ajft

Last chance for a bike ride for the year — “Let's go for an easy ride down to Mordialloc,” says Evan. Yeah, right. He's been up at 6am every day for the past three months, clocking up 300km a week and getting faster and faster... I've just been sitting around or riding to work! A hot and tiring 68.3km by the time I got home, that would be, um, err... 8,520km for the 2003 year, not counting rides when I didn't have my odometer with me, or was on another bike, or it just wasn't working.

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Lazy hot day at home, I'm on holiday, not feeling too guilty that Jo's back at work...

Chased up Australian Geographic, “where's my subscription?” I thundered. Not quite, just a query to find out why I haven't received number 72 or 73. No idea, they say, but there's another copy on its way as soon as the warehouse re-opens next week.

With Jo's car off the road due to the oil leak, we decided to venture out this evening to a friend's barbecue on the tandem. Only its second ever expedition — I wonder when we stop counting the individual rides? More fun and games man-handling it down the stairs, and then through the barricades at the pedestrian underpass at Burnley station. We're getting the hang of riding it, I'm remembering to warn about pot-holes and speed-humps, and to change down gears before stopping!

Naomi's barbecue was partly to catch up with friends, and partly to try out the telescope that she's borrowed for the summer. Unfortunately none of us really had any idea about setting it up correctly, and the minimalist instruction manual from the Russian manufacturer didn't really help. Still, we eventually managed to find the moon! Amazing to view the craters, but annoying to have to keep adjusting everything to keep it within view. One of the guys then tried to point it to a planet, we think it was mars, but even with it centred perfectly in the smaller site-scope, nothing we did could make it visible in the main telescope — we weren't even sure if the two were lined up properly.

With one last chance to see some nieces for the next few months it was over to my sister's for lunch, a barbecue and a stepping stone on the way back home. Drove along the back-road from Bungendore to Collector, mum warned us that the sign on one of the turnoffs was hard to spot — sure enough, I drove straight past then turned around in a well-worn gravel patch — we were not first! Too far from Lake George to see anything, just a narrow country road through the bush, degenerating into a mass of pot-holes in places.

As usual, Kathy had her hands full of twins. She's loving it, as is Cec. It's definitely keeping them both busy! They still manage to get away to shows and show-jumping, I've no idea how it all fits together. Makes me feel very disorganised. A few more photos of them all — I finally managed to finish the APS film that's been in the camera since November 2001 — and all too soon it was time to leave.

It'll be fascinating to see what's on that film, once I bought the digital camera I just didn't use the Elph much anymore. Too expensive in processing, even if it is a little bit smaller.

Driving, driving, driving... back in the car at three, off up the Federal highway nearly to Goulburn, turn left, drive for seven hours, get back home to Melbourne. Somewhere along the way Jo's car seems to have started spraying oil out under the engine, no warning lights came on, neither of us noticed, but as soon as we got to the city and slowed down we could smell it burning on the exhaust. Too tired to do anything, too dark in the garage and complicated under the car anyway.

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Last minute Christmas shopping panic — everyone else's, not mine! First day of my break, tired from last night's late finish, I wandered up the street at about eleven to gather my thoughts and look around. The more frenetic the crowds got, the more relaxed I felt, their panicing only seemed to emphasise the fact that I had absolutely nothing to do!

Called past the Tennyson building, a lovely old warehouse that's been empty for months. I'd been hoping that it would be redeveloped in a “sensitive” way, maybe keeping the entire old building, or even just the façade. But no, come the first of January, the bulldozers are moving in and the place is being demolished — presumably to make way for more non-descript three-storey townhouse apartments. At least I managed to capture a couple of photos before it vanishes.

Lunch, a little shopping, a leisurely walk and then home for a siesta — all preparation for the long drive up to Yass.

Phew! Just remembered to pay the rent before we close down for Christmas. As always when not at work, its a pain trying to use Konquerer or any other non-Microsoft browser when trying to access businesses over the Internet. After logging in about three times I finally managed to get the applet to load and display my account details!

Too early for New Year's resolutions? Maybe next year I need to tidy up all the loose ends of this site. Too many things that aren't quite right. Too many pages where I've started to say something, but then left it empty as a place-holder. I like the idea of a random photo being included each day, just as a reminder of what I've got!

Work finished early, it always seems a bit pointless on the last few days of the year. Nothing gets done, the jobs are still there, but nobody is interested. I'd feel ripped off if I took leave though — why waste a day of leave when in exchange there is only half a day of work?

Early dinner then off to the Corner Hotel for a Christmas institution — the Mick Thomas Christmas shows. It used to be the Weddoes', for the last few years Mick has been back with his new band — and visitors. There's a tension between what he'd like to play, and the audience stuck in a time-warp, all these very blokey blokes all wanting to chant and swill beer and stomp around and pretend that they're still young and single and at the old Central Club gigs.

A full page article in the Age on Mick and the shows seemed to result in sold-out audiences and far more of the old WPA fans.

First support act was a one-man play performed up on the rooftop, “A Party in Fitzroy.” Very evocative, and exceptionally well done, in what could have been a hostile environment of drinkers and talkers.

Then time for a drink and to sit and talk and watch the sun go down from the rooftop beergarden — first time I've ever managed to get up here! You can see the beergarden from the train, I've thought of heading up there a few times, but each time its either been closed or I was waylaid, or something else came up. Finally up there, a refreshingly un-renovated outdoor oasis, just far enough up from the traffic to be isolated.

Back downstairs in time to catch Nick Barker as first support with his Backyard Six — although whether that's the name of the band or just the name of the latest album I'm not sure. Good as ever, Nick and the band just looked as though they were having so much fun to be there. Covered old songs and new, finishing with a balls-out rocker of “Stone Hearted.”

Next support was Git, a band I've never really enjoyed. Just too much a whining country girl band for me. They seem fairly light-hearted, but I just can't get into their music.

Finally the moment we were all waiting for, eleven o'clock and Mick and the band came on. Two sets and an encore, finishing on the dot of one a.m. There seemed to be a lot more of the older Weddoes material than at previous Sure Things gigs, maybe that newspaper article self-fulfilled by attracting all the old fans. Sure enough, there were plenty of half-drunk neckless yobs stomping around, arms around each others' necks in blokey mateship and screaming out for songs from ten years ago! As always, the final set had the stage filled, Nick Barker, Sarah, Suzannah and Trish — the three women from Git — and Michael Barclay joining the four members of the Sure Thing for a couple of songs.

Up and out of bed early today — well, early for me! After a few too many weekends where I've managed to justify staying at home, or sleeping in, or not going riding, I think it's finally time that I really did get out on my bike and train for the Alpine Classic! Relying on native ability just isn't going to work for 200km of mountain climbs!

The Duke/Myers family barbecue at Shoreham provided the impetus, all I needed to do was ride down there and join them for lunch. Simple really, apart from Jo not being able to quite remember where I was meant to go. Tentative directions and an instruction to phone for help if I got lost!

A wonderful cool morning as I headed off down to St Kilda, onto Beach road and keep heading south. A quick hello to Pete as he was arriving at his shop and then total mayhem — a triathlon had closed Beach road from Brighton to Black Rock and everyone was being redirected onto suburban back-streets. There were cyclists and cars everywhere, nobody seemed to know where they were, or where they were heading, and it was a wonder that I didn't see anyone knocked over with the way they were all tearing along, trying desperately to get further south and back onto Beach road.

Gradually increased in temperature as we got to Mordialloc and then on down to Frankston. As usual, some idiot tried to knock me off my bike in Frankston — petrol-head central. Surprisingly, it wasn't a commodore with P-plates, this time it was an elderly bloke, he sped past flicking my elbow with his mirror — obviously too hard to pull out and go around a cyclist. His next stunt was to stop at the traffic lights and have the passenger throw open the door and step out directly in my path.

Up Oliver's Hill, then through the hills to the Mornington turnoff, pausing to fall ungracefully off my bike at a set of traffic lights. Major embarrassment — the rains of the last week had made one of my cleats a little rusty and I was just a fraction too slow in unclipping when I stopped!

Mornington was busy, café goers and shoppers, then through the hilly twisty bit around the coast to Dromana. Safety Beach was another surprise — the entire road had been dug up through the middle of the town, so once again I had to detour through back streets — and I didn't realise that Safety Beach was big enough to have back streets!

Just after Dromana is the left-turn for Arthur's Seat. Rounding the corner is a very demoralising sight, the road seems to go under the freeway and then straight up the hill like a ski-ramp in reverse. Luckily that isn't the way to the top, the road up the hill is hidden behind the freeway and zig-zags its way up through four kilometres of forest, gaining about 300 metres in altitude. Steep climbing, and hot, since the sun was now beating down. I was going slowly enough to marvel at the size of the bull-ants crossing under my tyres. Also had plenty of time to check out the chairlift pylons and cables, now repaired after their collapse a year or so ago.

From the top of Arthur's Seat it was about ten kilometres to Shoreham, rolling downhill most of the way — shorter and quicker than I'd expected. Only the final turnoff at the end of the Redhill-Shoreham road nearly fooled me, I couldn't see the signs and didn't realise at first that I had to go straight ahead. Turning left, I glanced back and spotted the sign, crossed the road and coasted the last few hundred metres down to the town. Just over a hundred kilometres, less than I'd expected, three and three-quarter hours, and maybe there's a chance that I'll be fit enough for the Classic!

Perfect timing, I arrived just in time to chat and cool off before the barbecue was lit, and just as the clouds started cooling everything down. Over lunch the clouds turned first to a few spots of rain, gradually increasing and forcing us under cover. Two small, excited, noisy and very tired nephews occasionally forced us back out into the open.

After a long hot day, I was glad to be getting into the car to be driven home. Especially since the rain kept increasing, becoming a solid downpour by the time we'd returned to Melbourne. Drivers on the freeway were doing their usual frightening best to tail-gate at 100km/hr in pouring rain and low visibility. Worst of all were the semi-trailers, up higher their drivers could see, or just didn't give a damn, and kept on thundering past, intimidating everything and everyone slower out of their path — Professional Drivers indeed.

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Apache Junction Fire District — Fire, EMS, Safety and Health. They also have the domain http://ajfd.org/. One letter difference, and today I'm on the receiving end of a well-meaning, but miss-addressed Christmas greeting!

Little things that stick in your mind, trivial things, but curiosities nonetheless. For the last twelve months — at least — there's been a flattened beetroot can squashed into the road on Clayton road. I see it every day. It first appeared as a row of four or five purple smudges, ending in a bent tin where it had fallen off a truck. Gradually it moved to its resting place, becoming flatter and flatter, more firmly embedded into the tarmac. Once or twice a week I ride over it — clack, clack. Today it's gone. A trivial amusement.

Another stinking hot day. Cicadas screaming in the trees as a rode to work.

The ITS Christmas lunch was held today, three hours of fun and excitement and a short speech. A sit down affair in the University club, with too much red wine and undercooked rissoles — ok, the ones I had were raw. A truly revolting feeling biting into a mouthful of luke-warm raw mince under a burnt crust.

What started as an accidental photo of the back of a colleague's head turned into a minor challenge — to capture portraits of the entire Communications and Networks group, from behind. Not sure how successful I was, or even if I can identify them all now I've got them!

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Oh dear, I just haven't been paying attention to the important things going on in the world — that latest batch of spams purporting to offer me nude videos of Paris Hilton, seems that there is one... somewhere. I guess it made a change from the 30 or 40 a day offering to clean my colon for me, what that says about the American publics' obsession with bowels I don't know — for we all know that the Internet is American, and that everyone on the Internet is American....

Oh damn, I said nude video and Paris Hilton together in one web page. Google bait for sure. Hi there spiders and search engines!

Need to get out more! So out we did go. Out for a walk around the river, downstream to the Burnley wharf redevelopment. I was curious whether it was all still there after the floods last week!

Its an old quarry, left over from excavations of the river channel, building works in Richmond, and construction of the freeway. For years there's just been a large stagnant pond hidden between the freeway and the electrical substation, with a small wharf and some of the river maintenance craft moored. Recently the grounds around it have been landscaped and opened back up the public, and access is possible either from the road or cyclepath.

Then off to catch up with some of Jo's friends in the beergarden at PA's, and a chance to get one step closer to photographing all the pubs of Richmond!

Spent a lazy few hours sitting in the shade under the vines, drinking beers and catching up with friends. We hadn't seen Neale since our wedding in April!

Then this evening, finally! Off to see Matrix Revolutions this evening. Ho hum, what a dud. Blam, blam, blam. Explosions. Shootings. No style, no suspense, but plenty of action for the fourteen year-olds.

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http://www.markschenk.com/cssexp/

CSS / Experiments

Our benevolent leaders lashed out and paid $25 for the group to go out to lunch to celebrate Christmas — food only, no alcohol to be paid for. A couple of people had suggested Maxy's in Glenhuntly road Elsternwick — mostly because it was near to where they lived, not necessarily near to work! Off we trouped, in we went, down we sat, then out came the food.... Wow! The large trays of assorted dips, breads, salads and calamari were sufficient to fill nearly everyone, but that was only the entrée! These were whisked away and out came two massive trays of meat. Ribs, chops, sausages, schnitzels, kebabs... more food than I think I normally see in a month.

Completely stuffed, we somehow managed to waddle out the door and make it back to Monash to attempt to work for the rest of the afternoon!

Actioned — my least favourite word of the moment. Some colleagues seem to insist on using it, its one of those bureaucratic nonsense words, like the euphemistic, wishy-washy issue that is used by those too mealy-mouthed to say what they really mean. If something is a problem, then say that its a bloody problem!

Browsing around more geography resources, stumbled on MultiMap again. I guess the following is useful:

Address:         Johannesburg, Gauteng (PWV), South Africa
X:3125000 m Y:-2999900 m    26:09:34S (-26.1594), 28:04:21E (28.0724)

Now I need to go back and re-anotate all my South African photos and journal entries for December 2000, January 2001!

I think I've got enough of a hang of this RDF stuff to start adding it in here.... My FoaF file has been present for quite a while, but now it's got links to http://ajft.org/index.rdf. One thing I can't seem to make up my mind about is whether to munge together all the RDF data about individual pages, images and indexes into one big file a'la Norman Walsh's “knows.rdf”, or to keep all the bits seperate, and link between them with rdfs:seeAlso. I think I'll choose the latter.

Ho hum, another day, another stupid motorist tries to drive into me while she's chatting on the phone. White Ford, a Festiva or something like that, PRZ-291.

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An early start to the day — finally I've been convinced that I really do need to train for the Alpine Classic — that day-to-day rides to and from work just aren't likely to be enough preparation! Six o'clock wake up, breakfast and wait... and wait... and wait some more. The phone rings; Kelvin has had another puncture — of course — and so they'll be a little late to pick me up. I sat around outside watching and listening to the morning's bird-life, spotting a butcher bird that I'd never seen before on the neighbour's roof.

Off to the east towards Launching Place, navigating by memory since Evan's melways was lost in Wednesday's flood. A moment of confusion and we end up almost back at Lilydale before finally finding the right turn-off, then events conspire against us with the local CFA blocking the road since someone has just managed to drive head-on into a tree. More detours down back lanes, finally back on the main Warbutton road, finally get to Launching Place for the 8:30am start — only about an hour and a half late!

As we're getting the bikes off the roof racks, the mist over the hills promises a cool ride. Much discussion takes place on what people should wear, and there are further delays as arm-warmers and long nicks are donned. Failing to bring anything other than the nicks and jersey I was wearing, I stood and waited and hoped that cold or hot, the weather wouldn't be too uncomfortable!

Finally we were ready, off down the rail-trail towards Warbutton, the surface not really suited to some of the road bikes. Over the years the track seems to be deteriorating, like a lot of bicycle facilities, it doesn't look as if there is any budget for maintenance, once the thing has been built, that's it! One particular timber bridge is in a sorry state, the approach from the eastern side being eroded away, and quite dangerous unless you zig-zag onto the opposite side of the track.

By the time we reached Warbutton we were all ready for a bite to eat; the sun had cleared away the mist, all the previously donned warm clothing needed to be shed, and people were starting to comment about the warmth of the day!

Back on the bikes, off through Warbutton, then turn off the main road and seventeen kilometres of climbing up through the Yarra Ranges park to the summit of mount Donna Buang. It's still a great ride, there's never much traffic, the scenery is fantastic, and at 1250m, it's quite a climb!

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The creek is back down, the heron was back on his rock this morning — I wonder where he went during the flood? The river is still turgid, brown and full of drifting objects. Driftwood everywhere, the stink of mud in the air.

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Last night's storm created floods in the suburbs just north of us. Over 100mm of rain fell in some places!

I don't think I've ever seen the flood marks from the creek up so high, this morning every flat bit of bike track was awash with debris or mud. All the councils have just finished beautifying the parklands with pine-chips and mulch, so as a result, there are now huge piles of pine-chips and mulch washed off every garden bed, deposited in “challenging” ways on the track.

Glennferrie road underpass just passable. Under Tooronga road was a slimy, slippery mud pit.

There were a few very large trees floating in the Yarra, and lots of rafts of plastic bottles and stuff migrating down to the sea.

Three of the seven lightning photos from last night sort-of worked.

Lots of fun'n'games with my photo annotation stuff. Trying to find sufficient information on RDF and N3 and then trying to find examples to show me what is needed. After creating some very broken files, I've found that the following is what is needed:

<> foaf:annotates <http://ajft.org/2003/12/01/204-0408_img.jpg>;
  foaf:maker [
    a foaf:Person
      foaf:mbox_sha1sum "87d5276974d12ea0f4064e7870cab2d47cb5e91d"
  ];

Half an hour later, riding in the gates at Monash there was a White ibis flying past overhead. I guess that might mean something important if I was in ancient Egypt, as it was all it meant was two more birds to add to the list I've seen while commuting.

So much for going riding today! After not getting to sleep until after three a.m., the alarm woke me at six. Ankle was still sore from where I half-twisted it yesterday, completely stuffed from lack of sleep, all coupled with a serious case of really feeling down about it all. I lay back down for ten minutes, intending to call up and let Evan know I wouldn't be joining them — next thing I knew it was half an hour later and the phone was calling, wondering where I was.

Spent the morning sitting around listlessly, hoping that a thunderstorm would cool the place down, wishing I could fall back asleep.

By dinner time the weather had cooled off and I had woken up to normality, so off up the street for a bit of exercise, a change of scenery, and a bite to eat. People everywhere, many from the tennis, wandering up and down the street, peering at menus and discussing whether it was ok to eat “here or that other place.” I settled on Silvio's, but then had the challenge of choice. Normally the two of us don't even need to look a the menu, but being alone meant that I had to think and pick something else! Pizza Luciano, a good combination of flavours, a glass or two of wine, and an excellent coffee — all the while watching the comings and goings of the take-aways, the passer's by, and the traffic on the street.

The guy at the next table was having dinner with his young daughter, I've seen them around at Blue Heaven many times before. Amusing mix of half-kid, half-adult conversation, she was insisting that they sang a song together — very much the primary-school nonsense-song, but annoyingly catchy, slightly Gilbert and Sulivan-esque, and probably destined to be stuck in my head for the rest of the week!

  I went to a Japanese restaraunt,
  to buy a loaf of bread, bread, bread,
  My name is Elvis Presley,
  the girls were in the back seats,
  drinking lots of pepsi,
  Cheesecake!

Managed to nab a few more pubs this afternoon, for the photo collection alone, although with the hot weather it was very tempting to go and sample a beer in each one... The Vine, Mountain View, London and the Grand. There can't be that many left now... can there? Although I still wanted to walk on past the Grand, that new colour scheme just doesn't look good to me!

Off to a teamRC17 dinner this evening, foolishly without checking the details! I'd been walking around all day thinking “seven o'clock,” it was only when I went to leave home that I actually read my scrawled note and saw that I should have been there at six! Then I couldn't find the place, driving slowly down the Nepean highway trying to read street numbers while everyone else was trying to get where they're going as fast as possible — I'd just about given up when I spotted the enormous sign advertising the place! Not to worry, I found it, the others had only just ordered so I snuck in with time to spare. Good food, and huge servings, I think I managed to get through about two-thirds of a bowl of gnocci. A good thing I didn't order an entrée as well!

Normal day's ride to and from work today, then a magnificent evening ride later on. Lack of motorbike meant that when I got the invitation to have an evening beer and barbecue with friends, it was either norky bike or the train — and Friday evening trains aren't my favourite.

Another of Marko's fine barbecues, a good time to sit and chat as the day cools down and the cicadas sing. The selling of their house still hangs over them, the market isnt' good, and by definition, the real-estate agent is a real-estate agent. Will it sell or not? Will they move or not? Who can tell. In the meantime, we enjoy what we've got — coffee, food, companionship, and an old steam engine that Marko had found and restored!

Three days after the full moon, there are no street lights on the bike paths, there are no lane markings on the bike paths, its all just a case of trust your instincts and follow the black ribbon through the darkness — flashing bike lights are good enough to be seen by, but not good enough to see with! Along the way the other senses come into play, the temperature changes as you drop down to the cool of the creek, or climb up to the heat radiating off the concrete roads, the sounds of frogs and birds in the bushes, muted traffic and Friday night sirens, the smells from the creek, the mud, the drains... non-too pleasant, but all standing out that much more at night.

To the driver and passenger of the electrician's white van, QXC-557, just what is it that makes you want to yell abuse at people on bicycles as you pass on the road? Is it the feeling of power and invulnerability as you speed past, anonymous, except for the foot-high letters advertising your employer's company? Is it the knowledge that you can outrun the abused/intimidated cyclist, or is it some mistaken belief that if I can't retaliate at the time, that I won't be able to record your details, your company name, your phone number, your registration number, and retaliate later...

Australia, Portugal, Spain, England, New Zealand, France, Switzerland, Italy. What do they have in common? All countries that I can count as places that I've visited for long enough to spend a night in. All countries that I've cycled through on my bike! Add in Ireland, and that's my nine entries for Norman Walsh's counting countries competition.

[2008-01-23] Vietnam, China should be added since I originally wrote it, and Jersey was missed back in 2003.

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Late evening, a warm spring evening. The sun sinks into the clouds, wood smoke in the air, a few too many glasses of wine with dinner and the cicadas start to squeal into the night...

A minor crisis in the bicycle storage facility — the new toy arrives at its new home... Half of it is my birthday present from Jo, half her birthday present from me. A brand-new second-hand Trek T-50 tandem. Three or four weeks since we first saw it, about a fortnight since we decided to buy it, but only this weekend have we finally had time to get down to Peter's shop in Brighton and pick it up — after a little nagging, mostly because they want the shop space back!

Bicycle 106-4528 BI 0677 is the most recent addition to the stable — definitely the largest, heaviest and most ungainly to carry up and down the stairs, as well as being the one least likely to fit in the car for transport to or from any ride. I guess we'll just have to ride it everywhere...

A hot day today, 39°C, windy and dusty! Probably not the best day to try and sell your house, but when its booked in advance, that's what you've got to do. Off we went at noon to lend moral support as Marko and Lesley's house is being auctioned... Lots of people around, lots of people wander through looking at the place, are they potential buyers, are they sticky-beaks, or are they just neighbours and friends like us!

Half-past twelve and the auctioneer calls it to order, there's the pro-forma legal blurb, then the desultory start to the bidding. Nobody seems interested, the auctioneer opens with a “vendor bid,” a peculiar form of legalese that they can use to get things moving — apparently still legal so long as the bid is declared as being a vendor bid. Still not much interest, one couple bids, the auctioneer makes another vendor bid, the two of them go to and fro a few times and the property is handed in under the reserve price.

