ajft

  Total: 2512.5km
  Today: 49.61km

As we were leaving this morning we passed a familiar-looking cow at the side of the road, but thought nothing of it. Phil — driving out half an hour later — realised that it was the dairy cow that belonged to the farm and had escaped onto the road, so he stopped, caught it, and then managed to lead it several kilometres back to the gate. Judging by the way he looked at lunch time, he had the most energetic morning of us all!

The hilight of today's riding was the six kilometre descent from Gentle Annie, several hundred metres vertically, down from the rolling hills to the dead-flat coastal plain.

Gisborne was working itself up for the New Year's celebrations. Being a coastal town it's always popular as a holiday resort, and as the eastern-most city in the world, they are the first to see the sunrise of the New Year, so its become a bit of a ritual for some surfers to go there.

Where?

Glen Innis station, Gentle Annie, Gisborne.

>BNSW RTA Big Ride: Oberon to Forbes

  Total: 2463.0km
  Today: 83.24km

We woke to grey skies and a howling wind — not very inviting weather for cycling. Breakfasted in Phil's room then the four of us packed the bus and drove the 30 or 40km up from the lake and down over the ridge to the end of the gravel road. We stopped at the spillway to look at the view, but the wind was really funnelling in across the lake so nobody wanted to stay and look around for long.

Started riding at Manapapa bridge around 10:30, a much earlier start than yesterday, and we made good time along the valley to Frasertown. The tailwind for the last 5km along the valley was great.

Morning tea in Frasertown consisted of chocolate bars from the only shop, then back on the road, up and down the valleys past sheep, cows and goats, with a few deer and pigs for variety. The lunch stop at Te Reinga falls was a nice spot, worth the detour down and climb back up. The falls had a permanent rainbow over them, just visible from the lookout and track. More a steep cascade than an actual waterfall, the vegetation around the lookout blocked most of the view.

After lunch there was about a 10km climb out to Tiniroto and beyond, then a great swooping descent, made a little more exciting by the gravel on the corners at 60km/hr! Both Jo and I have recovered from the plane trip, are feeling a little fitter, and are starting to have a good time.

The weather ended up quite hot, we were expecting more cold winds after yesterday, but I had to change out of my fleecy top at lunch time — one of the benefits of having all your clothes in a van, if it had been inside my panniers I might not have bothered unpacking! Glen Innis station B&B is in a beautiful spot, just up above the river across with fantastic views of the hills lining the valley. They have a huge vegetable garden and flower gardens. The house is surrounded by lavender and the lady running it is falling over herself to be friendly. She seems to believe that anyone from “the city” has never seen a farm before and doesn't know which part of the cow the eggs come from. The invitations to come and see the chickens and watch the house-cow being milked were so overwhelming that we thought we had better keep her happy!

Dinner with the four who ran the place was roast home-grown lamb, and the conversation ranged through the farming and tourism part of their business, and covered a theme that we were to hear frequently, of more and more people leaving the land, with large companies buying up farms to bulldoze and plant conifer plantations. Presumably better than logging native forests, they all still believe that it leads to rapid erosion and wastage of the land, but massive profits to the overseas timber companies.

Where?

Waikaremoana. Frasertown, Te Reinga falls, Tiniroto Glen Innis station.

  Total: 2379.7km
  Today: 61.26km

We woke to a mostly clear sky. Sleeping in late and unpacking the bikes meant that we didn't get away from Paengaroa until about 10:30 for the drive down to Rotorua.

Parking the bus and trailer in Rotorua at lunch time on a Saturday wasn't easy, but Phil found a spot while Jo and I made our first visit to a New Zealand bank.

Then back on the road for the drive to Murapara, a quick look around the tourist information centre, and on to the riding.

Thick vegetation all around us, the roadsides were covered in plants that only grow in gardens in Australia. No birds or animals anywhere, just the odd dead possum. Derelict cars dumped at the side of the road, derelict cars being driven past. Most cars are full of Maoris, nearly everyone waved as they passed.

The town of Ruatahuna was shut. Supposedly our lunch stop, the motel/shop/petrol station was closed until further notice, so we set up the barbecue and had an early dinner on their lawn. Every dog in the town within earshot barked from the moment we arrived until we left.

Jo called it a day here, 47km of hilly dirt roads were enough. I rode on for another 10km, about two thirds of the way up Taupepe saddle, but by then it was getting dark and I was very tired, so I gratefully hopped in the bus when they caught me.

Amazingly, we had avoided the rain all day, and made it to Lake Waikaremoana in time for sunset, a cup of tea, a much-needed shower, and bed.

Where?

Paengaroa, Rotorua, Murapara, Ruatahuna, Waikaremoana.

“Beef or Chicken? the hostess asked me on the plane...”

With apologies to Mick Thomas. The airline staff were handing out the meals, Jo looked at me, smirked and uttered the line, then, as I nearly doubled up with suppressed laughter, the large, walrus-moustached hostie repeated it.

A midnight landing at Auckland, two staff to process 400 passengers through imigration.

A call for Duke and Tritschler to go to the baggage desk — but it was only a book that someone else had left in the plane near our seats.

The customs staff weren't, then were, then weren't, interested in checking our bikes.

Outside the airport and we met Phil and Julianna, then began the arduous three hour drive to Te Puke. The full moon on the left was shining on enormous storm clouds, then clear sky above us, then another huge storm over to the right, complete with lightning and torrential rain. Not an auspicious start to the weather!

We hadn't even reached Auckland when three cars shot past — boys out on a Friday night. Travelling at least 120km/hr in the wet, the first tapped his brakes, the second slid a bit but recovered, the third slewed straight off into the wall, sparks and glass everywhere, then bounced diagonally back across the road in front of us, then off the side of the road to the left. Two minutes later, lights and sirens started up ahead of us as the police took off after the first two.

Nearly five am and we crawled into bed as the sky was just starting to get light. Off to sleep with the rain on the roof, roosters crowing outside the window, and no real idea of where we are!

Where?

Auckland, Paengaroa

Friday, nearly the end of the year, and so much seems to have happened. Lots of things that I won't be writing here, some I will.

Reading some more of Gerald Durrell's biography I was struck again by what a larger-than-life character he was, I'm glad I got to visit the zoo in Jersey, even if I did have misgivings about it at the time.

As the first stage of our trip to New Zealand I spent the morning packing the bikes in boxes—and foolishly forgot to measure the boxes, so my bike (the larger one) ended up in the smaller of the two boxes. Didn't realise until I'd nearly finished, no wonder Jo's was the easier of the two to pack!

The bags are packed, everything looks far too small with no panniers, no tent, we even left the airbeds at home once we re-read what can be supplied by Phil.

Melbourne's weather has finally fined up after the last few days of rain and wind, it is starting to feel like spring, rather than the middle of winter! I'm curious what the weather in New Zealand will be, neither of us is looking forward to a fortnight of cycling in the rain.

I've got my new toy to play with, I'm happy now. Canon Digital IXUS 300. It's a millimetre or two thicker than the APS camera, but the same size in the other dimensions. All I've got to do now is learn to use it properly!

Canon Digital IXUS 300, $1399 rrp, various prices available; $1094, $1175, $1200, $1198. 64M and 128M memory cards extra.

[http://www.tvgohome.com/]

odd stuff

[http://www.steves-digicams.com/]

I think I'm going to get a digital camera to take on holiday.

[http://photo.net/]

A photo site

A pair of CDs from the market at Uni.

Stephen Cummings: Lovetown
Johnny Thunders & the Heartbreakers: L.A.M.F. Revisited.

Amazing, that last one was still in the original shrink wrapper from HMV!

[http://www.qni.com/~nyztyz/tenzo/tech/mod.htm]

Putting H4 globes in place of original 55/60W in a VFR

[http://www.electrexusa.com/honda.htm]

source of aftermarket voltage regulators.

[http://www.labyrinth.net.au/~edwinnew/reg-rect.htm]

possibly non-existant.

Aha! ^Q^J to insert a newline into the XEmacs minibuffer. Trivial, but it's been bugging me for a while.

Lest this journal turn solely into a day-by-day account of idiot motorists and their life-endangering activities, I'll try to add a few other bits 'n pieces as they occur to me.

An interesting selection of alternative news websites, accompanied by the quote: “And, of course, when I want to see the latest line of bullshit, I go to CNN or the NYT.”

[http://www.orlingrabbe.com/homepage.html]

[http://www.rense.com/]

[http://www.antiwar.com/]

[http://www.prudentbear.com/homepage.htm]

[http://www.emperors-clothes.com/]

Not a daily service, but well worth visiting regularly

So many car doors, so few motorists with brains.

There we were, riding up Swan street on the way home. Suddenly Jo yells out “lookout,” I screamed out “Door!” Yep, both passengers in the taxi (Vic. M-3561) had decided that sitting in the lane of stationary traffic was enough, so without indicating, pulling over to the side of the road, or obeying any other form of road laws, they'd just thrown open both left-hand doors and got out. Jo made it around them, I couldn't swerve far enough without hitting her wheel so I ran into the back of the calf of the rear passenger. Both passengers then started screaming at me to watch where I was FW#$%%%ing going and get off the F*#W$@#$%ing road. Taxi driver meanwhile had driven off, caring only that he'd made another fare in the minimum possible time.

A first apparently, a motorist in Chicago who deliberately ran down and killed a cyclist has been charged with murder. It'll set a precedent, and in one way I'm pleased with the verdict, but it sure is disturbing reading about the case ... especially knowing the number of times I've exchanged words with motorists after they either try to “scare me” by going a little close, or just don't look and don't care.

• [http://www.chicagocriticalmass.org/mcbride_main.html]

... and today's motorist of the moment award goes to the driver of the metallic green hatchback in Richmond. Why? I hear you ask. Well, I couldn't work out why he was having so much trouble making it around a right hand corner from a standing start, then as I went past I realised that he had a bowl of cereal in his lap, spoon in his right hand, and was driving with his left.

Something happened to summer! Yesterday was looking great, woke up today and it was gray and rainy from start to finish. Felt more like December in England than December in Australia. What to do on a day like that? Sit inside and read and fiddle with the PC, try to find out why, ever since it was “upgraded” by my employer, it won't run for more than a day or two without shutting itself off.

I did manage to get out of the house for an hour at lunch time, long enough to walk up the street in the rain, listening to the cars splash past. Poked through the second-hand CD shop and came away with two old Church disks that seemed to fit the mood of the day.

The Church: The Blurred Crusade
The Church: Gold Afternoon Fix

Something must have re-sparked my interest in Plan9, so I downloaded and installed it on the spare 4G partition on niflheim. Unfortunately I discovered that once it was installed it had somehow clobbered the boot record so WindowsXP now won't boot.

[http://plan9.bell-labs.com/plan9dist/]

Plan9

[http://www.vitanuova.com/inferno/]

Inferno

[http://mapage.noos.fr/~repo]

[http://einstein.ssz.com/hangar18/]

sigh discovered today that a person I know has just spent the last six weeks in hospital after being driven into by a drunk driver while out cycling. Apparently the driver simply fell asleep and ran into them. This didn't put me in the best of moods for a quick jaunt in from Clayton to East Melbourne to attend a product demonstration. Then along the way I met:

1. A motorist travelling slowly who started to veer into my lane as I passed; surprise, surprise, he had the Melways street directory open across the steering wheel and was reading it.
2. A motorist travelling slowly in the right-hand lane; sure enough, when I pulled over and passed her I saw she was deep in conversation on her hand-held phone.
3. The piece de resistance, a small truck travelling slowly in the middle lane and gradually creeping into the left; as I past him I noticed that the driver was on the phone, using a hands-free kit, but was holding his credit card in his right hand and appeared to be reading out the numbers to whoever he was talking to.

Can someone please shoot the lot of them!. Oh, that's right, I forgot. According to the police speed is the number one cause of “accidents,” it couldn't possibly be the total carelessness of the majority of the morons out there.

Paid the rent. Receipt Number N540115072711. I can't remember if anything else happened today. Something must have happened somewhere...

TODO: I neeed to automate some of my monday morning updates and instalations. I'd look at playing around a little more with Narval if it wasn't so appallingly slow and (so-far) unusable.

[www.Xemacs.org]

editor of choice.

[www.cygwin.com]

utilities to make Windows2000 bearable.

SNMP MIBs:

• www.somix.com/software/mibs
• www.inotech.com/mibs/foreview.html

With much groaning and moaning we dragged ourselves out of bed this morning, applied sufficient coffee to achieve basic humanity, then made our way to Spencer St station in order to catch the train. Steam locomotive R711 of the South Western Railway Society was there in all its hissing and shrieking glory, ready to take us to Echuca and back.

It was a very long day. Four hours in the train to get up to Echuca, four hours of paddle-steamer trip and touring Echuca, then four hours back home again. The four of us spent most of the train trips snoozing, nibbling on assorted picnics, and giggling at the array of people we were sharing the train with. Everything from ordinary families to extreme train-spotters.

Where?

Melbourne, Echuca

Last things first. Considering the early start tomorrow, going out to see an 11:00pm show might not be the smartest thing in the world, but knowing what a big fan Joey is, I'd booked tickets to see Mick Thomas in the Spiegeltent. We turned up around 10 and sat around with a drink, watching the queue grow longer and longer. Eventually we joined it, wondering, along with everyone else, why nobody could get inside. Finally, at about 11:10, a car pulled up and someone ran inside carrying part of a drum kit. Coincidence? Maybe, but the queue started moving immediately!

Mick remarked during the set that it did seem bizarre to be playing in a venue he's been in before, but with a view of Melbourne rather than Edinburgh out the window. With an appreciative audience he proposed taking the Corner Hotel or Cornish Arms and audience, and transporting them to Prague or Beijing.

[http://www.packinheath.com/]

[http://www.counterpunch.org/]

The motorists ... the motorists.... This morning there was the lady who unsuccessfully tried to peel and eat a banana with one hand while trying to drive her mercedes with the other. If she'd only looked before swerving into my lane I wouldn't have had to blast on the horn. Now she's probably going to tell everyone about the mean biker who appeared from nowhere, and how dangerous motorbikes are.

Then in the evening someone drove into someone else, but managed to completely block the Monash Freeway inbound so that everyone had to be diverted off at Toorak road and crawl bumper to bumper through Hawthorn and Richmond. If I'd had a book of tickets I could have made a fortune, since every second motorist stuck in the traffic was on the phone, frantically calling: “Hi honey, I'm stuck in traffic and illegally using my phone, don't be mad when I get home late with a $165 fine.”

Laugh of the Morning: There I was, sitting at a set of traffic lights waiting my turn and watching the traffic go by. A non-descript, two-tonne truck caught my eye, company name COPE and slogan Fragile Cargo Specialists emblazoned on its side. As it rounds the corner BANG up the kerb, then BANG back down again. I wonder what fragile cargo it was carrying...

I've scored a win with Telstra. After battling last week through their voice mail system and a myriad of menus in an attempt to change my address details, only to be told that it must be done in writing, I duly sent off the change of address form. Today I rang up to see if I could get a statement for the last financial year and the operator changed my address details while I was on the phone!

Looks like Joey and I can both get the time off in January, so I've booked our bike ride with http://www.scenicroutes.co.nz/.

The Monash email system has been unwell, so half the staff are sitting around with a “we can't do anything without email” expression on their faces.

In keeping with the weekend's views of flora and fauna in the bush, an interesting article in New Scientist on John Warmsley, a rather radical conservationist who is actually doing something.

[http://www.warrawong.com/]

Warrawong Earth Sanctuary.

Joey's birthday seemed a great success.

Despite, or perhaps because of, the cold wind and torrential rain early in the day, we spent a wonderful five hours at the Healesville Sanctuary. Dodging a few brief showers was infinitely preferrable to dodging the hordes of tourists and screaming kids that we could have met.

One of the most interesting events was during the daily raptor display. The first keeper wasn't sure whether they'd be able to get through the three birds normally displayed, since the wind was gusting strongly and they were concerned that they might “lose someone” should they decide to fly off a few kilometres downwind. Firstly a hawk, then a Barking Owl were brought out. The highlight was the male Peregrine Falcon. As soon as he flew up above the trees, a wild pair appeared and started attempting to drive him from their territory. The keeper was amazed, he claimed he'd never seen a wild pair nearby, and was quite concerned that the Sanctuary's bird would be injured. Eventually the wild pair departed and the Sanctuary's bird reappeared from where he'd hidden in the branches.

I was wishing I had a decent digital camera, or even an SLR to take some photos of the birds, as it is, there should be a few good pictures on the current roll in my camera.

