Daves Random Ramblings

I read a tweet today from Jamie Nicholls  . Well, when I say a tweet, he posted an image of a post presumably done elsewhere as there was no way it was getting past the tweet character limit.  The final sentence really did sum it all up... "In other words, go big or go home and live outside of your comfort zone! ".  Now I partially agree with that sentiment because if you always stay inside your comfort zone then you'll never grow outside of it and move into new territories where you gain new experiences and abilities.  But sometimes you need your comfort zone to take stock and have a base to launch out from. I was looking for a motivational meme for this blog entry and chanced upon this which I think is really suitable.  But as much as you are your own competition, you are also your biggest cheerleader also.  That voice in your head makes you capable of great things, or just kills the belief in yourself.  So the greatest battle you can have is the ...

As I sat in Morrisons this morning trying to get some feeling back in my fingers, my brain starts going over the events of the week. Back to work, put down deposits for Keegan and I to return to Kaprun, sorting out a new mortgage deal, finally seeing light at the end of the tunnel for a leasehold extension which started about 1 year ago oh and to a lesser degree, my right shoulder finally stopping hurting even though I’ve no idea why it even started hurting to begin with. Yesterday as I was driving home, I was speaking to my friend Claire and she asked if we’d known each other about a year also (I’d mentioned the leasehold extension). At first my brain said “yeah of course” but then actually thinking about it, no we hadn’t as it has only been about 10 months. That’s made me think about how quickly things become involved in your life and the effects they have be they positive or negative. Tuesday 5th July 2016 @ 8pm. Seems like an arbitrary date and time but that marks the first time ...

Well dont get jealous just yet as I'm taking my car in for a service as the dreaded "Service Oil" message appeared the day before Keegan and I headed off to Kaprun.  I tend to take it to a family run garage in Woking and they've always done a good job with the added bonus they don't charge a fortune on labour charges unlike the garage across the road from my office that charges £80+VAT per hour which isn't bad work if you can get it. I think the last time I took it across the road was to get an MOT done back in 2015 / 2016.  It was convenient as I also only had a 1 minute walk to work as opposed to the 10(ish) minute walk from where I normally park (because its free).  Anyway, I could also peer out of the office window to see if my car was being worked on etc.  I remember seeing the car had been moved into the garage so knew it was being MOT'd, about 30 minutes later I see what I thought was a smoke cloud billowing out of the garage.  Turns out that was ...

hi everyone.  Its been a weird sort of day which started off with some very random dreams.  When I say "started" I do mean this side of midnight so technically it was today.  I dreamt that I was in the office but that a former co-worker was there (the name will be withheld to protect the not so innocent).  I didn't know why he was there but I knew he shouldn't be, except that he was. Anyway, back in the real world and in the office this morning I went to the kitchen to get my regular coffee to kick start the grey matter and in there is a guy from my team that I didn't really get a chance to talk to yesterday.  So we just start the usual "hey, hows it going, how was your holiday?" type stuff and I start telling him about being in Kaprun. But while I'm talking about it, it was actually like I was back there on the glacier with Keegan, white snow, blue skies, just like the picture of the glacier below that I cannot take credit for (it came from www.sk...

...Or as Morpheus said to Neo in the first Matrix film... "Welcome to the real world". Stepped on the scales this morning, yes it was a gain, would have been miraculous if it hadn't have been given the week of holiday eating I'd just done.  Still, a 7.8lb gain isn't bad at all given all the non-Slimming world food I'd been shoveling down my mouth.  I do wonder what it would have been if I'd not been snowboarding also. I left a review for the hotel on TripAdvisor at lunchtime.  I'm one of those sorts of people that doesn't normally leave reviews on anything but they definitely deserved it.  I could actually only find one niggly thing with the hotel and that was that the beds only had one large pillow each.  Much bigger than what we have in the UK, but much flatter.  So I ended up placing a towel under the pillow and then also folding the pillow in half.  Not the biggest issue in the world, I know.  But not wanting to leave my Hotel Tauernhof co...

Today Keegan and I went on an organised away day to the Saalbach ski circus which is a huge area to the North of Kaprun. But I would say that the preparation for the trip started last night as we needed to find the pick up point. Fortunately we discovered the village lifts after some good directions from a really cool guy that sits on the table next to us at dinner. Anyway, I digress. So after dinner Keegan and I went for a walk in Kaprun village. It just looked absolutely brilliant at night. Coming from the UK we can appreciate that snowy buildings just look Xmassy don’t they. Well this is Xmas in mid-February so a mini mind job and made me really want to know what else they do to make the village look Xmassy, you know, in December. Here’s a restaurant on a hill And lastly another hotel that isn’t Xmassy but just looks like the staff haven’t taken down the deccies Anyway, we find the pick up point and OMG there’s only a kebab van there. But it’s more Kebap, yes a doner...