Well call me naïve, but over a drink afterwards the auctioneer reveals that the bidding couple were actually his “friends” — dummy bidders in other words. Unknown to us, undeclared to the public at the auction, and unknown to our friends whose house was being sold! This is quite clearly illegal here in Victoria, but is still widely accepted as happening everywhere. According to the auctioneer only the stupid or the unlucky are caught and prosecuted. The real-estate agents just manage to confirm my opinion of their place in life, somewhere down there, below computer- and used-car salesmen.

Someone has decided to start trying to log the mobile-phone users and send an email direct to the top — Andre — or Police Minister Andre Haermeyer, if you want to give him his official title.

Andre has a mobile phone driver reporting page. You can find it at http://www.ratbagitinerant.com/cm/phones.html

Reg says: Dob in a drongo driver!

Just the one? As the sign says "Wipe off five". This evening's mild entertainment came from:

1. 17:40 QRD-368, Blue magna, Clayton road/Ferntree gully road intersection.
2. Red Ford Falcon, Malvern road. No, that's not a phone, driver is slugging back a UDL as he skims past my elbow. Too quick, no plates.
3. 17:55 PJV-969, White ford telstar, Malvern road
4. Silver Toyota Seca, east on Malvern road. Young girl SMSing, sun in my eyes and no plates. What caught my eye was that she was driving the up the bike lane… just like the woman who killed a guy.
5. 18:09 RHG-878, purple peugeot 306 convertible, Malvern road/Wattletree road.

The last one took the cake. There he was, sitting stopped at the intersection, indicator on to turn left, phone against the ear, GREEN TURN ARROW in front of him, mindlessly chatting. I rode up alongside on the driver's side, leant over and said very clearly “YOU CAN PUT THE PHONE DOWN NOW, THAT'S A GREEN ARROW.” “Oh, err, yes,” came the reply as the driver in the car behind leant on the horn, off he went up Wattletree road.

Three definites in half an hour, I guess that at $135 per fine that'd be $800 an hour I could be making for Andre. I should be getting a commission! I really wouldn't mind riding around on my bike for an eight hour day and raking in whatever proportion of $6400 per day that would be!

Woohoo... barbecue; No photos, too busy cookin' and eatin'. Plans were made, deadlines were set, sausages were bought, fire was lit, meat was cooked. The wedding present barbecue was assembled, fired up, and did its job.

Eleventh day of the eleventh month and I didn't notice. So much for armistice day, or for Aussies, Gough day. There seems to be a growing disquiet that Melbourne's motorists — indeed Australia's motorists — just don't give a damn about the laws regarding driving and using a mobile phone, and that the police don't give a damn about policing these laws. $135 fine and three points off your license — who cares. Endangering other road users — who cares.

The woman who killed a cyclist near Geelong while she was sending an SMS has been let off by the courts — a suspended two year sentence. Even Bicycle Victoria, famous for not doing anything that would seem to remotely offend anyone in the government or VicRoads, is calling for tougher penalties and a public “dob-in an illegal motorist” hotline.

I don't think that tougher penalties are the answer — its a knee-jerk Aussie reaction — call for tougher penalties. What's the point when the existing laws aren't being enforced? You can increase the penalty up to ludicrous extremes of having the death penalty for speeding, but if it's not enforced, nobody will obey it.

Amazingly though, no life-threatening mobile-phone wielding motorists today — only the dogs on the bike path to contend with... and one particular rabid old lady who is too important to keep to the left, is too important to keep her four dogs on leads, under control, or even on one side of the path, and is sanctimonious enough to claim that a loud voice shouting BIKE! cannot be heard because I don't have a bell on my bike... Refused to answer any queries as too why she didn't use a lead or keep left, just walked off saying over and over again “tra-la-la I can't hear you...”. Absolutely infuriating, but I shouldn't let these idiots get to me! Hopefully sometime soon their idiot dogs will run in front of a truck rather than a bike.

They wonder why Melbourne's taxi drivers have such a poor reputation — ten to nine on a Tuesday morning, taxi stopped with its hazard lights on in the left-hand lane of a main road. The driver hopped out, walked around to the rear door and pissed on the road, then zipped up and drove off! Maybe its acceptable in whatever third-world country our taxi-drivers get their licenses, but surely he could have driven to the petrol station two blocks away!

Stupid me, stupid, stupid me! There I was, riding home, happily minding my own business. I glanced at the courier van parked at the side of the road... Stupid me; I thought that for once someone had decided to stop to chat on their mobile phone. Stupid, stupid me. Panic stop as the idiot does a u-turn from a standing start, straight across three lanes of traffic and missing me by a foot — all the while still talking into his phone...

Ten minutes later, same ride home, minding my own business in the bike lane. Woosh!, idiot in a tin box misses me by inches, meandering back and forth across the lane and bike lane. Surprise surprise, there's a phone held in his hand, clamped against his ear...

Yass to Melbourne, seven hours sitting in the car, seven hours of driving down the Hume highway, seven hours of eyes glued to the speedo lest we drift over the speed limit and be pounced on by the constabulary as a lethal threat to society...

Miraculously managed to sleep in until 9am — not easy in a house containing three young neices — breakfast with Colin and Liz and catch up with people and family events. Then off in the afternoon to Canberra Hospital to visit the object of the entire weekend — sister and youngest additions, Katelyn Jane and Heidi Ann, three days old, happy, well and asleep.

I even remembered to take my film camera with me — and to actually use it! One day soon I may even have finished the film that's lain dormant since I bought the digital camera — the camera certainly made some unhealthy noises as the motor opened and shut the lense cover, probably two years' worth of grit and dust in there. Back to Bungendore afterwards, to look with envy at dad's garden and get itchy feet for a garden of our own — maybe not so big that we need to mow it, but just big enough to grow some tomatos with taste! Over the winter the massively overgrown greenhouse has been put into order, the cacti gardens are all flowering, and more and more birds are appearing in the garden...

Inspired by the CD of wedding photos that we recieved from Gabby, I've started working my way through Ritchie's rolls of film.... Time consuming... and disk consuming! Eventually I guess I'll finish...

Wyvern news: I found out that somehow I'd broken the CD reading, who knows how, it just wouldn't load the right modules. Anyway, time to upgrade the kernel from 2.4.20 to 2.4.22. Build, install, build, install, lilo, reboot... Yay, CD back again!

The nasty sneaky little magpie in the park near East Malvern station scared me half to death this morning — again. I must remember to look out for him tomorrow...

The airconditioner at work wasn't working all day — fairly typical — now that the weather has started to warm up. As a result, it was stuffy and hot and I was glad to escape to go for a ride in the evening, while it was still daylight! North road and Warrigal road through all the evening traffic, then around the bay along Beach road, chill breeze and evening sunlight, a great time to be out. I made it home a little after seven, slowly riding up Swan street and stopping to add to my collection of photos of Richmond's pubs — the Depot, the Corner, the Richmond Club, the Vaucluse, the Swan, the Central Club and the Rising Sun. Seven more down, how many more to go?

New baby number two has a name, but baby number one hasn't. I'm not sure I understand, but apparently it all makes perfect sense to my sister. So happy birthday for yesterday to Heidi and the other one!

Seems my sister Kathy couldn't wait until after we visit this weekend — I'm now an uncle again. I had a feeling she'd hatch before we could get there to see her. Five nieces, one three and a half year-old, two one year-olds and two born tonight! No names yet for the new ones.... Should make family gatherings crowded in the future.

MLP

[http://theory.lcs.mit.edu/~rivest/sexp.html]

SEXP —(S-expressions)

  Today: 91.5km
  Trip: 257.0km

Final day of the ride, best weather so far! Sticking my head out of the tent at around 6:30 there was not a breath of wind, the sun was rising and the bay was as flat as a mirror. We left Rye around 10am, in bright sunshine, but with a chill still in the air.

It always amazes me how much traffic there is on the stretch of road between Sorrento and Mornington, I guess to my subconscious the road doesn't seem to go anywhere, it just ends at the heads, so where do all the cars come from? Unfortunately it seems that each time I ride along here I could also ask “where do all the idiots come from?” as there always seem to be yobs in V8s and 4WDs determined to show their masculinity by pushing cyclists off the road. Today was no exception. A blue ute, JOOST-1, made the biggest impression, sliding past in a shower of gravel around a blind bend near Mornington, his driving skills astounding all...

The good weather and Cup day holiday had also brought out every boat owner in Melbourne! It certainly seemed that way, with every beach, boat ramp and bay packed with fishing boats, pleasure boats and sail boats of all descriptions. Later on as we passed over the Patterson river the launching yard looked like complete mayhem, I've never seen it so crowded.

A cold drink at the Mornington hotel, then ten kilometres of noisy, busy road to Frankston. The swooping descent down Oliver's hill makes it all worthwhile. Then warily through Frankston, watching for opening doors, abuse, and swerving rusty bombs... Out of Frankston and on up the Chelsea before turning off onto Station street, somehow we managed to catch every set of traffic lights just as they went red. The Bridge hotel at Mordialloc was starting to fill with punters and partiers as we passed to turn off into Beach road. From here it is straight up Beach road back to the city.

Where?

Rye, Melbourne.

  Today: 49.25km
  Trip: 165.0km

Where?

Torquay, Rye.

  Today: 67.27km
  Trip: 120.0km

Where?

Lorne, Torquay.

  Today: 51.02km
  Trip: 51.0km

Where?

Apollo Bay, Wye River, Lorne.

Ouch! Canon's ZoomBrowser program crashed while starting this morning and deleted the entire database of photos on the laptop. Luckily it didn't touch the photos themselves, just the database of details. Thanks Mr Canon — good thing I don't use it to record titles, dates, etc...

Out for an afternoon walk in the cold and the wind, took photos of the Bridge and the Nash — two more to add to the pub picture collection. Then it was time to hurry home to make it to the Spiegeltent on time, or least in time for a beer, then to see the Gadflys. A far more lively show than Thursday night's — the band's party trick would have to have been the passing of a double-bass from one member to another ... between notes and mid-song! Four guests up and down to join them at various times, at one stage all seven musicians were crowded into the tiny space.

Up the road to the markets this morning — and first steps in taking the photos of all the pubs. Unfortunately, the best place to photograph most of them is half-way across the nearest main road, or risk having passing traffic blocking the view. The Royal Oak, DHR, the Spready, three down, twenty four to go... Down to the Burnley post office to pick up a parcel, oh no! What has happened to the Grand? A thick coat of drab olive paint on the outside, and a remodelled interior all decked out in mission brown. Too much of a shock, it was far too ugly to capture against the grey sky.

The weather forecast for tomorrow sounded worse than today, so off for some cycling this afternoon — and a visit to the Sydenham, the mystery twenty-seventh pub that neither of us could ever remember seeing. A couple of back streets and detours, captured the Royston and Earl of Lincoln along the way, then west along Elizabeth street and there it was, now renamed as the Richmond Tavern. Down along Punt Road in heavy Saturday afternoon traffic, I can never remember whether there are two pubs or only one along here... sure enough it's two: the Royal and the Cricketer's Arms.

Enough pubs for one day, we continued down to the river and along the bike track past the ca$ino and down to Port Melbourne. Out onto Station pier for the full effect of the cold wet wind off the bay, old men bundled up and fishing at the end, the Spirit of Tasmania looming alongside. Grey skies turned to drizzle, drizzle eventually turned to rain. Time to head home by the shortest route possible.

Melbourne between spring rain storms: Grey skies and a thick brown river.

I tried to find a little about the architecture of Richmond, and found a website all about walking in Melbourne. Then was reminded, sadly, that the St Kilda pier had burned down while we were away on holiday.

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

Walking Melbourne

Decided today to take a photo of each of Richmond's pubs. Earlier in the week I'd seen a collection of photographs of English pub signs somewhere on the web, and I remembered how Jo and I had challenged each other to name all the current Richmond pubs — 17 I think — or was it 27.... Vaguely starting from nearest home and spiralling outwards:

1. the Bridge Hotel

Closest to home, just up the end of the street.

2. the Royal Oak

Flashing lights and poker machines, home of the Richmond Tigers AFL.

3. the Spreadeagle

Good food, Guiness on tap, a large hot fire in the winter.

4. DHR — the Dover Hotel Richmond

A quiet and friendly kind of place.

5. the Royston

Always reminds me of Walter Burley Griffin or Frank Lloyd Wright's architecture. Circumstance keeps conspiring to prevent me ever getting inside for a beer.

6. the Grand

Second closest to home, recently changed hands and there seemed to be some funny business with the opening hours during the changeover.

7. the Rising Sun

Smoky

8. the Cherry Tree

Out of the way, rarely visited.

9. the Great Britain (the GB)

10. the Prince Alfred (PA's)

You used to be able to wheel a bike straight into the beer garden, then it was renovated and the garden closed over.

11. the Vine

Flashing lights and poker machines, studiously avoided.

12. the Swan

A quiet place for a drink during the day, bouncers on the door and yobs inside on Friday and Saturday nights. The old drive-through bottle shop is now a sunny room full of trestle tables.

13. the Vaucluse

More poker machines and old men watching the dogs and ponies on the TV screens.

14. Central Club Hotel

Used to have quite a live music scene, complete with legendary Christmas shows by Weddings, Parties, Anything. In the last few years it seems to only have heavy metal bands for music.

15. the Richmond Club

16. the Nash (National)

up on Victoria street, on the border with Abbotsford. Seems to be making a name for itself with local bands.

17. the London

a newly renovated beer garden and rebuilt bistro.

18. All Nations

Famous Melbourne-wide for their food, a cosy old place out of the way near the towering ugliness of the housing commission flats.

19. the Kingston

Another up-market eating place.

15. Prince of Wales

16. Earl of Lincoln

17. Mountain View

18. Cricketers Arms

Right on Punt road, packed after any match at the MCG.

19. the Corner Hotel

a corner-piece of the independent music scene.

20. the Depot

Friday night drinks, cover bands and queues to get in.

21. D.T.s — previously the Batchelor and Spinsters

Does it count still as a pub?

22. Spargo's

I guess it doesn't count either, but the bar and restaurant are what was the old Town Hall hotel.

23. the Sydenham — now the Richmond Tavern

I had to resort to reading through the Melways for this one, never knew it was there!

24. the Royal

Another one that I thought had closed. Established 1848, I hope it makes it to 2048!

A possible favourite would have to be the Loyal Studley, sadly it isn't a pub anymore, I've no idea when it closed, but the building is still there and the sign on the wall.

Off this evening to the Famous Spiegeltent for an early show, time to see the Blackeyed Susans. The venue was packed, the queues were long, the seats were hard but the show was good. Ran into Cos and David while we were hanging around waiting for the — very late — appearance of Jo's sister and friend — they turned up just as the show started. Bad mood gave way to good as the Susan's played their way through a range of songs, from very old to material off the latest album — Shangri-La — the one that's been sitting in the CD player since I unwrapped it for my birthday.

Springtime, wildly variable weather. I really should be used to it now after seven years of living in Melbourne!

DAML — Dam what?

[http://www.daml.org/2001/06/map/]

DAML Map

Nearly had an all-in brawl across the street this evening. I'd just got home and was wondering what all the screaming and shouting was — three blokes were shoving each other around, chests out, swearing shouting and waving their fists in the air — “You F'en started, it ya C***,” “Nah, you F'en started it, coming round here ya F'en C***...” Meanwhile, three or four women shrieked like harpies telling their menfolk to lay into each other and “F'en kill the C***.” All the while half a dozen young children alternating between screaming and being screamed at to go inside... Charming bunch.

...

OK, this takes the cake for the weirdest spam to arrive in my inbox for quite some time:

Dear Portal Administration!

I have recently come across your site and liked it very much.

I suppose that the visitors of our resources belong to the same social group and my site could be useful for your audience so I suggest to exchange our links. This will help both of us to increase Link-Popularity and accordingly get top positions in many searching system, Google for instance.

My site is dedicated to guns.

More fun and games with Norky bike today. Off I went to deliver the spare wheel to the bike shop so that Jo's dud wheel can be replaced with a spare — the infamous evil replacement wheel from hell (or Devizes in the UK). Casually mentioning that my gears aren't quite working properly, investigation reveals that old bottom bracket and the new cranks don't quite agree with each other, and a narrow bottom bracket is required... The shop is then turned upside down and many a box is emptied trying to find appropriate sized parts, and a quarter-hour quick visit turns into a leisurely hour and a half.

Then on the way home some idiot decides to run into me. I was stopped at the traffic lights, parked in the “forward bicycle box” when a car pulled up behind me, parking inside the bike box markings. Pale blue sports car, registration Vic. NOY-007. The left-turn arrow went green, and without indicating, the motorist started off, then turned sharp left, pushing me sideways off my bike and left me sitting on my arse on the ground! No idea what (if anything) was going on in his head — he stopped around the corner and sat there looking at me in the mirror, then drove off.

Babies, babies, babies... blah, blah, blah, blah, blah... One work colleague has just announced that he's pregnant. Four or five of them then sat around gossiping for the next two hours — blah blah blah, babies babies babies... SHUT UP!

Bravely they entered Ikea, a place where many have ventured, but few have kept their cool after being herded, sheep-like, round vast and twisty passages... We survived, and even found a suitable thing to put the TV on, no longer must it sit on the temporary table, as it as done for the last eleven months!

Many jokes have been made about flat-packed furniture and “easy-to-follow” instructions. Very boring, I found them easy to follow.

123 days uptime, reset back to zero. All courtesy of CitiPower I guess. Damn, after checking logs, maybe the machine didn't crash, maybe just the video and keyboard disappeared... Maybe its time to upgrade wyvern's kernel since I've no incentive now to keep it running!

Busy day. I must be getting over whatever it was. After a slow start in the morning I ended up spending most of the afternoon spring cleaning — we now have the cleanest springs in the street. Paid Mr Tax Man, paid a pile 'o bills, put away a month's worth of receipts and papers, threw out a bunch of old magazines, consigned another assortment to a well-ordered pile hidden under the spare bed. Even threw out some well-loved, but unworn-in-the-last-decade clothes.

Out walking this afternoon, another taxi (ST-1531) drove past with the driver merrily smoking in his cab, pausing to flick the lit cigarette out the window as he turned into the Rydges hotel to pick up passengers. I wonder how many of them don't smoke in their cabs? Maybe its time for another letter to the EPA and the Taxi directorate...

Another day at home, two hours sitting reading, one hour sleeping in bed, repeat...

[http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/32732.html]

Bill Joy leaves Sun.

[http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/32780.html]

Bill Joy, creator of vi.

I think this is the first time I've ever snarfed an entire Slashdot article, but I found so many of the subjects referenced interesting that it seemed the easiest way. I've just about given up reading anything below the article itself, 99.9% of Slashdot seems to be crap.

SmellsLikeTeenGarlic writes "Seth Nickell (of Storage and Gnome HIG fame) has started a new project which aims to replace the aging Init system on Linux. OSNews has more details on the project, directly from Seth. The new Python-based approach will make booting faster and it will talk to the D-BUS daemon, freedesktop.org's leading project. And speaking of freedesktop.org, it is important to mention the release of HAL 0.1, an implementation of a hardware abstraction layer for KDE, XFce and Gnome, based on a proposal by freedesktop.org's founder Havoc Pennington and being implemented by David Zeuthen. It is innovative projects like Storage, SystemServices and HAL that can bring the kind of integration to the underlying system that current X11 desktop environments lack."

Later in the afternoon I head up the street for some groceries, then stopped on the way home for a drink and a snack. Sitting watching the traffic go by, seeing everything that is ugly about Australia. The view is dominated by the width of the road — town planning twisted so cars are more important than people. Drivers cursing, swearing, hooting at each other, then in turn stopping where they shouldn't, turning where it's forbidden. One, two, three... half a dozen... ten... I quickly lose count of the number yacking away on their phones, minds in neutral, inches from the car in front. Amazing that they don't run into each other more often.

Disease 1, Adrian nil. Staying home today to wallow in self indulgent cold remedies — and old CDs that I haven't listened to for months. While I'm here I might as well try and clean up some of the last month's mess. All those newspaper cuttings and little jotted notes, for example.

I never did buy a replacement PDA. The Palm Tungsten looked attractive, but not enough research before we went overseas, so I had no idea what prices were good, bad or average. I came close in Singapore, but a small matter of the price for a Tungsten T, but with the spec. sheet for a Tungsten T2 made me a little wary. Now I read that the Tungsten T3 is due out this month. Oh well, next month's model is always better and cheaper... Oh, and I just saw that the T3 has a three hour battery life — not helpful!

Ugh! Inundated with web-browsers and assorted other software, I've been using Konquerer on my home PC for a while and today it decided to stop displaying double quotes, ellipses and em-dashes. A font thing. SSH-agent has decided not to run either, so I have to keep reentering my private key password.

Must be Spring! The university campus is full of nesting birds, including a rather aggressive Noisy Miner that swooped down and pecked me on the back of the head when I walked too close to its nest. A first for that species, I'll add it to the list of magpies, mudlarks, swans and hawks that have attacked me over the years!

A new week, a new disease... I must have been away from Melbourne for too long, coming back I've caught the latest local cold.

Always around when you least need them! This morning on the train a group of six ticket inspectors came through the carriage checking tickets and keeping the peace. After yesterday, is this a coincidence? Why can't the train operators just face up to reality and put back one or two guards/inspectors on every train.

Aw hell, go away travelling for four weeks and what happens. Johnny Cash and Slim Dusty both dead, what else happened while I wasn't looking?

Fun and games on the train this morning. A bunch of strung-out looking druggies were smashing the doors and each other, swearing and smoking, fighting either amongst themselves or with someone they didn't like. Just as I was getting off at Huntingdale, one of them decided to start hassling other passengers, asking for money and threatening to stab people. A long and fruitfull conversation with the police ensued, a call back later confirming that at least one of them is in custody for a later attempted robbery.

Big joke: Reading the newspaper this evening, there was a quarter page advertisment telling people to catch use public transport as a relaxing way to get to work.

Nearly back to normal, apart from waking up around 4 a.m. and gradually listening to the world come alive. Assorted chirpy birds, cars in the distance, the first train of the morning, the clip-clop of someone walking down the street, a ticking noise every five minutes from the lounge room... hang on, that's the thermostat! Seems that the house-sitter must have turned the heater on sometime, then forgotten to turn it off — its almost impossible to tell by looking at the switch whether the stupid thing is on or off.

Still at home with my foot up, recovering.

I guess this will confuse things, but this is the first entry since we got home yesterday, first entry since we went away in August. As the mood takes me and time is available, words and pictures will appear to fill the gap.

The pictures would have started to appear today, except that although the camera, laptop and external drive are all sitting here at home, the cables to connect each pair are sitting on my desk at work! Oh well, maybe tomorrow...

Reading

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

Richard Forno's website. From an article “Hooked on high-tech” that appeared in the Age.

A four a.m. landing, hobble along to retrieve the bikes and the luggage. Time for quarantine and customs with the bikes, the boxes had to be opened to check for mud. AQIS staff polite and helpful as I've always found them, they even handed us tape to fix the boxes back up.

Outside to catch the shuttle bus into town, and the first major problem of the trip with carrying bikes on public transport. Typically, after four weeks of no hassles in three countries, there's a problem here in Australia. The bus driver took one look at the boxes and declared that they wouldn't fit and couldn't go in his bus, then made a big song-and-dance of moving people from the front seats to the rear and folding seats up to make room. The luggage rack was only a third full, and there were a whole 16 people on his forty seater bus!

The bus timetable, posters and information booth all made no mention of the cost of the tickets — surely something that most customers are interested in. At $13 one way, I'm not surprised that they're embarrassed to display it! A tram ticket to within one suburb of the airport costs around a quarter that, no wonder Sky-Bus and the taxis are resistant to the idea of a normal public transport link to the airport, that's quite a lucrative racket they're running.