Where?

Healesville

Stupid, stupid me. It was wet and cold all day yesterday, you'd have thought I'd take a hint. No, foolishly I hopped on the bike this morning and didn't put on my wet-weather gear. Ten minutes later I was soaking wet, freezing cold, and thinking about going home to change!

MLP

[http://www.scenicroutes.co.nz/]

Phil advertised a two week ride in NZ in late December, early January. Looks interesting, I've always wanted to ride in NZ and Joey seems keen, especially since she's likely to be out of work at the time.

Another episode in the saga of attempting to buy an outdoor table. I'm starting to think that businesses just don't want our business.

Summoning up all of our courage, Jo and I drove off on a wet Sunday afternoon to do what every couple does—go furniture shopping. We tried another Barbecues Galore store, but they didn't have the table we saw yesterday, in fact they didn't have any small tables. We guessed that because we were out in the 'burbs now, and its un-Australian to live anywhere other than in a big box of a house with 1/2 an acre of concrete and lawn, only big pieces of furniture for big aussies can be sold.

Then we tried Ikea, now its probably five years since I last stepped through their doors and now I know why. A carefully designed coralling system so that the customer can't go to the section they want, but must be herded sheep-like through the entire store. I found the whole thing insulting.

qLast on the list was Freedom Furniture, a few tables visible, but nothing small. Then as we were leaving Jo spotted one buried under a pile of other stock. We tried valiantly to get the staff to show us one, they weren't interested. Eventually they shifted half the stock off the table, but as I pointed out to them:

If I can't see it, I'm not going to buy it.

note to shop: minimal wage == minimal interest

MLP

[http://www.havi.org/]

http://www.havi.org/

Stupid me, I thought it would be easy to buy a small table for our balcony. Just walk around a few shops, check out a few prices, buy one and go home....

Lots of ornate cast iron tables with curlicues and tile or glass tops.... Lots of huge tables that wouldn't fit on the balcony.... Finally a suitable table in a Barbecues Galore store. Now the fun begins.

We've picked the one piece of stock with no price-tag. Mr Minimal-Wage Saturday Casual Staff doesn't know the price. Nobody else in the store knows the price. He rings another store and nobody there seems to know the price. He gets off the phone and quotes us a price. Unfortunately this seems to be a wild guess, he doesn't look comfortable with it, and since its more than a larger table from the same manufacturer in the same store, we treat his guess with the disdain it deserves and leave.

Election day... Bah! After the quality of the electoral campaigning over the last few weeks, I don't think any of the politicians are capable of running a school fete, let alone a country.

MLP

[http://www.vic.greens.org.au/]

Victoria state greens party

[http://www.greens.org.au/]

The national Greens party

[http://www.democrats.org.au/]

Australian Democrats.

[http://www.australianbicyclelobby.com/]

not only one of the longest domain names I've seen, but a coalition of cycle groups raising political issues. Noticably absent is Bicycle Victoria.

[http://www.ross-anderson.com/]

Ross Anderson, author of Security Engineering. Higly recommended reading.

Strange, I can't find anything important happening on the date 9/11, I wonder what all the Americans are on about?

MLP

[http://blog-java.sourceforge.net/]

Java servlet-based blog. Came from the enormous list of blog resources at http://www.larkfarm.com/wlm/roll_your_own.htm.

Well, I didn't want to cycle to work today, but the mountain bike and the motor bike conspired against me and so I had to. The Honda started, ran for thirty seconds, then died when I turned the headlight on, trying to restart it the battery was too flat to turn it over. I really must try and fix that dying battery and voltage regulator.

Still raining, still grey, still miserable. Welcome to Melbourne Spring-time.

[http://www.groundeffect.co.nz/] — ordered some new bike nicks for me and a winter jersey for Joey. We've both been meaning to do this for weeks. Pity that they won't turn up in time for this weekend's Deadly Treadly Tour.

I think I've got Niflheim re-installed and operating under OpenBSD now.

Every day the “shared path” that I ride along brings new and interesting challenges. Somedays its the dogs, other days the ankle deep mud, today, an aggressive pedestrian.

Walking towards me on the wrong side of the path, eyes on his feet, shirt and suit jacket unbuttoned, tie half-undone, two large armfulls of parcels, he nearly walked into me as I stopped on the bridge. He glared at me and demanded that I ride around him. I politely pointed out the law required that he walk on the left. He threw his belongings on the ground and screamed that he'd had a bad day and I could F####ing well ride around him. I sat there. He threatened to move me if I wouldn't go around him, so I carefully rode around him leaving as large a gap as I could. As I was leaving there was another torrent of abuse about my attitude etc. Hopefully he was in a better mood before he next got into a car or met his wife or children at home.

TODO: Since there's a date-of-birth record in my copy of bbdb, wouldn't it be nice if Xemacs' calendar could extract these and give you warning of upcoming events. Oh bugger, it's in the bbdb TODO list already!

It rained heavily again last night, so this morning the cycle track was covered in mud and crap and Gardiners Creek was flowing strongly. In the last few days I've seen so many birds that I thought I'd keep a list of them somewhere.

Sneaky. Not sure when this happened, but TRAMP stopped working sometime recently. A bit of digging and I've found that the format of its filenames has changed from /r:host:/path/file to /[host]/path/file.

I've ordered Joey's birthday present—finally—but I'm not writing down what it is in case she reads here. :-)

Why do organisations make it so hard to change my address?

The Winesociety: I couldn't login to their website for some reason. After calling them, it turns out that my email address had been chopped off at 28 characters. That was updated, then when I successfully logged in I found that I must provide them with my date of birth as proof that I'm over 18. The fact that they have already given me a membership seems to be irrelevant!

St George Bank: Everyone hates banks by definition. After spending 15 minutes on hold last night I gave up in disgust and called again this morning. The address change I put through a month ago, together with the phone-access number, appears to have vanished. This morning I managed to get my address changed (again). I guess I just wait another month to see whether it worked this time.

[http://www.iriver.com/english/]

an iRiver MP3 player?

[http://www.steves-digicams.com/]

or a digital camera?

[http://www.slowfood.com/]

Mentioned on RRR's food show, about local groups resisting the globalisation of foods and food sources. eg Nestlé, McDonalds

Grabbed a whole pile of references to do with Java and Jini after I finally got around to reading some more of Core Jini.

Another day riding to work, another day watching the aftermath of Melbourne's motorists driving into each other.

MLP

[http://www.netbeans.org/]

NetBeans — Java IDE

[http://www.adm.monash.edu.au/magpie/archives/monpix]

MonPix — Monash online pictures archive. Not easy to search, or at least, I can't find things by the search terms I choose, but it does have some interesting material accumulated at the University.

A spot of finger trouble and I've accidently nuked the debian linux installation on niflheim. Maybe its time to consider one of the BSDs. [FreeBSD], [OpenBSD] or [NetBSD].

A bit of site news, updated to a more reasonable style sheet that doesn't seem to waste so much space, but still looks good. I've finally got around to getting PHP4 and Apache working under Windows so I can test as well as author pages.

the list of places that I've had excellent meals at.

[http://www.gillmusic.com/]

Andy Gill Music. I came across this website while searching for a Gang of Four's Love Like Anthrax. Its been in the back of my mind this last week, a joke in poor taste.

[http://www.alertbox.com/]

Current Issues in Web Usability.

Last night was spent at a Billy Bragg concert. I've always liked his music, but never been a huge fan, some of his political rants seem too simplistic, too one-eyed. I was surprised though, in concert he was quite humerous, played really well despite the acoustics of the Melbourne Town Hall, and delivered three encores to a very appreciative audience.

I just found a quote that I think sums up my thoughts on a huge proportion of the email that I receive, and regrettably, on some of the email that I send:

Look at the culture of email. It's alright to slap people around via email; it's alright to send careless, half-decipherable messages for no good reason; it's alright to contribute wholesale and without any thoughtful hesitation to the message overload of your fellows; it's alright to fire off responses without having read the message you are responding to. Use email as vacuously and irresponsibly as you wish...

My latest photos have returned from Kodak, unlike the last lot, they are of a decent quality and the scans are bearable. Obvious conclusion, Kodak knows how to develop and scan films, one-hour photo processing shops do not!

Another useful Novell TID:

10053872

NW5 GUI using XWindows

[http://www.pandromeda.com/]

MojoWorld — artificial world. Just another bit of MLP from slashdot.

Should I have another rant about motorists yabbering on their mobile phones and not watching where they're driving? Probably not, its all getting a bit depressing. I was amazed at the guy who drove alongside me for 15km yesterday, sitting in the right-hand lane, holding the phone to his ear and talking the entire way!

Maybe I could rant about the constant chatter and background noise in our open plan office, but that wouldn't get me anywhere either.

10024591

What is a SLP DA (Directory Agent) and Scope?

10058095

The Relationship Between SLP DA Objects and Settings

10025313

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) about SLP

10027163

Configuring SLP for a NetWare Server

10014466

Configuring SLP for a NetWare Client

10014868

SLP Console and SET Commands

More on Melbourne's drivers... Or should that be “Moron; Melbourne's Drivers.” There just seems to be something about the mentality of smokers that can't conceive of the idea that dumping a lit cigarette out the window of a moving car is firstly littering, and secondly, bloody dangerous to the motorcyclist behind who cops a facefull of it. Congratulations to the lady driving RAV4 Vic. rego QPF-206, you get the idiot of the day award. On second thoughts, congratulations to the Victorian EPA for having a downloadable litter report form.

NT security, and a good reason to not give people the ability to boot your locked down workstations from a floppy disk. An article, and the tool — linNT.zip — referenced to reset Administrator passwords after booting from Linux.

I've dropped off my latest film to be developed. I think I've learnt my lesson after the last fiasco, so I've sent this one off to Kodak.

[http://www.counterpane.com/]

someone reminded me of this today. I urge everyone to read Bruce Schneier's special issue regarding the September 11 terrorist attacks.

Bacon and Eggs for breakfast, good company. Now if only my parents had good coffee, it would be perfect!

Spent the morning in Bungendore, visiting one of my favourite shops/galleries, the Bungendore Wood Works Gallery. If only we had the money to buy the pieces that we like... and the mansion to display them!

A quick visit to a winery that I've been meaning to go to for years, Lark Hill didn't have any larks in evidence. If there were any, they'd been blown into the ocean by the wind over the vines. Its only 2km from my parents' house, so after eight years it was about time to visit and sample its wares!

Then donning our disguises, Joey and I drove around Canberrra for the afternoon pretending to be tourists. There was an icy cold wind howling through the trees, so sitting in the car in the sunny spots was quite enjoyable. Felt bizarre to be visiting places I hadn't seen for years, we drove up the street where I lived from 1969 to 1983 to look at the house, so many things the same, but also some changes. The huge old gum tree was cut down, the garden turned from a semi-jungle to a flat english-style lawn.

From the top of Black Mountain we leant into the wind and laughed at the fiction coming from the security staff. According to the security staff there is an incredible danger of dishes and aerials dropping like autumn leaves from the tower, while there seems to be no problem with the general public walking past equally high buildings in the center of any city. Here is my somewhat cynical version: Prior to building the Telecom Tower, the trees around the carpark were trimmed down, and dotted around the place were sundial thingies pointing to places of interest, the view from the top was excellent and many tourists and locals drove up there to look around. Once the tower was opened you could wander around its base for free, roughly two stories off the ground, or pay an entry fee to go up to the observation deck to see the sites. Simultanously, the trees were allowed to grow up and block the view from ground level. A little while later the base was cordoned off, citing “safey reasons”. The more cynical might wonder how many tourists were making use of the free view. Now there is a sign stating that the entire concourse is a hard-hat area (which must be a pain for the staff there), all except for the entrance way where paying tourists come in!

Quiet day evaluation CA's eTrust anti-virus software. Unfortunately it seems to all rely on a vast infrastructure of Microsoft Windows networking, manual entry of usercodes, and manual duplication of the organizational structure already present in the NDS.

It had to happen eventually... I was halfway home, flying along the Gardiners Creek bike path and I met Marko coming the other way. Luckily we were both on the left hand side, unlike some of the riders I meet each day — Marko's a remarkably solid lad, I'd hate to hit him head-on at the speed we were both going.

Went to see a movie last night, The Bank. Lots of laughs throughout and it certainly touched a common feeling of anti-bank sentiment in the Australian public. Famous quote “I just don't like banks.”

[http://www.crikey.com.au/]

A bit of activism, some interesting reads, the odd rant.

Distributed Computing: book on the Grid by Kesselman and Ian Foster.

I thought I'd put this lot in a couple of days ago when something about the NSA Secure Linux popped up on slashdot. Random OS links:

[http://www.nsa.gov/selinux]

SeLinux — NSA's Security Enhanced Linux

[http://www.cs.utah.edu/flux/fluke/html/flask.html]

Flask — Flux Advanced Security Kernel

[http://www.cs.utah.edu/flux/oskit]

OSKit — a framework and a set of 34 component libraries oriented to operating systems

[http://www.cs.utah.edu/flux]

Flux — The Flux Research Group works in software systems

[http://www.ucch.org/peds-www/is/cscott.html]

Cory L. Scott — Microsoft NT security information.

[http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/winlog/]

Windows NT Event Logging — the Oreilly book. Must add it to the list of books to get.

[http://www.intersectalliance.com/projects/WinNTConfig/index.html]

WindowNT Config — step-by-step approach to locking down Microsoft operating systems.

[http://www.intersectalliance.com/projects/Win2kConfig/]

Windows2000 Config — step-by-step approach to locking down Microsoft operating systems.

I ache all over! As Marko said during part two of the War Against the Mattress, if we did this a couple more times we'd get really fit. As it is, two days of furniture and box moving, then unpacking and repacking bookcases, has left me feeling several hundred years old.

I would add a reference to the café where we had an excellent steak dinner last night, but for some reason I can't even find them in the Telstra white pages, or in citysearch. Maybe I've imagined the whole thing? Does Saratoga really exist? Ah, maybe if I'd remembered that it was called Saragossa I'd have had more luck...

MLP

A couple of pages about the Daleks:

[http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/grahamwalters/dalek_fr.htm]

Dalek Extermination Page

[http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~mimrie/dalek/daleka.htm]

Dalek Resource WebHome

A bit like Christmas... now that the flat is full of boxes of things, we've had to spend the entire day unpacking them, sorting the contents out, then finding places to put it all!

Hopefull the final campaign in the War Against the Mattress has now taken place, with one bed taken apart and moved into the spare room, and the other bed being assembled and the evil mattress placed into its final resting place.

A day of lifting and lugging. With the aid of a few close friends Jo's remaining boxes of belongings and pieces of furniture were stuffed into a car and a van and transported back to the flat.

The most exciting part of this was the great War Against the Mattress, a battle in at least three parts. As per some requirement known only to the mattress-makers guild of Australia, there were no handles on the mattress, so Marko and I maneuvered the recalcitrant beast out of its upstairs lair and convinced it to wobble earthwards without getting caught on any of the picture hooks in the stairway. The other two then joined in to poke and prod it into the back of Leslie's van, where it expanded to fill all available space.

Back at Richmond it took the combined efforts of three and many powerful swearwords to extricate it from the van, then before it had time to realise what we were doing, Marko and I chased it up the stairs and into the bedroom where it stood, looming ominously over the other bed.

A much needed beer was then consumed!

A purely reactive day. More anti-virus work to be done, more datafile updates to be downloaded and configured. The sooner we can dump this 'orrible product the better.

Cycled to work and guess what, another driver tried to flatten me where the cycle path crosses Malvern road. I'm getting sick of this sequence. Stop, wait, light goes orange, wait, light goes red, wait, cycle path light goes green, start to ride across intersection, stop and scream abuse as maroon Commodore NCI-033 drives straight through the red without slowing down.

More time spent analysing virus-detection logs, attempting to automate the production of reports from them.

The Networks group are commisioning Statscout to monitor all our devices via SNMP, as a result I can take some of the traffic monitoring out of the ITS MRTG graphs.

More predictable Melbourne drivers. Today it was raining in the morning, therefore someone had driven into someone else on the Monash freeway, therefore traffic was banked up from Clayton back to Toorak.

A day of electronic bill paying... and a little gentle stirring of large organizations. After trying to pay my Citipower account via the online B-Pay system and being told that the company didn't allow credit card payments, I can then call a toll free number and pay with my credit card.

