Winter riding..thank you Mr Gritter man :)

My new cycle hat!

Got out on the bike today for the first time since ..wow..well before Xmas really. If you remember back a long I was hit bad with some nice funky asthma and as soon as I recovered from that the snow and ice came, so we're probably talking nearly 6 weeks!!!

Anyway, checked out the roads on Tuesday as we had to go into town to pick up some upholstery webbing for the sofa talented husband is building (you will see ALL soon!) and figured the roads were nearly ready to go on again with two wheels.

Apart from having to go up the main village road, rather than cut through the housing estate we usually do, and having to walk gingerly up our new ice rink (or lane as we used to call it) the rest of the ride was fine.
The gritters had done their job and the temp had stayed just above freezing last night so there was no sneaky ice patches waiting to get me.

The COLD lonely road home.

It would have been a lovely ride into town had it not been for some IDIOT in a silver Astra complete with *cough*penisextension*cough* spoiler on the back who very nearly wiped both me AND Kim out. He passed so fast and so close that he nearly pulled me into the road.
Kim kept a beady eye out for his car in town but didn't find him.

We seriously have no trouble on the roads. We know a lot of the people using them, at least to raise a hand to, and 99% of people pass us at a sensible speed and give us space, even without the kids with us. But there is always the idiot. As I said to Kim though, you get the idiot factor when you are in a car as well.

Kim waiting for me to take pics, what a trooper :)

Ce la vie.
What you gonna do? Turn for home and never set foot out your house again? Probably more chance of getting killed in a car crash than getting killed on a bike.

Anyway, idiot aside, we got to town in one piece and I set to my mission.

My plan today was to note down prices for fruit and veg in the local shop and the little farmers cabin and compare them with the supermarket prices.
I'm hoping there will be little to no difference as once I get the trailer up together I want to do as much of our shopping in the little town rather than drive all the way to Big town or have to get it delivered.
The cabin especially uses a lot of local produce so is doubly green!

The basket, part of my arsnel for leg powerd shopping!

So after spending a few minutes scribbling down prices like some demented vegetable spotter, we cycled home again.

Dunnydeer Hill Fort, as seen from the Insch/ Auchleven road.

I was really pleased to feel not that unfit considering.
I didn't need to stop, could still talk while cycling up hill and felt good when I came home.
I do need to get fitter I know I've put on weight, even though me and the scales have not been on speaking terms since before Xmas (my jeans declining to do up though said more than any words could). So back to cycling :)

Asthma. A pain in the arse if I'm honest.

Most of you know that I have asthma.
This is not something I had as a child but looking back I have suffered on and off since my late teens. Coughs that wouldn't go away and left me fighting for breath, but back then I was pretty fit (and a lot slimmer) and so got away with it.

It wasn't until I was 30 that I was officially diagnosed with adult onset asthma.

Now I won't lie, this sucks royally at times.

Just when I was getting the kids all to school and had time to look after me I end up stuck in the house not able to breath.

So far I have had a handful of "real" attacks (most of my asthma is like having a none productive cough, so you can't talk for any length of time or at all if your walking).
An attack is frightening. I always thought you wouldn;t be able to breath IN but its not like that at all. Its breathing OUT that is hard.
So you breath in a lungful of air and then you cough but nothing comes out, and soon your skin is prickling like someone is sticking you with needles all over as you try to force air OUT of your lungs so you can take another breath.
Before I was diagnose I found myself sat on the edge of the bath one night coughing non stop. I couldn;t breath, my vision blurred and went dark at the edge's, I thought "Wow! I'm either passing out or dying!" but wasn't too upset at the time, all I could think of was breathing.

Asthma happens when the hairs in your lungs get inflamed. You then produce mucus in response to this and this is what makes it hard to breath. Your airways narrow and you feel like you are drowning. You can read about it and see diagrams HERE.

People have different triggers to asthma from perfume, cat hair, dust, pollen, pollution, colds and viruses and also food/ drink sensitivities.

For myself I know that too much coffee doesn't help me, dairy is a BIG no no, even a weeny bit can cause an attack if other factors are in place. Also if I have a cold I will at some stage soon after get an asthma attack. I also get wheezy in the summer when the broom is in bloom and funnily enough so does my horse LOL.

I thought I was ok this time.

Since my last asthma period in March 2009 I have been on different meds, got healthier and fitter, eat more organic food and cycle and walk lots. I thought I had it all in hand.
But week before last I had a cold...a really little sniffly one...hardly registered. And the last couple of weeks I'd slipped into the habit of a coffee or two a day rather than herbal teas, and THEN on Monday I brought some chocolate that I thought was milk free but turned out to have butter milk in it (it was right next to cocoa so I had thought it said cocoabutter milk which is ok!).

With all those triggers lined up I didn;t have a chance of avoiding one. My meds, which at least kept me from a BIG attack haven't helped much, so I am back up to the Doctors to chat about it.

Trouble is I REALLY don't want to go down the road of Oral steroids.

At the moment I am on an inhaler that opens the airways (to use as and when) and one I have to take twice a day which has a stronger airways opener and also a steroid to strengthen my lungs. Its a fairly mild one but I didn;t want anything higher.

