The year that was 2013.

Well that was an interesting year, started some what badly at work, mainly due to my own occasional absent mindedness and my Grandmother's passing, which still isn't affecting me the way I would expect it to, possibly due to the fact that the dementia had turned her from the lovely person she could be into the forgetful almost child like hollow shell of a person, I did get a thump in my chest when I was on the street where she sometimes did her shopping before being house bound, when I realised that, no I couldn't pop in like I used to since she wasn't there now.

I had hoped to do the New Years day swim, down at Whitley Bay but someone pinched my bike from the garden so I had no way of getting down there, this year, I have a bike so I will be swimming around the north sea, in a pair of shorts with other like minded lunatics, it should be cold but can't be as cold as an ice bath.

Went on a brilliant stag do in Cologne, to see Tom off, I really enjoyed the whole weekend, even when the others were ribbing me about having never flown before, Cologne has some great pubs and I loved that you didn't need to pay for each drink as they came, simply settled the bill at the end of the session, it did surprise me seeing 250 Euros for one of our bar tabs.
The food was utterly delicious and definitely not a place for those watching what they're eating, my German that I'd been practising didn't come in particularly handy though I did recognise a few words on buildings.

I did decide that I would get a season pass for the Tough Mudder events, mainly so I could get into the first event, which had sold out, I ended up completing five of the six events, which weirdly got harder as the events went on. Out of the five events, I only gave the Electroshock therapy a miss once, mainly as I'd had several falls on Everest and couldn't face going through, the Welsh and Yorkshire courses were incredibly tough runs, with a lot of hills but looked beautiful, so I think I'll get some proper training on hills in this time and get some arm strength training done, so I can get myself over obstacles without needing too much help, I might try and get some team mates, to compete with, rather than happening to team up, like I did with Jamie and Lucy.

I got back into my flow riding, after my injury in January, where I damaged the ligaments in my right shoulder, which isn't something that I'd recommend, I'm also going to get myself a board, as the council boards aren't very good.

We had a nice little break up to Craig Tara in Ayr, the park has really seen better days, it could do with quite a lot of repairs and some touching up of the paint, Lee and I did the roller disco a couple of times, with him doing excellently, even though he'd never skated before, I managed to find a roller disco, that isn't too far away, so I've been going there about once a week and thoroughly enjoying it, though there are times when I'm the only person there, it gives me a chance to practise and finally skate backwards, which is something I could never do when I used to skate about twenty years ago.

I'll probably do the whole resolutions thing again, just to see if I've kept to the ones I set last year, I've started journalling on a daily basis, though, sometimes I'm writing things like a review, rather than my thoughts at that time.