I've been asked to analyse our logs to provide a summary of the number of viruses (virii?) detected on various platforms. Major hassle is that procmail hasn't been running on silas for many months, so the email logging from Vet was turned off in May. I turned it back on for version 10.3.7.0 on September 10.

[Millenium]

Microsoft Research's Goals for future operating systems. Interesting thoughts, too bad that what comes out of the product department seems to be somewhat diluted by the marketing department.

More success in my never-ending battle with PSGML, SGML and Xemacs. I've finally discovered how to set sgml-parent-document in order to correctly edit SGML fragments from within Xemacs.

Mayhem in the office all day, the combination of air-conditioning installation, broken security alarms, and just general Friday-ness resulted in more than usual levels of interruption.

Today we have another shining example of Melbourne's finest drivers. Silver Holden Commodore, (Vic. QKU-199), at first I wondered what he was doing, attempting to drag me off from the lights on Dandenong Rd. Then I realised as he swerved in at me: the left-turn only lane didn't apply to him, and it was more important for him to ram the motorbike out of the way so he could go straight ahead and on down Dandenong Rd at 110km/hr in the 80km/hr zone.

[http://memepool.com/]

Interesting collection of information.

Interesting postcard arrived in the mail today from Joey. The New York city skyline... that'll need adjusting on the next batch of cards.

[3D Flight over Switzerland] Using an ActiveX plugin, so it only works under Windows IE at the moment.

Finally got to see Moulin Rouge this evening, lots of sound and light and colour, and I loved the songs made of other song fragments. An audience of seven, three couples and me, and one of the couples talked incessantly the whole way through!

Work

We're running into problems with the MRTG monitoring of the NetWare servers. Every five minutes; 136 statistics, 104 of which involve invoking a perl interpreter means we're hitting process limits and time-outs on the server. I've upgraded to MRTG 2.9.17, but it looks like it'll need a re-work to use rrdtool.

Two successes. A good day. They're not even in the same league though.

First, Joey called from Vermont and we spent half an hour on the phone. Despite all, she's having a great time, saw some whales near Cape Cod and is now in the forests, where she's seen a skunk and is now on the lookout for mooses.

Second, with a little fiddling and help from http://my.gnus.org, I've got both IMAP and HTTP traffic out of wyvern to be tunneled via SSL.

Too tired to go out four nights in a row, so the Cruel Sea will have to wait for their next visit to town.

Sat down to try and get my home PC to use Linux kernel 2.4 and was halfway through fiddling about when the power supply just upped and died. I guess that means I won't be getting that going anytime soon.

MLP

http://www.garmin.com/

The eTrek was mentioned as being a useful GPS to own.

Nearly impossible to get anything done this morning. The open plan area is getting more and more noisy.

Musical MLP

[http://www.davidbridie.com.au/]

David Bridie

[http://www.thedavegraneyshow.com/]

The Dave Graney Show

[http://www.hughcornwall.com/]

Hugh Cornwell, ex Strangler

[http://www.kraftwerk.com/]

Kraftwerk

A miracle! The pothole on Forster Rd near the Nott has been filled in. That pothole has been a feature of my trip to Monash for the last five years, I can remember being driven through it on my way to a job interview here in April 1996!

.

I wonder how many more ETLAs I can come up with this week for titles of the day's entry?

http://www.snmplink.org/

http://www.winsnmp.org/

http://www.wtcs.org/snmp4tpc/

Ugly colour scheme, but lots of information on SNMP for the Public Community. Predominantely Windows and NetWare.

Decided to log all the odds and sods regarding moving into the new flat.

Work

Another stunnel problem with the laptop. After booting it up in a standalone configuration and then plugging it in, I had to issue a net stop stunnel, net start stunnel in order to make it connect.

NAI Antivirus mirror, two problems;

• It hasn't been updated since it was first established.
• Monash's FTP server demands an email address for anonymous ftp login.

TODO

TODO: Get NAI datafiles mirror working. Update Virex documents

.

Still digging around trying to find out how to author documents in Docbook format, then export them as HTML with a common look and feel. So far the DSSSL and XSL stuff looks to have a steep learning curve!

SGML for NT

A brief tutorial how to set up a free SGML editing and publishing system for Windows NT.

The Debian SGML/XML Howto

http://www.docbook.org/

The main repository of Docbook material

TODO

TODO: Add instrumentation to the Registrator(s) so it can be monitored by MRTG. Count outstanding transactions and make it available via SNMP?

More MRTG mods, after queries from the Faculty of Law, added the network traffic from ITS-MENZ3 to the things that are monitored.

[http://www.cryptoapps.com/]

More interesting stuff, predominately Cryptographic Appliances as the name implies.

A series of articles from IBM's developerworks on redesgning the Gentoo web site using XML and XSLT. In four parts [1] [2] [3] and [4].

Vet updates to South Africa are working again, now that I've created the $HOME/.ssh/authorized_keys2 files for the cruxnds account.

Stunnel: Just had stunnel crash and sit there, I had to manually issue a “=net stop stunnel= then “=net tart stunnel= to get it going again

The experimental stunnel to the proxies takes a further step, we now have it running on one of the real proxy machines. CJW to ask the security group to test.

Another afternoon with me holding the hotline phone, another day where nobody calls it, preferring to pick random names and numbers out of the air.

[http://www.mrtg.org/]

MRTG, one of my favourite pieces of software

Updated the main server status page and MFS07 details that had changed.

Ross the plumber called this morning. I called him back and went through the following conversation:

I was there six months ago wasn't I?

No, it was actually April last year.

Aren't you on the ground floor on the corner near the garage?

No, I'm on the first floor.

I'll have to arrange a time to come and take a look at the place.

A plumber came and looked at the place and took a report back about a fortnight ago.

I'll refer it back to the Agent. Goodbye.

Citipower will connect the electricity on Friday ($25 fee vs $189 for the weekend). Their records show that it is already connected, so it will just be a matter of changing it over.

Telstra will move the phone across at 9am on Saturday morning. The only problem could be if the line at the MDF in the garage has been reused. They are assuming it is free and so everything will be simple. If the line has been reused, it will require manual intervention and at least a week delay.

Tramp, Tramp, Tramp...

Another work day, another vet update (v1436). Each time there's one of these it reminds me to make more time for the NAI replacement...

More success on a secure front. On Win2k, TRAMP is now successfully working under Xemacs with cygwin scp.

• The Tramp makefile wouldn't work, so manually did a byte-compile of all the lisp files manually.
• Cygwin is OpenSSH v2, so it uses v2 keys. Needed to created a $HOME/.ssh/authorised_keys2 on silas. This explains why Teraterm was working with the public key, but Cygwin wouldn't. Teraterm is v1 only.

Visited the local photo developer who sent my films off to be badly scanned and expressed my dissatisfaction. Unfortunately with the language gap between us we didn't really get anywhere, so I left with $30 which he swore meant he was operating at a loss (despite charging me $60 initially), and with no CD. I guess in future I'll stick to Kodak's developing and scanning.

I think I've got the docs pages to use a two column style that nicely mimics the three column one of the blog. It looks fine in Mozilla, IE6 beta is problematic, the style sheet I've based it on has an ugly hack to get around bugs in IE5.5, maybe they've been fixed in 6...

Using srvany.exe I've got stunnel.exe running as a service on Win2k.

Surprise surprise — 16:58 and the real-estate agent calls up. She wants to send a potential tenant over tomorrow. Stupidly, I relent when the carrot is offered — a reduction in rent if the new tenant moves in after I move out.

Carried my camera around with me all weekend since I'm trying to finish the roll of film, if it wasn't so expensive to develop APS I'd probably just get the half roll done.

While I was trying to take a photo this morning of a king parrot that came to eat on the window sill I found that the battery is flat. They don't seem to last long, and at $AU19 a time, certainly add to the costs of the pictures. I desperately had to laugh when I found that even the batteries have a URL on their case. Step right up to http://www.energizer-e2.com/ to find out all about them!

Jo and I spent the afternoon trudging through the mud in the Otways. A brief attempt to visit Cora Lyn Cascades was aborted when we discovered that the creek was well over the track, and there was a metre of debris choking the valley from storms earlier in the winter. The cascades look far more impressive now than during the summer when most people see them, with only a trickle of water over the rocks. Erskine falls was similar, not quite a torrent, but a definite waterfall.

After much scratching of head and pulling of hair, I think I've got blogmax mostly working using a 3 column style sheet. Ugliness still abounds, but with changes to the elisp code, the templates, and the stylesheets, I think I'm getting there.

To avoid some of the problems with the current web proxy configuration there's a proposal to tunnel the HTTP traffic from client machines to the proxy servers. Stunnel clients are available for most platforms. On the Windoze side the tasks seem to be:

• Turn off all the log output.
• Run the stunnel as a service.

  [http://www.stunnel.org/]

  [http://www.openssl.org/]

  Freely available versions of the Secure Sockets Layer.

A simple matter really, just notify the Real Estate agent that I'll be moving out in 28 days...

• Call agent, the phone is engaged.
• Half an hour later, call agent, leave voice mail message
• an hour later, get a call from a different agent “didn't you remember that Kirsty is no longer your agent?” (Oops, obviously I didn't). Get the fax number to send in the notification.
• Send the fax, it fails, either I wrote down the wrong number or Colleen gave me it wrong.
• Look up Biggin and Scott's webpage to find the correct fax number. It isn't listed, but they do give the office phone number.
• Call the office, wrong number, seems that the website has incorrect info on it. “We get a lot of calls for them, goodbye!”
• Look up Biggin and Scott in the whitepages, call their number, get the fax number, which is one digit different from what I had. When I tell them that their website is wrong I get, “Oh yes, we know about that.”
• Yay, success, after two hours, four phone calls and two fax transmissions, I think I've let them know!

Well well well... A quick email exchange with the author of the package and it seems that I've found a bug that causes blogmax to fail in Windoze Xemacs 21.4. A new version has been provided and it now seems to work. Now its just up to me to see whether I can make it work for me.

I'm not sure what the coefficient of friction between hail-stones, a wet road, and worn motorbike tyres is, but I think I came very close to finding out on the way to work this morning. Terrible weather, made me want to go back home and curl up in bed.

Later on, yay, real-estate agents, one of my favourite life-forms. In typical pushy real-estate agent fashion, the 1st of September is barely acceptable, we are expected to be able to terminate our current lease on zero notice, pay a month's rent as non-refundable deposit before tomorrow lunch time, and to sign the lease in the agent's office, at their convenience.

Of course we don't have much choice, so we accept.

[http://dotgnu.org/]

The DotGNU Project: DotGNU will be a complete replacement for the .NET strategy - it will not be a Free Software implementation of .NET.

[http://glish.com/]

Some very stylish material, including a lot on CSS and styles.

I checked out the photos that I picked up yesterday with a view to putting them here on the site. Well, there's some good news and some bad news.... Good news is that most of them scanned ok; bad news is that instead of one roll of 25 and three rolls of 40 prints I've got one roll of 25, two copies of 39 of one roll, all 40 of the next, and only 36 of the last roll. They only printed three of the four index pages for the CD cover too. Congratulations to Malvern Photographics, 90 Glenferrie Rd. Malvern. (03).9509.0199, I wouldn't have thought it too difficult to scan each roll, once, completely.

Jo telephoned to query how long it is likely to take to process our application and we got told the following:

• The landlord wasn't expecting applications so soon as he didn't expect the premises to be repainted so quickly.
• Since we've asked to move in on the 8th of September, which is "a fair delay", the application must be referred to the landlord.
• The landlord is interstate and the application can't be processed until he returns.

Now to me it looks like some of them are mutually exclusive, but I'm no real-estate agent, so I guess we have to wait. Surely if they weren't expecting the premises to be ready until September, the fact that we want to move in then should be acceptable?

Brrrr! Seven degrees and it feels like its going to snow.

Work work work...

Our NDS is growing and slowing, we're using new features on top of old hardware, more features on top of old software.

The Workstation Objects keep a history of users who login to them, in a student environment this grows and grows.

Mr JRB's SETNAME is going into the weekly cleanup, with a:

SETNAME * /o=Workstation /a=WM:User_History /d /x

Now this could be a bizarre house moving experience, potentially the world's shortest. Joey and I went to look at flat number two, next door, and decided that it looks pretty good. Just like number one — only twice as big — and not twice as expensive!

Norky bike was ready for collection from the shop, Freedom Machine, revitalised after its sojourn in foreign places.

UK and France: Six weeks riding around the UK and France.

In possibly the easiest house-finding experience of the century, Jo came home early to see a "to let" sign hanging on the balcony of the flat next door to mine! Not expecting it to be big enough she rang the agents and found out that it has two bedrooms, and we can inspect it tomorrow at 9am.

Five o'clock in the evening, just about to leave and there's a phone call; ITS-CAUL1 has stopped responding on one of its interfaces and the switch is reporting more errors on that port than for most other ports at the Uni. A little digging by myself and Biggles and mysteriously it appears that the switch has been changed from 100M full duplex to autoconfigure, which never does.

Spent the day at a Novell OneNet presentation. A bit about NetWare 6, a bit about all its components and a fascinating bit about network security and protocol analysis.

Oh no! Back at work at last.

Several thousand emails to sort through, fourteen voicemail messages.

Please enter your security code. Bip Bip Bip Bip. You have fourteen new messages, press one for new message. Bip That message has been stored for too long and been deleted, you have thirteen new messages, press one for new message. Bip That message has been stored for too long and been deleted, you have twelve new messages, press one for new message... Bip You have no new messages.

...I wonder what's happened in the world of computers, networks and Monash in the past two months....

End of my trip, nothing much to do but wander around the shops half-heartedly thinking about duty free toys to use up the last of the spending money. MD and MP3 players here and there, but none caught my eye as being just right. The Polar S710 heart rate monitor looks pretty good, but while it supposedly exists, none of the shops have seen one, one of the bike shop staff confessed to me that he doesn't believe that any have been brought into the UK yet.

Just to top things off, it started to rain on me, back home at a brisk walk, just in time to avoid the downpour that it became.

Where?

Reading.

Last night I lay in bed reading until around three, so this morning I slept in until nearly eleven — so much for going away and doing anything today!

Rang Jo at noon, having completely forgotten that it was Friday night in Australia and she might be out. She was home and we could have talked for hours, both of us excited that I'll be coming home soon.

Later in the afternoon I headed into town along the Kennet, deciding to go and see a movie, hopefully a better one than the last time I tried! Swordfish was on; Hollywoodised computer hackers, action, car chases, etc. All good silly fun. There was a very slightly twisted plot, a little reminiscent of the Usual Suspects, but it was not explored in any great detail, explosions and chases being easier on the audience's minds.

Finally having a chance to catch up, Liz and I sat up half the night drinking wine, watching TV and talking. Talking about family and relations and us and Jo and me and how things have worked out. The wine and the TV had us in fits of laughter; an intentionally funny Billy Conolly special, followed by an episode of "The Equalizer" with acting so wooden that we were in hysterics.

Where?

Reading.

Woke to a cool gray day and light showers — the heatwave has broken, but obviously not with the semi-tropical thunderstorms the forecast had us believe.

Late in the morning I scurried into town in the drizzle to pick up a postcard for Tuesday (oops!) and then hopped on the train to Bath. I can't make sense of the ticket prices, they seem one of the eternal mysteries of this trip. Some seem quite reasonable, others ludicrously expensive. Yesterday was £8 return to Oxford, today is £20.50 return to Bath, and all the tickets have different names "Cheap Day Return", "Supersaver return"... whatever they all are. Not even the staff seem able to figure out which one I should buy in order to get to where I want to go for the cheapest price — maybe that's the idea.

Spent the afternoon having a more leisurely look around Bath than the last time I was here, cathedrals and old buildings, museums, shops and redevelopments. The optimistically placed deck chairs sitting by the river in the drizzle.

Where?

Reading, Bath.

I thought of packing up some clothes and heading up to Derbyshire to visit relatives, but it all seemed too much effort. Instead I decided to go to Oxford for the day. Caught the train there and spent an afternoon walking around and being a tourist.

Magnificent old buildings and shops. Stopped to recuperate with a beer in a lovely little pub called 'Old Tom' with its tiny beer garden overgrown with flower pots, petunias and fuschias. Saddly the barman said he might have to remove them due to insurance concerns of drunk patrons either falling over them, or damaging them!

The trip home was slow due to a typical British train problem. The express that I was on got stuck behind a "stopping-all-stations" local train, along the way the air-conditioning stopped working as well, so it was a hot, slow, tedious trip back to Reading. However, unlike my last train trip from Oxford to Reading, at least nothing ran into us!