Looking online I think I need to go for some vitamins. Some extra vit C and D some Magnesium and some B vits, that way I can help stave off any colds. Also I need to be extra vigilant about checking labels and also avoiding coffee, especially if other triggers are present.

If anyone has any ideas or sites to share that can steer me down a more natural route please share them.
Your the best ;)

When you open your eyes......

The trouble with trying to follow a little trod green path through life is when you realise that all the everyday things you did and took for granted come with a consequence and there is never NEVER a correct answer.

Life is not black and white.

When we vowed to give up the car for stupid journeys we accepted that every time we DID take the Land rover out we would need to justify it to ourselves. So when we felt sorry for ourselves early this week and wanted some shop brought comfort (hey..we had been ill! In the school holidays AND it was raining..I stand by my choice *heehee*) I made sure that we packed as much into the trip as possible.
So as well as the shop we also took all the re-cycling we could find, went to the charity shop to buy junk to make Halloween costumes (and books!) as well as taking stuff to them. We stopped by the chemist and the art supply shop, and took out cash for at home money from the ATM.
I can accept that, again....not black and white.

However one thing I have been putting to the back of my mind for a while is the tumble dryer.

Now ask anyone of a green bent what they think of the tumble drier in relation to the environment and they will shrink back hissing like Nosferatu from sunlight. In fact it is almost universally agreed on that these machines are basically the devil dressed in white and making your clothes soft and dry.

We have one.

We brought one just over four years ago after struggling for years without one.
I used to hang washing from clothes horses in front of the fire and line dry when possible.


Now I LOVE to line dry. I get a 1950's housewife satisfaction from getting sweet smelling dry clothes for free on a sunny day (or even a grey day when the wind is in the right direction) but I live in the north east of Scotland, my nearest sea is the north sea, we get a lot of rain (and snow and ice ...), so a lot of the time washing was indoors.

So far so green right?

Well, although I could put up with the smell of slowly moldering laundry my walls couldn't.
Our house is old (1800's)and made of stone, the insulation isn;t fantastic, We have done what we can but the way the house is built limits us with things like wall cavity filling.
The plaster board on my walls rotted.

You could poke a finger through it.

The condensation from the drying laundry killed my walls and covered them in mould.
As a family of five who live an outdoors life you can imagine that even being a little grubby we still get through a load of washing a day.
And what about duvets? Bed sheets? Yes I can wait for a sunny day but what happens when one of my small children has a night time accident or (as we had last week) vomits in their bed?

Try drying a duvet on a clothes horse in front of the fire.

So when we brought our tumble dryer I was told "No more drying in the house!"
Apart from the ruined plaster board, mouldy walls are not good for asthmatics!

This was fine, I still do lots of drying on the line and only use the dryer when I have to ....until....it broke.

Just a drive belt but we didn;t get round to fixing it. The weather was nice and it didn't matter, and that little voice in the back of my head said..."maybe we DON'T need a dryer?"

Until this week, when illness and rain (been over 36 hrs STRAIGHT of torrential rain and gales so far) meant that my bathroom floor was carpeted in dirty washing and my living room was steaming as I desperately tried to dry washed bed sheets and yes, duvets in front of my fire.

I did what I had to do.

I got online, ordered the new drive belt. 24hrs later Kim fitted it and I have to say the poor thing hasn't stopped since yesterday.

So what do you do?

The occasional use of a dryer is surely better than re-platerbording your house every couple of years, better than having to take stronger asthma meds?
But I still get that niggle in the back of my head, the one that purses its lips and sniffs and proclaims that THEY never use a tumble dryer.

SO what do YOU do??

Miles and miles of smiles :D

I'm surprised at how many miles we are notching up on two wheels as a family.

Yesterday Kim took Ollie to art club in town on the bikes.They tried out their new lights as the evenings are drawing in and their 7pm finish means that, although not dark, it is getting "dimpsy".
We still haven't decided what to do in the winter about art club, when its already dark by 4.30 pm or earlier. I would love to try and find something similar on the weekends for him to do, otherwise we will have to drive him.
A couple of kids from school also go so I'll try and work out a car sharing rota if anyone is interested..if they don't mind their kids in the back of a landrover once every 3 or 4 weeks that is ;)
At least that way we are not only car sharing for us , but cutting others emissions as well!

Well that's my opinion and I'm gonna stick to it *heehee*

Me and Kim Cycled to Kellockbank garden centre today so a round trip of about 11 and 1/2 miles!
I tried to convince him that I needed a bag of compost but he wasn't impressed (meanie!).





The reason we went was to pick up our magazines. I love The Green parent magazine and particularly wanted this issue as it had a home education feature in it.
We also brought Permaculture magazine.
Both of these are published every two months so I don;t have to cycle that far again until November!!

The weather has been so lovely these last couple of weeks, ideal for me to get started in cycling again. Today was no exception so I remembered to take my camera today and show you the top of the road between our village and Town.





I have to say these photos do nothing to show you how steep the climb is! We live in a basin, this means that every time we get on a bike it is uphill straight away! Of course for every hill you pant and puff up, there is a nice long glide down (and visa versa! *groan*)

But its been getting better and better.

I'm feeling fitter than I have for years, my asthma is getting better, I have an inside thigh "burn" which MUST be a good thing!

Time to think about investing in some damn good waterproofs soon....I have no intention of letting a little rain dampen my smile :D