‘Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
not a creature was stirring, not even that mouse I killed yesterday.
Which is good, because the last thing you want on Christmas is a hoard of zombie mice attacking you.

Suffering from the standard hemisphere-displacement complaint of “It just doesn’t feel like Christmas if it’s not stinking hot/minus 20oC/snowy/dusty/filled with venomous snakes”.

We do have a Christmas tree though. Well, Christmas cactus. At least it’s trying. I don’t think it would take many baubles without complete cactus-failure occurring though.

Out on the streets it’s a different matter, with shiny lights and snow-covered Christmas trees everywhere.

(PS. Imperial leather is an odd name for soap)

Fed up with not having any exercise for the last week and a half, I decided to test out my knee on a short bike ride. Unfortunately the warmest it managed to make it to today was -22oC (-8oF) or so. And there was a lot of snow around, so it ended up being a longer than planned bike ride with large sections of pushing. As I set out it was like a world of pastel though, with everything snow-covered and subdued sunset pink and blues soaking through.

I went back out and cycled along my nemesis track – the powerline trail where I crashed and hurt my knee. Much less icy this time round. However I then made the mistake of turning off to cycle a loop along by the dam – I got bogged pretty much straight away, but for some reason decided to keep going.

So the pushing began, as even deflated, my tyres weren’t fat enough to deal with the snow. The sun was setting – and I was getting colder. My eyelashes got lovely and icy – as did my eyebrows apparently. And yes, I have a red polka-dot balaclava. It means I look more like a Russian peasant than the serial killer or cat burglar looks that you get with the standard black balaclava, but I’m ok with that.

The new sculpture in Canmore, The Head, is based on the word ceannmore – the Scottish-Gaelic word that’s said to be the origin of the towns name. It literally means ‘big head’ (although possibly in the sense of wise leader, not large and lurking stone noggin emerging from the pavement).

All sorts of headgear have been turning up on him. This crocheted beanie/toque appeared just at the start of the cold snap (and no, it wasn’t me).

The worst thing about minus 24oC is the frozen nostril hair.

Although I did get to go home from school early! (School being work in this case)

Colder than -30oC up on the hill = too cold to ski!

Being relatively immobile is conducive to learning new crafty skills. I keep making hats and then undoing them to try something else.

An expedition into town today led to the acquisition of some Continental Spike Claw 240s (at the only local bike shop that wasn’t sold out of winter tyres). The physio also made my knee work again – well, it’ll still be recovering for a few more weeks, but now it bends at least.

So maybe eventually I’ll be able to ditch the crutches and start utilising the fancy new winter tyres. And perhaps one day our car will no longer live at the mechanics.

After Sundays adventure I’m hobbling around on crutches with a knee that is swollen like a water balloon and won’t bear much weight. Thankfully there’s probably nothing broken, fractured, twisted or torn, so I just have to wait for my knee to stop panicking (it has an built-in air bag that doesn’t deploy quickly enough?) and recovery might not take too long. I hope.

Then I shall buy these tyres (Schwalbe Winter Marathons) and laugh in the face of any ice and snow in my path.