Somewhere along the way I saw an add for an interesting bike ride. £250 for 8 days along the Nile! 10-17, or 17-24, February 2002. See www.mencap.org.uk for more details.

Where?

Reading.

  Trip total: ??km

The end is nigh! Walked in to the bike shop and picked up a bike box to lug home to Liz' house before cleaning and packing Norky bike away in the box. With each experience comes the reminder to add more packing to the parts of the bike that protrude!

Where?

Reading

  Trip total: ??km

Joe and Paddy picked me up at lunch time and we drove off through Henley to Hambleden for lunch. Its a fantastic little village, but with a heap of money tied up in the genteel stone houses — everything from picturesque cottages to the W.H.Smith manor house. Roast duck and a pint at the pub for lunch, then a walk around some of the lanes, then back to Henley where they dropped me off and I walked back up to Shiplake along the river.

Where?

Reading, Henley on Thames, Hambleden, Shiplake.

  Trip total: ??km

Today I walked down the river instead of up. Off along the tow-paths to Sonning Lock. The river and banks were packed, boats and swimmers and people and dogs strolling along the paths everywhere. A pause for an ice cream in the tea gardens at Sonning and on downstream to Shiplake.

I called Joe from the pub, then spent the evening with my uncle Joe and Paddy, sitting around in their garden — a great summer evening.

Where?

Reading, Sonning, Shiplake.

  Trip total: ??km

Another hot lazy day, at least I managed to force myself out for some exercise! Around lunch time I decided to walk up the river to the next town, but ended up turning around on its outskirts and heading back.

The river bank was lined with hundreds of people, all there for WOMAD. Lots of hippies and ferals, narrow boats docked four deep on the banks with people walking over each other to get to their boats. Naked children and lots of dogs, papers and garbage everywhere.

TV tonight was interesting. Eye of the Needle, a Donald Sutherland WWII spy movie, then Sliver, again with a spying/voyeurism theme. I found it interesting with the UK obsession with Big Brother and CCTV everywhere. I wonder if anyone else noticed? Guess I'm turning into a regular TV junkie.

Where?

Reading

  Trip total: ??km

Four pm and I haven't stepped out the door all day — hot and humid weather, yet again I'm lying on the couch reading my cousin's novels.

Eight pm and I head out for the evening....

Ten pm and I'm home gain. Three cheap pints while sitting in the evening sun and I decided I'm just not in the mood to go out alone on a Friday night. Instead I sat around the house feeling melancholy and thinking about the nine days until I'm home again.

Oof, I just saw the evening weather report! 32°C here in the South and 37°C in Cheltenham — lucky Mike!. No wonder I thought it was warm today!

Where?

Reading

  Trip total: ??km

Again, the morning held only a comfortable couch and an escapist novel. The riding yesterday really wore me out!

I spent the afternoon shopping and emailing and walking about, then came home for a rest before going out for the evening. I'd decided to sample some beers and entertainment, so it was a couple of beers at O'neals, then a walk, then a couple of Guinesses at the Walkabout. Franchised Irish bars to franchised Aussie ones. Their only redeeming features being the cheapness of their beers.

Tried to watch the highlights of today's tour stage, but ten minutes before the finish the bar staff turned off nearly all the TVs and showed only a direct video of the band that was playing at the other end of the room! Bloody annoying, when I asked, the bar manager told me “tuff”, and pointed out that I could still watch sport on two of the eight TVs. Wonderful, these were showing an “X-Treme Sportz” channel of snowboarders and skateboarders crashing into things and each other.

Where?

Reading

  Trip total: ??km

Oooh, Guiness hangover.

Too little sleep, too little food, and too much Guiness. After a quick breakfast and goodbyes to Andy, I felt terrible for the first hour this morning back on the bike. A few pastries at a bakery seemed to fix things up a touch, from then on it was just a long day of riding, made more than a little frustrating by the maze of roads and villages that make up Surrey.

To add to the riding woes, Norky bike's headset bearings seem to have died. I have no idea when it happened, but all of a sudden today I noticed that they have a big notch at the straight-ahead position, and gentle turns are a nightmare.

Where?

Brighton, Reading

  Trip total: ??km

A hot sunny day, a holiday feel in the air again. Breakfast was yet another episode of the English B&B's game of advertising a “full English breakfast,” and then seeing how small a portion of each item they can deliver.

I spent the morning walking around the Brighton Pier, then the aquarium. The aquarium was a bit of a disappointment, after reading so much about it I found it full of uncontrolled kids running around hammering on the glass and yelling at each other. In addition, most of the exhibits were designed for children or short adults, hardly anything was visible for anyone over about 5' 6” — I found myself staring at the wall above the tanks and had to keep crouching down to see in.

After the aquarium I just kept walking along the sea front. Up to the marina to have a look around. A standard upmarket waterfront development, same as anywhere else in the world, apartments, cafés and wharves. I did manage to purchase a pint of Hoegaarten in a glass that closely resembles a bucket, and had a lazy lunch watching tourists get on and off the tour boats, and the O.A.P's file in and out of their tour couches....

Eleven days to go... Feeling a touch melancholy as I wrote today's postcard — then later burst into laughter as I passed a newsagent and saw the catchy headline on one of the women's magazines “Is your man having a holiday fling — how to tell from his postcards.” I'm kicking myself that I didn't buy it to post the article to Jo.

Where?

Brighton

  Trip total: ??km

Yet another morning spent reading in Reading . I seem to remember spending most of my time at Elizabeth's house lying around on the couch reading novels. I did remember to check the clocks though, so as not to get caught and miss the train.

About lunchtime I walked into town to the station to find a train to Brighton. I had managed to cram enough clothes and stuff into my shoulder bag, including an empty pannier, to make overnight survival a non-event, and should have no problem carrying it all back tomorrow on the bike.

Tickets are £19.90, and there were two trains I could catch, either direct to Brighton at 13:07 or via Gatwick at 12:34. I aimed for the earlier train, then missed it when I ducked up the street to find a postcard for yesterday. Strangely, none of the myriad of shops inside the station sell postcards.

A relaxing afternoon sitting in the comfort of the train, watching the countryside rush past, feeling the sun on my face, and just generally enjoying life on my way to be reunited with Norky bike.

Once at Brighton I spiralled around trying to find a place to stay, ending up in a rather dishevelled looking B&B only two streets from where Andy and Suzie live! Managed to include the tour of the piers, the beach front, the poky little alleyways, and all the other touristy bits of Brighton along the way.

A measure of the B&B was when my keys fell off the desk and wedged down behind it in my room. Attempting to tilt the (nailed down) desk forward I managed to recover not only my keys, but also several pens, pencils, and four ancient pornographic magazines.

I caught up with Andy and Neale for dinner at a nearby pub, then a pint or two, then back to the dingy room to sleep.

Where?

Reading, Brighton.

  Trip total: ??km

Lazy me sat around all day reading and watching SciFi TV. I did get out around 1pm for a walk down the Thames and up along the Kennet canal. (That name still amuses me, depending on your political inclination, Jeff Kennet was a very popular/unpopular politician in Australia. A bit like finding a “maggie thatcher canal” I guess.)

Then foolishly, I decided to walk into town to see a movie, and chose Jurassic Park III. My el-cheapo bike computer nearly made me miss it by mysteriously losing 35 minutes. I was sitting having a bite to eat beforehand when I suddenly realised what the time really was and had to race out the door and over to the cinema. It was all a bit of a waste of the £5.50 really, very ho-hum and predictable.

Where?

Reading.

  Trip total: ??km

Vegetated around Reading some more. I started to look in the shops for presents for myself, something to use up any outstanding spending money. The Polar Heart-rate monitors caught my eye, but I'm not sure what the prices are compared to Australia, or even if they are available:

S210 : £130 : $349
S410 : £150 : $399
S510 : £170 : $449
S610 : £180 : $499
S710 : £200 : $549
S810 : £?? : $849

During the day I fiddled with one of the blogging bits of software on my Palm pilot.

Testing to see how useful this is. I wonder if I can ignore the hassle of writing here & use it as a diary?

Sat around reading all morning while Liz shopped, finished Lance Armstrong's book & wish I could put into words a few thoughts.

Eventually left the house at 3, walking into town to check out the Ale and Jazz festival. It was closed, with no sign why, or when it opens.

Been sitting in the pub from four til seven just wasting time & feeling sorry for myself & watching the girls go by. Tried to ring my cousin Toby, but no answer.

Where?

Reading.

  Trip total: ??km

First success of the day — I found that the Debenhams chain store operate a decent, cheap, internet café , I managed to connect back to Monash, and to read and sort through my 950 incoming emails! Even managed to reply to the important ones and check both bank balances.

Joey's shopping list:

• duty free gin
• Bootes ear plugs

Where?

Reading.

  Trip total: ??km

Thoughts on Lille — for the first time in France I seem to have seen lots of beggars and homeless people. Maybe it's just the first time I've been in a big city, maybe I just haven't noticed. Two-star hotels, kebab shops and sex shops. Maybe I should have tried to move further away from the train station.

A big bustling city, certainly lots of construction around the two stations. French police uniforms suddenly struck me as appearing very functional, Australian and British appearing more symbolic by comparison.

I walked around all morning, definitely a bustling place, a pity that more of the center isn't car-free. The squares in there have some great 17th century buildings — and one of the first McDonalds that I've seen in France.

After lunch I had a beer or three in a micro-brewery located handy to the station — an excellent wheat beer — as one would expect so near to Belgium and more good beers. Then it was back to collecting duffle for the stagger through customs and onto the train. Eurostar can't seem to work out whether they want a customs check or not, whether the UK is part of Europe or not, so it all seems badly designed and added on as an afterthought.

Sat down to find that Richard had the seat next to me, so we kept each other entertained for the trip, including a last-minute rummage through our pockets for all our French change to buy a mars bar. Then it was off at Waterloo, a phone call to my cousin, £10 and two hours more on the train and I was in Reading, in a hot shower, and relaxed.

Where?

Lille, London, Reading.

  Trip total: ??km

Rain, more rain, then a little more rain. A fine day to be leaving the mountains.

Amazingly, we all managed to get up in time for the 8am start, crammed everything and everyone into the van and the car and drove to Grenoble. A bizarre feeling sitting in a car and watching the world go past without having to pedal. Almost as bizarre was listening to The House of the Rising Sun playing on the radio ... in French. We tried to sing along, improvising in a strange mix of English and French as words occurred to us.

464FF later and I'm sitting waiting for the train to Lyon and onwards to Lille. My bike is still in the van, subject to the tender mercies of Andy and Suzie on their way back to the UK.

Step one complete! I arrived at Lyon and got myself onto the TGV. After smiling and nodding on the platform to the beautiful girl who had a burmese cat in her carry bag, I found myself sitting opposite her for the trip to Lille. Opposite her, but next to a large fat man who chewed his nails the entire time he was in the train — beauty and the beast. I want to take a photo of her and the cat, but don't know how to ask.

Where?

Vaujany, Grenoble, Lyon, Lille.

  Odometer: 85.2km
  Today: 39.3km
  Trip total: ??km

We left Vaujany around 10:00 to ride up to l'Alpe d'Huez. Some chose the route via Bourg d'Oisans and the main climb, the rest of us headed up to Villard Reculas and then around the side of the mountain to Huez. The unfenced vertiginous drop off the side of the road was too much for some, Richard flat out refused to ride on the right hand side and sidled along the wrong side of the road, hugging the rock walls. Crowds along the roads from Huez onwards made the ride slow to a crawl.

A quick coffee at Huez, a thorough telling off for wheeling my bike through the bar's courtyard, and it was time to head up the mountain to hairpin #5 and join the other Aussies that had accumulated on the mountain. Some of them had travelled here together, our group had met them in the pub last night! Others just dropped in when they saw the flags or were told that this was where we were—like the guy from Kiama, on the lookout for his wife, somewhere climbing up below us, or the couple that used to live just down the road from me in Richmond! I recognised their bikes before I spotted them, the “Blücher” name caught my eye and I looked up, wondering who here would have a bike from Mascott cycles!

A kombi van, beer, aussie flags and suntans - stereotypical and loads of fun. The atmosphere on the mountain was incredible. The Italian contingent on our left came and offered food, the Americans across the road offered entertainment and continual race updates from their radios. More entertainment than they had intended...

A reporter from Adelaide came and took some group photos for the Herald Sun and other papers. As we were posing, one of the American girls on the other side of the road tried to surreptitiously get changed, unfortunately straight in front of twenty onlookers. Loud cheers rang out as she panicked, got her head stuck in her shirt and danced around topless frantically trying to cover herself.

The whole spectacle of the caravan of sponsors vehicles giving out junk and bored models waving and smiling seemed to get everyone even more worked up. One model looked so bored that I blew her a kiss, at last there was a human reaction as she smiled and blew kisses back to us.

What an atmosphere!

The riders themselves were a blur, even on the hill. Armstrong, then Roux, then the others. So crowded and so fast that I really had no idea at the time who was who. I had even less of an idea of the photos that I'd taken. I've either got a photo of Stuart O'Grady by himself, or the back of the head of the guy who jumped in front of me just as I was taking the shot. Now I understand how every few years a fan manages to hit a rider while desperately trying to take a photo through an instamatic view-finder.

The riders hurtle past, I can't believe it is on the same mountain that I was crawling up last Friday. Lance Armstrong in the lead, gone past so quickly that I didn't even recognize him, a couple on his tail. A little later the polka-dot jersey — Patrice Halgand as I later found out. Stuart O'Grady was easy to spot, by himself and in the yellow, but unfortunately way off the back of the pack.

It was 6pm as we left, crawling through the crowds back to Villard Reculas, me hooting the horn the whole a way — a Dutch guy following us offered to buy it when we got stuck.

On the descent I remembered the day's many beers and tried to take it easy, but the adrenalin wasn't helping. It all finally hit on the climb from the lake up to Vaujany, a long slow slog, I didn't reach the hotel until 7pm, just as it started to rain.

Where?

Vaujany, Villard Reculas, Huez.

  Odometer: 45.0km
  Today: 45.01km
  Trip total: ??km

The pizza last night for dinner was a very bad idea. It stayed in me about an hour. The stomach pains and poor sleep lasted the whole of the rest of the night. This morning I feel a little better, but very weak, not having eaten much for the last two days.

On the plus side, it has stopped raining and the fog looks like it might clear up.

Feeling the need to do something, I decided to catch the telepherique across the valley and up the mountain. Colorado Mike and Karen decided to join me, and we caught it up to the 2800m point for a brief snowfight and 15 minutes of looking down on Vaujany. There's not much to do up there without skis, and so after tromping in the snow, we caught it back down to Alpette and spent a further hour and a half walking, exploring, stumbling in icy-cold mountain streams and marmot spotting before coming back to the village for some lunch.

Back down in Vaujany I hurried up to the phones at the village shops. I managed to get through to Jo on the phone and was in much better spirits for the rest of the afternoon.

Nearly 3:30pm and I went out for a bike ride, heading down the valley to the lake, then around to le Bourg d'Oisans. I think at the start I had a vague idea of riding up l'Alpe d'Huez again and trying to better my time. It was chaos, the closer I got to the town. People turning up for tomorrow, parking and camping everywhere, people riding little stretches of the route. I briefly thought of heading part way up the mountain and then coming back via Huez and the side road to Villard Reculas, but my heart wasn't in it so I turned around and came back the way I'd gone out.

As it was I managed to do an idiot thing and turned off at the wrong side road from the lake. I was half-way up to Oz, having climbed for ten minutes before realising, and having to go back down to the lake, around a couple more kilometres and up the road to Vaujany.

Where?

Vaujany, Bourg d'Oisans.

  Odometer: 179.8km
  Today: 0km
  Trip total: ??km

I wasn't feeling well this morning and slept in quite late. There were assorted bad dreams, I nearly fell out of bed a couple of times, and I'm still feeling quite bloated from the meal last night. Skipped breakfast and stayed in bed, watching the rain.

Around 10:30 I walked up the street to see what all the noise was about that had finally woken me up. Then stayed around to watch the start of the local MTB races with Mike and Richard in the rain. Wandered off through the village and joined David, Karen, Keith and Katherine for coffee, but I think this was a bad idea as it quickly made me sick again and sent me back to the hotel to bed.

Some of the others headed off either riding, driving or walking in the fog, so much for our grandiose plans to go riding — I stayed in the hotel in bed for most of the afternoon.

