The past week has held several things in store for me. What with my 21st birthday and major road works on the island I live on, I've been more than a little busy with life.

The road works are so bad that my usual short car journey to or from work was taking up to an hour, rather than 10 minutes. Annoying as this might be, it was the catalyst I needed to get cycling to work more regularly. Which is a good thing, as I haven't had much time to cycle outside of work for the last few days.

I do, however have an excellent excuse for no cycling. You see, I bought myself one of those shiny new Xbox 360s to celebrate my birthday and housewarming. And, well, I just kind of wanted one. I forgot how much I love those things! I'm in live with the shiny exterior, and the price was pretty reasonable which always helps. The only problem is that I want to spend all my time on the Xbox now, and not go and do things like cycling. It’s such a stress having two passions in life!

On the plus side, now I've got into it again, I can at least spend some quality time on my bike commuting to work. Unfortunately, my bike has been a little unloved recently and was in desperate need of some attention. I dragged myself off the Xbox long enough to spend a good half hour cleaning nasty old, black, gunky oil off my chain, blow my tyres up properly and readjust my bike seat. But, in true geek style, I'll be back on the 360 once I've finished writing this piece.

So. What is it that finally persuaded me to get back onto the Xbox bandwagon and buy one instead of using other people’s? After only having access to a Wii and DS for a few months, I can't describe the satisfaction at feeling an Xbox controller in my hands again. Sure, the Wii is great fun but I've been brought up on more traditional console controllers, and I was starting to have withdrawal symptoms. Yup, that is definitely a sign that I'm more than a little hooked on gaming. But, to even things out, I bravely donated a long-unused PS2 to my neighbour’s little boys. I might not be passing down the bike geek side of things just yet, but I'm making sure that I infect any children possible with a love of gaming!

Written by Tim Pestridge

You can support Tim by buying Riding my Xbox 360 Slim



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Tim Pestridge writes the Bike Gamer column.

"I like bikes and video games because they both spark my imagination and provide seemingly infinite possibilities and just generally make me smile."

Here are the games I've been playing recently:

• Rift
• Costume Quest
• Winterbottom
• Braid
• Home