Seven a.m. and we were home at last. A flurry of unpacking, then a day spent snoozing in bed, or endlessly filling and emptying the washing machine. Somewhere in there I managed to get to a doctor and was told that I'd sprained my ankle four days ago, to go home and rest it and to make an appointment with their physiotherapist — the receptionist interjected that this would “probably be sometime between two and three months from now”, as they were fully booked.

A blur of plane travel — a long, drawn out, uncomfortable blur. I took my shoe off and my sprained ankle sweeled up so much that by Singapore there was no hope of putting a shoe back on. No matter what I tried, I couldn't get it comfortable. Even under the seat in front, airline hostesses managed to kick it as they served meals. Pointing out my bandaged ankle only seemed to elicit a “sorry” in addition to the kicks, but didn't stop people tripping over it.

  Today: 0km
  Trip: ??km

Where?

Milan, Heathrow.

  Today: 0km
  Trip: ??km

A bad night's sleep due to the noise, the sprained ankle, the heat, and the stuffy room. In the morning I somehow managed a one-legged shower in the miniscule shower cubicle without flooding the bathroom or falling over and further injuring myself.

Where?

Milan.

  Today: 0km
  Trip: ??km

Where?

Peschiera, Verona, Milan.

  Today: 0km
  Trip: ??km

Where?

Fusina, Mestre, Peschiera.

  Today: 0km
  Trip: ??km

We'ld started talking after the two of us almost walked into each other, both were too busy watching an enormous container ship glide past, almost near enough to touch.

Breakfast in the café, more 1980's music. Cyndi Lauper and the Village people, endlessly repeating. How the barman can stand it I don't know! We escaped back to the tent to plan the day's activities. Caught the 10 o'clock ferry across to Venice again; then hours and hours of endless walking. Boats here are used for everything — deliveries, garbage collection, workman's cars, ambulances... We hopped in and out of shops, looking at glassware, looking at paper-ware, hopefully trying to find a wedding album! The glass is too breakable, the paper too bulky, neither really suited to carrying in a backpack — and both are quite pricey!

Another ferry across to Murano, home of the Venitian glass industry. We debated catched the ferry all the way around from the Arsenale on the south, but decided to avoid the hour-long trip, to walk across to the north and catch it from there. Dived back into laneways and alleyways as we zig-zagged through some very non-tourist parts of the island, ordinary grocery shops and cafés, no glass, no souvenirs, finding our way without too much problem across to where we wanted to be.

Onto the ferry and across to Murano, then an hour or more spent looking around the glass museum. An impressive collection of Venetian glass from the 15th century to today, together with archaelogical glass finds from back to 100BC. Some of the three or four hundred year old pieces were almost indistinguishable (to me) from pieces created in the last decade! Most of the museum is labelled in English as well as Italian, but the layout of rooms is slightly confusing, and with no map or floorplan we nearly missed visiting a few rooms.

Exausted on leaving the museum, it was definitely beer o'clock. The first café that we sat down at refused to serve just a drink — for some reason there can't be enough profit on €5 beers without food as well! The second attempt was more successful, two cold, refreshing beers for only about two-and-a-half times what they cost in Australia!

After the beer it was time to start heading home, lest we be forced to do the unthinkable and have to pay for a meal in Venice! Back to the ferry, then packed in like sardines for the Murano-Venice trip with all the homeward-bound commuters. A long and tortuous path through lanes and paths and streets and stairs to the Stazione to check train timetables for tomorrow, then back to Fusina wharf, just like yesterday, we were just in time for the 19:10 ferry. Another sunset trip across the lagoon, magnificent colours as the sun sank through the pollution haze over the oil refinery. Three large cruise ships or Mediterranean ferries were all leaving at once, dwarfing us as they silently moved past in the channel, and the bay was so thick with tiny fishing boats that it looked as though you could use them as stepping stones to get from one side to the other. What were they fishing for? The water looks shallow enough for it to be shellfish off the bottom — with the islands only one or two metres above sea level, is the water here that much deeper?

Back to the campground for a beer before dinner, the barman's accent jolting with the friendly greeting of “Gidday, waddaya wantmate?”

Dinner of pizzas and another half litre carafe of wine, nothing exotic, everything tasty, everthing enjoyable. Then off to bed with the distant sounds of the refinery and ships passing in the lagoon.

Where?

Venice, Fusina

  Today: 0km
  Trip:

A last breakfast in the hotel and then a minor victory — they're happy to let us leave the bikes in the basement for a couple of days while we head off to visit Venice.

Off to the station, lugging the luggage, then try to find a working ticket machine — one that would accept notes! The problem with the machines seems to be that they were too successful, and they were all full and couldn't accept any more money! An armed guard and a bank employee were visiting them one by one, empting the cashbox and restarting the machines, and then instantly a queue would appear at each revitalised ticket machine. I was amused to see that inside the machines there appears to be a very ancient IBM PS/2 running OS/2, and not once did I see a crashed one, unlike the numerous Windows blue-screens, such as on the information kiosk that sat there for three days!

The 10:38 train to Venice Mestre, luckily we got on ahead of the crowd and managed to get seats in a compartment, every other seat ended up taken and there were people standing in the aisles for the two-hour trip.

Complications at Mestre, the only information counter is hotel information, and they wouldn't hand out a map without a booking for one of their listings. Eventually the girl relented and was waving a hand vaguely at where camping grounds “nearby” might be found. Finally she said that she could make a booking at another campsite — not in Mestre, but close, “on the beach at Fusina”, a short bus ride away. Not only could she make a booking, but she could give us a discount voucher and also a map of how to get there! We took the vouchers and the directions and went outside to find a number 11 bus. After about ten minutes it arrived and the driver started shouting at us and pointing across the road. Seems that the tourist office keeps on directing tourists to the wrong bus stop! Crossed the road and waited another half an hour for the bus in the right direction, then stayed on the bus to the end of the line at Fusina. For a while we wondered where we were going, the bus seems to head off into endless miles of derelict industrial ruins and rusting junk, before finally arriving at Fusina where all that remains is the ferry, a carpark and the campground.

Surprise — Jo realised that its the same campground that she stayed in five years ago! “On the beach” seems to have been muddled in the translation from Italian to English. Yes, the campground is next to the water, a steep rock wall seperates it from a major shipping channel! It was very impressive to see a container ship the size of an office block go drifting past through the trees as we were putting up the tent.

It's also directly under the flight path for Venice airport, but somehow that wasn't mentioned in the description at the information booth!

A quick exploratory walk around the campground, the €5 lying on the ground near the tent was grabbed and added to the beer fund, then off to the facilities to do some much needed washing. Laundromats are in short supply in Italy.

Definitely a backpacker-oriented campground, domestic visitors are not the intended audience — but would probably be made as welcome as we were. Seemed to be run by ex-pat Australians. Internet café, shop, bar, café and restaurant, bad 1980's pop music playing in the bar, four or five Kontiki tour buses filling one parking lot, and masses of dorm rooms and near-outdoor showers for the summer crowds.

Also handy is the Fusina ferry terminal, only a couple of minutes walk across the road.

Half an hour to travel across the bay, then we spent three hours getting lost and found through the maze of lanes and alleys that is Venice. A fascinating place to visit, but no way would I want to live there, too damp, too expensive, and bicycles are forbidden!

We headed back to Fusina for dinner as it started to get dark, to avoid the cool of the evening and the heat of the prices. Venice is expensive! I saw a €6 beer and a €4 coffee. Still, there's obviously enough tourists who are prepared to pay that, but I won't be joining them.

Dinner was a thoroughly enjoyable, and far more affordable, affair in the campground. Eventually the bad 80's music drove us away from the bar and to bed, but a newly arrived coachload of 20-something Latvians made for a very loud evening! Partying in the nearest dormrooms, laughing, singing and dancing, they were in for a big night. The aircraft overhead and pounding dance music left me thinking that I'd never get to sleep.

Where?

Verona, Mestre, Venice, Fusina.

  Today: 0km
  Trip: ??km

Where?

Verona, Mantova.

  Today: 0km
  Trip: ??km

Where?

Verona.

  Today: 99.70km
  Trip: ??km

Where?

Peschiera, Verona.

  Today: 81km
  Trip: ??km

At the top nearly half the group were sitting around waiting to catch their breath, so a great photo shoot was undertaken, fifteen or so cameras lined up in the middle of the road while Nigel worked his way through them all, puzzling out the intricacies posed by a myriad of styles, designs and controls. Ed's arrival nearly put an end to it all as he rode triumphantly through the middle of the cameras, narrowly missing the lot! Within minutes of the majority leaving, Jo arrived, closely followed by Roger, and were greeted by an almost empty hilltop!

A long and windy descent, magnificent in the most part, but one or two scary moments with oncoming cars when we realised just how narrow the road was! Jo and I stopped for a drink and some fruit in the first village that we came to, unfortunately just after the group of ten had been in and upset the proprietor by picking through all her peaches and bananas looking for the ripest ones. “Don't touch the fruit!” — a warning we heeded well. A fantastic final descent through steep olive groves to Lake Garda, then around the shore of the lake to lunch.

Where?

Idro, Peschiera.

  Today: 98.30km
  Trip: ??km

Rained all day.

Where?

Ranzanico, Idro

  Today: 99.27km
  Trip: ??km

Rained all day.

Where?

Bárzio, Ranzanico

  Today: 69.63km
  Trip:

Everyone got up early because of the rain, then sat around with glum expressions watching the water run down the paths and under the tents. Being such a high-traffic caravan and campervan-oriented campground, the individual sites are almost completely bare of grass, so the whole place turned instantly to mud.

Over breakfast the rain eased off, and then after sitting around for another hour we all started to roll out of camp around 10 o'clock — except that Jo had a flat front tyre. Removed the sliver of glass from the tyre, in with the spare tube, and off we went.

Sixteen kilometres to the ferry at Menággio, the temperature rising and jackets coming off as it became increasingly steamy.

Ferry ride across lake Como to Bellagio and a pause for a coffee and a bite to eat. Jo and I managed to accidently jump the queue by sitting at a table by ourselves, while the other six all sat at one large table. Also present in the café was a dozen members of the BMW formula one team in matching shirts and jackets, I've no idea whether any of their drivers were present! Still thinking that it was going to be a short day, with an easy ride to tonight's town, we headed out to visit the chapel of Madonna del Ghisallo, the patron of cyclists. One by one, or in groups of three or four, we all missed a turn off due to Andy's odd route notes concerning a stop sign and a turn. Two or three kilometres further on, and heading south-west up the ridge and along the lake shore, Jo and I stopped to consider the map.

The lines on the map seemed to indicate that we could cut across country, down to the river and back up to the next ridge to rejoin the correct road, so Tony, Jo and I tried bravely to take the short-cut. After climbing steeply up through a village, then zig-zagging down towards a creek, the track eventually petered out as a vanishingly small lane into someone's farm. Maybe it came out the other side, maybe we'd taken a wrong turn, we weren't game to try any more variations, so headed back towards Bellagio, spotted the missed turn, and made a second attempt.

I think if there had been a printed profile of today's route that far fewer people would have tried to visit the chapel, it was several hundred metres of climbing up through misty clouds, then a very discouraging descent before a final eight hairpins up to the top. The chapel itself is amazingly decorated with at least a hundred years of donated jerseys and bicycles.

There's a cycling museum being built next door to the chapel, it looks strangely abandoned. Signs seem to indicate that it was started, or designed, in 1998, but it appears that the building site was abandoned about a third of the way through construction. Maybe they're just taking a break...

The eleven kilometres back down to Bellagio passed in a blur, along the way the clouds had thinned again, giving us good views down to the South-eastern arm of Lake Como.

An hour or so to wait for the ferry to Varenna, then came what we thought would be an easy twenty or so kilometre ride around the lake then up the valley of the Tioverna to Barzio. Unfortunately we had no route profile, or notes to tell us that it climbed quite steeply towards the end, or that we'd left it too late in leaving the lake.

The ride up the valley was quite enjoyable, even if the clouds did close in again, the traffic was light and the villages attractive. There was a major detour around one smaller town where a landslide had destroyed the main road — and a number of buildings — and we had to detour off along a very narrow track. Eventually, somewhere around Introbio, as the rain came down again, Andy and Rose caught up to us in the van and persuaded us to forgo the pleasures of ten kilometres of climbing in the gloom and the rain, and to get into the van for a lift up to the town.

We were staying in the Hotel Esposito and looking forward to a group meal in their dining room. The meal started off well, but after a tasty first course the main course of two or three small and very salty sausages was not well received.

Where?

Porlezza, Menággio, Bellagio, Varenna, Barzio.

Postcards

  Today: 106.35km
  Trip: ??km

Where?

Cannobio, Porlezza.

  Today: 0km
  Trip: ??km

Germans, Germans, Germans... Every car we see, every person we pass, every conversation we overhear. As soon as we enter a shop and the shop-keeper realises that we aren't Italian, they start talking German to us. All very polite of the Italians to the German tourists who are their main source of income, but it's starting to get a little annoying since we don't speak German!

Cloudy this morning, a late lazy breakfast and a slow walk into town for stamps and to write postcards. The first challenge of the dy was entering the post office/bank — the anti-bandit doors had us completely fooled. Eventually we got in, a dozen stamps were purchased, and we managed to get out again.

Coffee and a long lazy sit by the lake, post cards to everyone on our list. At least I think we got everyone on our list...

Where?

Cannobio.

  Today: 89.14km
  Trip:

Where?

Bellinzona, Cannobio.

  Today: 83.66km
  Trip:

Where?

Andermatt, Bellinzona.

  Today: 103.77km
  Trip:

First the Grimselpass, then the Furkapass — what a day!

Where?

Interlaken, Andermatt.

  Today: 84.74km
  Trip: ??km

At Im Fang, Switzerland suddenly became German, it was strange, one minute we were still in the French part of the world, the next minute everything had gone German, the look of the buildings, the road signs... Strange too, since it wasn't at the top of a ridge, or across a river, the divide seemed to be half-way up a valley.

Where?

Gruyères, Broc, Im Fang, Interlaken.

  Today: 103.82km
  Trip:

Around the lake to Villeneuve, then after stopping at the shops to stock up on vitals, Jo and I missed the turn off for the bike path. On and on through town we went, out the other side and then nearly ended up on a major road — the same major road that the route notes warned us not to get onto. Andy arrived just as we were trying to work out where to go next, and redirected us back into the centre of town, with directions on finding the bike path. Once on the bike path it was supposed to be simple: “just follow the signs to Aigle” said the notes.

The bike path headed off into the woods, then there was an endlessly infuriating hour of zig-zagging back and forth, farmland to woods and back again. Single lane farm tracks criss-crossed the plain in a grid, some were marked as cycle paths, others were simply lanes between the fields. The fields themselves were full of 2m high corn, too tall to see over in many places. The cycle paths were labelled A, B, C, D and E, with not a sign to be seen with any town or village names! After just about giving up in exasperation, we finally found ourselves heading into Aigle, having travelled 47.5km for what was marked as 30km in our notes! Over a large and spicy lunch of kebabs the others all related various tales of woe, swearing that this was the last time that any of us would ever chance riding on a Swiss cycle path, and threatening Andy with various forms of dismemberment. The distances covered varied from 35km up to our maximum of 47km, the group that made it in the shortest time had abandoned the notes and ridden straight along the highway.

Up the valley from Aigle, we came to the first climb of the trip, switchbacks up from the plains and into the start of the hills. Motorbikes wound their way up the hill, while a pair of touring cyclists with fully laden panniers went swooping past downhill. Then twenty kilometres or so of climbing through picture-postcard scenery.

After arriving in the campground at 5:15, I hurriedly changed and leapt in the van in an attempt to get up the hill to the old city, and to try to visit the H.R. Giger museum. It would be unforgivable if I came here and didn't try to visit... Hurrying in from the carpark, across the cobble-stones, past the restaurants, hotels, souvenir shops and usual mix found inside mediaeval walls. Only foot traffic is allowed inside the old city walls, so no traffic to contend with. Then the juxtaposition of the Giger museum and accompanying Giger bar next to the old castle. I was out of luck, the museum doors were being locked at five to six and I wasn't allowed inside for a quick peek around. Richard and a few of the others had managed to get inside an hour or so earlier, but were being unceremoniously herded out by the attendant who wanted to go home.

I made do with photos of the outside, and some refreshing beers in the bar, marvelling at the work that has gone into the detailing — disturbing detailing that it is in places. Still in need of a shower from the riding, I had a brisk walk back to the campground only to find that both the showers I tried took my money, but neither gave any hot water. A quick rinse in icy cold water and then try to find a powerpoint to recharge the camera, since I'd just about flattened the battery in the Giger bar. Not a chance, almost all the powerpoints had locked covers! I managed to sneak five or ten minutes with the camera plugged into a shaver socket while I wrestled with the showers, but not enough to fully recharge. It was the epitome of the Swiss camping ground — coins for the shower, coins for the washing machine, even coins to get a bucket of hot water for washing up!

Unwashed, cold, in a bad mood, and out of coins, I was only just in time to jump in the van to go back up the hill to the old city for the group dinner. Good food and great surroundings helped improve the situation! As we were leaving, the sun was just setting in a magnificent display of purple and orange, just a little too dark for my camera to capture. Everyone walked back from the hilltop to the campsite, our designated drivers having partaken freely in the wine and beer with the meal. The air temperature dropped rapidly, reminding us that although it was still summer, we were quite high in the hills.

Where?

Cully, Aigle, Gruyères.

Where?

Geneva, Cully.

Where?

Geneva.

Where?

Henley on Thames, Reading, Geneva.

Where?

Henley on Thames, Hurley.

Where?

Henley on Thames.

Coffee in the first café that we came to, just around the corner from Paddington station — Jo suddenly realised that it used to be a florist that she walked past nearly every day.

An exausting day, topped off by catching the very last train home. The clickety-clack and rocking motion making it nearly impossible to stay awake. Suddenly I sat up with a jerk as I realised that we'd stopped at Reading and had to get out now to change platforms for the branch line to Henley! Somehow I managed to wake Jo and levitate us both out of the train in under five seconds, I've no idea how, I don't think it could be repeated.

Where?

Henley on Thames, Paddington.

Joe and Paddy had been up the river to Beale on Saturday, but both of them enjoy the boats and the river, so off we all went again for a day in the sun at the Inland Waterways Association's annual festival. Strolling around in the hot sun and looking at the dry grass, it was hard to tell that we were on the banks of the Thames, and not at a country show somewhere in Australia in summer time.

Magnificently decorated narrow boats and holiday boats on display everywhere. Boats for hire, boats for timeshare, boats to buy... The whole support industry and cottage crafts, everything is here — and all at a price. Love to have one, but they seem to start at £50,000 and work their way up!

The main arena was as dry as a dust-bowl, marching bands played, a motorbike stunt team performed intricate manoeuvres while their sergeant-major-esque leader bellowed through his walrus moustache. Chitty Chitty Bang-Bang was in attendance, if not the original car from the movie, then an almost perfect replica.

As well as the static displays there were demonstrations of the boats in the river, I fell in love with one magnificent vessel — the Daybreak — as it cruised around effortlessly while the commentator expounded at great length on its many features. There was an old working Merryweather steam-engine fire engine, I thought I'd taken a photo of it, but later couldn't find it. A shame, considering how well maintained it was.

Where?

Henley on Thames, Beale.

Heathrow, Sunday morning, 6:15 a.m. Three plane loads of people arrive at once to queue for immigration. Me in the short EU queue and Jo in the very long other — we didn't realise that she could come through with me. She found out and chased after me — too late — I was in that trance-like post-aircraft state and went through alone, leaving her to queue up behind a jumbo jet load of Nigerians for a very slow trip through customs. Much grumpiness, not an auspicious start. The plane-load from Lagos was very slow in passing through customs — maybe they were all being asked if they had inherited large sums of Nigerian money recently....

Next challenge! The £35 car rental quote that Jo had found on the Internet turned into a £95 per day charge due to it being a Bank holiday — even though she'd checked the rates for this weekend! Forget that for a joke, we'll put the bikes into the left-luggage facility and catch the train...

Heathrow's left-luggage are happy to take anything, at £5 per day per item... except for bicycles in boxes, which are deemed bulky, and thus cost £10 per day, each. Huge suitcases, golf clubs, and other large boxes all somehow appear to be ordinary items, but not bikes. £100 to hold the bikes until Friday seems excessive. Next option... We rang up my uncle Joe and caused much surprise, chaos and lack of communications meant nobody was really sure when Jo and I would be in the UK, or if we'd call them. We arranged to catch the airport bus to Reading, and for Joe to meet us there.

What a production the bus turned into. First there's a quarter of an hour wait for the inter-terminal shuttle, then a long, drawn out and winding trip from Terminal 4 around to 1, 2 and finally 3. The bus terminal at Terminal 3 is dinghy and noisy and grimy — standard for bus terminals the world over. I sit with the bags and bikes while Jo heads off to find tickets. Barely two minutes later a bus for Reading pulled up and a woman appeared from nowhere to sell tickets at the door. Meanwhile Jo has vanished into the enormous queues inside at the service counter and can't be found — no Jo, no getting on the bus.

A quarter of an hour later Jo reappeared, dishevelled and very pissed off. She'd picked up a pamphlet on her way in that told her to buy tickets at the counter, then queued with the crowds until she got to the front, and was then told that tickets were only sold on the bus itself! Congratulations National Express, what a phenomenally disorganised mess.

Signs everywhere on every counter warn of harsh penalties for "rage" or aggression of any kind against employees — maybe if they weren't so institutionally and individually incompetent, these signs wouldn't be necessary!

Finally we got to Reading, were met by uncle Joe and cousin Elizabeth, and made our way back to Henley, Jo and Elizabeth in one car, Joe and I, the baggage and bikes in the other.

A cup of tea, a little lunch, and we spent the rest of the afternoon talking about family, and with a walk down to the Thames to sit by the lock. Maybe its the novelty of a working river, but I think we could both sit and watch boats going through the locks for hours....

Where?

Heathrow, Reading, Henley on Thames

One row from the bulkhead in the 747, there in front of us is the seat row with the babies. Not one, not two... there are three babies in the row, all poised to make life hell for the 26 hours to the UK. Two babies and a toddler. A quick stare and a roll of the eyes distracted the crying one for long enough — it stopped crying. Meantwhile the toddler is busy pinching his baby brother.

The cabin crew were having a problem with the video system, a voice came over the PA system “Ladies and gentlemen, as a last resort I am rebooting the system, this will also remove power from your seats.” Cool, blue screen of death to the aircraft seats.

No video, oh no! I'll just have to entertain myself by playing at being a martian — using the plastic swizzle sticks as antenna. This didn't last very long, it wasn't very entertaining and I was given that whithering look that asks “Just how old do you think you are?”

I thought the work day would never end... But it did. Home at last, packing, getting ready to leave.

I called Qantas this morning to enquire whether it was possible to check some of our luggage all the through from Melbourne to Geneva, even though we're spending a couple of days in London. Thirteen minutes on hold listening to an endlessly repeating tape, then a voice comes on the line. “Yes, there's no problem with that,” said the nice lady on the phone. “Just call back with the flight numbers so we can check that it's with an airline that we share with.”

Around lunch time I called them back, with the flight numbers this time. Fifteen minutes on hold, and then a different voice:

“No, there's no way that they can do that unless you are travelling from London to Geneva on the same day. I don't know why anyone would have told you otherwise. Your only possible option is to send it as unaccompanied baggage from London to Geneva, at about $4.90 a kilogram, here, I'll transfer you to the freight company we deal with....”

Ten minutes on hold listening to a different tape, and then:

“Sorry, can't help you, this is domestic enquiries, hang on and I'll put you through to international.”

another minute...