Around 10pm Mike and I headed up to the local shops and some pizza for dinner, I'm hoping I've recovered enough to hold it down. Had a long chat about cycling here and in the UK and Australia, and the attitudes that people have towards cycling.

Still wet and foggy and dizzling as we headed back to the hotel to go to bed. I'm starting to feel a bit depressed that the last two weeks have been such a high point, and that there's another three weeks of making time pass before I get home to see Jo.

Where?

Vaujany.

  Odometer: 179.8km
  Today: 28.73km
  Trip total: ??km

Where?

l'Alpe d'Huez, Vaujany.

  Odometer: 145.4km
  Today: 61.67km
  Trip total: ??km

Where?

Les Egats, Valbonnais, Le Périer, Chantelouve, Col d'Ornon (1371m), Borg d'Oisans, l'Alpe d'Huez.

  Odometer: 83.6km
  Today: 83.6km
  Trip total: ??km

Where?

Menglon, Chatillon en Diois, Menee, Les Noni&eagrave;res; Col de Menée (1402m), Bellegarde, Clelles, Mens, Col de Accarias (892m), St Jean d'Hérans, Les Egats.

  Odometer: 0.0km
  Today: 0.0km
  Trip total: ??km

Bloody cheap bike computers! The stupid thing completely reset itself today.

Where?

Vaison la Romaine, Mirabel, Les Pilles, Sahune, Remuzat, Cornillon, La Motte La Charce, Establet, Col de Prémus (903m), Jonchères, Luc en Diois, Luzeron, Menglon.

  Odometer: 2790.1km
  Today: 97.69km
  Trip total: ??km

Somewhere along the descents my bike computer stopped reading anything. I was too busy to readjust it at the time!

Where?

Avignon, Parnes, Carpentras, Bédoin, Mont Ventoux (1912m), Vaison la Romaine.

  Odometer: 2677.3km
  Today: 92.2km
  Trip total: ??km

Where?

Anduze, La Madeleine, Ners, Mussac, Garrigues, Arpaillurgues, Uzès, Pont du Gard, Remoulins, Avignon.

  Odometer: 2585.1km
  Today: 75.3km
  Trip total: ??km

Where?

Florac, Col de Faisses (1020m), L'Hospitalet, Le Pompidou, St Roman de Tousque, Col de l'Exil (704m), Col de St Pierre (597m), St Jean du Gard, Anduze.

  Odometer: 2509.8km
  Today: 105.8km
  Trip total: ??km

Packed up this morning in drizzling rain. Everything is damp. Everything smells.

Where?

St Geniez d'Olt, St Saturnin, Col de Lagarde (810m), Altes, Massegros, St Rome de Dolan, La Malène, Pounadoires, St Enimie, Prades, Blajoux, Le Chembonnet, Ispagnac, Florac.

  Odometer: 2404.0km
  Today: 91.4km
  Trip total: ??km

Where?

Conques, Grand Vabre, St Projet, Viellevie, Entraygues, Estaing, Espalion, St Come d'Olt, Lassouots, Ste Eulalie d'Olt, St Geniez d'Olt.

  Odometer: 2312.6km
  Today: 0.0km
  Trip total: ??km

Rain stops play.

After a restless night spent listening to the rain hammering on the tents and the gurgle of the rising river, we were all relieved to wake up and find that we still had a campsite! I think everyone was aware of just how close that river was, and how flat and low-lying the campsite. Breakfast was a rather damp affair, with nobody really wanting to start riding in this rain. There was a minor bit of excitement when the local fire-brigade turned up and after some shouting and arm waving, persuaded the manager to find a crank arm which they then used to open and close various lock gates on canals leading in and out of the river.

After a brief consultation, Andy, Suzy, Martin and Tony decided that it was probably not safe for us to be out looking for unfamiliar turn offs in the gloom, and that we'd be better off using the van to shuttle everyone to the next camp at Conques. I can't say that anyone protested too strongly!

By the time we got to Conques I was almost wishing that I had ridden my bike. The rain had lessened, and I was feeling quite car-sick from being crammed in the van as it wound its way through the hills.

Conques was beautiful. Somehow it has managed to miss all the ugly developments of the 20th century. There is a carpark on the road leading towards the village, and everyone visiting it parks outside and walks in. During the day there are no cars on the village steets at all, and at night only a few belonging to residents. No wonder it has achieved World Heritage status.

Dinner in Conques was on an outside balcony above the street, one of the many beautiful settings that Andy and Suzy managed to find us over the course of the fortnight, the souvenir label from the Château de Sauzetour 1999 Bordeaux is stuck in my diary as a permanent reminder of the dinner.

Where?

St Céré, Conques.

  Odometer: 2312.6km
  Today: 97.31km
  Trip total: ??km

Yay, it was cool and overcast this morning!

The ride out of Sarlat was remarkably easy, no problems getting through either the town or the traffic. The first 30km just flew past.

We stopped for pastries and coffee at St. Julien de Lampon and were served by a very grumpy lady in the bakery, then back outside were we sat in the square and watched as other cycle groups passed us in both directions. It was amusing to think that the “bon jours” that we called out were most likely being responded to by other visiting English and American cyclists. Some of the groups seemed to be riding a very low distance each day, their bus picking them up and dropping them on the outskirts of each picturesque spot, then letting them ride through it and back to join the bus.

The climb up to Rocamadour was great, if the weather had been hot like yesterday it would have been a killer with all the bare rock faces around us.

At Rocamadour Irish Dave and I were far more interested in food than in the natural and man-made beauty of the place, so after a quick look round we had a large steak and chips and flirted with the waitress at a café. It was all worthwhile with her smiles, then when the couple at the next table left she just handed us their half-full wine carafe to finish off.

Leaving in the light rain it was almost cold, but after the last few days it was a delight. The last 30km were in either drizzle or rain, a bit of thunder and then the 6km descent into Sarlat—taken at a very easy pace on the slippery road! I stupidly opened my mouth when we were around 5km from town, mentioning to Dave how we'd avoided most of the rain, and how lucky we'd been — not surprisingly, it then started to pour on us for the last stretch into town.

We got in at around 4pm, just in time to help Martin put up the marquee in the rain so that the others could be dry when they arrived.

Where?

Sarlat, Carsac, Grolèjac, Veyrignac, Ste Mondane, St. Julien de Lampon, Payrac, Calès, Rocamadour, Alvignac, Padirac, St Jean Lespinasse, St Céré.

  Odometer: 2214.9km
  Today: 125.7km
  Trip total: ??km

Before leaving I tried to take a few more photos of Limeuil this morning to try and compare the different lighting on the town. I'm not sure how they look, I just know it was a beautiful campsite.

Where?

Limeuil, Le Bugue, Savignac de Miremont, Rouffignac, Plazac, Thonac, Montignac, St Léon sur Vézère, La Roque St Cristophe, Les Eyzies, St Cyprien, Beynac et Cazenac, Sarlat.

  Odometer: 2088.8km
  Today: 129.4km
  Trip total: ??km

Limeuil had a magnificent campground on the banks of the Dordogne, we were directly across the river from the town, but it would have taken a very strong swimmer to make it across. The river was shallow, but very strongly flowing, I walked in up to my knees, dived in facing upstream, and came up ten metres downstream from where I started!

St. Emilion, Castillon la Bataille, Ste Foy la Grande, Monbazillac, Lanquais, Tremolat, Limeuil.

  Odometer: 1959.4km
  Today: 88.7km
  Trip total: ??km

After breakfast there was a flurry of activity in unpacking and making ready the twenty bikes. The hotel had very nicely given us the use of their conference room to avoid having to do all this outside. I was lucky here, after a month on the road, everything on my bike was sorted out as well as it could be!

After an initial group photo, it was off on the bikes. The first day touring together with other people. I found this a vast relief as I'd been getting quite lonely at times.

After riding on almost empty roads all day we headed through St. Emilion to where we were camped on the far side of the town, then we all piled into the car and van to come back in for a magnificent meal in a restaurant courtyard. Great food, good wine, good weather, good conversation — it really felt good to be here.

Where?

Bordeaux, Cadillac, Rauzan, St. Emilion

  Odometer: 1870.7km
  Today: 0.0km
  Trip total: ??km

Hangover time, last night there were far too many Newkie Brown's with Debra and Nick (Irish barmaid and Welsh traveller) at Dick Turpin's — an English theme pub. Debra kept trying to embarrass guys by flirting with all the guys in the pub and making jokes about her exceptionally large bust. I'd met Nick and another Welsh guy a few days ago in Nantes, but didn't recognize them at first.

Did very little all morning except wander around through back streets and parks between the station and the hostel, snoozed in the sun and wrote another postcard. Finally feeling a little better I found some great looking back streets around a college, took a few photos and found the local Saturday market. Mostly clothes and food stalls, all packed with customers and all run by africans or Moroccan's

After taking a few photos and a brief look around inside a church I made my way back to the hostel and gathered up my stuff to move on to meet the Wide Open Road group. To my amazement someone had pinched one of my hooters while the bike has been locked up in the bicycle store room (the horns on the end of the handlebars). Rode the couple of blocks to the Hotel Kyriad and spent the rest of the day snoozing on the bed.

Later, we all met up at one of the cafés near the train station for introductions, beers, and for dinner. My choice was a magnificent bowl of onion soup, which was presented to me accompanied by a bowl of raw garlic cloves. I assumed that the chef knew what he was doing and so I tentatively chomped into one of the smaller cloves along with the soup. An impressively strong taste! The others were laughing and joking and wondering who I was sharing a room with when Dave piped up from the other end of the table. He'd ordered the same dish, so the two of us toasted each other with the largest garlic cloves we could find, then ate them with tears streaming down our faces.

Where?

Bordeaux

  Odometer: 1870.7km
  Today: 0.0km
  Trip total: ??km

The English guys managed to flood our room three times this morning by overflowing the shower! Somehow the sign telling people not to turn the shower up too high just wasn't getting through. They were going to the beach for the day and invited me to go with them. When I got to the station it all started to look too hard, the trains too infrequent, so I changed my mind and sat down to have a coffee. More indicision and the fine sunny weather and I changed my mind back again, trotting inside to catch the train to Arcachon for the afternoon!

It was well worth it, I sat on the beach in the sun, watching the world go by. A strange mix, as some people were out in beach clothes, others seemed determined to wear their Sunday best.

There were signs pointing to the ocean beach and the world's biggest sand dunes. Or maybe they were Europe's biggest sand dunes. In any case it was too hot and too far and I was too lazy, so I had a gelato instead and wandered around the shops.

After catching the train back to Bordeaux I headed out for the evening, choosing the Irish bar and English-speaking company over a French bar and much less conversation!

Where?

Bordeaux, Arcachon

  Odometer: 1870.7km
  Today: 0.0km
  Trip total: ??km

I'm not sure if I'm getting better or not! There's less phlegm, but more cough, maybe all that beer and wine and the smokey bar last night was the correct way to treat bronchitis!

I got in earlier today and paid my 160FF to take my chances on the winery tour. It turned out to be more of a chateau drive-by bus trip, with two winery visits thrown in. A little dissappointing to anyone used to a visit to Australian wineries, especially the smaller, more personable ones.

I could laugh at the comments that came from the French, automatic out-of-hand dismissal of Australian wine. Or the comments; “naturally they go for quantity at the low end of the market,” or “they change blends on a whim, here everything is controlled.” Then there's the Americans on the bus, none of them have ever been to a wine tasting before!

Once back at the hostel I had a more leisurely evening than last night; sitting around eating bread and cheese and sausage, and drinking wine with Lolita and Tiffany, Brazilian and Canadian respectively, and Julie, from the Blue Mountains in Australia.

Where?

Bordeaux

  Odometer: 1870.7km
  Today: 0.0km
  Trip total: ??km

Bronchitis hit me hard this morning, coughing and wheezing and spitting for an hour or more when I woke up. I was feeling sorry for myself and equally sorry for the others sharing the room.

Spent much of the day being a tourist and walking around, by lunch time I wasn't sure whether my aching legs were from cycling, walking, or just from being sick. I'd hoped to get onto the winery tour today but it was booked out. Maybe tomorrow….

After taking a couple of photos of the very famous statue I found out that I'm nearly at the end of a roll of film, and again I've left my spare film behind at the hostel. I also forget to copy down the statue's name or the comprehensive plaque around it. It had kings and queens and symbols of the republic and seahorses and water monsters and all kinds of things...

I found a shop with internet access, then had what the customer relations people would describe as an “unpleasant end-user experience.” Creaking old 486s, grotty keyboards, slow net connects and foreign keyboard layouts. Assorted linked systems back at Monash being out of action all affected each other, and the lack of server-side mail processing meant that when I could get through, there were several hundred mails waiting in my inbox to be manually sorted.

I spent the afternoon walking around the public gardens and the Natural History museum. It's a magnificent old building that feels like something out of the 19th century. Fusty old paint peels off the walls and the rooms are full of row after row of stuffed animals in glass cases.

I adjourned to an Irish pub to sit and write a few postcards, then after a large steak dinner, headed back to the hostel where I spent the evening with a bunch of Canadian guys and three young Finnish girls, drinking far too much wine and talking late into the night.

Where?

Bordeaux

  Odometer: 1870.7km
  Today: 151.09km
  Trip total: ??km

Good news or bad news first? The good news is that sometime during the night it finally cooled down and now is slightly overcast and around 20°C. Perfect weather for cycling. The bad news is that my cold is now much worse, probably bronchitis judging by the coughing and spitting!

Fantastic weather to ride in, cool and a light mist, so little that nothing stayed damp, just enough to keep me cool. It warmed up gradually later in the day, but stayed overcast the whole time.

Bordeaux was quite a hassle to get into, as most large cities are. Roadworks on the motorways meant that there were diversions all over the place. The side road I was on ended up being the motorway for quite a way. Further in I found a cyclepath labelled “Bordeaux Centre” and followed it for ages, then just as I was feeling hopeful that I was actually going to reach the centre of the city, it expired in a building site in a dodgy part of the docks on the wrong side of the river.

Bordeaux struck me as being overwhelmingly big. A big city, big traffic. It's probably the largest place I've had to ride into. Surprisingly enough, once I'd made it across the river I found the hostel easily enough.

The Garonne river is quite something to anyone from Australia. We just don't have rivers on that scale! The current looks frighteningly strong, full of enormous eddies.

The hostel is very new and clean, it even has a bicycle room, but there isn't anything to lock the bikes to inside the room, so you have to trust all the other people with access.

Route

Saintes, D6 to Thenac, Tesson, Gémozac, Toutvent, Mortagne-s-Gironde, D145 to St Thomas de Conac, St Bonnet-s-Girone, St Ciers-s-Gironde, D9 to Blaye, D669 to St-Andre-de-Cubzac, St Vincent de Paul, Bordeaux.

  Odometer: 1719.6km
  Today: 95.41km
  Trip total: ??km

I'd left La Rochelle with a vague idea of riding to Bordeaux today, optimistically managing to mis-read the map. At lunchtime as I neared Rochefort I saw that it was another 160km! Decided to make for Saintes instead, and only just made it there, during the afternoon the temperature just kept on climbing, around 35°C I guess.

I found a bike track this morning that ran from La Rochelle to Rochefort, but as with bike tracks everywhere it didn't seem to have enough signs and I managed to lose it a couple of times. One particularly frustrating occasion had me zig-zagging back and forth and venturing onto the motorway before I rediscovered the track.

The last stretch from Rochefort to Saintes was exhausting, I was just plodding along guzzling down hot water and counting down the kilometres. Finally got in around 3pm, had a shower as soon as the hostel opened, and then went to bed and slept for an hour.

After a sleep I felt much refreshed, the temperature had dropped too, so wandering around the town was quite reasonable. I had a look at some Roman ruins, drank a few refreshing beers, sat in the park and then had a meal in the square.

Route

La Rochelle, Châtelaillon-Plage, Vieux Châtelaillon, le Marouillet, Yves, Fouras, Rochefort, N137 to Saintes.

  Odometer: ??km
  Today: 0.0km
  Trip total: 1455.0km

It was nice to wake up and not have to pack up and move. Michael and I walked around for an essential visit to the laundromat, then spent the morning sitting on the beach watching the girls go by.

The beach and the bay looked fantastic, but as the tide went out we saw that the sand ended at the waters edge, and it was all mud and rocks from there out! Probably explained why so many people were sitting on the beach, and so few were in the water.

In the afternoon I managed to chase up an internet connection and check my email, 690 messages to sort through, and only two that I was interested in, the two from Jo. The French keyboard isn't a QWERTY layout, and that really slowed me down. The whole “internet booth” was an Apple iMac in a fancy cabinet, and it crashed as soon as I tried to access St George's electronic banking applet. Not a satisfactory experience!

