My brother came to visit from the UK for the week on his way to his company’s annual sales meeting. I hadn’t seen him since he visited me in hospital in Miami back in March/April last year.

It was great to see him again, although Kaboodle kept me pretty busy during the week I managed to at least take a day off during the week and went down to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Both of us have been keen divers so it was fun to go see the fishes without getting wet and cold.

At the weekend we did a day trip to Kirkwood for some snowboarding with my boarding buddy Robert. It was bitterly cold in the morning, probably the coldest I’ve ever experienced down there and the snow is still not great…but the sky was blue! We haven’t boarded together for probably 8+ years, so it was fun to chase each other around the slopes.

The only challenge was that, by the end of the day, my stump was aching from the cold…my prosthetic just “conducts” the cold and the circulation isn’t that great in my stump at the best of times. When I took my socket and silicon sleeve off the end of my stump felt like an ice-cube! I’m going to have to experiment with something to keep it warm.