“Hi, um, we're in the middle of moving offices and I'm on my mobile and I don't have any of the rates, can you call back on this number in about ten minutes?”

I explained that I'd been on hold for quarter of an hour and had no idea what “this number” was.

“ok, how many kilos are you sending?”

I explained that it was about 30kg, it is two bicycles in boxes.

“Oh, bicycles are charged on volume, it works out to be about 32kg per bicycle, you'll need to measure the height by width by depth and then divide by 6000 to get the equivalent weight charge for bulky items, I'll take your name and phone number and call you with an exact price....”

...end of lunch time, one 28 minute phone call, one thrilled customer.

On the topic of security, I wonder if Qantas still insists on only providing plastic knives with meals, but accompanied by metal forks, and wine in glass bottles? I've always found that bizarre, especially after being mugged once by someone using a broken bottle as a weapon.

Picked the wrong day this weekend to go for a ride — too cold and too windy — but the scenery more than made up for it. Inspiration had struck on Friday and we tried to retrace parts of the MAD ride — drive out to Yarra Glen, ride to Healesville, then up Myer's Creek road to Toolangi and back.

Yarra Glen to Healesville was mostly flat, but with an icy northerly blowing, not really enjoyable. We spent that part of the ride with our eyes glued to the road, trying to spot the Harley keys that a guy driving past said he'd lost along here! Not much chance of finding them, but he looked pretty desperate — crawling along about 100m ahead of us, peering out through the windscreen of his ute. No keys to be found, just the usual variety of road-side rubbish: a shoe, cans and bottles, a nappy dumped on the road, the sleeve of a shirt, a towel, someone's discarded g-string.

Into the forests near Healesville we were finally out of the wind, the roads busy with traffic for the markets. Around the backstreets and off northwards up Myer's Creek road, an ambulance screaming off ahead. Suspicions were that it would be one of the many motorcyclists in the area, come to grief somewhere on a corner. Sure enough, when we were a few kilometres out of town, first the ambulances came back at a more sedate pace, then rounding a corner we came upon the tow-truck and police, attempting to haul a downed bike out of the ditch off the end of a bend.

The climb up to Toolangi is about 10km through the forest. I enjoyed it, but for some reason Jo just doesn't like this hill — says she didn't like it in 2002 when we rode up it, and still doesn't like it today. There are towering tree ferns at the side of the road, old Mountain Ash stumps that still have the marks where loggers cut them down in the thirties, a couple of recent tree falls had been sawn through to clear the road — trunks almost 2m thick.

Toolangi General Store provided warming sausage rolls and a much-needed large mug of coffee, then we checked the tourist map before heading along the ridge in the direction of Kinglake. Now that we were up out of the forest the wind had hit again, straight through the clothes and numbing fingers and toes — a minor mutiny and we decided to turn back along a dirt road that we thought circled back around to Toolangi. I guess a better knowledge of the area would have told us that the Toolangi-Dixson's Creek road would go off through the forest and take us to Dixon's Creek, but we didn't know that. It was a great find though, a traffic-free dirt road on the sunny side of the ridge, protected from the wind as it wound around through dry forest and down to the farms and vineyards below. Amazing how different the forest types were on the two sides of the ridge, gone were all the mountain ash and ferns, open dry scrub and stringy-barks in their place.

The one possible drawback of that route was the last few kilometres to Yarra Glen — along the Melba highway. Narrow, noisy, and plenty of traffic, including a couple of caravans being towed by drivers who forget just how much wider they are than their cars. We did get to see all the high end tourism-oriented Yarra Valley wineries from the road, but in the cold there was little incentive to stop and sample anything.

Just on three hours riding and we were back in Yarra Glen for a second warm-up cup of coffee and a determination to find a map once we got home and work out just where we'd managed to go!

Two new tyres for Norky bike, I thought it better get them now rather than feel foolish somewhere on tour. Hutchinson Tom Slicks at $120 a pair! A bit pricey, but they look to be just what I'm after. Fitting them was a pain, after weeks of being folded, they didn't want to unfold and sit on a wheel. Might need to get some new — narrower — tubes as a result though.... We also picked up two cardboard boxes from the two bike shops up the street. Ray wants a postcard as payment.

Saturday morning, slept in until nearly eleven, then got up to find that one of the neighbours must have assumed we weren't here and as stolen the newspaper. That'll teach me to be slovenly.

A quick walk up the street to the vege. markets, then we breakfasted at Kojo Brown's, up on Bridge road. It's been up there in the “must get around to trying their menu” list for quite a while. A big decadent breakfast of eggs and bacon and mushrooms and tomato relish, several cups of coffee, and doing the crossword in someone else's newspaper. All while sitting in the sun and watching the world hurry past.

Via Ponte still hasn't reopened after closing for Christmas, at least there seems to be some action going on inside now — a complete rebuild, taking up what was the furniture store next door. I wonder if it'll bear any resemblance to how it was under Ian when it reopens?

Taxi driver of M-6897, you're a very naughty boy... Not only are you forbidden from smoking in your cab, but throwing the lit cigarette butt out the window is littering. Its a good thing that both the Victorian Taxi Directorate and the EPA are so keen to take reports on people breaking both sets of rules. You probably shouldn't have had your arm stuck out the window either, maybe next time a cyclist won't slow down and you'll get whacked on the elbow by a handlebar...

Off to the dentist this morning, an hour of sitting with my mouth jammed open, far too many implements and fingers being stuffed in there. If only I could have chosen better tooth genes... Perhaps nanotechnology tooth-repair, it would have to be better than drillings and fillings. Felt too woozy afterwards to go to work, I've come home to spend the day sulking on the couch.

The weather's been in tune with my mood too — gray and dismal all day. I listened to the Cure and tried to label a few older photos — its scary how quickly some of the names and places blur. I must make time on our trip to write something down every day.

More hills, more hills! Time to ride up some more hills... Richmond to The Basin along Canterbury road, then off through the forest along the Basin-Olinda road, a dirt road that winds peacefully up through the hills before popping out in the midst of Sunday tourist mayhem.

There was more traffic today than I've met on previous rides up that road — some days I haven't seen anyone else during the whole six kilometres, today there was traffic in both directions, slippin' and slidin' on the slick clay road. One patch of road so sticky that both Jo and I thought that our tyres were going flat, the mud wasn't deep, but it really seemed to stick us to the road. In the pauses between the traffic all we could hear were the bird sounds and the distant whine of motorbikes on Mountain highway. Kookaburras (Dacelo novaeguineae), parrots, and numerous small unidentifiable forest birds keeping us company on the way up the hill.

Eternal optimism meant that we stopped at a café in Olinda for lunch, something I really should give up doing. There must be one of Murphy's Laws that says something about competence and tourist areas... A very harried looking owner, a long delay to order, “sorry, we've none of those,” a changed order, a long wait... Why aren't there hobo-like chalk signs on the road or building, letting us know that some places just can't cope?

Three o'clock and time to leave if we want to make it home by dark. Zip up the spray jackets, warm up the legs. Off down the main tourist road to Sassafras, just one part of a long queue of traffic. Despite their “soothing drive in the country,” many of the motorists seemed to be highly stressed on the drive down, turning off onto Mountain highway and away from all the traffic was a relief.

Twenty minutes or less of effortless swooping descent through the trees, only two cars pass before we're back at The Basin. Part way down, a manic young mountain biker with knobby tyres roaring and t-shirt flapping tears past, then heads off up a fire-trail and off into the scrub. The road's been widened at a corner where once I nearly ran off into a bus shelter, new lines and warning signs too.

From The Basin back to Richmond is another two hours on the bikes, Sunday afternoon traffic, everyone wanting to get home from their day out in the countryside. Rolling up and down the hills of Mountain highway, Burwood highway, Toorak and Camberwell roads, and finally back onto Swan street for the last half suburb. The concrete expansion gaps in Toorak road feel like riding on train tracks, ka-thump, ka-thump, ka-thump...

Change of pace for the evening, yesterday's newspaper had thoughtfully included a discount voucher for the new cinemas up the road in the Concrete Monstrosity Shopping Mall (oops, Victoria Gardens). A quick check shows that Terminator 3 is on — definitely a night for a bit of mindless action. The movie was everything expected, Arnie and explosions and a wafer-thin plot. An added bonus was the shorts for nearly every other action movie to be shown in the next six months — I'd heard of some of them, but a few were new, all looked hilarious....

Fast service. They promise two day delivery on the website, but the new toy arrived today. (S/N VP2060.023221). Definitely easier than lugging a laptop around overseas. Now if only it had a few more smarts and an ethernet port...

Chased up the broken toy too. Although they didn't give us any warranty cards or paperwork with the TV, at least Dick Smith could tell me that there's a three year warranty on it and to call TEAC directly. No questions asked, Mr TEAC will be over in a flash (eleven days from now) to poke the broken power switch.

There's a white-faced heron that's been stalking around beside the bike path for the last few days. I think it must live somewhere near the Glennferrie road underpass, some days it perches on the spillway downstream from the road, other days I see it walking around on the grass...

More toys on the way... today I bit the bullet and bought an X-Drive II, so I'll have some way of saving my digital photos while away travelling. Lots of counting on my fingers and scrawled notes on a piece of paper and it turns out to be cheaper to buy one bundled with a 20G drive than to buy an empty one and muck about finding a drive. Two day delivery they say...

Dear Senator Alston.

Since you seem to be under the impression that you can control the internet, here's a sample of today's spam. Once you've passed your anti-spam laws, I'll be forwarding all I receive straight to your office so that you can best deal with transgressors.

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Yay! Only 13 more working days until we go on holiday... Monash was getting me down today — just a few too many cases of people not reading instructions and ringing up to query things.

More fun-and-games on the bike path under Glennferrie road this morning... a warning sign and huge row of orange cones. Is it flooded? Are they trying to install a dyke to keep the water out? I slowed as I entered... no, there's a film crew setting up for a shoot in the storm-water drain. There's lights and generators and cables and wires and chairs and people everywhere. Shame that some of the public are actually trying to use the bloody track to get to work!

An interesting contact came in the mail today — no, not more spam — it was from a relative of my Great-Great-Grandmother (Martha West Issott). Had some interesting background information on that part of my family tree.

Off to church this morning! A very strange thing for me to do — I can't remember when I last entered a church... other than for weddings, or christenings, or to admire the architecture. This was another christening, but it came at the end of the weekly service. Quite unsettling, as I had no idea what was happening at various times, and kept suspecting that as one of the god-parents, I'd be expected to know what was happening.

It all passed without incident. Neither Jack or Will had a tantrum in the church, Jack was happy to have me as a god-parent, John and Kath are happy to have me as a god-parent for Jack, I'm happy to be a god-parent for Jack. There's a small matter of the technical requirements of the church — but that's a matter for the church...

It did make me wonder exactly where I'd been christened. I guess my mum knows...

Then off to a celebratory lunch, two families, a myriad of cousins, a giant serving of food.

It seemed like a good idea at the time... If we're going to be riding in the Alp's next month, Jo thought she should have a little hill riding as training. Over a beer or two last night Evan mentioned that he hadn't ridden up Mount Donna Buang for some time, and what a great ride it is at this time of year, especially with the Warbuton-Healesville road being closed over winter. A spur of the moment decision and the three of us decided to ride up there today.

First there was the early start — not too early, but early enough that we thought there'd be a bit of the day left after we finished. Coffee and toast while I wrestled with the tyres, changing the normal slicks for the off-road knobbies — dirt-roads and the possibility of snow meant that slicks wouldn't be a good idea!

Evan called round and picked us up, three bikes onto the roof and off we went. Under an hour later and we were getting unpacked and sorted out in the carpark of the Launching Place pub. The plan was to ride the 12km along the rail-trail to Warbuton as a warm-up, then up the mountain through the forest, then the Warbuton-Healesville dirt-road along the ridge, and back down to Launching place. Its about 70km, a good three or four hours out in magnificent country.

The rail-trail is an easy ride, a little muddy in places, it meanders through the paddocks and bush, sometimes popping out to cross the road at inconvenient places. Not many other bike riders, but a wide selection of people walking, including a group of about a dozen, with nearly twice as many dogs.

Into Warbuton we turned from the trail back onto the road, then left and up, towards Mt Donna Buang. “Road Open to Summit,” proclaimed a large illuminated road sign. Slowing as we climbed, the road passed through alternating warm sunny patches and increasingly cooler shady spots. By the time we reached the forest lookout platform, roughly half-way up, none of us wanted to stop for very long and admire the view.

We're not sure exactly how far it is from Warbutton to the top, one sign at the bottom says 17km to the summit, at the forest lookout it is 9km to both top and bottom, and at the last turn one sign states one kilometre to summit, twelve to the bottom! I'm tempted to believe 18km, but in any case it's quite a climb. Launching Place is about 150m above sea level, Warbutton, 220m. The peak of Mt Donna Buang rises to 1250m, with the road winding all the way to the top.

From the lookout onwards there was increasing patches of snow at the side of the road, and signs warning us to beware of snow clearing machinery. A light but constant stream of motorists wound past up the hill, some waving, some just looking bemused. We caught them up and passed them all again at the entrance to the park, there's a $6 charge per car, but bicycles can enter for free. The weather was perfect though, not a breath of wind, and a clear blue sky.

At the last carpark the road was closed the last 100m to the summit, families sat by their cars with picnics and coffee, kids slid around on plastic toboggans. The more energetic walked up to the peak, Evan and I tried to ride... I made it about 2m before jumping off, the front wheel ploughing off on a course of its own choosing, the rear spinning frantically like a paddle-steamer. Jo sensibly walked from the start, keeping alongside, but in far less danger of falling over into wet snow!

Once at the top we waded through knee-deep snow to the sign for the mandatory photograph, then stood around admiring the view and watching people toboggan past or have snow-ball fights, or build snowmen. Misty clouds started to come in over the peak and it cooled rapidly, we'd made it to the top, now time to leave. Again, Evan and I foolishly tried to ride the snow-covered track back to the carpark. I made it most of the way, frantically hopping on one foot while half-balanced on the seat. Evan lowered his seat so that it resembled an 1880's bicycle and paddled his way down with both feet on the ground. Once again, Jo sensibly walked, and got there ahead of both of us!

Consternation at the turnoff for the Healesville-Warbuton road. We'd been expecting snow, but not quite this much snow. Cross-country skis would have a chance, but there was no way that we'd be able to ride through this! It was well over knee-deep, as Evan demonstrated by embedding the bike upright in the snow on the road and walking off.

While wondering just how far the snow continued, a couple of skiers appeared from around the corner. Definitely not a road to try and ride down, we'd have been out all afternoon and not have had an enjoyable time, not to mention probably getting soaked.

The only option was to put on the warm gloves, zip up the wind-proof jackets, and head back down the way we'd come. A chilly 9km run to the forest lookout, my fingers and toes going numb, worrying that I wouldn't have enough feeling left to operate the brakes. I insisted on a stop, parking myself for a minute alongside the parks noticeboard, long enough to get some circulation back into fingers. Off again for the last half of the decent, Evan leading the convoy, me a hundred metres back, then Jo, then a couple of motorists who didn't want to pass.

I thought my front tyre was feeling a little strange on the bends, but put it down to an unfamiliar tyre, a different profile, or just the hill and the cold. Evan had stopped on the last bend in the sun to wait for us, and as I pulled off the road I realised that my front tyre was now almost completely flat. Not fair — two punctures in twenty-four hours! As I turned the wheel, Evan politely enquired whether the two thumb-tacks embedded in it were a likely cause. I guess I'd picked them up at the National Parks noticeboard...

We stopped in Warbutton for a well-earned lunch, calling in at the Swagman Café, that rather peculiarly, was advertising Polish food and beer. Evan ordered soup, Jo and I, the focaccias, and three coffees. With two staff and only two other customers, we were expecting quick service... Sitting comfortably out in the sun, we didn't mind the the coffee and soup seemed to take a while to arrive. Half an hour later, however, the lack of focaccias was irritating. I ventured back inside to enquire, the response: “Oh, was there food with that order?” did nothing to cheer me up! With much apology the food was rushed out, it wasn't very good, but by then neither Jo nor I cared.

Nearly four o'clock, it was definitely now time to head back towards Launching Place and home! The gentle curves of the rail-trail are a great wind-down after the strenuous hill climb and freezing descent. Only one problem — and it was the usual problem when riding in a rural area — a car goes past and the idiots inside decide to abuse the cyclists. “Get off the bicycle!” came an amplified voice as the car passed on the road — only one difference from the usual run-of-the-mill idiots. This one was a marked police car — I guess the rural officers get bored easily. Really makes me feel comfortable about approaching them in other circumstances though!

Finally back at the car, nearly seven hours after we set out, we could pack up and head back to home. Very little chance of getting anything else done this Saturday though!

Do not confuse concubine with porcupine.

Just a statement that came up at dinner time this evening.

I don't really mind riding in the rain — although I prefer the rain to be on the ride home, rather on the way to work. What I do find annoying is when it starts hailing on me. Just a little bit too uncomfortable... It really makes me think that I should have dressed up in the waterproofs and ridden the motorbike, or just stayed home in bed!

About time I wrote something I think. Maybe time to backfill a few days over the last week. Time seems to be at a premium, gobbled up by travel organisation and playing with my plan9 system...

Interesting poll on slashdot today, the usual stupid irrelevancy, this time on how many operating systems people have used — but it did make me think. I've come up with the following list:

1. CoCo basic
2. Ti99/4A basic
3. AppleII
4. OS/9
5. Flex
6. CP/M
7. AmigaDOS
8. MS-DOS (2...6.22
9. Windows 3.x (3.1, 3.11, WfWg)
10. Windows 9x (Win95, Win98)
11. Windows NT (NT, 2000, XP)
12. Linux (0.99.4...2.4.21)
13. HP/UX
14. Plan9
15. QNX
16. BOS (Cobol-based "Business Operating System" on 80386s)
17. RSX-11/M
18. MacOS 7,8,9
19. PalmOS
20. NetWare (NetWare386...NetWare 6.0)
21. Solaris
22. CANDE (was that the name of the Burroughs B6700 OS?)

More running around to be done to get to the bank before work. The motorbike isn't quite sure what's going on — being ridden so many times in such a short space of time.

Money was extracted from the bank, money was deposited to the travel agents. They're almost as leech-like as each other, with STA travel threatening to charge 2.5% extra for credit cards or cheques, are we expected to carry around enough cash to pay for $2000 international air tickets?

A very tooth-oriented morning. Off to the dentist at 9 o'clock, to be poked, prodded, probed and polished. Tax and dentistry — I seem to get around to both of them shortly before heading off overseas on a holiday.

An hour later at work, Allan brought in his weekend's masterpiece — a carrot cake decorated with fondant carrots. I just had to take its photograph before it was sacrified.

P-plates, Commodores, baseball-caps. What is it about the combination of the three that leads to such predictably abusive behaviour on the roads?

We'd decided to go for a bike ride from Bundoora to Kinglake West, a few warm-up kilometres along the flat, then the seven kilometre climb up through the forest along the Humevale road. A strong northerly wind made the Bundoora to Whittlesea leg more onerous than necessary, A brief pause at the petrol station before Whittlesea to refuel on jelly-babies, then four kilometres of the thoroughly unpleasant leg of the Plenty road before reaching the Humevale turnoff. Every second motorist seemed determined to run us into the ditch; the afore-mentioned Commodore-driving, baseball-cap-wearing, P-plate displaying young men each trying to outdo the other in obnoxious behaviour, rudeness, or just general aggression.

Thoroughly pleasant to turn off onto the Humevale road for the half-hour climb through the forest. Birdlife all around us, including a lyrebird that ran across the road in front of the bikes and vanished into the forest. We saw only a single car on the way up the hill. Unlike some previous rides in more testosterone-fueled company, it was a leisurely thirty-five minutes from wombat-sign to stop-sign — the traditional start and end points of the hill-climb.

A brief rest at the top, then zip up the jackets for the icy descent and a high-speed run back to Whittlesea. We were back there almost before we realised, then not much longer on the bikes found us back in Bundoora and diving into the bakery for a well-earned lunch.

No riding this Saturday! After last night's icy cold winds and three days of almost constant rain, neither of us felt like getting up and going out on the bikes — and besides, it's been nearly three weeks since we visited the markets, there's half an eggplant left in the fridge, and that's about all...

A bit of grocery shopping, a bit of breakfast, a bit of housework. Mind-boggling interesting stuff. Stuff that just has to be done sometimes.

An eerie creaking call made us look up while hurrying around the markets — a flock of twenty or so black cockatoos were circling overhead. I've never seen them in the suburbs before, just sometimes heard them in the forest further up the river. The call almost reminded me of the herring gulls in England.

Second day in a row of warm, almost Spring-like, weather in the evening. It made riding home such a change from the last few weeks! The warmer weather seems to have brought out the idiots too — two days in a row I've met the same guy who's decided that he needs to ride with a red light on the front of his bike. Hopefully soon someone will kill him painlessly, before he causes anyone to crash avoiding him. There also seemed to be about half a dozen stealth-riders along the track — dark clothes, no helmets, no lights...

Five degrees this morning and there was more frost along the river. After another night staying up to watch the live coverage of le Tour de France, it would have been very tempting to spend the rest of the morning in bed.

Far warmer in the evening though. It almost felt like Spring!

Another month nearly gone and we're starting to catch up with the Great 2003 Pasta Challenge. For the first time in a few months the dish looked recognizably like the picture on the calendar! Now at last the calendar can be changed over to display July. Then we've got another week to make a dish that contains scallions and cilantro — I'm guessing a small onion and a type of herb! Extra challenging trying to follow a foreign language recipe book — English.

It tasted great, even if it wasn't quite the weather for a cold pasta dish. Probably one of the better meals from the calendar. One small problem was that I broke a piece off a tooth while eating it — I guess I can't really blame the pasta though — I seem to lose small bits off a tooth every three months or so. Poor tooth genes I guess.

This afternoon we headed over to the Botanic Gardens for a chance to get out of the house, a chance to get a little exercise, and a chance to wander around in the winter sun and watch the tourists.

A cool, misty sun shining over the city, and the distant sounds of the football made it all feel very wintery.

Rounding one of the lawns on a billabong we were looking at a very striking willow that hung down into the water. It looked almost like something out of a Japanese print. There was a bundle of sticks in the tree that caught my eye — a nest. Suddenly we realised that there were at least four large Night Herons sitting in the tree — dead still and almost perfectly camouflaged. I wonder how many hundreds of people walk past them every day and have never realised that they're there...

Cultural event for the weekend was finally getting to the cinema to see Whale Rider. Very familiar looking countryside in the movie — it was filmed in Whangara in New Zealand, just north of Gisborne. Jo and I rode through there in early 2002.

MLP

[http://www.acl.lanl.gov/supermon/]

[http://sexpr.sourceforge.net/]

the small, fast s-expression library

Another Saturday morning ride, running late this time we missed the start by ten minutes and rode down towards Mordialloc alone — or as alone as you can be on Beach road on a Saturday morning.

Time to tidy up and catch up in the afternoon, I'm still writing up bits of my 1998 trip to Spain. Really ought to do this quicker, but the memories are still vivid, and my paper notebooks may well outlive this website anyway! Joey is watching the netball — and shouting encouragment to the TV, the sunset is turning the sky over the city a fantastic range of colours, and I'm feeling happy and content after the ride and a large lunch.

