see better things for Partick Thistle who are in grave danger of dropping down yet another league, so I'm planning to take a trip to Dundee on Saturday to lend them my support. Fingers crossed.
That's all for now - have a good new year everyone!
