New mountain bike

As you can see by the pic (and probably deduce from the title of this post), last week I did buy a new mountain bike. An Orbea Sherpa. The child I already owned.

As much as I love it, there is a whole bunch of buyer's remorse associated with it. Of course, there is the fact that it is NEW, to start with. Not to mention I spent approximately 50% more than my budget. Oops. And then, there is a whole lot of other buying of things that is required for a bike. For example, I need a bottle cage for it. I pilfered one off a child's bike, but it is too little and won't fit a fullsize water bottle on. I also need a bike pump holder (I can swap the pump from bike to bike though). And it didn't even have a rear reflector (illegal to ride on the roads). I pinched that off an old child's bike too. I knew there was a reason I had a shed full of bikes!
And I'd really like a bike computer for it. So I know how fast I'm hooning down hills and how far I've travelled. While I'm wishing, I'd actually like a GPS for it. Well, it is a MOUNTAIN bike.
Seriously, it would come in useful. Today my mountain-biking friend Amanda and I went to Cudlee Creek National Park, where there are lots of trails. We cruised around for a couple of hours, having no more than a vague idea where we were at any one time. We randomly took a turn that actually ended up right back near the start, but we could just have easily roamed around in the bush for days.
And a way cool mountain biking story, especially for my overseas readers. Well, I thought it was very cool, the kids were a little less excited. But then they'd been at a circus this morning so I guess they were over animal antics.
While we were out in the middle of nowhere today, Amanda nearly got knocked off her bike. By a kangaroo! Well, three of them actually. I was ahead of her and saw them hopping along to the right of us. I stopped at the bottom of the hill to wait for her and watched them still hopping along. They caught sight of me and changed direction, right across the trail! They jumped down off the hillside, the first one in front of Manda, the second over her head and the last one behind. I guess I'm glad she didn't get knocked off, but what a cool story she'd have to tell about her injuries.