And the latest bit of wisdom to arrive in an email attachment is a Windoze VB scripty thing containing the following:

kIlLeRgUaTe 1.03, I mAke ThIs vIrUs BeCaUsE I dOn'T hAvE NoThInG tO dO!! ~

More fun and games with rsync from WinXP direct to wyvern. In the past I've used a two-stage way of getting my photos to home. First copy them from the WinXP laptop to the Solaris box at work, then go home and transfer from Solaris to Linux. Both steps used rsync over ssh, both were successful. In the last couple of weeks I've dialled in from home in the morning, then tried to rsync files direct from the laptop to home, invariably it fails with:

rsync: writefd_unbuffered failed to write 188 bytes: phase "unknown":...
rsync error: error in rsync protocol data stream (code 12) at  at /tmp/rsync-2.5.6/io.c(515)

There seems to be various bits of muttering about cygwin/rsync problems on the rsync website. I guess I'll just do the two-step thing for now...

And now for the News... or not. Owing to restructuring by VRN, there's now no longer a news server at Monash. Definitely a cost saving to the University, it also might mean a few more hours worked by some staff, but most surely a loss of a resource that made life more bearable. Where will I get my news:aus.bicycle fix from now?

St George has responded to my email query. According to them it is not possible to pay any bills from a credit card through the Bpay system — I guess this means that either a) I'm hallucinating about the ones that worked, or that b) they're full of crap.

Half-way through the year, it must be time for the Bund christmas dinner. An earlier start than usual, someone decided that a 7pm booking was ok! Jo and I were wondering just exactly where Kookoo was, but we met Michael on the tram and he'd been there before, so led the way in the unmarked doorway and upstairs to the bar.

An impressive place, but very hard to find! It doesn't help that they can't seem to make up their mind what their name is. The menu says Kookoo, but they're not listed in the phonebook. Whitepages finds them under Kookoo, but when you get to the front door the name seems to be Cookai! Whatever they're called, it seems a good place for a drink and a meal after work — providing you work in the CBD.

Bund people have been busy. Since the last get together, Oliver and Kathryn are engaged, Mike has had a baby, Jo and I have got married. Cos and Droo think its time for a Bund blog to keep track of it all....

[http://www.custommaps.net/images/mwyedn1.htm]

First edition Melways!

[http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/scitech/SciTechRepublish_898675.htm]

“Marriage may tame genius” — I guess I'd better be careful then!

Tired, sleepy, irritable. Tour de France live coverage. l'Alpe d'Huez.

Managed to drag myself out of bed this morning and make it to the point where I got to work. From there on it all seemed down hill. Warm and stuffy inside today, I'm trying hard not to fall asleep... and its only noon.

More electronic banking weirdness. This has happened before. The bank says I can't use my credit card to pay my electricity bill because the electricity company won't accept credit card payments. I quit out of the bank's internet banking site, pick up the phone, and pay the bill with the credit card over the phone! Then send off the same email to both St George bank and Origin Energy asking them to explain what is going on. We shall wait with bated breath for a response...

Your message has been forwarded to St. George. A consultant will be contacting you shortly regarding your enquiry.

Origin Energy acknowledges receipt of your enquiry. Your enquiry will be actioned as a priority.

Oh well, at least Norco Australia have returned my bike computer — at least I think its my bike computer. Had to reset the wheel size back to 1975mm — clever me having recorded this the last time I reset the beast. I even took the time to reset the odometer back to 10248km, can't be bothered working out how far I've ridden in the last couple of weeks though!

There's a first time for everything; today we managed to get up, fed, dressed and out on the bikes by nine o'clock! Early enough to try and meet friends who have a 9:30 social ride every Saturday morning. The gods must have laughed, because today nobody except Rae turned up, according to her there are lots of people most mornings.

A pleasant enough sixty kilometres though. Almost down to Mordialloc before turning for the ride home — straight into the headwind. During the ride out the northerly had gradually got stronger and stronger, the clouds darker, the weather cooler. Made us glad that we'd gone out early — for us — but it certainly was a tiring ride home!

I've definitely got Jack's cold. Last weekend of being climbed over, coughed over, and jumped over has left its mark — the common cold. Sneezes loud enough to wake the dead accompanied me on the ride to work.

Assorted councils seem to be indulging in some scorch-the-earth style of landscape gardening, all the way from the Yarra to Oakleigh, and covering three different councils! Major trees all seem to be being cut down, and there's nothing in their place to fill the gaps. One of these days I'll stop and read the signs alongside the track that actually tell me what they're doing...

Finally got to see a movie tonight that had been on my wish list for a long time. Lawrence of Arabia, in 70mm and at the Astor in comfort. To add to the pleasure of the experience, I found a $20 note lying on the carpet in the foyer at intermission — total cost was then $2 for the two of us! It seemed strange coming out of a movie about the searing heat of the desert and stepping out into an 8°C cold night.

MLP — Bike Touring

[http://www.thebest.net/drbob/]

Dr Bobb's homepage (Cycle trip to Spain)

Wow, day tour of the Tour de France and Australians hold three of the four coloured jerseys! McGee's still got the yellow, McEwen in green, and Baden Cooke in white. All this while the NSW government tries to put an end to cycle racing in NSW, and the newspapers continue to shower us with tennis coverage about Philipousis losing!

So that's what the cryptic messages on my answering machine over the weekend were for. My sister did sound a trifle excited when she left them — I'm going to be an uncle... again. An uncle to twins... again! Those'll be very big boots to fill if Jo and I ever have kids, especially after John's comments at the wedding about twins running in the family!

MLP

[http://www.sagehill.net/docbookxsl/]

DocBook XSL: The Complete Guide.

Memorable event of the day — my first ever SMS spam, closely followed ten minutes later by my second ever SMS spam:

Congratulations!! your number won US$30,000 login to HTTP://WWW.MASS-LOTTERY.ORG to claim username: 00767910791 password :6546546 :masslottery@mail15.com

Strange thing was that both came from South Africa, and I half thought it was a message from a colleague there....

This afternoon's cycling adventure was a 38km loop up the Dean's Marsh road from Lorne, then around through the — rapidly cooling — forest, and a screaming descent from Erskine falls back to Lorne. Sea level to about five-hundred metres altitude, the climbing up through the forest was magnificent.

Arriving back at the house just on dusk, we discovered that there'd been a whale in Loutit bay for most of the afternoon! I've never seen a whale in the wild, its getting to be almost a joke about them appearing when I go away...

There's birdlife and other wildlife all over the place every time we visit. King parrots, Crimson Rosellas, Currawongs, Kookaburras (Dacelo novaeguineae) and Magpies all come and feed off the balcony — but not all at the same time. The King parrots and Kookaburras will feed out of your hand, the magpies snatch food from your fingers, the currawongs are too shy with people, but scare all the others away! Assorted honeyeaters and treeclimbers flit around in the garden, never quite coming close enough to be positively identified. The kookaburra pictured was one of six that sat in the tree and watched John digging in the garden, completely fearless, just waiting for worms or lizards to be revealed.

Walking down the street half an hour later there was a wallaby feeding in the neighbouring block, it was too shy to approach close enough to photograph. Last time we visited there was a fox running across the road at same spot. Down at the river there's a White egret that's taken up residence, all weekend long we would see it wading in the shallows or along the tide line.

The better part of the day was spent riding along the Great Ocean Road, eastwards to Anglesea and back. Motor traffic was constant, but never more than a slight irritation — more an amusement at the antics some of the drivers. We'd been expecting cool weather, even a little rain, so the dry sunny conditions were a pleasant surprise, as was the tail wind in both directions! Almost unheard of, I think it must have changed around while we were sitting in Anglesea. The sea was almost dead flat all day, near Airey's Inlet there were a couple of surfers paddling around very hopefully and chasing ankle-high waves.

OK, I guess we're going to Switzerland then! I finally managed to transfer €1,068.75 through Paypal. Airfares would be the next thing to organize....

No day is complete without the motorist du jour.... There I was, just leaving work this evening, glancing around as I hopped on my bike and started to ride off. I half noticed a car driving through the car park but ignored it — we were separated by a large mound of dirt, it was at least fifty metres away, and heading away from me — a low priority threat and could be ignored... I thought.

The sudden BOOM brought my attention back. My head whipped around, the car had stopped, the driver was getting out.... I rode across the car park, first noticing the flattened road sign, then the crumpled front of the car. Somehow the student had not noticed, then driven into and demolished, a 3m high parking restriction sign.

There was an impressive amount of damage to the car, the headlights looked as though they were facing each other. The student was unharmed, but somewhat shaken. I rode off as he was trying helplessly to stand the parking sign back in its hole in the ground.

Fun and games this evening with Mozilla's Thunderbird email client. I'd told it to remember my password, then changed my password externally. Couldn't find any method from within Thunderbird of making it forget the old password. Eventually editted the line out of the config file in ~/.thunderbird/default/<randome>.slt/<random>.s and restarted it!

Yay, finally got KDE working on wyvern. Turns out I had some old shared libraries lurking in /usr/local/lib.

New month, new financial year. I can tell, the bank is too busy to let me view my credit card account. Still waiting, waiting, for the PayPal registration to appear so I can finally pay for our holiday. Extortionate Paypal won't let me use their service until I pay a measly $1.95 fee — a fee that'll end up around $10 by the time currency conversions and bank charges for daring to use overseas funds have applied.

We're getting woefully behind in the pasta calendar promise. With a little frantic shopping last night, I've finally managed to make the May meal — in July. Now we're only a month behind. Part of the problem is that it's a northern hemisphere calendar, ingredients have weird names, and aren't available in Melbourne in the winter!

After last Friday's massive media beat up regarding the Critical Mass ride through the Burnley tunnel, there's a few rants on how cyclists were abused more than usual over the weekend and in the days since as a direct result. I'm curious; does it happen? Is it just cyclists being more than usually paranoid and expecting it? Limited data from my riding, Friday evening was well away from the whole area, but seemed to have just the usual mix of abuse and stupidity on the part of the motorists, Saturday was just an ordinary 30km ride, today's commute was no different to normal....

MLP

[http://www.ultreya.net/]

a site about el Camino de Santiago. An exceptional path to ride or walk, but the website is a bit sparse.

Let the ranting commence! I wouldn't normally get to see it, but during a visit I glanced through the Herald Sun and found their usual anti-bike rantings. One report quoting that traffic was banked up “for several blocks” — indistinguishable from any other Friday night as far as I can tell, and then a venomous editorial that included this gem:

But there are plenty of parks, bike tracks and city public spaces where protesters can do it without disrupting a vast number of citizens. Less busy times, too.

It seems that they're all for democratic rights and protests... so long as they're carried out somewhere where nobody will notice and nobody will be inconvenienced.

Oh well, contrary to various fears expressed in cycling groups during the week, when I went out on a ride today I was not confronted by a baying mass of blood-thirsty motorists, anxious to run me down as direct payback for the actions of the 450 riders yesterday. Just a pleasant 30km out to Mount Waverley and back, the only excitement being a group of golfers who refused to share the shared path. They forced me to go around them through the mud, they got splashed with mud — c'est la vie.

Tonight was the much-anticipated 70's 70th party. Nettie and Chris' combined 30th and 40th birthdays... With a vague “hair” theme, it was amazing the lengths that some people went to. Prize comment of the night was Sean's sudden realisation and “Oh! That's your hair.”

Honorable mentions must go to the number of black afros, and Marko's blonde mullet and matching pro-wrestler moustache.

You have to watch out for those idiots in tin boxes, a girl tried to run me over last night... backwards. She couldn't fit in a parking space and reversed out, then stopped. I was stopped a metre behind her, lights on, bright yellow jacket on, trackstanding and trying to work out whether to go around her on the left, the right, or just wait for her to drive off. Surprise! She decided to drive backwards down the cul-de-sac and shot straight at me. Somehow I managed to leap to the side, belting the side of the car as it passed.

Then this morning, you wouldn't believe it — some idiot tried to reverse into me at high speed! He came backwards down the service lane of Dandenong road, then reversed around the corner, backwards through the stop sign I was sitting at! If it hadn't been for the stupid girl last night, I wouldn't have been paying as much attention and he'd of hit me.

The media have latched onto the Critical Mass ride through the Burnley tunnel and rants are growing louder and louder, for and against... It'd be fun to ride through there, but leaving work at 6:30, it isn't possible. Instead I had my own little cruisy ride, deciding to take an extra few kilometres in the cool of the evening. Along the way the usual number of idiots abounded. I was:

• Spat at and screamed at by bogans in a Barina. Maybe the spitting was accidental and they were just frothing at the mouth...
• Squeeezed off the road by someone who resented me passing them three times, so they passed me and then ran their wheels into the kerb in front of me. Hated being shown that MTB was as a fast a car — so much that he ruined his wheel alignment to show me...
• Narrowly missed by a falcodore that shot through a giveway sign in my path, motorist with phone against the ear. What's $A165 and a three point penalty anyway...
• Terrorised by an RACV truck driver zig-zagging his way up Chapel St, I thought at first he was deliberately trying to ram me into parked cars ... no, he was reading the melways on the seat next to him.
• Blockaded by cars driving up the bike lane on Church street.
• Blocked out by cars parked in the forward bike box at traffic lights.

Yep, just an ordinary Friday evening, the motorists were as well behaved as normal. There didn't seem to be any exceptional malice or abuse, just the everyday accepted malice and abuse...

After all that, I met up with the Critical Mass on Swan Street, they were heading back towards the city as I was riding home. Had to laugh as I pulled up alongside the woman in the Barina — must be a night for Barinas — parked in the forward bike box at the lights. She was staring open-mouthed at the bikes on the other side of the road and blissfully ignorant of the green turn-arrow for her. The taxi behind was beeping its horn, she was ignoring this too! I waved to attract her attention, gave a polite “'scuse me lady, you've got a green light,” and she crunched the car into gear and drove off.

Must be a bicycle kinda day. At lunch time I sent off my bike speedo to the Australian importer. My call lodged at Sigma's website resulted in an email asking for me to return the unit to Norco Australia — the local agents.

More fun and games with the Monash City Council. They responded to my email, claimed that they were collecting the rubbish, that the trolley contracters are the ones dumping things. They even helpfully gave me a couple of phone numbers to report future litter. I tried one this morning, since in the last 24 hours someone has dumped a trailer load of household garbage, a TV, a chair, garden cuttings, etc., on the same section of bike path between Cole street and Warrigal road. Bad luck, the number they gave me is for reporting litter seen from specific vehicles, and without a report of the vehicle, the EPA won't take a report.

I did use the other number though, its not quite 1-800-TROLLEY, but it should be. At 1800.245.022 I give you The Shopping Trolley Hotline. Dobbed in the four or five that are out on the path and parks today. No idea how quickly they respond though...

Damn it was cold this morning! I must be getting soft in my old age. Radio reported that it was 3°C while I was listening in bed, coldest I can remember hearing while I've lived in Melbourne, but I don't think I've ever seen a decent frost here!

Riding to work was a numbing experience for the fingers though, foolishly I left the warm winter gloves at home and opted for the ordinary ones. Frost on the grass and a strange lack of people walking their dogs...

Riding home was much warmer... but there was this one BMW — a blue one, 3 series — being driven by a lady who I could have sworn was drunk.

First she stopped at the Dandenong road/Orrong road corner with half her car in the right turn lane and half in the through lane, but a car and a half length back from the car in front.

I caught her again at Orrong road/High st corner, she looked like she was going to turn left, the car was angled about 30° in the lane, the front bumper overhanging the curb. The lights went green and she wound the wheel around, bumped the kerb, and went on straight.

I caught her again at Malvern road lights and stayed well back, she stopped, opened the drivers door at the lights, half got out of the car, then sat back down and drove off, then closed the door.

A very, very scary person to be sharing the road with.

I thought it was never going to happen, but we finally got to use the free Gold-Class tickets to see a movie at the Village cinema in the Casino. The tickets have been sitting on the kitchen bench for over a year, expiry date, a couple of days ago! Very civilised though, sitting in very comfortable armchairs in a cinema of only thirty seats. Oh yeah, the movie... Matrix Reloaded. Lots of fun, parts of the dialog were almost hysterical. All the expected action and intrigue, plus enough new characters and ideas to make it seem more than “just a sequel.” I did find the ending very abrupt, and reminiscent of the 1940's serials with their “stay tuned for next week...”

From The Age:

Man jailed for car-door attack on cyclists

A car passenger who attacked a group of cyclists for fun was yesterday sentenced to 15 months' jail. The Tasmanian Supreme Court was told Stephen Leonard Campbell, 43, was travelling in a car driven by his learner-driver son when they approached five professional cyclists on Hobart's East Derwent Highway in March last year. “As the car overtook the cyclists, the passenger opened his door, deliberately striking the third cyclist with it,” Justice Alan Blow said. “The second cyclist lost his balance but was able to stop.”

The third cyclist fell, causing the fourth and fifth riders to tumble. All suffered injuries. Campbell, who was seen laughing, was disqualified for driving from five years.

Hardly puts a dent in the number of bogans who think its a funny thing to try and “door” someone, but I guess its a start. I wonder if like all the other driving suspensions it'll be overturned on appeal because he “needs” to drive to get to work?

Too much red wine last night and not enough sleep. I'm getting too old to go out two nights in a row!

A lazy day, some slow-motion shopping to refill the kitchen, a pause for lunch and to rehydrate at E-Lounge on Victoria street. Four young asian girls sat at the table next to me and chain-smoked for an entire hour.

No, I was not named after Mr Castro, or any of the other famous Fidel's throughout history! School friends found it hilarious — it was the cause of many instances of verbal abuse as a child. I spent years convincing bureacracies that I have two middle names, nowadays, I still have trouble with institutions and (mostly American) software that insist that everyone has a Christian name (whether they are Christian or not), a surname, and a single middle initial.

Fidel was the first name of one of my ancestors, a watchmaker who was born near Frieburg in Germany in 1834. His father was also named Fidel, but we don't know much about him. He ran away from home and followed the Rhine down to the sea, then across the English Channel to England. Through family practice, the first-born son in each generation has been given the middle name.

There must be some kind of record for slow bicycle riding — today Jo and I managed to cover almost 40km in five hours! I guess spending an hour in Christie's viewing the sad remnants of their stock didn't help. The MT800 Cannondale tandem looked mighty tempting; but even discounted, its still a lot of money at $3750... not to mention being a rather bileous shade of toothpaste green. I guess the KHS Alite really is looking attractive — especially at almost half the price. I consoled myself by buying a Vistalight “Code 15 Nightstick” headlight.

Spent the rest of the afternoon exploring the backstreets of Fairfield, Thornbury and Northcote, including such wonderfully named sub-suburbs as Dennis and Merri. We're vaguely thinking that if we bought a house, that would be the area we would be heading...

This evening was Alistair's annual solstice party. A Sumerian theme was felt to be topical this year, my knowledge of Sumer comes from a reading of Snowcrash, Jo's from first-form high-school history!! Lots of fun as usual. Lots of wine as usual... Evan surpassed us all with his choice of costume. Ancient Sumeria or 1950's B-grade SciFi movie... we weren't quite sure.

Alistair got out of his usual solstice speech by hiring a belly dancer. He claimed that Turkish belly dancers were fairly close to the Tigris/Euphrates delta, and that anyway, he'd been very busy and only organised it all at the last moment. He then attempted to entertain us all by joining in the dancing.

Well here goes Sigmasport, an email is on your way. Is 16 months and 10,0000km an unacceptable life for your products, or do you believe that I should be buying a new bike computer almost every year?

The site keeps evolving... In keeping with the current interest on RSS and RDF, I've added an RSS feed of my latest ten photo albums. Its all done with an evilly mangled perl script — one that I'm too ashamed of to reveal in public.

Time for a cultural experience this evening — off to the Melbourne concert hall to see Paco Peña, a Spanish Flamenco impressario and supporting troup. We'd left it a little late buying the tickets, so we sat in row “W” and wished we had thought to bring binoculars like the family in front of us. It seemed that half of Melbourne's Spanish community was there! Very impressive, made me want to go back to Spain... Such a brilliant contrast between the control of the performers and the flamboyance of the material...

More FOAF stuff. Playing about with the FOAF explorer when I should have been working...

You can check me out in the explorer , or view the raw XML+RDF /foaf.rdf.

Stupido! Riding home in the rain, I calculated that the bike speedo would read 9,997km when I got home... I was already wet, an extra three kilometres wasn't going to be too much further....

So on I rode up Yarra boulevard, around into Bridge road, then up Burnley street to the concrete monstrosity — Riverside Gardens — then over the river, up the bike track in the dark and then a kilometre or two along Kew boulevard. Turned around at 9,997km and started heading home — pausing in Hawthorn in the rain to take a photo of the magic “9999.”

Big joke — I got home and tried to see how far I'd ridden today. The buttons have broken and the bike computer is now falling apart! Sixteen months since I was given it, exactly 10,0001km on the clock — not exactly good advertising for Sigma!. 625km per week average.

More pollution; today it was petrol flowing down Gardiners creek, it all seemed to be coming out of a drain in the golf course, maybe they overfilled a lawnmower.... It was enough to annoy me about yesterday though, and send off an email to the City of Monash asking them to clean up the crap.

Gotta love it: An extract from “High and Mighty” by Kevin Bradsher, a book about 4WDs (SUVs) in America.

Who's been buying SUVs since auto makers turned them into family vehicles? They tend to be people who are insecure and vain, they're frequently nervous about their marriages, and uncomfortable about parenthood. They often lack confidence in their driving skills. Above all, they're apt to be self-centred and self-absorbed, with little interest in their neighbours or communities. No, that's not a cynic talking, that's the auto industry's own market researchers and executives.

Ooh look! Nearly 10,000km — and back to zero — since I fitted the Sigma bike computer to Norky bike.

Damn. Spent way too long trying to get cwm running on the WinXP laptop only to get bitten by Windows. The authors have two files URI.py and uri.py in the same directory, Windoze still only allows the one.

Monash city council seem to be doing their bit to increase the amount of litter in the City of Monash. Someone had gone to a great deal of trouble to gather up the abandoned shopping trolleys that were lying in Gardiners creek and drag them to the side of the path. They'd picked up an impressive amount of garbage; old cardboard, bottles, etc, and filled the trolleys with this. Presumably they'd then called the council to let them know....

As I was riding up the path, a council truck drove past me, then parked next to the trolleys. I didn't see how this happened, but when I came past in the evening, the trolleys were gone, but all the garbage has been emptied on the ground!

That's the second time in a couple of months this has happened. I guess some genius believes that his job is only to collect the trolleys....

[http://rdfweb.org/foaf/]

Friend of a Friend

[http://norman.walsh.name/]

Norman Walsh's private page. RDF and XML.

[http://relaxng.org/]

Relax NG

Rain, cold, wind, winter.

Coffee, soup, read the paper, listen to the radio.

...do last year's income tax.

Here's a challenge for our American friends: How many of the Australian states can you name? This morning Jo mentioned that Australia's states had such boring names, while American ones were at least interesting. As a result of that we started naming them — eventually managing to remember 49 of the 50... I think we forgot Delaware.

Alabama Alaska Arizona Arkansas California Colorado Connecticut Delaware District Of Columbia Florida Georgia Hawaii Idaho Illinois Indiana Iowa Kansas Kentucky Louisiana Maine Maryland Massachusetts Michigan Minnesota Mississippi Missouri Montana Nebraska Nevada New Hampshire New Jersey New Mexico New York North Carolina North Dakota Ohio Oklahoma Oregon Pennsylvania Rhode Island South Carolina South Dakota Tennessee Texas Utah Vermont Virginia Washington West Virginia Wisconsin Wyoming

I'm not sure what it shows, maybe just the pervasiveness of Americanism. Maybe the breadth of Australian education....

Winter is here though, a cold biting wind howling along Bridge road, the warmth of the coffee shop after the markets this morning very welcome.