In the evening we walked around the harbour again and drooled over the Round-the-world yachts that had tied up as part of the BT Global Challenge event. Fleetingly joked about trying to crash the welcome ceremony and help ourselves to the seafood buffet and champagne that we could see, but settled for going to dinner and a few beers in a nearby café.

39FF for a pint of Guiness came as an unpleasant surprise, although the beer and the bar and the company were good. Later we explored a few more side streets as things got a little quieter with the end of the weekend, and found a statue of a horse that someone had put a beer bottle in its mouth. I tried to take a picture, but had trouble zooming in on something that far away. Again, it cooled down rapidly once the sun went away, and we had a fairly early night.

  Odometer: 1622.7km
  Today: 167.7km
  Trip total: ??km

My cold is growing, I've been sneezing all day, and my nose is running constantly.

Stinking hot again inland, later in the afternoon it cooled as I got the sea breeze, but there were then 30km of head-winds across “Les Marais” which I think translates as “the swamp”. A flat, smelly, and very uninspiring ride!

It took me almost an hour and a half to get out of Nantes, I kept having to avoid motorways and zig-zag about, never seeming to make any headway. Managed to get lost in a couple of smaller towns as well.

In Luçon I was stopped reading a map when a French girl and her daughter came up and chatted (in English). She had ridden across Canada about 9 years ago, and would like to travel more, but with her young daughter now she just makes do with talking to riders that she meets.

Crossing Les Marais there are some strangely disturbing bits of road-kill on the desolate roads and lane-ways. They look like beavers, or enormous rats. I've no idea what they are, but I don't think I'd want to fall into the drainage ditches off the road. If anyone knows what they are, please tell me!

In La Rochelle I met a guy from Mt Evelyn, just out of Melbourne! Neither of us had booked into the hostel and we were surprised at how full it is, apparently we're lucky to get a bed at all! We spent the evening exploring the town, but it cooled down pretty quickly once the sun had set.

Where?

Nantes, Luçon, La Rochelle.

  Odometer: 1455.0km
  Today: 143.9km
  Trip total: ??km

I've had a sore throat all day, I think I'm getting a cold.

I felt like crap and hardly wrote anything in my journal.

Rennes was nearly impossible to get out of on the bike, I ended up heading south on the main highway for a few kilometres before being able to escape onto the side roads.

Where?

Rennes, N137-E3 to Chartres-de-Bretagne, Noyal-Chatillon-sur-Seiche, St Erolon, Bourgbarré, Chanteloup, le Sel-e-Bretagne, la Bosse-de-Bretagne, Teillay, la Thébaudais, Rouge, Châteaubriant, Issé, la Robertière, Nort-s-Erdre, D 26 to Sucé-sur-Erdre, Nantes.

  Odometer: 1311.1km
  Today: 141.9km
  Trip total: ??km

A long day, but in some ways it didn't really feel like it.

After getting out of bed and queueing for breakfast with hundreds of French school girls all on a school holiday trip, I headed out at 10:00 along the minor coast road in the direction of Mont St. Michel. I hadn't realised how far it was, so it was 64km and 1pm by the time that I got there, very hungry and hot. The early fog burnt off quite quickly to a hot day. Mont St. Michel loomed into sight when it was at least 50km away, and just didn't seem to get any closer, when I finally got there it was a bit of a dissapointment, with hundreds of people, cars and tour busses all around. With nowhere to lock my bike, and hunger rapidly rearranging my priorities I headed back over the causeway to a supermarket and then lunched in the park.

Over lunch I decided to head for Rennes since there was still plenty of time and I was feeling fine. Three hours later, stinking hot and probably stinking, I rode into Rennes with no real idea of where I was heading. Just as I found the centre of town I spotted a hostel sign, headed off and got lost and confused, then found the signs again, and by 18:00 I was showered and comfortable, amazed at how far I'd travelled in one day.

Where?

St Malo, D201 to Rotheneuf, le Verger, les Portes, D155 to le Vivier, D797 to Pontoroson, D976 to le Mont-St-Michel, Pontoroson, D175 to Antrain and Rennes.

  Odometer: 1169.2km
  Today: 48.110km
  Trip total: ??km

Young Sammy's first birthday if I remember correctly...

I bummed around all day in the sun, riding out to le Corbienne lighthouse in the south-west. Once there I found a broken spoke, on the cluster side of course. Probably as a result of over-changing and dropping the derailleur into the spokes.

Rode back to St Helier and tried all three bike shops, all were too busy to change it. I ended up doing it out on the street with the help of a guy who ran a tourist bike-hire business, he'd called in to visit at the same time I was there. After a bit of re-tensioning to the entire wheel it all finally stopped creaking and so we went and had a beer while I waited for the ferry...

Chatted to a Danish motor-cyclist on the crossing to St. Malo, then had my bike disinfected against foot and mouth yet again as we disembarked. The guy manning the disinfectant sprayer was pretty good about it, acknowledged that the odds on me managing to bring foot and mouth disease on the bike tyres were almost zero, and was careful not to blast the oil and grease off the gears and chain.

A little disorientation and riding around in circles before I managed to find the St Malo Youth Hostel, I ended up almost heading out of town before I found a sign pointing back in towards where I wanted to go. My minimalist map was no help, so I covered the same roads about four times in different directions.

Where?

St Helier, St. Malo

  Odometer: 1119.5km
  Today: 42.03km
  Trip total: ??km

I woke up this morning and couldn't work out whether the clocks were right or not; I had no idea whether Jersey was in the same time zone as the UK or not!

I left the panniers in the B&B for the day and headed out on the bike. Riding into town after breakfast I was wobbling all over the place, its amazing how different the bike feels without the panniers on it, and how quickly you become accustomed to them. Chose to ride through the tunnel, twice, which I think was illegal, rather than go the long way around the point.

Yet another ferry ticket mystery. A one-way ticket to St. Malo is £28! I really can't understand these pricing structures.

The Zoo—Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust

[www.durrell.org] I'm not sure what I was expecting here, I've been a fan of the late Gerald Durrell since I was about 12 and first read one of his books. For years I've wanted to visit, and now that I'm finally here its all a little disappointing. The animal enclosures were excellent, the animals healthy, but it wasn't easy to find your way around, the signs were all in a dozen different styles, frequently just photocopied sheets of paper. Without a guidebook it would be nearly impossible to find your way around.

Thinking that I was about to run out of film, and having left all my spare in the B&B, I bought a pack of three forty exposure films, then discovered that I was up to frame 24 of 40, not 24 of 25! As a result, I've now got enough film for 200 more shots! It'll probably last me an eternity, since I tend to take very few photos.

The frogs cage was one of my favourites, with a number of beautiful individuals on display. I spent most of the day following the free guided tour, our guide was incredibly enthusiastic and almost overcome with laughter when the free-range marmosets started climbing all over her to get to the food. Apparently this was the first day that both species — of marmoset, not marmosets and zoo keepers — had been together in this area.

Eventually I felt I'd seen enough and left the zoo to meander around in the sun along the lane-ways of the north coast, then sat on a small rocky beach, gazing at France, feeling content and finally on holiday. Feeling much happier now that I was out in the warm weather and out of the UK — hang on, Jersey is part of the UK, make that out of England — it just hadn't been feeling like a holiday for a while there.

There were many other cyclists out on the roads during the afternoon, all sorts of bikes and all sorts of people.

Came home and lay down for a nap for a while, then walked in St Helier to resolve my mounting money crisis. I've spent a scary amount today! Walked around the centre of town looking at menus but it was the bistro at the end of the local street that caught my eye, so when I got back I went in there and had a luxury meal, scallops in garlic sauce followed by a Seafood Tagliatelle. All excellently prepared, and in large quantities, as I waddled out the door, the plate-full that I left looked as though I had hardly touched it.

Which reminded me of some of the other menus I had seen across the south of England:

“Chorizo sausages in Sweet'n'sour sauce with pasta” — seems an interesting mix of nationalities.... or

“Menu Español” — containing lasagne, spaghetti bolognaise, and fish & chips!

Where?

St Heliers.

  Odometer: 1077.1km
  Today: 29.20km
  Trip total: ??km

Six weeks until I see Jo, and I've got a broken tooth. Feeling just a little depressed today, the grey English weather isn't helping. On re-checking the calendar I found that it's seven weeks, not six.

A lazy day, I rode the 12k or so through Studland and the coastal park to the ferry then paid my 80p to cross to Poole. The ferry prices are strange, I've paid anything from 80p to £3.50, and it would have cost £4.50 to cross Exmouth! The prices seem to depend on whether the ferry is oriented at tourism, or is a functional replacement for a bridge. Found that the 1:45pm ferry today doesn't go to Jersey, so I bought a ticket on the 4:15pm, paid my £51, then lazed around in Poole on the Quay, watching the boats in the harbour and the passers-by. Directly across from where I was sitting is the boat-builder for one of the multi-millionaire off-shore cruiser boat firms, there are some fantastic looking boats being built.

The ferry ride was a bit of an anti-climax, no reading material because I'd left it all in my bags, and nobody to talk to. One thing that caught my eye was a plaque with a map of Tasmania on the wall. The ferry is built in Tasmania, and seems to be more successful at crossing the English channel then they are at crossing Bass Strait.

A problem I found with leaving at 4pm was that I didn't arrive in Jersey until 8pm, after the tourist office had closed. With no idea of where to stay and it rapidly getting darker, I rode around and around looking for an affordable B&B and eventually found that £25 a night was all that was available — but only if I booked in for two nights!

A bite to eat and a walk along the foreshore, then I sat with a pint and listened to some Karaoke in a bar. Strangely, nearly everyone who tried could sing — one big guy called Andy had the most amazing deep voice. I left near closing time and nearly forgot which street was home, but found it after only one false start.

Where?

Swanage, Studland, Poole, St Helier.

  Odometer: 1039.7km
  Today: 89.45km
  Trip total: ??km

Worst part of the day — stopping to grab some fish and chips in Swanage from The Fish Plaice and breaking a tooth on a piece of grit in the second chip I ate. Staff in the shop couldn't care less, grabbed another chip out of the fryer, poked it with their fingers and declared “nuffin wrong with em”.

I'm staying in a B&B because the YHA is shut! There are no people, no signs, no messages on the answering machine, nothing. Just an empty building and a recording of “we can't answer the phone, please leave a message and we'll call you back,” which is of zero use if I don't have a number to be called back on! To make it more inconvenient, the YHA is most of the way up a hill, and the nearest phone-booth is down at the harbour, so I rode up and down a very steep road about three times. Eventually I gave up and checked into a B&B.

This morning I rode up around the Isle of Portland, there was a local cycle race around the roads on the top and they all laughed when I rode into the start with the panniers and asked if they were accepting late entries, and what was the handicap for 20kg of gear. Lots of motor-bikes around as well, all out for their Sunday ride. Stopped to look at the lighthouse, and was reminded of a conversation a few days ago with someone who said he was photographing every lighthouse he came to because his mother collected lighthouses... mostly just photos and models, I don't think she had a real one yet.

I didn't end up leaving Weymouth until 1pm, there was a parade of WWII vets and vehicles celebrating the Queen's birthday, people everywhere and traffic brought to a standstill. It felt like being on the set of Dad's Army! One of the last groups to drive past was a collection of motor-bikes and bicycles, with one of the bikes stalling on the start line and refusing to restart. When it eventually could be kicked into life, the crowd gave the rider and round of applause.

After sitting and watching the parade I made my way to the ferry terminal and found out that although the day return ticket to Jersey is £29, they want £51 for a one-way ticket! I could try for a day-return, but was told that if they suspect that I'm “miss-using it,” when I get to Jersey, I'll be charged double the day return, minus what I've spent already!

Left Weymouth along the A353, then followed the A352 to the delightfully named town “Wool,” just another of the towns I seem to find that have a single noun for a name. Turned off at Wool down the B3071, then down a lane through Coombe Keynes, Shaggs and on to East Lulworth.

The ride out through the Dorset countryside from there was through an army firing range! It took me some time to convince myself that I'd taken the right turn, and I retraced my steps back to East Lulworth a couple of times before I was sure. Very strange to see burnt out tanks sitting in the fields besides the roads.

Corfe Castle looked very impressive, towering ruins poking up out of the trees. I ran into a large group of motor-cyclists out for a Sunday run there, some of them were the same group I'd met in Portland this morning. From there it was back onto the A351 for a busy rode down into Swanage.

Once in Swanage, it was up and down the hill trying to get into the Youth Hostel before eventually settling on a B&B, some of these places must seriously believe that Faulty Towers is a training video.

Where?

Portland, Weymouth, Wool, Coombe Keynes, Shagg, East Lulworth Swanage.

  Odometer: 950.2km
  Today: 145.31km
  Trip total: ??km

The hostel last night was far less crowded, our eight-bed room only held me and the two Swedish girls, and neither of them snored. Woke up to yet more drizzle though, a theme that continued through the day.

I dodged the rain; I got caught in the rain. I made it to Starcross just on 10:15, and since the ferry runs on the hour, I either had a forty five minute wait or I could ride up to Exeter and back along the other side of the river. Since the only way to get from the main road to the passenger ferry was on a footbridge up and over the railway lines, and I did not feel like lugging the bike up and down them, I took the long option and rode to Exeter instead.

From Exeter I stuck to the A3052, not a very scenic ride, but since I'd already added more distance than I wanted, I didn't feel like going around the coast in the rain.

Coming down a 16% hill towards Seaton my rear tyre decided to make life more exciting as the tyre split and the tube blew out. Luckily I wasn't going too fast, so there was only a small scrape of the rim against the road before I managed to stop and walk the rest of the way down the hill. I walked about a mile into Seaton and asked a passerby about bike shops, he directed me back out of Seaton towards Ladyton, about 2½ miles, a long walk along the lanes, he also warned me that the shop closed from noon until 2:30 on a Saturday so the owner could have his lunch. It was with some misgivings that I made the walk, thinking that my chances of finding a bike shop here were minimal, and trying to work out the best way of locking the bike up and catching a bus to Lyme Regis, which I thought would be the closest large town, and most likely to have a bike shop.

Amazingly enough, the shop did exist, and it seemed enormous for the tiny village. It also seemed to be as old as most of the village, containing stock from decades ago. After returning from his leisurely lunch, the staff opened up and found me their last 26" slick tyre, a Tioga Cityslicker that they sold to me for £10.

Shortly after leaving Ladyton I was drenched by a thunderstorm, but was too hot to put on my spray jacket, so I just rode along, steaming gently.

I finally got to Weymouth around 6:15pm, and with much misgivings turned towards Portland and over the causeway. Trusting to luck to find the YHA, the first corner I came to had a large sign pointing straight to it! Brand new, still smelling of paint, the hostel is an ex-Ministry of Defence Police house on the naval base. Its newness explains the omission from the phone listing.

Life took a turn for the better with a comfortable room for the night and a warm shower, I'm sharing a room with a German guy from Oxford who is riding from Oxford to Exeter this weekend via Salisbury and Portland. Rounded off the evening with an excellent meal at the Cove House Inn, and sat and drank and talked with Tony and Tricia, a couple from Mansfield in Nottingham.

Where?

Torquay, Starcross, Exeter, Seaton, Ladyton, Weymouth, Portland

  Odometer: ??km
  Today: 0km
  Trip total: ??km

Drizzle in the morning, fine in the afternoon, then pouring with rain in the evening. Not the best day to spend wandering around through the shops, although I did manage to go for a walk up along the beach path quite a way. Visited Torre Abbey, but I didn't feel like paying the £3 entry fee, so I just walked around the outside and looked in.

Money just seemed to be disappearing today, nothing to do but fritter it away on things to eat and things to drink.

Where?

Torquay.

  Odometer: 804.0km
  Today: 67.02km
  Trip total: ??km

A grey day, a grey mood, a cold south-easterly head wind and about 10km extra due to my inability to read road signs. Somewhere along the way I detoured off the A370 and ended up at Underwood, then had to retrace my steps as I was determined to not ride on the A38.

Felt rotten all morning, that the riding was just a chore to be finished. The A379 to Brixton, detour to Underwood and back, then A379 to A3121 to Ugborogough, turning off onto laneways to Totnes, then the A385 to Paignton, and around the bay to Torquay.

One bizarre event was stopping at a petrol station on the A379 for a mars bar and a drink. I could swear that I went through the same conversation with the same lady as I did three years ago when I last rode through here.

