Late on Friday, V received the results from her Japanese-Language Proficiency Test (JLPT), she took the N5 level one back in early December. Even though she didn’t end up properly studying for the test, for reasons, she did manage to pass, woohoo!

As a reward, she wanted to get herself a tea pet that she’s been eyeing for a while, and who am I to not be excited about a weekend outing to Nan Yi?! While we were there, I spotted a wood-fired tea pot and instantly fell in love with it. As luck would have it, it was half off. A no-brainer! Similar to my wood-fired gaiwan, it’s also made by a Czech potterer, this time Jiří Lang (who does not seem to have any web presence). Isn’t it gorgeous?! It’s unglazed, so it’ll be reserved for light oolongs only. I can see myself ending up with a cupboard full of tiny tea pots.

Training-wise, this was still a slow week. I’ve only managed three zone 2 rides, and today there are tempo steady states on the menu. I’ve been trying to start slow, giving my heart a chance to get into the grind again. I’ve also reduced my FTP by 10%, I’ll see how the next few weeks go, and when I’m ready, crank it back up and get into the more intense workouts again. A slow start to the year indeed.

After I started riding indoor again this week, I noticed a few more issues with my indoor setup which currently consists of a Wahoo Kickr Core trainer and an old, ill-fitting road bike which would otherwise just have spent the last two years unloved and forgotten in the basement. As opposed to the other bikes, which are also in the basement but very much loved and in use. The fit isn’t great, and I haven’t particularly looked after it the last two years of riding at home. All the sweat and lack of maintenance have left quite some marks.

I checked my stats, and when I found out that I spent over 200 hours on the turbo last year, I decided that it might be worth treating myself to a proper setup. Against all odds, I do enjoy cycling indoors, that is, interval work that lasts up to maybe 90 minutes. I even rode it multiple times a week during summer, although less often than in winter. So I ordered a Wahoo Kickr Bike Shift, this way both I and V could have a proper setup on the same indoor bike.

It arrived on Thursday afternoon, and I found out that as is normal with freight deliveries, they only bring it to the curb. So there I was, heaving an unwieldy 50kg box onto the curb and up to the entrance of our house. It was quickly out of question to bring the box up to the fourth floor, so instead I managed to somehow slid it down the stairs to the basement and unpack it there. V brought some of the individual pieces upstairs, while I had a hoot of a time getting the main, 30kg part up four stories. My arms hurt for the next two days.

I am now also the proud owner of a wooden palette. If I would live in Neukölln I could sell it for a lot of money as part of a bed frame, but alas, I live in the bourgeois south-west of Berlin.

I don’t have any specific cycling events planned for this year. When I started looking in early January, most of the interesting events in the first half of the year were sold out already. I threw in my hat for the Leipzig - Berlin 225km gravel track, a one-day event, and will soon know if I managed to get in. It’s probably for the better that I didn’t have a specific event on the calendar, gives me more time and breathing room to start slow after the wrist fracture and subsequent seven weeks off the bike. Instead, I was thinking of potentially doing a week-long ride around the Telemark region in south Norway some time in June. I realised, when I came back from Norway in 2024 that I could make it from Berlin to Oslo in just over 24 hours, with trains and ferry. And from Oslo it’s a quick train ride, or a day’s cycle over to the Telemark region.

I also still need to take five carry-over vacation days until the end of March and have vague plans for, weather permitting, a short shelter tour in Denmark, which, like Oslo, is just a train and ferry ride away from Berlin, albeit, of course, a shorter train and a shorter ferry.

With each first of the month being Rabbit Rabbit day, our own adaptation of a superstition, I finished off a major new version of it and launched it under the new studio. Today, we went out in -5ºC weather (-12ºC if you take the wind chill into account), and renewed our luck for the rest of the month. It was freezing, but had some mint tea with us and drank it on the way home, which helped a little against the freezing cold.

You’d be glad to know that yes, we still have not managed to make the first mark on our new yearly calendar hanging on the wall. Maybe next week!

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