An afternoon bike ride — warmly dressed! Out along Gardiners creek to Carnegie, a visit to Fitzroy Cycles for Jo to trial a few more bike seats, finally selecting one, after months of searching... Now there's no more excuses, we will be riding enough to go on the Geneva to Verona tour in September!

Man jailed for car-door attack on cyclists

A car passenger who attacked a group of cyclists for fun was yesterday sentenced to 15 months' jail. The Tasmanian Supreme Court was told Stephen Leonard Campbell, 43, was travelling a car driven by his learner-driver son when they approached five professional cyclists on Hobart's East Derwent Highway in March last year. “As the car overtook the cyclists, the passenger opened his door, deliberately striking the third cyclist with it,” Justice Alan Blow said. “The second cyclist lost his balance but was able to stop.”

The third cyclist fell, causing the fourth and fifth riders to tumble. ALl suffered injuries. Campbell, who was seen laughing, was disqualified from driving for five years.

Interestingly, the Mercury (Hobart newspaper) reports that he had been drinking, but makes no mention of the driver being his son on L-plates.

Sufficiently weird quote in [9fans], I just had to preserve it for posterity — I hope it makes it to the fortunes file.

No, I won't be bringing either the Harley or any guns, since apparently, I can get a pass without them.

Coincidence. Last night we were discussing strange kids names that parents choose — we've recently heard of Atticus. To me it was a reminder of Roman generals, to Jo, of Atticus Finch — Gregory Peck) — in To Kill a Mockingbird. Today we wake up to hear that Gregory Peck has died.

Bike riding — it sure does provide rich and varied experiences... this morning's priceless moment started with me watching the small truck drive out of the discount tyre place, slowing as it turned to drive off in front of me, then me hitting the brakes and swerving wildly as it launched a brand new truck tyre out through the open rear doors. Tyres are round, they roll really well!

Google is a wondrous thing indeed. If something's been bugging you all week, thirty seconds of typing and you can find the answer. So just what were the Seven Wonders of the World?

Hmm, the copyright notice on the page makes this a bit tricky, but they are (or were)

1. The Great Pyramid of Giza
2. The Hanging Gardens of Babylon
3. The Statue of Zeus at Olympia
4. The Temple of Artemis at Ephesus
5. The Mausoleum at Halicarnassus
6. The Colossus of Rhodes
7. The Lighthouse of Alexandria

The perfect end to the day... There I was, minding my own business, riding home along the bike track under the Citylink tollway when all of a sudden a girl heading the other way yells out “Slow Down!” I rounded the curve to find a Volkswagen Golf stuck at the bottom of the track, nose up to the bollards that are designed to prevent motorists from driving in to the bike track. I guess there is nothing at the other end to stop them coming in, half a kilometre back! I would have thought that driving for that distance along a 2m wide red track, with hand rails either side would be enough to make the driver stop and think.... I just managed to squeeze past, shaking my head in bemusement at the befuddled looking old man in the driver seat.

Unfortunately my camera didn't want to focus on the car at night, or maybe I was laughing so hard that my hands shook too much, anyway, I couldn't capture a picture to add to my collection of “Things I Have Met on the Bike Path.”

The vending machine up the hall decided today not to give me any change. Nothing special there, but just this once I had my phone in my hand and decided to call the 1-800 number to report it faulty.... Deadly seriously, all my details were taken, details of the fault with the machine, then a promise to have it seen to, then a promise to send me my change in the mail! I wonder how much it costs XYZ vending company to process a single payout of $A1?

The laughter abounds. It seems that recently, every time I try to look at an Australian product website, I find that they've been written by a demented 10 year-old who would fail basic English.

Q. Can I divide partition the Anypak Drive?

A. Of course you can, just like any other drive. However due to a bug in Windows, it is recommended that for stable use, you do not partition the drive.

Q. Can I boot my computer from the Anypak?

A. Unfortunately, you can not boot from the Anypak. Booting sequences are decided by CMOS BIOS and CMOS BIOS does not support booting by USB. USB is recognised only once CMOS BIOS has booted.

Wording? Facts? who needs 'em. Will I buy the product... Not bloody likely! (Shame about the machines that boot from USB, they've just been told they don't exist)

With a minimum of effort, XF86Config now appears to be managed by debconf. Magic command to reconfigure everything is:

dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xfree86

Key points to remember are that the RivaTNT video card has a driver type of "nv".

Give a man an Imprezza WRX and he thinks he's a world rally champion... until he slides it backwards off the Great Ocean Road and leaves it hanging over a cliff. One of two great Kodak Moments™ that I should have taken a photo of today — the other being the road sign: “In Australia, DRIVE ON THE LEFT” — I guess a few too many international tourists stop at the lookouts and then drive off on the wrong side.

Magnificent timing in our ride to Wye River though — the ominous gray cloud turning to rain just as we pulled in to the shop for a coffee, pouring down for the half hour that we sat there, then stopping in time for the ride back to Lorne!

Where?

Wye River, Lorne.

Fourth day of riding in to South Melbourne for a course at Excom — learning all about Windows XP (or at least enough to be dangerous). I could get to enjoy this — out the door, down to the end of the street, right turn onto Swan street, ride to the end, right turn onto Alexandra parade, through the tunnel and onwards along City road, then, right turn onto Montague street, stop. Seven kilometres, fifteen minutes. Shame about the traffic jam in Swan Street though — cars are packed so solidly they're slowing down the bicycles. A bulldozer to clear the parked cars out of the clearway would come in handy too; there's been at least three cars a day so far.

MLP

[http://haystack.lcs.mit.edu/index.html]

Haystack, “the Universal Information Client” Yeesh! 48M of java application to download — maybe later!

[http://rantelope.com/]

Rantelope. Yet another blogging system. This one has a cool name, maybe I should investigate...

Bah! Debian unstable is living up to its name for me. Following whatever my most recent updates are, Evolution is refusing to run, just crashes on startup, and after downloading the tonne of debs that is KDE, it generates a crash when starting, then gives me a neato blank screen with a pointer. Maybe having Gnome and KDE on the one machine is a bad idea — certainly for anyone not owning a 100G hard disk.

With Evolution refusing to play, and me using Firebird as a browser, maybe it's time to download thunderbird as well, and try using that for a mailer. It's just that I'm getting really fed up with the “training period” required by each new mailer. I want my programs to all share a common set of configuration options, and I want them all to use ACAP (rfc2244)!

Shocking news! I found out that random people actually read some of the pages in here. One of Jo's colleagues complained that I'm out of date — as a married man I shouldn't have a link to my girlfriend.

Three dud floppy disks and one good one, a quick download of the Debian rescue image — mine seems to have vanished — and finally wyvern is back on the air. In the future I must remember to get these sorted out before fiddling around with partitioning!

Boot off the rescue floppy, rescue root=/dev/hdc1, login and run lilo, logout and restart. Back to where I was on Saturday morning...

I've been getting grief from circle on the debian unstable system. It complains that python-gtk isn't present, even though dpkg -l shows that its there. A bit of digging shows that they seem to have hardcoded python2.1 into a few places. Changed the python2.1 to python in /usr/bin/circle, and made a symbolic link from /usr/lib/python2.1/site-packages/circlelib to /usr/lib/python2.2/site-packages/circlelib and miraculously, it works.

Browsing through the latest Australian Personal Computer (June 2003), there's a review of a bunch of barebones mini PCs. The Shuttle systems still look attractive so I thought I'd look up more details on the importer's website. Assorted pages that won't display at all, HTML delivered as MIME type text/plain, so browsers don't interpret it, nothing validates, and PDF files that don't download from their ftp server at all. Oh yeah, then there's the Yoda-speak on the pages that you can read...

1. How qualify Daytona Geforce2 MX do perform?
3. Does DDR RAM exactly run double speed faster than that using SDRAM?

Time to rearrange a few partitions on wyvern. Three hard disks — all nearly full! I thought I'd use the spare 6G on hda and try installing an extra OS... stupidly forgetting that lilo is writing to hda2. All was well until I restarted... Oops! Do you think I can find a rescue floppy anywhere around here....

Coughing kept me awake all night — the last time I remember looking at the clock it was nearly 03:45! Then I finally managed to fall asleep... As a result, today I feel like crap and not capable of going to work.

Dennis just had his brand new Colnago stolen — two days old and someone broke into his house and took it. Sounds suspicious to me! Here's the picture and the email he sent around, if anyone sees it...

I had my house broken into today, and my new bike was stolen.    It had it
official unveiling on Saturday and has been riden twice!!!!!

As it is a Colnago with a non-standard paint job, it should be quite unique
around town.

Can you keep a watchful eye open on the roads, in bike shops, pawn shops or
trading post it.  I have attached a photo.

Details of the bike are:
Frame:         Colnago OvalMaster Titanium 54cm,
                Team Rabobank Colours (Orange, White, Blue)
Fork:                 Colnago Force Carbon Fibre
Group Set:         Dura Ace, 9speed/Dbl ChainRing
Wheelset:         Mavic Open Pro Rim/Dura Ace Hubs
Handle Bars: Eason EC90 Carbon Fibre
Bar Tape:         Orange Colnago
Stem: Colnago 120mm
Seat:                 Sella SLR (black) with Colnago seatbag
Pedals: Look Black (old)
Lights:         Vistalight 5 front with NiMH Battery ,
                Cateye 5 led rear

I am offering a reward for the bike of information leading to the person who
needs to be dealt with.

On a far happier topic, I've finally got my 1-Wire weather station working — been a little scared to unpack it and plug it in, just in case it was broken and I'd found myself with an expensive lump of plastic from the US. A quick edit to mweather.c so that it displays in celsius, a guess at which serial port its plugged into, and here is the time and temperture. (Wind speed and direction are a bit irrelevant here inside the spare room)

% sudo ./mweather /dev/ttyS1

/---------------------------------------------
  NWeather - V2.00
  The following is a test to excersize the two
  1-Wire Net Weather Station containing
    DS1820 - temperature measurement (at least 1)
    DS2423 - counter for reading wind speed (page 15)
    DS2450 - Isolate direction for wind
       or the
    DS2406 - switch to isolate 8 DS2401's for wind
             direction on channel B.
  Press any CTRL-C to stop this program.

Output [Time, Temp1(F),Temp2(F).., Direction Serial Number(s), Wind speed(MPH)]

Port opened: /dev/ttyS1
Found DS2450
9000000000FD1220
Found DS1820
0A000800093AC610
Found DS2423
D60000000156AA1D
The Found Weather Station
11:18:18, 22.7, 14,  0.0
11:18:20, 22.7, 14,  0.0
11:18:23, 22.7, 14,  0.0
11:18:25, 22.7, 14,  0.0
11:18:28, 22.7, 14,  0.0
11:18:31, 22.7, 14,  0.0

Later in the afternoon I finally got around to adding some descriptions for some of the older photo albums, looks like I'm finally making some headway in the grand plan to digitise them all! Unfortunate side effect is that a whole lot of old folders have now been touched, so the “most recently changed” list isn't particularly accurate.

MLP — Pervasive Computing

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

[http://www.computer.org/prevasive]

I think I moved just a little too much furniture over the weekend. Wine racks and washing machines seem to have taken their toll, I'm feeling a little frail this morning...

Another productive day around the house. Yet another attempt to buy a present for our wedding photographer fails — but I relented and picked up a photo album for myself. Then spent half the afternoon putting a whole bunch of unsorted photos into an album... at last. Pictures from '93 to '96 — from my trip to the UK [1], [2] to just before moving to Melbourne ³.

This evening we drove down to Moorabin, checked out a washing machine and dryer, man-handled the washer into the car and drove it back home again ... tomorrow the dryer! Only twenty-four hours after Rosie asked for her washing machine back, a friend of a friend email advertised this one for sale! Only one problem. KA-THUMP the washing KA-THUMP machine KA-THUMP is very KA-THUMP heavy KA-THUMP and had to be KA-THUMP lifted up KA-THUMP the stairs KA-THUMP one at a KA-THUMP time....

Shopping day, a new wine rack to show for it, and Baudalino transfers itself from the list of books I might like to buy, to the list of books I've bought but haven't read yet....

Called around to visit Marko for a few tasty beers this evening — its been a weekend for tasty beers. We sat and watched a Clint Eastwood movie on TV, or watched it in the background. Its strange hearing the original versions of quotes that have made it into modern parlance. “Go ahead, make my day,” and the room disolved in laughter — not the intended reaction I'm sure!

For the first time in years I caught some of Rage on the ABC. Still the same format, still the same intro. Still the same film clips too! Wendy O'Williams and the Plasmatics, Sex Pistols, Iron Maiden, AC-DC — hard to tell what year we are in. Then a few more recent bands, I can tell because they're ones I haven't heard of...

The funniest SMS message I think I've ever received: “I cant believe you've padlocked the chockie bikkies. Not happy jan.”

It all came about earlier in the week; Jo had come home early feeling sick, a chocolate biscuit and cup of tea were part of the home-remedy. I jokingly mentioned that I'd have to lock the jar to ensure that there were some left for me — later that night I stumbled over this old padlock — Jo's old padlock — and snuck it into the pantry. All week I've been sniggering to myself and waiting for her to notice....

First you think that it would be a good idea to go out for dinner, then you get your mind firmly set on going out to a particular place for dinner — then when you get there you find that for inexplicable reason's, they're shut. Why is it so?

Umalulik seemed like the place for dinner, we'd been meaning to go there again ever since first trying them out. It was not to be — shut, no idea why. Next choice was Mr Tandoor, an old favourite, but one that seems to be dropping down the list. I can remember walking in there and being supplied with papadums when I sat down, and that the chutneys and dips were free... now, everything must be specified, and none of it seems quite as spontanous and fun and friendly as a few years ago. All part of the fun I guess, everything changes, sometimes slowly, sometimes quickly.

Visited the Caulfield campus of my illustrious employer today. Walking across one of the paths on the way out we had to pass between a group of flagpoles on which fluttered a collection of bedraggled-looking flags of various countries. The Australian Aboriginal flag amongst them — but flying upside down. A sly dig using the international distress signal, or was it just a clueless idiot who hung the flag?

MLP

Debian Mentors [http://mentors.debian.net/] providing a repository of untested debs for a whole bunch 'o stuff. Add the following to /etc/apt/sources.list:

deb http://mentors.debian.net/debian unstable main contrib non-free
deb-src http://mentors.debian.net/debian unstable main contrib non-free

Mattresses galore! Last night I thought there were only four — either the things have been breeding overnight, or there really were eleven mattresses dumped at the side of the road yesterday. There's getting to be a lot of rubbish dumped in that area.

Amazingly, sometime during the day they've all been cleared away. Riding past in the rain this evening it was as though the mattresses had never existed....

W32/Palyh-a and gullible people — just the combination we need to make my Monday funfilled and busy. I got in this morning in time to find that the wheels had fallen off the world while a new Windows worm has hit the University. Staff everywhere just blindly executed the attachments — a dissappointing state of affairs given the publicity surrounding the number of viruses that propogate via email. Around noon our anti-virus vendor supplied us with an update and we set about mopping up.

Meanwhile — out in the real world — the bike path was covered in broken glass again — resulting in one punctured rear tyre, someone has dumped another trailer load of househould garbage beside the path near the Malvern tennis courts, and this evening there seemed to be four or more old mattresses besides the path! “Bike path” is apparently now a euphemism for garbage dump.

Saturday morning — Richmond markets — coffee at Blue Heaven.

Catch a tram to the city to visit the jeweller — finally I have my ring back! Two weeks without it seemed forever, now I have to get used to wearing it all over again, not to mention the reaction that'll happen at work when people start asking why I wasn't wearing it when I first got back from our honeymoon....

Paused for lunch and to catch our breath at a café in a lane in the city — I just love the light fittings that reach across from one side to the other. Very reminiscent of Gaudi.

Usually its an irritation, but just occasionally, spam makes me laugh. Checking my mail this evening and there are four items in a row offering “scientifically proven methods of preventing hairloss” — the fifth item is one for a painless hair-removal process!

One pint of Guiness last night and today I feel like death — maybe I'm finally succumbing to whatever Jo's had all week. Being kept awake by coughing can't have helped any.

Several strong coffees through the day couldn't keep me going, eventually I just gave up and headed home at 3pm. Feeling distinctly green, it was a slow and leisurely ride. Spent the rest of the afternoon in bed!

I really need to rework my photo album display code. None of the prepackaged ones did what I like, they've either got far more features than I want, or the HTML is ugly and full of tables and cruft, or both. Mine just has far too many things hardcoded — such as file name formats — and so any non-standard images don't display.

Spent lunch time making a few scans on Alan's scanner. Its a Nikon Coolscan IV, 1200dpi. About 30M per image, I'm frightened of the amount of diskspace that the CanoScan 4000 would chew up if I scanned all my old negatives!

The test images are all from Jo's camera. They start on January 5th, 2002 in New Zealand, and end in April 18, 2003 in Western Australia! That's about how often I used to use my film camera.

Warm autumn evening, riding home in a light, misty rain. Wood smoke and eucalyptus smells all around. The kind of evening that lends itself to a slow, gentle ride. Reflections of headlights and hissing tyres on the wet road seemed to remind me of somewhere — but I couldn't quite remember where... maybe they just remind me of a mood.

The intention was to see a movie tonight. Last minute cancellation, Joey has the plague, or flu, or something. Oh well, it was about time we saw a movie, the last one was months ago!

Photo-related thoughts today — maybe I should bite the bullet and buy myself a scanner... the CanoScan FS4000US is recommended by a photographer here at Monash. About $1200 though. Maybe I can recoup some of the costs by scanning other peoples' stuff... I couldn't possibly do as bad a job as was done in the last one I paid for...

Canon CanoScan FS4000US, $US800, $AU1200
Nikon Coolscan IV, approx. $AU1500

Lorne pier is in the newspaper, and not for a good reason. The crane has been condemned, the two remaining fishermen have been left high and dry. It will cost $100,000 to repair the condemned crane — the same crane that was passed as “perfectly ok” 12 months ago. Guesses are that since the chairlift collapsed at Arthur's Seat, the yearly inspections have become just that little bit more rigorous!

Today's motorist-related activity was “Setting Fire to Stuff.” The morning's entertainment provided by an immense cloud of pungent black smoke rising from the Ferntree Gully road bus depot — burning tyres I believe. In the afternoon, Gardiners road contained in order: a chunk of metal, a long trail of petrol, a smouldering Gemini and a discarded fire-extinguisher.

MLP

[http://www.photo.net/photodb/folder?folder_id=304755]

my folder of Lorne photos at http://www.photo.net/

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

on-line retailer in Queensland with a good range and good prices on the CanoScan.

Dinner for seven, mother's day special, the pressure is on. How much will we need? What should we make? Have we left it to late to start cooking? I was just about to add the barley into the casserole when the cry rang out “Eek! Stop!”

An infestation of weevils was the last thing we needed! Somehow they'd got into the packet before we'd put the packet in the jar, then bred and died in the cupboard. Not paying enough attention, I'd nearly managed to empty dead weevils and everything into our dinner!

A hurried trip to the shops, and a careful examination of the next pack of barley. Dinner was completed without mishap!

Off to Scienceworks this afternoon to see the “Vanishing Skills” exhibition before it closes. Horologist, Milliner, Cooper, Wheelwright.... Stange to be writing about such old crafts in such a new medium as this. I was quite impressed by the display detailing the manufacture of glass eyes.

In an attempt to somehow maintain a semblance of cycle fitness for Jo, the trip to Scienceworks was made by bike. A pleasant enough ride — and it would have been quite quick — but for the decision to ride through Southbank and past the ca$ino so that we could drop in on the CityLink office and replace an e-Tag. Pedestrian crowds blocking this premier “Yarra Bike Trail,” and signs from the Southbank management stating “Cyclists Dismount” give a very mixed message about the supposed bike path. Even the Melbournce City Council has admitted that the signs are really advisory only and that they've no grounds to enforce them!

Jo's eTag is supposedly faulty. I'm convinced that its merely got a flat battery — but there's no way that CityLink will admit that! They didn't bat an eyelid at the return however, just handed over a new one.

At least when we got to the punt to cross the river there was no delay this time... no dead bodies, no misshaps, just wheel the bikes on and putt across under the Westgate Bridge. One of these days I'll remember to take a photo looking up at it from underneath...

Riding home this evening I watched a mother and baby ring-tail possum walking along the hand rail of the bike path. Classic nose-to-tail view, the adult moving slowly, the baby half her size, but snuffling about all over the place. They disappeared too quickly to photograph, but they made me smile.

Rolled over 9,000 kilometres on the bike computer as I turned onto Yarra Boulevard. Not a great distance really, I've had it for fifteen months, 600km per month, only 7,200km per year!

After nearly three years of living in the street, I finally got to have dinner in the pub at the end! Steak and soup in the bistro of the Bridge this evening. Good pub food, made more humerous by the TV playing with the sound turned off — we could make up our own sound track to the noxious looking “Greeks on the Roof.” Sound track was provided by Bland FM, or whatever it was. Second time in under a week that I've heard Suzi Quatro singing Ballroom Blitz while I've been in a pub bistro!

Guests on the TV were Sigrid Thornton, Derryn Hinch, and what appeared to be a dehydrated Australian corpse-like woman, somewhat reminiscent of Cher on a bad day. No idea who she was, but all three of them appeared to be wearing highly artificial wigs. The only other thing to add about the show is that Angus Sampson — one of RRR's breakfaster team — has a face that is ideally suited to radio....

Moron of the moment: Cycling up Ferntree Gully road around 09:40, here it comes from the side road, white Falcon panel-van, blue sign-writing, window down, driver's elbow out, phone in hand, brain in neutral, yacking away, driving straight out in front of me half-way out through the Give-Way sign.

“PUT THE PHONE DOWN,” I yell as I swerve around the bonnet.

A blast on the horn and a scream of abuse, I continue up the hill. A squeal of tyres and he tears up behind me, swerves into the next side street, stops and keeps swearing. I look over my shoulder, “PUT THE PHONE DOWN,” I call again, he points and screams “I'll F'en this and F'en that, you F'en c***.” Another squeal of tyres and he's gone, a u-turn across six lanes, dissappearing off down the hill.

This evening — Henry Rollins...

Where do you start? The man is amazing. We walked in the door at ten past eight and he was already going at full throttle. Three hours later to the second, he stopped. Full bore to a dead stop. Three hours of intense, driving, monologue.

He didn't seem quite as unrehearsed as last time, there was more of a feel that this was just one show of many. Topics ranged far and wide as usual — for Henry to pick on the Iraq war was like shooting fish in a barrel, a eulogy for Joe Strummer and the Ramones, a side-splitting story of the first-ever Ramones gig he attended as a teenager...

MLP

[http://www.mrpumpy.net/]

Cycle touring, mostly in SE Asia

["http://www.thepaper.org.au/]

The Paper, an independent newspaper/zine.

[http://www.sleepybrain.net/bike.html]

“Rebecca Cannon was recently knocked off her bicycle on a Melbourne road. She wants sweet killer revenge. Strap on your helmet and get ready to rock.”

Is my PC dying? Sitting here this evening and all of a sudden everything stopped. No response to anything, and the three keyboard lights were flashing... Oh well, so much for the 32 day uptime!

This morning I feel like a badly made cartoon robot. My neck creaks and clunks, I can turn my head to the left, but not to the right. It made riding to work interesting.

Spent some more time musing on site designs. Structure and design... structure and design... Along the way I found a blog with an amusing quote “few glasses of Aussie Shiraz/Cabernet.” This country is the size of Europe, it has more wine regions than you can poke a stick at, but to this author, it's just a generic “Aussie.”

This evening, we made April's Calendar Dinner... a few too many substitutions and applications of guess-work unfortunately — the resultant meal looked nothing like the picture! It still tasated fine, however, but we're not sure if it really counts.