I managed to get to the hostel in Torquay at around 1pm, just ahead of the rain, then sat around drinking coffee and chatting with the other residents and restoring my good humour.

Later on, around 4pm, went out to a nearby pub that had a PC with free internet access for as long as you had a beer nearby. I managed to somehow dispose of the more than 7000 emails that had banked up in my in-box! Some well-meaning person back at Monash has put in a vacation message for me and thus stuffed up half my mailing list subscriptions and automatic mailings. I did manage to send a second message to Jo, as well as catch up with Andy at Wide Open Road, and turn off all the cron messages from Monash, so it wasn't a waste of time.

Spent most of the rest of the afternoon unwinding from too many days riding with too few breaks. Had a few pints, then a dinner and back to the hostel, before going back out to the pub with everyone from the hostel. It was good to be out with people for a change. The local surf band were nothing special, too loud for the venue, but full of enthusiasm. A fine cover of the Buzzcocks' “Ever Fallen in Love” seemed to suit the singers voice perfectly.

Off to a club afterwards, but I was starting to fade at this point, a glass of water and all I wanted was to go to sleep, so I left — then managed to get lost on the way home and covered twice as much of Torquay as was necessary.

Where?

Plymouth, Brixton, Underwood, Ugborogough, Totnes, Paignton Torquay.

  Odometer: 736.9km
  Today: 112.24km
  Trip total: ??km

A few minor misreadings of the map and my estimated 80km trip turned into 112km!

Three ferry crossing during the day; three very different styles of ferry. There was a very touristy pedestrian one from Falmouth to St. Mawes, at Fowey a creaking little car ferry drawn along on chains, then another pedestrian ferry right at the end of the day into Plymouth.

Lunch at St. Austell, a place I thought was a bit of a dump. Dingy concrete shopping malls straight out of the 80's, unemployed and single mums just hanging around hopelessly everywhere. The bakery staff warned me to a keep a close eye on my bike and all my stuff if I wanted to keep it.

I did manage to find another of the cross-country bike routes though, “NCN3” I think it is, but without any maps of these and of where they go, I don't find them particularly useful! Before coming away on this tour I had tried emailing the CTC, Britain's cycling group, as they seem to have a large amount of information on touring. Unfortunately they seem to only make this available to their members, I couldn't download any of the useful material from their web-site, and they never responded to the email enquiries. A shame really, as I've been assured that they are very helpful normally!

Met an older couple who are doing the end-to-end ride. I saw them yesterday near Penzance, and we're all staying at the Plymouth Backpackers. The backpackers was still as I remembered it from 1998, more importantly, it was still where I remembered it from 1998, since the street signs didn't seem to help in finding it.

Where?

Falmouth, St. Mawes, Fowey, St. Austell, Plymouth.

  Odometer: 624.5km
  Today: 77.51km
  Trip total: ??km

No breakfast at the backpackers so I cruised out at 8:30 and rode down to Lands End. It's the sort of place that everyone knows is tacky, but everyone visits all the same. At nine in the morning before it all opens up everything looks even sadder and more depressing than normal. It was dead still, no wind, no people, just flat sea and gulls calling.

I sat at the famous sign post and wrote a postcard to Jo, taking my own photo before the stalls opened up and I was forced to pay the £5 charge for a photo! I love the sound of the gulls here, it just seems to suit the place.

Breakfast wasn't until Penzance at about 22km, I was more than a little hungry by then! I nearly laughed out loud at the menu when I saw the English Vegetarian breakfast — fried eggs, fried bread, beans, everything else fried in butter and bacon fat. The only difference from the regular breakfast is the absence of bacon and sausage. I had the traditional breakfast, which was ok, but foolishly asked for a caffe latte, which was shocking. I should stick with straight espresso or filter coffee here — these strange foreigners just don't seem to know how to drive their milk frothers.

The tendons in my right knee were very sore this morning, but raising my seat a fraction seems to be helping and it got gradually better during the day. I think a few things have come loose in the days on the bike.

Falmouth is a nice place after the tourist towns, just a plain ordinary sea port town. I'm staying at a B&B though, since the hostel in the guidebook has apparently been closed for a couple of years! The ever-so-helpful local Tourist Information Centre staff tried to direct my to the nearest backpackers — “just a little bit up the road” — in Newquay, where I stayed two nights ago!!!

Later in the afternoon I sat on the beach eating apple pie and cream while waiting to get to the B&B, then had a wonderful hot shower once I was inside. The only drawback is that Norky bike has to live outside chained to an old ladder.

These £15-20 B&Bs are pretty worthwhile when I consider that most hostels are around £10, with breakfast typically another £3-£5. A very different clientele that they're aiming at though, a few times I've had the B&B operators look down their noses at a single person on a bicycle.

Spent the evening sitting in a pub having a pint and then another pint... Sitting and watching the bay and the old video clips from the early eighties on the juke box. The Jam came on and brought a smile to my face. Then an old Carly Simon clip of “You're So Vain” from years ago. The Jam ended and a song started that I knew I should remember but I just couldn't place it. Finally it twigged, “Teenage Kicks,” the Undertones, another strange musical coincidence that seems to haunt my visits to the UK.

Where?

Sennen, Lands End, Penzance, Falmouth.

  Odometer: 547.0km
  Today: 94.66km
  Trip total: ??km

Jo's email yesterday and my thoughts of her were heavy on my mind all day, a melancholy day, and it's only one week into the nine so far.

Right now its 7pm, the sun is miles up above the horizon out over the Atlantic. I'm sitting on the headland up above Sennen Bay. It is incredibly peaceful here, the only sound is the waves on the shore, the sea is quite flat. (Seems that everywhere I go, the sea is flat!)

All the other travellers I meet all seem so young. I'm missing Jo already. This nine week trip seemed good in theory, I hope it works out well in practice!

Back to more prosaic matters, St. Ives was an interesting place to visit, but I think I'd prefer to do it on foot if I came here again! Steep narrow roads, all marked one way only, and tourist busses everywhere, grinding their way up and down from the harbour. I managed to take a wrong turn while trying to get out of town and ended up back at the harbour, on my second attempt I followed a local bus, even with the panniers I managed to follow it far enough to get me back to the country roads.

Somewhere along the way I've managed to hurt my right knee, possibly from struggling up some of the hills, but I think my cleat has slipped a little as well. The constant hammering on the handlebars has also left me with a blood blister on my left hand.

I had been intending to stay at the Lands End YHA at St. Just, but when I got there I found that they were closed. No real reason, just a note pinned on the door saying “shut for two days”, just another case of British tourism at work I guess.

Dinner was excellent. I sat in the Sennen pub and had a home-made fish cake with chips and salad and the best garlic and herb bread that I've eaten for months. The fish cake was enormous!

Where?

Newquay, St. Ives, St. Just, Sennen.

  Odometer: 451.9km
  Today: 64.97km
  Trip total: ??km

Woke at 5:30 as usual, but managed to sleep for another two hours with my mask on and ear-plugs in. When I finally did get up it was to see a gray dismal sky and listen to the howling of the wind.

At breakfast an old man celebrating his 40th wedding anniversary observed, “In my day, you was a sissy if you 'ad gears.” Despite the accusing tone, he was quite interested in where I was going and where I'd been, and did temper his initial comment by pointing out that he “'adn't carried arf as much kit” as I was.

Finally saw another bike tourer as I rode through Tintagel, a girl heading north with bigger panniers and twice as much to carry as I. I called out hello but she either didn't notice or didn't respond. Tintagel looked a bit too touristy for my tastes, too many plastic king arthurs and merlins, so I didn't stop to look around.

One of several strangely named towns for the trip was “Rock”. These single-noun towns seemed unusual, I guess I was expecting them to be prefixed by “The Rock” or “Fred's Rock” or “Big Rock”. “Rock” and “Beer” just seemed too short.

Showing that the residents have a decent sense of humour, I sat around in the local “Soft Rock café” for morning tea, then spent half an hour in the shop next door chatting to the guy who runs it. He normally lives in Grenoble in the Alps, and was full of advice on places to visit and roads to ride. Unfortunately most of these were rattled off at such a pace that I couldn't remember more than one in ten. He was also surprised that I'd chosen to go touring with SID forks on the bike, I think brave was the politest way he could find to express himself.

After wheeling my bike across the sand and hoisting it into the boat, I caught the foot ferry across to Padstow, then it was pleasant riding the rest of the way to Newquay. Like most of the coast, the road swoops up and down from sea level to moors, and on one my chain decided to come off just as I started to climb.

Newquay is crass and touristy, full of surf culture and pinball parlours. Out-of-place looking Australian surf memorabilia and shops. The strange thing is that for such a tourist-oriented town, the Tourist Information Centre is shut on a Sunday! According to the sign on their door, they're only open half of Saturday too. True British tourism at work.

After negotiating a maze of one-way streets I found the backpackers and left my bike in “the Boardroom” — a room full of surfboards and wetsuits.

The ATMs decided that I wasn't going to get any money, so I thought that £11 was going to have to last me til morning, but after lunch the VISA machine decided to work and let me have some. Checking my bank balances on the Internet I found that I've already maxed out my Mastercard! I tried to check my email, but one of the automatic processes back at work has gone badly awry and there are 2900 email log messages in my in-box. Attempting to sort through these over a dodgy connection with a PC that keeps substituting ding-bats for the fonts is well nigh impossible. I found one email from Jo from last Thursday, managed to rattle off a quick reply, disconnected and was charged £5.20 for the whole unsavoury ordeal!

For entertainment in the evening I headed out to an Aussie theme pub for a beer, laughed at the tackiness of it all, street signs from Melbourne and Sydney, the front half of a Holden Commodore hanging over the bar, stuffed crocodiles everywhere. A tiny portion of expensive fish and chips and a couple of beers, most of the entertainment was in the 20ish crowd, dressed in American/Australian surf gear, but talking in west-country accents.

Where?

Boscastle, Tintagel, Rock, Padstow Newquay.

  Odometer: 386.8km
  Today: 125km
  Trip total: ??km

I discovered today that my panniers are falling apart! The right one has lost one of the bolts that holds a hook on, and the left one has come half-undone. The threads on the left hand side are stripped and the aluminium bar is bent where the hole weakens it. Will they last seven more weeks?

I got lost in Barnstaple in the Saturday morning market crowds, then it took ages to get out of town onto the Tarka Trail, and as soon as I found the trail I punctured the rear! Wheel off, tyre off, tube out, patched, back together, back on the bike, all before finding out that it was a snake-bite and I had the other hole still to fix. Consequently, not in the best of moods as I rode out of town.

About 65km into the day the tyre went soft so I was pumping it up every 10km, preferring to change it when I got to town rather than out on the road. On top of that, I didn't eat enough and bonked out at Holsworthy. The Holsworthy bakery performed life-saving service with a cup of tea, an apple donut and a slice of tea cake, and I was in much better spirits from then on.

The last 30km seemed interminable, dragging on and on up and down the hills. I finally got in to Boscastle at 5:30 and it more than made up for it. The town is magic, a little world heritage village nestled in the bay, the sort of place that made me think of parking the bike and just moving in for a year, to live here through the winter as well as the summer tourist time. The YHA is right on the harbour in a converted old warehouse, there are photos of waves coming over the wharf and hitting 4’ up the walls, washing two foot deep around the door!

Changing inner tubes I found that the spare has a slightly shorter valve stem and is barely long enough to fit through the crappy rim. Pumping it up was a trial of patience, as it has to be completely flat to let the pump grip the valve, but if it slides off before its fully inflated, I have to let it all back down again!

Where?

Lynton, Barnstaple, Holsworthy Boscastle.

  Odometer: 261.7km
  Today: 115.4km
  Trip total: ??km

A long ride, with some amazing hills. I discovered that gradients of 1:4 are scary downhill, and nearly impossible to ride uphill.

Leaving Glastonbury I got a little bit lost, heading north-west instead of west I'd turned off the A39 somewhere near Northove, desperate to get off the A road, and added a few more miles onto the route. Part of the problem was getting breakfast. Nothing seemed to open in Glastonbury before noon, I managed to find a bakery and a couple of buns, but all the shops and cafés seem to be for the tourist crowd and don't open until noon. Eventually I found myself back on the B31351, so continued along it to a turn off that headed back south, crossed the A39 near Ashcott, then headed west along the back-lanes.

Bridgwater was a bit of a nightmare to navigate, it was market day and the place was packed. I finally managed to get out and onto the A39, not that it was pleasant. A nasty shock being on an A road; not much wider than the lanes, but a lot more traffic. Once I turned off back into the lanes I quickly needed the granny gear, but the chain still kept jamming. Judicious applications of lube and swear words seemed to make it better, which is good, since the climb up through the Qantock Hills would have been impossible otherwise. Very steep descents into Stogumber, then I got lost somewhere at an unsigned corner and had to backtrack. At Washford I rejoined the A39 and A-road traffic to Minehead, then sat in the sun in the town square and ate a sticky bun, glad to be out of the wind.

From Minehead the only option is along the A39, until I reached Porlock, where cyclists are allowed to use the private toll road. It's a 6km climb up through the woods, spinning along in granny gear at about 10km/hr with magnificent views out to sea. The toll-keeper at the top just waived me through, I think the 50p bicycle toll is reserved for people who drive their bikes out here on the roof of their Range-rovers and ride up from the village.

Then it was back onto the A39, rolling ups and downs across the wind-swept moors. I found a mobile phone sitting at the side of the road, it made me laugh that in the supposed desolation of the moors people could lose their mobile phones.

The hills down to Lynmouth are amazing, 1:4 gradient, holding the brakes hard on most of the way down. Then when I got down to the town I found it was exactly the same going back out! With the short wheelbase and weight of the panniers I found it completely unridable, the bike was wheel-standing and threatening to flip right over, so I ended up walking most of the way up to Lynbridge.

After lying on a bench in the garden and waiting until they opened, I checked into the hostel and had a much-needed hot shower.

Changed into clean clothes and walked down to Lynton on very rubbery legs, most of the village was shut, but I did get to ride on the vertical railway down to Lynmouth. Its a marvellous piece of Victorian engineering, water from the river fills a tank under the railway cart at the top, then the weight forces this car down while a chain pulls the other car up to the top. The drivers regulate the amount of water in the tanks to cater for the weight of passengers, and its been running like this for the last hundred years.

A filling pub meal of baked potato and salad, thankfully with none of the evil salad cream that the pubs seem so fond of, a quick pint and I was home and in bed, exhausted, by 9:30pm.

Where?

Glastonbury, Northove, Ashcott, Bridgwater, Stogumber, Washford, Minehead, Porlock Lynmouth, Lynton.

  Odometer: 146.2km
  Today: 62.41km
  Trip total: ??km

Sitting in a pub in Glastonbury, the second of two pubs this evening, having a beer and watching the sun go down. The distance today was a little less, I didn't feel so pushed for time.

Got in around 3pm in plenty of time for a shower and a wander around town. I caught the bus out to the Tor and walked up to the top — then nearly got blown off by the icy wind. Glastonbury Tor seems to be the only thing that sticks up from this part of the country, and collects the wind straight off the north Atlantic.

Glastonbury is packed with new-agers, feral people of every description, hippies, beggars etc. All the standard “alternative” crafts you can find, all looking the same the world over. It could be Daylesford, it could be Byron Bay....

Riding along today I passed through some tiny lanes; one car wide and very dark, with the hedges meeting overhead. I learnt not to ride too close to the soft, verdant, green walls after brushing one too many protruding nettles and blackberries! Saw a dead badger on the road, and lots of foot and mouth warning signs, “Stay off this farm to prevent the spread...” A killer climb up out of one village and I discovered that my granny gear won't work properly. Worn ring or bad tension, I later discovered that the shop in Devizes hadn't re-adjusted my derailleur to cope with the different wheel.

Highlight of the riding would have had to be the lane down through the Cheddar Gorge. From the top it's a narrow country lane-way, a spectacular descent, 16.5% slope complete with a sign warning cyclists to dismount and walk. The temperature dropped between the limestone walls and I shivered as I chased a flock of wild goats down the pass.

Once the sun set, the alternative people came out in force. Some to the pubs, the poorer to just sit in the square, drink and smoke. What would have had to have been the world's worst busker set himself up directly below the hostel window with a drum kit and a ghetto blaster playing Hendrix. Ten or fifteen minutes of appalling noise and my room mate offering to drop a plant pot on his head, eventually the manager went outside and convinced him to turn it down.

Where?

Bristol, Cheddar Gorge, Glastonbury.