hi all!  Only me reporting in from you know where.  Yep Kaprun, Austria.  It’s been an absolutely gorgeous albeit freezing day! So the winter soldier and I put on our base layers which I like to think makes me look like some sort of milk tray snowboarding ninja but with Dare2Be emblazoned on them. Out to the glacier and it was positively rammed! The sort of queues you expect to see at a theme park to go onto a ride and we were only trying to get up a mountain! Anyway, inching forwards and muttering to myself that the next person to jostle myself or Keegan or lays their rental sh*t on my f**king board I’m gonna go into ski rage meltdown and shove that bloody pole where archaeologists won’t find it even after they’ve decomposed.  Aaaah that’s better, the  therapeutic blog entry.  So we eventually get up to the Alpine  centre and started queuing for the next gondola to take us up to the top of the glacier.  Then I suggest to Keegan we forget that a...

Hey there everyone  Well a few days in now to our Kaprun adventure and it’s been such an experience so far!  We’ve had bluebird skies and the complete opposite.  Helpful hint, when visibility is poor, do NOT go down a black run! That being said, today was absolutely gorgeous and apparently we’re due the same weather tomorrow. Keegan managed to break his boots so a bit of retail therapy was in order.  To be honest he was about to outgrow his old boots so not a moment too soon.  The flip side to that was also needing to get new bindings as his boots were too big for his old ones.  So new boots and bindings then off to the mountain we went! I’ll keep this blog entry short as the layout really does go to crap when typing it all out on an iPhone once the entry gets too long. I’ll report in tomorrow with more updates.  Suffice to say that Keegan has challenged me to break 35mph on my snowboard.  So far I got up to 33.8 😊

Hi everyone, well we are finally here! Ok we’ve been here since yesterday but was running on fumes so got to the room, put on the olympics (hoping to catch a fleeting glimpse of my man Jamie Nicholls) and we both just fell asleep. So a low key first day but the hotel we’re staying in has been brilliant thus far (Hotel Tauernhof).  The Saturday night meal was a full on buffet so I really did fill my proverbial boots.  I’ve gravitated towards Kaiser beer (yes I’ve REALLY fallen off the SlimmingWorld wagon) and have started to teach Keegan how to play pool. We’ve organised an away day on Tuesday with Crystal Ski.  So we had to upgrade our lift passes to SUPER lift passes which I think now means I can go on any bloody mountain in Europe for the rest of the week.  Probably not true but I like to think it is. Anyway! So today! Huge event.  I finally went on a mountain for the first time ever!   A good photo of Keegan there right at the base.  O...

It’s the final countdown!  Keegan is in his room playing call of duty, of course I am kidding, he’s on Minecraft. The bags are now all packed and I find myself with first world problems.  Whatever could you mean Dave? I hear you think to yourselves, well let me tell you.  I am severely under my baggage allowance, it’s embarrassing.  I have two suitcases that are both about 7kgs under, the carry on bags are about halfway to capacity in fact one of them looks like we ram raided Willy Wonkas chocolate factory... The only one that is relatively close is the board bag and even that has about 4-5kgs left on it. The good news is that Keegan’s foot is now fighting fit!  Hooray! He even said “I can even run on it dad! Watch!”  A split second later before his inner Usain kicked in I banned him from running. I have to say that today I was very impressed with Amazon!  It’s like they knew exactly what I was needing and I received an email touting “Amazo...

Good morning everyone.  Firstly happy Friday to you all! So this time tomorrow Keegan and I will be on our way to Salzburg.  The bags are very nearly all packed.  The snowboards have had their final scrape, brush, and Zardoz.  They are now resting base up on top of Sasha's crate since yesterday evening, they're looking incredibly shiny and ready to go play. Do you ever get that feeling when you're about to leave home that you're forgetting something?  I had it this morning when I was standing by my front door about to close it.  Yes I didn't have my front door key but that's because my parents are staying at mine while Keegan and I are away.  They get their own space and Sasha gets to be at home among familiar surroundings.  So anyway, I knew it wasn't that, because I hadn't forgotten it.  I had my wallet, my car key, my work door pass was in my car.  So I just shut the door and went to work.  I've now just remembered what ...

Its been an absolute age since I had a blog to record my own highly random thoughts, so I've been recently inspired by someone else's multi-faceted blog to start again. Not many of you will remember that way back in the day (approx 2003-ish) I used to have one that was attached to MSN Messenger.  Those little gold stars that would appear next to the person's name meant they'd done an update to their profile and as it would seem, people liked reading about what I was getting up to and hearing about my ever so random thoughts. I promise to make at the very least zero posts per day for you to scrutinise, comment on or otherwise destroy with even more well thought out random thoughts. So, what sort of things will I be writing about?  Well its my blog so pretty much anything I bloody well want to.  I can't say its a travel blog as I dont really go on holiday loads, except very soon I'll be heading off to snowier climates with Keegan (a.k.a. Winter soldier).  My...