MLP

[http://www.syndic8.com/]

news feeds, feeds of feeds, etc.

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

“web writing tools.” A PHP CMS.

[http://rodin.lot23.com/]

“Rodin is a delightfully simple content management system.”

Quite impressive it was! There's something primeval about a great, roaring fire, it's easy to see how tempting they can be for firebugs and arsonists. Stuck in the middle of an empty dairy paddock in the drizzling rain, it wasn't any kind of a hazard though! The rest of the day was spent at far more leisurely pursuits. Numerous cups of coffee, a long and lazy breakfast in front of the fire, and then a tour of some nearby towns and antique shops. Jeetho itself no longer exists as a town, all that remains is the town hall and railway platform. Loch, Poowong and others are still around, sleepy little towns that I've cycled through at various times. Lesley seems to know, or be related to, half of Gippsland, everywhere we went there was some interesting bit of news. Along the way I acquired yet another book to add to the reading pile...

When sitting around the house, Periodically we'd all go back to the pyre and poke at it with assorted implements — bowing to the urge that seems to prevent anyone from ignoring a fire.

After a full day of laziness, a two-hour drive home so that the rest of the weekend's activities would be possible — Mick Thomas at the Evelyn tonight, a three year-old's birthday tomorrow.

Where?

Loch, Poowong, Jeetho.

Drizzly rain. Woke feeling tired and lazy. Off to work on the CBX, which is blowing an increasingly large amount of blue smoke these days... A large infusion of money will be needed sometime soon.

The plan was to arrive home, pack and leave. Everything went according to plan. Dropped in to work on the way past to pick up a little wine delivery — forty-two bottles! — then off into the east towards Jeetho...

Traffic was a snarl out towards Pakenham — Friday night commuters, hurry home from the pub, wet roads, hooting, swerving, cutting each other off. Petrol-heads with garbage-bin size mufflers and those oh-so-cool blue lights on the bonnet.

We drove into Loch at 8 p.m. A sign pointed to the Royal Hotel on the right, so we hurried in to order dinner before the kitchen closed. Nothing much was expected, just dinner in the pub — a pleasant surprise — two fantastic chicken parmagiana meals, overflowing with mashed spuds, pumpkin and coconut, and assorted other vegetables. All this and a comfortable seat in front of the fire in a cosy pub!

Several relaxing beers later we phoned up Marko and Lesley. As expected, the other two had been late, and their 7:30 departure turned into 8:00, then 8:15... When we rang they were sitting in a drive-through McDonalds. We laughed, from the comfort of the pub, and ordered another beer to wait for their arrival.

I'm glad we had arranged to follow them from Loch to Jeetho! The phone instructions seemed complex, and the roads narrow, dark and wet. “You'll see an old farmhouse off to the right” takes on a whole new meaning on a pitch-black country road. We made it, slithered up the muddy drive, and unpacked in front of the fire. There was the obligatory ten-minute tour of the house — a strange place, originally built by a retired sea-captain, it had numerous bedrooms, a ballroom and various other parts. Sometime in the 20th century parts had been demolished, what remains is smaller in total, but all built on a grand scale.

Bedrooms were allocated and beers were opened. We all sat and chatted for a while, then crawled off into our respective bedrooms — Jo and I lost the coin toss and had the room with two saggy old single beds. Actually there was no coin toss, the other guests where more bossy than us...

Where?

Loch, Jeetho.

Bike stuff

Bad news, or just a bad rumour? Heard today that Christie Cycles is closing. It'll be a sad loss to Australian touring cycling if its true. Might be a chance of picking up a discounted Cannondale tandem though....

Site stuff

Ugliness abounds — still thinking about changing the look of the site. I like clean and uncluttered, but maybe something a littl more interesting....

Cleaned up the old images on my camera. Now that there's a minimum of two copies replicated between home and work, it's safe to delete them off the memory card. Annoying bug in the IXUS-300 means that it won't automatically download new images if there are more than 100 images in the camera — even if there are only one or two new images!

Wedding loot

This evening there was the succesful completion of a lightning raid on Myer in the city. I left work at five, went home, picked up the dinner set and lugged it downstairs to the bike. Rode off up the street, then hurriedly stopped and move the load around since the weight over the back wheel was causing frightening wobbles! Little Bourke street at 5 p.m. is a world of its own — narrow road, the smells and sounds of chinatown, pedestrians hurrying back and forth through the traffic. With perfect timing I pulled up at the Myer entrance as Jo walked across the street!

Clump, clump, clump — up the stairs, a short discussion to retrieve the refund vouchers for the wedding registry items that Myer couldn't supply, then to the kitchen department to swap the increasingly-heavy dinner set. A brief conversation, a lot of filling out of paperwork, and we've swapped the dinner set. Up to the toy department for a quick look around, the weight of my bag gradually dragging me further and further over to the right! Finally its time to leave. Now to lug it home again...

Rearrangement of the loot — part one. Now its all in one place.

Loot part two, and later parts, involve finding places to put it all, thanking all who gave it to us, hopefully being able to toss out stuff it replaces. All fun things to be done “in the fullness of time.”

Riding home late this evening, just after the rain had stopped. A light mist hanging over everything, and all the smells seemed enhanced. Eucalyptus from the trees, cooking smells as I was passing houses, a sudden waft of pizza as a delivery driver passed.

Security observation of the day: Mozilla will download style sheets for HTML email articles, at least the copy of version 1.4 that I'm running will. This happens even if you've told it to not download images for mail and news. All those nasty spammers can stop using image web-bugs and use style-sheets now...

Dog poo and near misses with pedestrians on the wrong side of the path... cycling to work has returned to normal.

Lunks

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

Open Source Content Management

[http://www.midgard-project.org/]

Midgard, an Open Source CMS

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

Outline Processor Markup Language

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

[http://hnb.sourceforge.net/]

Hierarchical Notebook.

Back to work at last...

Important things to do on the first day back include: paying the rent and phone bill, frantically digging through 200-odd emails that need reading — distinct from the other 200 that the spam filters have caught, replicating all my photos before a gremlin deletes them, checking up on the last two weeks' worth of work-like stuff, and generally fending off colleagues who all want to see the wedding photos.

There was a man with a death wish on Ferntree Gully road this evening — on a bicycle in the dark, no lights, black jeans, dark jacket, riding the wrong way up the middle of the road!

Ah, the fun of small children. Will has a cold and cried all night to keep his parents awake, Jack slept through all this, but then decided to be a brat all morning. Tempers were fraying, so he and I left the house and walked down to the beach. It was either that, or he was likely to get a thumping...

Hardly beach weather, but that's hard to explain to a three year-old. Off came the clothes, and into the tannin-stained waters of the Erskine river estuary. Amazing that when I could eventually drag him out he had neither gone blue nor brown.

The mystery is partially solved...

Convinced that my finger couldn't possibly have shrunk in the past two weeks, I ventured in to the city to visit the jewellers and ask them why my wedding ring is falling off. The ring was checked against the order form, tick, no problem. The finger was re-measured, uh-oh.... It seems that somehow my finger was measured as a “P”, but this was then transcribed somewhere as an “R”, two sizes larger. Not surprisingly, a ring two sizes too big will fall off when I shake my hand! Much apologies all around, me for not checking when we picked it up, them for causing the problem. A resized or remade ring will be available in about ten days.

Cleaning, cleaning, cleaning...

Bizarre coincidence of the day — tidying up all the crap in the kitchen, I found an old cash-register slip from the supermarket. The back is covered with Shop-A-Docket promotions for various businesses. One of the items is for personalised self-adhesive labels, the examples shown are all marked out for “Dylan Lewis”. Yesterday morning in the airport, a young guy was standing next to me at the luggage carousel, his name — “Dylan Lewis”. So hello to all the Dylan Lewises in the world today...

Sleep — must have more sleep…

A midnight start to a plane ride is not a good thing. Over three hours in the air, plus two more for timezones, and we landed at Melbourne just after six AM. Minimal legroom, no pillow, and a screaming baby meant that I didn't sleep much at all. Joey managed to sleep most of the way.

Luggage retrieved and repackaged. Airport bus located and boarded. 7AM into Spencer street, fog thickening around us.

Final stage in the journey home — a narrow escape. We climbed on the tram at Spencer street behind two indian-sounding tourists and sat down while they discussed at great length the intricate workings of the ticket machine. Laziness, tiredness, and bad habits meant that we didn't get up to buy a ticket after they finally finished — and then the ticket inspektors entered… Jo pushed past them to buy tickets, but found she hadn't got enough change for two, my guardian angel must have been hanging around though — while sorting through my wallet yesterday I'd noticed that I had an unused 2hour metcard. A few minutes of frantic rummaging, two tickets appear, and the inspektors took pity on the sleep-deprived scruffy-looking backpackers — us.

Home, to bed, to sleep for a few hours.

Eleven o'clock and the couriers arrive. Myer's bridal registry delivery. Seven parcels with one courier, one parcel with another! Three items aren't delivered, the printed listing merely states “contact store.” We contact the store to find out, “we don't know, I'll call you back within the hour.” About four hours later they called back and we found that although we had chosen the items, and Myer had accepted the choice, and people had purchased the items, Myer didn't actually have the item in stock anymore. A little insistence on our part and they called back to say that they did have one of them, but not at the moment, the other two we'll just have to accept credit vouchers and buy something else. Not a particularly impressive service.

Dinner time and we finally made this month's meal off the pasta calendar. We're keeping to the promise, but lagging badly! Now we can turn the page to April, with only eight days left in the month…

A hot day in Perth so we headed over to the zoo for the afternoon — as did every second person in the city!

A confusing place to get around, there didn't seem to be any clear maps or directions and at times we found ourselves heading in the opposite direction to what we'd intended. Maybe you're meant to pay more and buy the guidebook...

A thick screen of bamboo between the paths was completely covered in graphiti. Bizarre to see it, and it reminded me in some ways of the graffiti inside the towers of the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, every inch of the walls covered...

The waterbirds exhibit was excellent, a giant walk-in aviary with clear signs and a myriad of inhabitants. Seeing a pair of jabiru dancing their mating dance only half a metre away was an impressive sight! Huge wings flutting and gigantic black beaks clacking as they leapt a metre off the ground to impress each other.

A final beer at the pub on our way back to the ferry across the river, a final attempt to photograph the city skyline at night... That kind of photography definitely needs something more configurable than my fully automatic camera, however useful it is the rest of the time!

The taxi-fare to the airport in the evening worked out to be cheaper than for the two of us to catch the airport bus!

For breakfast we decided to try the other café in Walpole — a poor choice as it turned out. Two rubbery fried eggs with bacon and a tasteless industrial tomato. The eggs could easily have been used as sink plugs! Then time for a quick rummage through the local market stalls before commencing the drive back. I don't think I've ever seen so many variations of hand-made soaps, there must have been a local TAFE course on soap-making some time in the past...

Into the car to commence the long drive north-west through the forests. Looking in awe out into the Karri forest, speaking without thinking, came the classic comment:

So how often do they fall down?

followed by the obvious answer:

...just the once.

Two-thirds of the way up there's an enclosed platform. A place to rest, to straighten your neck, and in the words of the warning sign “to reassess your situation”. From here up the ladder is steeper, the tree sways a little more and its definitely not a place to take someone who'll freeze up. I wondered how many tourists panic and are stuck up there, and how long it takes before their friends can talk them back down...

Miles and miles of orchards once the forests ended, little towns full of day-trippers. One of the patch clubs was in town at one place — a couple of hundred Harleys parked along the street, the local police driving around eyeing them off. In another town, traffic was slowed around a 4WD that had driven through a give-way sign and demolished the car in the main road.

Despite being a public holiday we found a room in backpackers in the heart of Fremantle, complete with a parking space straight outside the front door! Then there was time for a walk around the park before dinner and a beer or two back at the Little Creatures brewery. That brewery would have to be the major find of the holiday, I'd almost be tempted to move to WA just to be nearer to it...

Where?

Walpole, Bridgetown, Fremantle.

Tree-top walks, the Valley of the Giants, Giant Tingle trees, Circular Pool and an eco-tour. The highlights of the day. Running into Jo's yoga teacher at breakfast was the bizarre coincidence of the day.

Definitely Easter-time, the tourist density increased markedly as we drove into the carpark at the Valley of the Giants. Queues to get in, then a constant stream of people around the walk itself. Bouncing and swaying gently, some find it very disconcerting, some try to make it bounce and sway more... If there hadn't been so many people around I think I'd have taken longer and maybe walked around again, as it was, it was just too noisy and too crowded. A brilliant way of getting a different perspective on the forest though.

The Valley of the Giants — every time I say it I can't help thinking of the Irwin Allen TV show from the 70's — Land of the Giants. Shockingly bad TV SciFi.

We'd decided to try and have dinner somewhere other than the pub tonight and we're just walking out the door when the thunder cracked and down came the storm. It didn't seem likely to stop soon, so much easier to step inside the pub and eat there again. $12 a head, serve yourself, anything from the bistro. When we joked with the cook that there was no more of yesterday's apple pie, he replied that there was only one large slice left, so he hadn't got it out of the fridge. Four dollars more and we finished off the pie.

A beer and a meal had exhausted the night-life of Walpole, so we retired back to the motel room, plonked on the bed, and spent the rest of the night watching Ben Hur on TV! It seemed bizarre, here we were 4000km from home, on our honeymoon, on a Saturday night, sitting up in bed watching an epic 1950's movie on a ten year old TV. Ad breaks and all, the epic turned into a major epic. I was glad when it finally ended, give me the cinema over regional West Australian advertising any time!

Walpole Touristy Links

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

WOW Wilderness Cruises.

[http://www.naturebase.net/tourism/valley_of_the_giants.html]

Valley of the Giants Tree Top Walk

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

Valley of the Giants Bird and Reptile Discovery Centre (and one of the longest and silliest domain names I've ever seen)

Where?

Walpole.

Arrived in Walpole around 4PM, first impressions are of a tiny town, all set out along one side of the highway, with a park and tourist information centre on the other side. The old lady in the tourist centre was horrified that we hadn't booked our accomodation months in advance. Told us that we had almost no chance of finding anywhere in town to stay — but the motel might have some rooms left. Rather than try to book them, she then launched into a great rambling spiel of all the local tourist attractions and which ones to visit in what order. Eventually we dragged her back the topic at hand — accomodation — and persuaded her to call the motel.

Not only did the motel have a room for the night, but when we pointed out that we had asked for a room for two nights, they very apologetically dropped the price by $10 per night because the only available room had a crack in the ceiling. With a little trepidation we headed up the road to find this room-with-a-crack. After checking in we subjected the room to an inch-by-inch search, but despite our best efforts, we couldn't spot the cause of the discount! Just a standard, non-descript 1960's motel room — door one end, double-bed, mission-brown bricks and faded carpet, nothing to get excited about, but nothing more than we'd expected.

A quick stretch and we headed off along the local self-guided walk, it winds around from the tourist centre to the beach, plaques along the way describe the life as seen through the eyes of a ten-year-old boy, part of the original group of settlers sent here during the 1930's depression. Even out of season there are plenty of wild-flowers about, and foot-high ant mounds of sticks and gravel, loose-knit and very fragile, they fell apart at the slightest nudge of a shoe.

Dinner in Walpole was a choice of either the local take-away, or the pub. Being Good Friday, even the bar of the pub was shut — only the bistro was allowed to be opened, and then only because there were guests staying.

Where?

Margaret River, Walpole.

Pouring rain this morning as we got up and dressed and drove into Busselton centre for breakfast — a lacklustre coffee and a toasted sandwich. Coffees still cost $AU3, even for bad ones out here in country towns...

We walked out to the Busselton jetty to see whether the new underwater observatory is open yet — no, it's due to open in October. The thought of paying $AU7.50 for a four kilometer walk in the rain was a bit off-putting, especially since there's nothing out there to see, so after a brief look around the shop we ducked into the art galleries in the old police station and courthouse.

A quick look around, then back into the car to drive to Dunsborough to check on accomodation. The railway carriages at the homestay were recommended by a friend, but we felt that we hadn't come far enough today and they were a long way out of town — and quite expensive. We stopped in the town anyway, an essential visit to the bakery to stock up on hot cross buns for lunch. Then back in the car to drive out to Cape Naturaliste to look at the lighthouse and walk to the end of the cape. It threatened to rain the entire time, but we never quite got wet. Out on the cape there were almost no other people, and no sounds at all except for the waves on the rocks and the ever-present ravens. Nothing man-made to be seen either, as far as we could see in any direction, quite a desolate area.

The lighthouse has been cordoned off, where it used to be possible to walk up to the building, they've now built an ugly 3m fence around it and now charge $AU8 admission to walk there from the park's tourist office and be escorted inside. I managed to take a photo through the gaps in the fence, the resulting picture looks better than the reality did!

Time to start heading towards Margaret River, with a detour out to the coast to see Canal Rocks — hardly a canal you would want to take a gondola through! Winery country, and we tried to visit one winery, but just couldn't find the way in — a huge pretentious mansion and restaurant façade, but no cellar door to be found. Maybe we were meant to go into the restaurant, we'll never know, no signs anywere, so we drove back out again. Next corner we came to had a small roadside sign “tastings and sales,” so we drove in. Sandstone Winery couldn't have been more different — relaxed atmosphere and down-to-earth facilities, just a big shed with a bench in one corner for tastings. They've only had the cellar door sales since January, but the wines tasted good and the people were friendly, which meant far more than the sandstone mansions up the road!

As well wineries, other gourmet delights fill the region. Inspired by the visit to Fremantle's Little Creatures, we made the detour down the road to a brewery and restaurant to see what they had to offer — unfortunately one that I've forgotten the name of! The Wheat Beer and Tom's Ale that we sampled were both good, and very enjoyable to drink while sitting on their lawns.

Conscious that we hadn't made any accomodation bookings, we thought it was getting a little urgent to get to Margaret River and sort out somewhere to stay. Mad Fish winery intervened, somehow saying to us “just this one last tasting, then on your way.” An enormous place, a lot of money has been made here, and a lot of it has gone back into it. A special offer on a 3-bottle pack of their red blend was attractive, but nothing else seemed to be special — except the $AU75/bottle cabernet sauvignon — yum yum!

Mad Fish are also highly successful with their merchandising — tee-shirts, hats, glasses, even custom-painted surf boards! The bus loads of visiting Americans can't seem to get enough of the combination of the quirky name and aboriginal motif.

We needent have worried unduly about accommodation. The first B&B that we stopped at had a vacant room — although warning us that it was “the last one” (presumably in case we wanted to book a second room). An almost overwhelming rose and floral motif, but very comfortable. They were obsessed that we book immediately if we intended to eat out anywhere for dinner — it didn't take long before we too started to believe that the whole town was booked out over the easter weekend.

Gathering up all the delicacies that we had accumulated, we headed back to the coast to see the fabled Margaret River surf beach. Twenty or so surfers were out on the waves, the sun gradually setting out to sea.

Dinner in a three-star restaurant, a stylish old farmhouse converted to a restaurant for visitors from Perth. The food was very good, but I feel that I better enjoyed a hearty meal in a country pub. Walking home we spied a kangaroo through the mists on a vacant block.

Tourism

[http://www.watercorporation.com.au/marinecam/]

Webcam on the Busselton Jetty

Where?

Busselton, Dunsborough, Margaret River.

Where?

Busselton.

Down to the river to checkout the ferries and cruises to Fremantle — there definitely seems to be more collusion than competition here! They were very laid back about discounts though, asking us what discounts we had, and then took my word for it that I had a YHA card in my wallet somewhere! Eight bucks one way, including all the free tea and coffee you can drink — so long as you don't mind International Roast in a polystyrene cup. The ferry was being laid out for a coach load of pensioners, shortly after we'd boarded one old gent asked me where the coffee and toilets where — being one of the few people under 50 onboard, he'd just assumed I worked on the boat!

The real captain and crew turned up shortly afterwards and we headed off down the river. It's a great way to see the place, and the captain was very knowledgable — not just with which suburbs and houses belonged to which millionaire, but details on the commercial shipping and the history of the river, which added a little more than your average tourist cruise. I caught a brief glimpse of a dolphin too, there are supposed to be twenty or thirty that live in the river. We'd been told to visit the new Maritime museum, but hadn't been expecting to spend the entire day in there! Modern displays that are well explained and once again we were given discounts on entry! There's also the option of paying extra for a tour through one of the decommissioned Oberon-class submarines — since Jo and I have an attachment to Holbrook (NSW) where another of the Oberons is, we just had to take the tour.

Unlike the Oberon embedded in a park besides the Hume highway, HMAS Ovens is up on the dry dock, towering overhead. Even so, it doesn't look as though a tour from one end to the other could take an hour! With another highly knowledgable guide, I thought it could well have taken all day — one glance at our guide and he just looked like a submariner. Apart from a minor idiosynchrocy of referring to World War II as “the last war”, there was little of the history submarines and especially the Australian submarines that he didn't seem to know — as well as considerable amounts of the operational aspects of the Oberons.

Safely out of the Ovens at last — and after only banging my head once on a piece of plumbing — there was still more of the museum to see. Australia II hangs from the ceiling in a position of honour, winged keel revealed for all to see — I can remember watching that last race of the Americas Cup back in '93 at college in UNSW, and then us all queueing up and banging on the doors to be let in for an early breakfast. A history of cargo shipping, fishing, and indigenous boats were other exhibits that caught our attention.

4PM and we finally got out of the museum! Walked up the street into Freo proper, marvelling at the old buildings around the docks. Most of these have been restored and repainted, unlike other dockland areas I've visited where a lot of them were torn down and replaced during the early part of the 20th Century.

All the cafés appeared to be shutting, but we managed to find the — uggh — “tourist precint” with all the open cafés and restaurants. Nothing was cheap, everywhere was full, but we finally managed to get some lunch! “Soup of the day with crusty fresh bread” in the Italian restaurant turned out to be seafood lhaksa with no bread, but it was hot and filling and restored our energy. Walking around town afterwards, by pure chance we wandered into the Little Creatures brewery/bar/café. It's been there around two years, but our Lonely Planet guide is at least two years old, and around Fremantle there weren't any signs to the place. The beers were good, the service friendly, the views into the active parts of the brewery interesting — so we sat on the balcony with a beer or two and some pizza, and watched the sun set into the ocean.

We caught the train back to Perth, feeding an endless stack of 5c coins into a ticket machine — and a good thing too! We'd only just left Fremantle station when the security guard/ticket inspectors walked in and checked everyone's tickets. I'm not sure what it is about them, but they just seemed friendlier and more competent than the ones in Melbourne — maybe there just isn't the general public dislike of the whole system. Just another feeling that the public transport system here works well, maybe we're just not here for long enough to experience the problems...

Walking, walking, walking... a day spent walking around Perth. But first... down to the hotel restaurant to make the most of the “free” breakfast.

We could just see the river from the hotel-room window — so down to the river to view the Swan Bells, then off for a lap of the CBD, an attempt to orient ourselves. I was impressed by the number of cyclists around, and especially near one office building where a bike rack has been placed solely for the use of couriers! The public transport looks good too — the CATs are free buses on intersecting loops, a bus every seven minutes, hop on and hop off whenever you like.

A restorative coffee in what may have been the most expensive coffee shop in Perth, then it was off to Northbridge to seek accommodation for tonight. Not particularly fussy, our criteria were “something with more atmosphere and less price.” The Governer Robinson filled both, an excellent find in one of the brochures I'd picked up at the airport.

Caught the Blue CAT back down to the river, then walked off in the direction of Kings Park.

Foot access was up a very steep path, laid out with plaques commemorating the WWII campaign along the Kokoda trail. A very effective mixing of the steep trail and the historic plaques — each time we stopped to catch a breath, the next plaque drew you in to the saga of the military campaign.