  Odometer: 79.9km
  Today: 79.72km
  Trip total: 79.9km

I must write this down while I remember it, sitting here in a pub in Bristol. Somewhere along the canal in the past two days I came to a little bridge, a narrow boat had stopped and a lady was carrying a bag of rubbish across to the bin. A stereotypical west-country old codger was sitting on a bench nearby, just watching the canal and the world go by. He looked at the lady and said “'eee, you be watchin' for trolls.” The lady didn't seem to understand, he looked at me, “eer, you know about trolls...” “Sure,” I said, “they live under bridges — little ugly fellers.” Old guy nods and replies “eee, 's right, I had some under me sofa once,” then goes back to watching the canal. The lady gave a quick “Harrumph!” and walked quickly back to her boat, and I rode off down the canal. Just a wonderful character at peace with the world, its a whole different world along the canals and towpaths away from the traffic and roads.

Back to today. There was an hour of fiddling about in Devizes after riding back up past Caen locks, phone cards and stamps and stuff, then back down the hill past the locks and finally on my way along the canal towards Bath.

Quiet and empty along the canal until Bath, then it was bizarre. Until then I'd only seen pensioners and mums with babies, all of a sudden I was in the middle of Bath and surrounded by hundreds of people of all ages. Tourists, shoppers, everyone.

Swapped the canal for a rail trail and rode the rest of the way into Bristol, a major problem being the “anti-car” barricades on the path. The only way to fit the bike through them was to stop, get off, and flip it up onto the rear wheel to walk it through, scraping the panniers on the poles or walls.

A strange feeling to be back in a big town. Bristol is not as touristy as Bath, but bigger. I walked around a fair bit in the afternoon and evening, getting a general feel for the place and making my way up to the famous suspension bridge over the gorge. Unfortunately all the postcard photos seem to be taken from aircraft or balloons, from ground level it was very hard to get a picture that wasn't all sky, or included street lights and wires. Traffic was as bad as most large English towns and I was glad to be getting about on foot, not stuck in a car crawling along.

Where?

Devizes, Bath, Bristol.

  Trip total: ??km

The sun comes up at 4:30am! Jet lag kicks in and I'm wide awake. Lie around until 7am dozing and listening to the birds — and trying to stretch my neck and shoulders. Ouch!

Pore over the maps and changing my mind — my original plans were to go further north, I think I'll explore Cornwall!

It was an expensive day, and an over-ambitious one. The hill out of Streatly was a killer, I had to stop three times going up, and nearly couldn't start again. Then an easy ride over the tops to Newbury, absorbed in my own thoughts. Somewhere in Newbury I went down a kerb on a bike path — not a good thing to do with panniers on, unfortunately I was too busy trying to read road signs to spot that the path went down the kerb.

Following the advice of the tourist information centre I rode along the canal tow-path along the Kennet canal. Idyllic scenery, and not a human sound to be heard. The tow-path varied from gravel track to single track to great expanses of rough-mown grass. The latter was arduous, and very slow going.

Somewhere between Pawsley and Devizes I got a puncture, stopped and realised that the slight buckle in the rear wheel was much worse and that a spoke had ripped through the rim, probably on that kerb in Streatly.

Fixed the flat and crawled into Devizes, the Tourist Info. office set me up at a £25 B&B. Very nice place, bottom end for a B&B, but up at the high end of what I was intending to pay! Pub rooms seem to start at £50 and are all up-market. I'm a mile or two out of town at the bottom of the famous 29 Caen locks.

£37.50 got me the only eight-speed wheel available in the bike shop, a very robust looking deep-dish rim, designed to appeal to the off-road cool crowd. £9.95 for a replacement computer, and so for a touch under £50 I have a working bike again.

Walked from the B&B to town for dinner at the Black Horse, a pub on the canal, then back down Caen hill to get home. Too much walking!

Where?

Goring, Streatly, Newbury, Pawsley, Devizes.

  Trip total: ??km

Day the first, long and arduous. Out of Heathrow and found that the airline had ripped off the speedo cables — finally, after years of the cables looking “nearly ready to rip off”. Then I managed to twist the valve while trying to pump up the rear tyre and flattened it — always the rear. After removing wheel and tyre I repaired it and finally got on my way. Straight out into 8am A-road London traffic. I also discovered to my dismay that the notes I had on how to exit Heathrow by bike all referred to people arriving in the other terminal!

I escaped London easily enough. A few hints from an old man standing at a roundabout had me headed the right way towards, but not onto, the A30.

Stanwell, Ashford, Staynes, Wraysbury, Datchet. A pause for a beer in Datchet, the all important first beer of the trip. Datchet to Windsor — then around Windsor a dozen times. Gray and overcast I was lost immediately, then popped out at the castle; sat and watched the tourists for a bit, then out onto the B3024 to Reading. Leafy and green, very green, and not much traffic. Not much elbow room on the road either. I got to Reading to find that the YHA I thought was in Reading is 8 miles up the river at Goring, so by 3pm when I got here I was tired, a little stressed, and still wearing some of the clothes from Sunday as there hadn't seemed to be the time or place to change them at the airport.

The hostel is a big old house, sitting quietly on its lawn. Most of Goring seems to be doing that as well—just sitting quietly.

I've got aircraft hair and aircraft neck — will probably feel terrible tomorrow.

The girl with the bike on the flight yesterday had returned to Aus. for a few weeks to see family before returning to the UK to continue her “big trip.” She was taking her bike because she missed it, and the rental ones she'd tried are terrible.

Where?

Heathrow, Stanwell, Ashford, Staynes, Wraysbury, Datchet, Windsor, Reading, Goring.

I woke up this morning feeling that my trip wasn't really happening — I just haven't prepared anywhere near as much as I should have!

It was noon before we went out looking for a box to put my bike in. The first three shops were shut, finally Lawrencia Cycles in Glennferrie road came through — with the only box on their floor! Absolute dismay at the size of the box, but after dropping the seat, removing wheels and pedals, and spinning the bars around it all went in. A good thing too, just in front of me at the check-in counter there was a girl with an unparceled bike, she was just about reduced to tears by the flat refusal of the British Airways staff to take the bike. Her and her brother disappeared to look for a box, while I prayed that I wasn't going to end up at the same counter.

British Airways have been great, its a new aircraft, everything is clean, the food was excellent, all the babies are quiet, life is good.

The seat-back video screens are a bit of a problem for me though; when the old lady in front reclines her seat, the screen gets so close I can't focus on it! Maybe I'm getting too old and long sighted...

I sat and watched Clint Eastwood and Donald Sutherland in Space Cowboys, fun, but very corny, and then the oh-so-British Noel Coward in a 1950's war movie, something about destroyers, but I can't remember it's name.

Just what I needed first thing on a Monday morning — to have to go to the dentist! I guess it was better than getting a toothache halfway through my holiday, which was bound to happen if I hadn't gone. Discoverered again that local anaesthetic and motorbikes don't mix, riding to work afterwards was a hassle with my balance not feeling quite right.

One of the worst parts of going to the dentist always seems to be the inane conversation or questions that you have to listen to while your mouth is wedged open and you can't answer. Maybe it's meant to take your mind off the fact that someone is rummaging around inside your head with assorted pieces of metal.

What would you know, a quick attempt to find out a little about the sea-slug we found yesterday and I discover that there is a www.seaslug.com and www.seaslugforum.net! Not only that, but there are pictures of the beastie that we found.

Victim of a sudden old music attack: listening to the Undertones, and then found a couple of songs by the Thought Criminals, something I thought I'd never be able to do.

Meandering back along the coast from Inverloch to Melbourne we stopped in at a few of the lookouts and went exploring the cliffs and rockpools. The two most interesting finds of the day were:

• A four-sided starfish! In amongst a myriad of small, green, pentagonal starfish, I found a mutant square one.
• A greenish weedy looking seaslug thingy, about 15cm long. When poked with a stick it squirted purple dye at us, then wriggled around across the pool. Quite an amazing find, I've never seen one before.

...and what would a day along the coast be if we didn't get a sudden urge to eat large quantities of fish and chips, then regret it immediately afterwards and spend the rest of the afternoon feeling way too full and way too greasy.

Quote from a conversation in the car:

That'd be either the Hairy Nosed Wombat, wombatus hirsutus, or the Combat Wombat, errr, the Common Wombat.

...oddly, there is a Melbourne band called Combat Wombat. Maybe not so odd after all, it does roll off the tongue quite well.

I have been very lax. Almost two weeks since last I wrote and many things have happened.

Mainly spent the last few days at work looking into the feasibility of amalagamating the various authentication realms that we possess. It would be really nice to be able to seamlessly sign-on to the Novell NDS, Netscape MDS, Microsoft and MIT Kerberos systems all at once, then have SSH and everything else just work. Been doing a lot of reading, looks like we've picked a non-trivial problem!

Why do I have an empty post telling me that there's a full moon tonight?

A highly successful day. MarkO and I were dispatched to the far reaches of Brighton to rescue Jo's car, with the aid of a little manipulation, a few choice words, and a judicious application of Brute Force and Ignorance we coaxed it into having two gears, first and third. A nail-biting drive home, but infinitely better than having to tow it.

Feeling that a job well done deserved some reward, we spent the rest of the afternoon riding around in the sunshine, out from Doncaster to Warrandyte, listening to the birds and the river, and the odd shout of abuse from the petrol-heads who aren't fond of cyclists.

I was all set to spend the afternoon sitting around doing nothing, when the last of the morning was interrupted by a phone call from a damsel in distress. Jo's car seems to have sensed that she wants to sell it, so with great skill it has coasted to halt and refuses to change into gear — any gear. As a result, it is sitting in Brighton, she is sitting on the train, and no one is happy.

Finally got to have a social beer with cos, after we've been talking about it for many a month. Yet-Another-Franchise-Bar-Chain, a Belgian one this time, a decent place to be, and very enjoyable beers, but I'm not sure I like the increasing en-Franchisement of the pubs. As Ox said “what with all the Aussie bars in France, and theme bars here, pretty soon you'll have to go to Europe to get a Carlton.”

The power of advertising! After spotting a special offer from the Celtic Club for a pint and a meal for $AU8.50, Jo and I went in for dinner. All that and live music from Stephen O'Prey (ex of Weddings Parties Anything). An intimate occasion, only about ten people in the audience, so we sat and ate and drank and chatted with Stephen during the breaks in his set.

Tossed and turned all last night, a crisis of conscience regarding security vs adventure, comfy flat or bike touring... I think the bike touring has won. Now to actually do it...

Step one, eight weeks leave...accomplished! Damn, that was easy.

Step two, getting to Europe...not so easy on five weeks notice.

Anzac Day — Lest we forget. And guess what — I forgot my brother's wedding aniversary. Even rang him up to say hello since we hadn't spoken for a couple of months, but didn't realise what day it was!

A bunch of random cycling stuff; after wondering over the weekend what had happened to the Wide Open Road tour of France in July, and making up my mind to mail them today, I received an update from them about their ride — now I have to make up my mind which has the higher priority — going on the tour, or living here in a place that I really enjoy...

Second event, a slightly wine-sozzled phone call from a bunch of people I met on the NSW bike ride, all having a social get-together, and deciding to call me from the restaurant even though they didn't invite me to the dinner.

More rain, lots more rain! It must be one of the laws of motorcycling that the time to dry out your shoes is proportional to the time until you next need to wear them. Today they were just down to “damp” by the time I had to put them on and come home again.

Melbourne's motorists did their best this morning to convince me that they have an expected life span measured in months, especially the semi-trailers doing 110km/hr in low visibility and high water along the freeway.

At least I felt something was accomplished at work. Finally had time to put some work into the MRTG monitoring of the NetWare servers. It's not complete (nothing ever is), but it seems to work.

http://www.mrtg.org/

http://www.its.monash.edu.au/novell/monitor/

Monash ITS NetWare server monitoring

Drizzle, rain, and the occasional deluge. For the first time in two years I actually drove up the street to the café for brunch rather than walking. It helped that the other party present had a car with her!

So what else do you do on such a day but laze on the couch and listen to old CDs, reminding you of your youth and making you think more on Henry Rollins' diatribe on “growing up.”

...and to round off the weekend's theme of Nepal and the Himalayas, read some brochures in the morning about mtn. bike rides tours in the area, then went out in the evening to see Himalaya at the Lumiere. Not a lot of story to it, but more incredible mountains to view.

Henry Rollins — what can I say, he walked on stage at 9:30 and spoke without pause for two and a half hours. The man has the most incredible presence and intensity! Not only that, but the opening topic of conversation was what my girlfriend and I were talking about this morning — when does getting older equate to growing up?

A lazy day at home, sitting around listening to music, sniffling gently to myself with a cold. Too lazy to do much at all.

Now the thunder is rumbling in the background, so there's even less incentive to go out or do much but sit here, listening, sipping, watching...

Maybe I should play with rrdtool, see if I can rework the MRTG monitoring that I've been doing of the Monash Novell servers?

MLP

www.ezydvd.com.au Noticed it in a magazine, must get around to buying some DVDs, maybe even a DVD player.

Another week ends, a relief — and it was only three days long! It must be time for a long holiday. ... Which leads to the evening's entertainment, sitting, looking in stunned amazement at the scenery in Evan's photos of his and Kyllie's recent walking trip in Nepal. Every time I see something like this I realise, there are no mountains in Australia!

Getting there was an exercise in itself — to Evan's house, not to Nepal! Forgetting that the football was on, catching the tram past the MCG and getting off to meet a friend at a pub right next to the game. Hordes of fans, footpaths blocked, beers and scarves.

Hour long divisional staff meetings, red wine, cool autumn evenings. Such is today. Work drags on, nothing much changes.

http://www.suzyj.net/

Suzanne's place — a denizen of news:aus.bicycle

Back at work after easter, and all sorts of fun and games have errupted over the Callista work of last week. Seems that the test environment was commissioned as the production environment, and now everyone is wondering why they can't get 400+ staff to update a 400M+ product, all at once, from a 486 NetWare 4.1 server through a 20Mb/s link. Consequently we spent the day juggling directories and trying to balance the load.

Picked up my latest photos at lunch time, forgetting my reciept and sweet-talking them out of the staff. For once I remembered to order a CD and it seems that the extra cost is well worth the effort. I must get around to getting all my other films scanned onto CD professionally. The first few of our daywalks in Magaliesburg look pretty good to me!

Riding home at dusk as it started to rain it was hard to believe it's late autumn, the air was warm, it smelt like thunder, the rain felt like hail. Could have been summer time.

• Monash IAS Callista
• Magaliesburg Online

Tuesday, wandering about at home performing essential domestic chores, listening to music and fiddling with my website.

I'd heard on the radio that Joey Ramone had died, so half the morning was spent nostalgically listening to old Ramones songs — 1-2-3-4 followed by 2 1/2 minutes of noise.

The journal idea has been rattling around for some time, so after checking up on a few websites I noticed that cos had rewritten ordinary world to use php. It was all too easy and I'm all too lazy, so I just grabbed his scripts and modified them to work here. I'll rework the scripts so that the look and feel isn't identical. I promise I will.

??

??

??

??

Cow-orkers back in Australia deal me another frustrating blow — rather than sending me an application setup that I asked for, the configuration that I know already works, someone decided to regenerate it in a spectacularly bad fashion. Not only does it not work, but because I stupidly assumed they had sent me what I'd asked for, I didn't check it before running it and it broke other things.

[2008-Apr-10] Not sure why this is still here, sometime in 2005 I moved all my work-related posts to a work log

ITS-ZA2 had rebooted 01:24, no messages in CONSOLE.LOG or SYS$LOG.ERR. There is an ABEND.LOG generated at 01:24, but it is completely full of "1" characters, server must have rebooted before it was written.

While running Netfinity manager on the workstation and connecting to ITS-ZA1, exiting the 'RAID Manager' component caused the following error to occur on the server console:

2000-01-17 10:51:51: SERVER-5.0-834 [nmID=2000D]
  Free detected corrupt trailing redzone for node 0xD02E9120, node size 2296

Started 'System Information Tool' from Netfinity manager, the server printed a few error message regarding corrupt memory, but then automatically restarted before these could be recorded.

Finally got organised and started to read up on some of the material I've brought with me to South Africa... exactly how are we going to do all this?

Spent 10R and 20 minutes at the internet café and caught up on my email, nothing special to look at, mostly just friends discussing holidays in July. The version of Internet Explorer on the machines kept generating errors in the javascript, both on the my.monash portal login page and after nearly every action on the web-mail pages.