At the top, time to relax and lie on the grass, then stroll around and look at the myriad of banksias. On the way back down we decided to try and visit the old Swan Brewery — a myriad of fences and closed off paths conspiring against us. Eventually we found our way back down the path we'd first entered by, then had to walk alongside a main road to get to the brewery! An interesting enough place, but very little of the brewery remains, its now an up-market hotel and conference centre.

By now time zones and holidays caught us out — by the time we started heading back, the buses had stopped, so it was a very long walk! Peaceful enough walking along the river, it seemed a very enjoyable ride home for the cyclists who passed.

Walking around Northbridge in the evening, a Spanish restaurant caught our eye, so we stepped inside for a paella. Sitting down to eat, Jo glanced over my shoulder to the next table — the same four Frenchmen who were in Duxton's winebar last night.

A magnificent meal, we couldn't eat it all. If all our dinners are like this it's going to be a good week!

Ten PM we arrive at the hotel. It has all the ambience of… a hotel. Nondescript, boring, large anonymous international hotel. I turned to look around the room and suffered flashbacks to the five weeks I spent in an identical room in Johannesburg in 2001.

After quickly unpacking we foolishly decided to head back downstairs for a drink at the bar. It had been open when we came up, but despite the signs stating “Open 7PM to Late,” they'd shut by the time we returned. I guess ten o'clock is late here….

In search of a relaxing drink we headed out into the night — not realising that it wasn't just the hotel bar that shuts at ten on a Sunday night in Perth… We quickly realised that nothing was open.

Last resort was to venture into the hotel bar of the Hotel Duxton, which looked dangerously up-market. It was quite affordable, we had a relaxing glass of wine in pleasant surrounds, to the gentle murmur of conversation from the four Frenchmen at the table behind.

Then it was back to Mercure, a big day satisfactorily completed.

What a day! Where do we start? How do we finish? How do we feel!

You could say it started in 1993 when I first met Jo... or maybe last year in Uralla when we decided to get married

However it started, today was a high point on how life progresses.

Butterflies and nerves this morning, Joey departed early to be made ready. Evan arrived to provide moral support and breakfast company. Breakfast was had, last words were spoken. Evan departed to dress for the occasion.

A minor moment with the heart in the mouth as Evan and Kyllie failed to reappear, then turned up twenty minutes late. An effortless drive to Kellybrook and we were all back on schedule. From there on, the day was just a blur of smiles and happiness.

Jo is tired and getting a little stressed... I'm tired and getting a little edgy... and we woke up to find it's absolutely pissing down! Tomorrow's forecast is “Early rain clearing to a fine day.”

MLP du jour

[http://www.robbastiaansen.nl/vmware/vmnw6cluster.html]

hints on bringing up a demonstration NetWare 6 cluster under VMWare 3.

A bad start to the day. A car was stopped in the middle of the freeway with hazard lights on and a two metre chunk of timber stuck through the windscreen. As I went past, the ambulance was just departing — a sobering ride the rest of the way to work.

Get to work, check the email. A message on teamRC17. One of the guys died a couple of weeks ago in a collision with a car, his brother just sent us an email to let us know. Sadly I can't remember Mark's presence, but his departure touched me and everyone else on the list....

A bizarre phonecall this morning — someone rang me up at work and asked to book a place on the Easter Deadly Treadly ride! I guess someone has either told them I would know the number, or mis-read a page where I said I've been on the rides! Redirected them off to Freedom Machine, I guess they'll know who to call.

This evening the momentum gathers; the best man, MC, usherette and bridal couple sit down to coordinate. Champagne and Spaghetti Bolognaise aren't normally considered ideal partners, but seem to go well together at the time. Timings and schedules are arranged, Evan delves into my phone book for access to friends and families who can deliver useful anecdotes....

I find my sense of humour somewhat strained.... Finally back at work after a week away, a great backlog of work to get done, and the on-again/off-again evening work finally rescheduled for tonight. Nobody else seems to have anything to do so they stand around gossiping with a visiting ex-colleage for an hour and a half, then go out to the pub for an hour for lunch, then come back and have a birthday celebration in the middle of the room! Open-plan offices suck.

To top it off, there's an email from the one non-responder to the wedding invites. “Oh sure, we're coming,” but somehow it hadn't occurred to them to send any kind of RSVP. Serve 'em right if they have to stand in the corner and eat dry toast....

The bucks' party that wasn't really a buck's party — just an excuse for some friends to get together and go for a bike ride, then to have a few beers and a meal at the pub.

Crossing the river was delayed a little... we turned up to see a police launch sitting where the punt normally docks. In a jovial mood, everyone started cracking jokes about what a wild bunch we were, and how Evan hadn't really needed to warn the police of our wild invasion of the western side of the river.... Turns out that the launch had just fished a suicide out of the river, one of the many people each year who jump from the Westgate bridge. High bridges and water form a magnetic attraction for the terminally depressed... it really wouldn't matter whether they jumped into the river or the parkland from that height!

Final day of the ZfD course at Excom — and the first day that ran to nearly the full length of the alloted time. I think we spent a total of 27 hours on the week-long course!

Off down Chapel street this evening to meet Neale and friends for his birthday celebration — bowling! Seems that bowling has become trendy, and combined bowling alleys and bars are now the places to be. Strike on Chapel [http://www.strikeentertainment.com/] is all flashing video screens and dance music, expensive beers and good fun. We played two full games, by the end of which I thought that my arm might fall off! The first game was wildly inaccurate, by the time the second came around I had partly got the hang of it, and was leading for a while — a fluke strike on my last bowl helped a little!

When we left, Chapel street had degenerated into its normal Friday night lunacy. Bumper to bumper cars crawling along at less than a walking pace, beany-clad lads shouting witticisms as they pass, every second car sporting enormous plastic wings and “For Sale” signs that exist solely to advertise the owner's mobile phone number... There's no hope of catching a tram or taxi, and not much point if you do, since they can't move, so we ended up walking home!

Not quite a wedding present — but definitely a present that was well appreciated! After several months of coveting MarkO's port barrel — not the least because he picked it up in a second-hand shop for around $AU5 — we've acquired our own.... MarkO, the guru of the second-hand shop and flea-market, discovered it while poking around last weekend in a market in Bendigo.

I wonder how things are going at Monash this week— I've been away on a course, generally fun to be out of the office, but the five-day course feels like it could be compressed into four, or even three. We've been leaving at around 3:30PM everyday so far. In another example of small-world syndrome, I've discovered that the instructor is the brother of one of the Smeg cyclists....

Judging by a phone call I received at lunch time, things are proceeding as normal. The call was to tell me that the work I was going to do this evening — the work that nobody had asked me to do, that some had just assumed that I would do and then told others that I would do — well, that work, had been cancelled because one of the other groups hadn't got something working yet. Actually, it hadn't been cancelled, it's been postponed to Friday evening, and would I be available to come in then and do it... Unfortunately the answer is no. I've already got other bookings. We'll continue to haemorrhage money by giving the students free printing, because the ability to generate paperwork is fundamental to the operation of a computer network, and letting thousands of people print in a total unmanaged way is more important than saving trees, printers and our time. Bah!

The bogey-man is coming, the bogey-man is coming — or someone nearly as bad.... Today was the day that the real-estate agents were performing an inspection. Would they complain that the front room resembled a bicycle repair workshop? Would they notice that the bathroom wall can't be cleaned because the grouting is so badly done that it falls apart when you wash it? A total non-event. He rang the bell, he walked in, said a brief hello, glanced into kitchen and lounge, and left without even looking in either bedroom or bathroom. Total time of inspection — approximately 35 seconds!

Strange sight on a blackboard menu in South Melbourne today — “Café Late.” They'd taken the time to put the accent on the e, but couldn't spell latte... Oh well, five minutes later I saw a SNITZEL being advertised....

Daylight savings has ended — finally I can wake up early enough to have a chance of getting to work early — even when work is a course that starts an hour before my normal start time!

Off to Wonga Park this morning to speak with Ivan — no, not Ivan the terrible — Ivan the chef. Final discussions on what we'll feed the horde in two weeks time. He was quick to put us at our ease, and offered all kinds of helpful suggestions and hints, our preliminary choices only needed a little refining for everyone to be happy, then it was off to wander around the gardens to get a rough idea of where everything would be — and to look at the colours of the autumn vines.

Later this afternoon I did battle with the internal combustion engine. After much grunting and muttering and endless cranking and cranking, the bike finally burst — or limped — into life. Immense clouds of black smoke billowed from the exaust, as five months worth of seeping oil burnt out of the cylinders, then I headed off for a quick run up the freeway and back to charge the completely flat battery. I think that money will need to be spent this winter to revitalise a rather unwell engine, but at least it's now in a state where I can get to and from the course for next week....

Urgent task of the day was to arrange garments for the wedding. I've had a catalogue for the past ten days, but the range is terrifying to a non-suit-wearing person like myself. Deferring to superior authorities, Jo and her mum made a few suggestions, then Evan and I carried them out. A relatively painless experience — all over in under an hour!

Dinner with a bunch of friends up in North Fitzroy at Konstantino's. What a place! Completely over-the-top decor, with plaster columns, grecian heads, and false flares burning over the bar. Quite a surprise too, when I walked in and the first person I saw was Karen from the NSW bike ride two weeks ago! She was visiting friends in Melbourne, friends she'd met on the ride in Tasmania in January, friends that I know. Once again it seems that the cycling community is quite a small one!

A strange meal really — a large greek restaurant full of large greek groups of large greek people — definitely an authentic experience... The waitress was one of the most unhappy-looking I think I've ever seen, not helped by the way her boss kept picking on her unmercifully. The boss didn't seem in a much better mood, towards the end of the evening he basically handed us the group bill and packed us up, serving coffee was too hard, he just seemed to want the money! As with most large group meals, the mathematics of bill-splitting became horrendous, minor arguments ensued, but eventually everyone paid and left. Good food, but an overall bad taste....

First day back at work. Everything has quietened down — but nobody seems to have done anything in the last week....

Am I meant to be at work today or not? Stupid me can't remember... Jo and I both think I had said that Monday was in my leave. I guess that since Monash's HR department has decided to ban access to the staff “eServices” from outside the campus I'll just have to trust to memory and stay home. Being able to check your pay and leave balance would be useful when absent, so it's been disabled for security reasons — obvious really....

Toddled off on the bike this afternoon to visit a friend in Fitzroy and plot some future events — wouldn't you believe it, after 600km of eventless cycle touring over the last nine days, some idiot drove straight through a give-way sign and nearly hit me on the way home.

Back home past the concrete monstrosity — oh wow, a massive new shopping mall — just what Richmond needs... I guess we'll soon see the Yarra fill up with shopping trolleys and plastic bags, like the creek near Chadstone. It's a worry what it might do the traffic short-cutting through our street — I guess speed-hump number two will sort them out....

  Today: 24.88km
  Total: 599km

Typical last-day bike ride foolishness. Bicycle NSW want everyone to ride into the final town in one big mass. Nearly everyone has the feeling that the ride ended last night, and most of the riders just want to get it over with and head home. There's the usual bunching up on the roads, and then being herded into a holding area on the outskirts of Cootamundra to wait in the sun and get gradually more and more annoyed. The ride is re-organized with all the odd bikes at the front — the tandems, recumbents and unicycles — followed by the colourfully dressed teams, then the rest of the rabble. Once all this is complete, the actual ride of the last two kilometres is a mixture of highly-stressed low-speed riding while attempt to avoid running into others or being run into, and the amusement of being cheered by people lining the streets as though we'd just completed some marathon event, and not just finished a week-long holiday.

Once in Cootamundra and at the finish point, everything quickly degenerates into a mad scramble to pack bikes, find bags, farewell friends, change clothes and get onto busses. It's always depressing in a way, mostly because of the way it just all seems to fall apart….

At least on this ride I had my own transport. It made a big difference being able to pack at my own pace and get leisurely into the car. I'd offered a lift to Melbourne to a number of people, but too late in the week so nobody took me up on the offer. Half an hour before I was about to leave, Charlie Farren came and asked me if I'd be able to give her a lift to Wagga Wagga — she had intended to go by train but it would mean a three hour delay. A quick check of the maps showed that it wasn't much of a detour, probably the same distance overall, just down the Olympic way rather than the Hume highway.

After a pleasant drive and interesting conversation, I dropped Charlie and her bike off in Wagga just as the people she was meeting arrived for their Sunday social ride. I then managed to get lost leaving Wagga, detoured around a few times before getting back onto the highay. Two in the afternoon and I was on the road and heading back towards Melbourne….

Home around seven-thirty to a disappointingly empty house — after nine days away I'd just have to wait a little longer to see Jo.

Tiredness was overcome by laughter as I ventured into the kitchen and saw the sink— Wednesday evening's SMS had said:

When are you coming home? The sink is getting full.

…but at the time I had thought she was joking…

She has been busy though, either that or the vacuum-cleaner fairy dropped in for a visit. I got stuck into the mighty mound of washing-up while listening to the Go-Betweens Bright Yellow Bright Orange — a recent arrival that must have appeared in the last week.

  Today: 80.07km
  Total: 552km

A cold morning again today — but Yass is renowned for being cold and windy! I left with thermals on under my jersey, but after the first nine kilometres of dirt roads had to stop to remove them, sweat was pouring off me!

A day of rolling hills and green paddocks, sheep and windmills. The wind had finally dropped, and once the early chill wore off it was a beautiful day of riding.

Harden closed off the main street from about four PM until midnight. This must have come as a great surprise to the locals who had spent the entire afternoon doing laps of the town, not game to actually park their cars and come and say hello or have a beer. Brown ute, gold commodore ute, laser with P-plates. Over and over again they drove up and down the street...

Also parading up and down the street were the Australian Light Horse regiment. This was formed here in Harden-Murrumburrah, and they've taken pride in the fact and kept a museum going to celebrate it. Half a dozen mounted men in soldiers' uniforms, and a gun — or amunition — carriage went up and down the street to cheers and shouts.

The final-night party was in the street, at last we had a band that played something different — no more Brown-Eyed Girl! An original Blues band, I can't remember their name, they just fit in perfectly with the surroundings and the mood, a great change from mindless, bland, middle-of-the-road American pop.

The party ended all too soon, on the stroke of midnight the council cleaners started pushing through the crowd to empty bins and sweep the streets, and the local copper started trying to move people along. He'd been looking nervous all night, probably not sure what to expect, but definitely looked to be enjoying himself once he could tell everyone to go home and stop drinking in public. At least half the riders attempted to go back to the pubs — the pubs that had advertised that they would be open until two AM. Unfortunately the pubs had pulled a swifty — although they were still open, they weren't letting anyone in the doors after midnight! The mood quickly degenerated when this became apparent, and most people gave up in disgust and headed home.

Where?

Yass, Harden.

  Today: 101.79km
  Total: 472km

I was expecting a very cold morning, thick fog, maybe even a frost.... It was cold, but not that cold. Even so, it didn't stop the whinges and moans from the people from the coast! The temperature seemed to drop between waking up and leaving, maybe it was as the wind increased.

Heading west from Bungendore on a bike is a rude shock. There's only around 3km of almost level riding to warm you up before you're presented with the climb up Smith's Gap. Mum and Dad, together with Boris and Scarlet, were standing at the end of Lake Road waving to the riders as we passed, they seemed to be laughing at the thought of us having to ride up the hill....

In about a kilometre and a half of road we climbed up nearly two hundred metres, many getting off and walking, others zig-zagging madly back and forth across the road and getting in each others' way. There were many red faces and panting voices by the time we hit the top.

From Bungendore to Murrumbateman the obvious route would have been to head straight along the road that joins the two in almost a straight line — it's a quiet country road with very little traffic even on a weekday morning. Unfortunately it would have involved a crossing of the Federal Highway, and that's anathema to Bicycle NSW, so we had to detour half-way around the country and add on an extra 20km of riding in the headwinds in order to avoid the major road. Their insistence on treating everyone like pre-school children gets a little wearisome at times...

The route used Norton's Lane and other roads that in the past ten years I have never ridden or driven along, then came out onto the Sutton road before heading out to Gundaroo and rejoining the route we would have been on if we could be trusted to look both ways and cross a main road. Unfortunately, with the increasing headwind, and after such a long, hard day as yesterday, the added distance meant that many people were so exhausted that they couldn't complete the day's riding.

Lunch was taken while sheltering beside or behind a CFA shed in a windy paddock, while a curious highland cow looked on from the adjoining paddock. It had obviously been hand fed, and was tame enough that it kept trying to lick various bikes or people that got near enough to the fence.

Lunch to Murrumbatemen, then via Dog-Trap road to Yass were just a continuation of the slog into the wind. Probably the lowest point was having to ride past the municipal tip at Murrumbatemen, being pelted with gravel from passing trucks and assaulted by the stench from the garbage.

At Yass sportsground the local primary school students were busy offering to help carry bags and put up tents in order to raise money for their Year 6 farewell. There's always the trade-off between wanting to help them with their fund-raising, and not wanting to injure anyone who tries to pick up 20kg of baggage! It can also be frustrating — if slightly amusing — watching others try to find your bag or put up a tent — and it's nearly always quicker and easier to do it yourself. It took three girls to carry Ron's bag, but luckily it's distinctive enough that at least they could find it!

After snacking on a steak sandwich, putting up the tent, and having a quick shower, I decided to head into town for a look around and to try and call Liz to see if we could catch up this evening. The countryside around Yass was much greener than it has been for the past few days, the view north and south along Yass river looked especially inviting. Walking back into town after setting up my tent I had to clamber over railings and run across the road to take the Southerly-facing photo without including the passing traffic. I loved the look of the old rail bridge that's parallel to the road.

Colin, Liz and the girls drove into town to meet me in the evening — no mean feat with the amount of baby-support equipment they all seem to need! We decided to head to the Yass RSL for a drink and a chat, as it seemed to be the only place likely to be open and suitable. Unfortunately they seemed to go out of their way to make us unwelcome, and made it painfully obvious that small children, or even any children, were not wanted.

One of the funnier aspects of the club is that immediately on entering the foyer, there is a flight of stairs to climb into the club proper. This is not easy to navigate with a baby stroller, and probably equally difficult for any of the disabled Returned Servicemen, for whom the club was built! Once inside we were forbidden from entering various bars and rooms, but that wasn't labelled anywhere — the only way to find out was to walk into them and then be told “you can't bring children in here. Colin remembered that the last time he'd been here, about six months ago, they had been similarly unhelpful to him and his mates.

As a final example of their customer focus, we got to overhear a conversation between a group of about a dozen bike riders and one of the staff. The riders were asking if one of the many TVs could be tuned to a particular football game, since all of them were showing one channel. The staff member claimed that he had to show what the boss had specified, but that the boss was at home and couldn't be interrupted, and that nobody in the club had the authority to change channels. Not surprisingly, the group of riders all left for another pub, where they could watch what they wanted!

Even with all of this, it was great to catch up with them all. I got to find out what a circus-like event it can be to just go anywhere with the twins — people just stop and point or interrupt and ask questions. Sammy was happy to see me, and unlike previous visits, no where near as shy as she used to be. Casey and Zoe just lay in their respective seats, sleeping quietly and periodically asking to be fed. I've no idea how Liz and Colin manage to tell them apart, even Liz says she sometimes has trouble, and they're not even identical!

Eventually it was past everyone's bed time, so they bundled themselves back into the car and headed home, while headed up the street to see if anyone I knew was out and about in the pubs. It was quiet out, the two long days in a row seemed to have taken their toll on the partying.

A one man band was playing in the pub, with around twenty people dancing and sitting about. His voice was so out of tune that a number of people had thought that it was a karaoke event, Stu even asked where to sign up to sing, this didn't impress the entertainer at all! Luckily he was also playing a saxophone, and unlike his singing, it was greatly enjoyed by all. I wonder if he ever got suspicious of why so many people asked for more sax solos?

The pub also had one of the more amusing signs that I've seen for a while, I couldn't resist and just had to take a photo of it. Attached to the hotplate of the barbecue was a sign that clearly read: “DANGER: BBQ HOT!” Obviously they've had advice from their lawyers... or maybe the barbecue is made for the American market and these signs are required over there....

Where?

Bungendore, Yass.

  Today: 99.76km
  Total: 370km

A very windy day — and an even windier night last night! A storm passed through just after midnight, howling winds, lightning and thunder, and a few drops of rain — but mostly just the wind! Bicycle NSW were so concerned about the reports and warnings that they received that they turned all the floodlights on and were attempting to take down some of the marquees. Reports of 80km/hr winds were being forecast. Apparently when it arrived the gusts were to only about half of that, and only the tea and coffee tent was damaged.

The wind wasn't the only interruption during the night — Goulburn is a major rail yard and we were right next door to it. Trains kept a large number of people awake for the rest of the night — I didn't even notice, but still had trouble dragging myself awake and out to face the day.

Today was “teams day” and so most of the people I knew were off riding together in their teams. As a result of this, all the groups were limited to the speed of their slowest. I didn't manage to meet up with any of the groups prior to departure, so decided to head off by myself, hoping to meet others along the way.

After about 9km of warm-up spinning, a gentle down-hill run, and a pleasant tail-wind, I found myself riding along at an absurd pace for a solo ride of almost a hundred kilometres. It was loads of fun, pushing myself just that bit too hard until I flew past the morning tea stop — 39km at an average speed of 32km/hr. There was then a right-angle turn into the wind and I found out why the first stretch had been so much fun — the headwind almost stopped me dead! Windellama to the lunch stop at Tarago was just one long slog, the average speed dropped to 28km/hr, and it was only in the last few kilometres that I found anyone to ride with.

Lunch at Tarago would have been pleasant, except the icy south-westerly wind made sitting in the sun too uncomfortable. A quick coffee and we were all back on the bikes for the last third of the days ride — almost straight south along Lake George between Tarago and Bungendore. The more southerly direction meant that there was less of a headwind, but the gusts from the side kept threatening to send me off into the ditch. By the time I reached Bungendore, average speed for the day was down to 26km/hr.

Bungendore made a real effort to welcome the ride, even without my parents living there it would have been a great place to visit. The main street was closed off, there were free bands in both pubs and activities elsewhere. I relaxed at mum and dad's, showering and lazing on the couch for a few hours before we had to head back into Bungendore so that I could get my dinner and mum could help out at the CWA stall.

Where?

Goulburn, Bungendore.

  Today: 0km
  Total: 270km

Rest days on tour when camping are a problem — I tried to sleep in past seven but the sun on the tent and beer in the bladder forced me up and out. Breakfast was a subdued affair, hangovers all around me from those out partying late, and grumpy comments from those who had come home early and then been woken by those out partying late.

No visit to Goulburn would be complete without a meal at the ??? Café, so I headed up there with most of the members of the Rusty Cranks. Too many options to choose from, I opted for an avocado and cheese croissant The food on the rides is generally pretty good, but its always nice to buy something that I want.

Then spent the rest of the day wandering around Goulburn, looking at the buildings and chatting to people — sitting in the park or looking in shops. Overall I was still feeling down, going away on a holiday while Jo has to work just doesn't seem to work out, no matter how much I needed the break!

Later in the afternoon I finally managed to call my sister and we arranged to meet for dinner at the Workers Club — apparently renowned throughout NSW for its food. When Kathy and Cec turned up, she was worried that I'd had to spend the day alone in a strange town, it hadn't quite clicked that there were a thousand people on the ride, and just how busy we tended to be!

Dinner at the Workers club lived up to its reputation, good cheap bistro food, but tastily prepared. Kathy and I both had lamb cutlets, while Cec opted for a Chicken Kiev that wasn't quite a Chicken Kiev, some minor variation perhaps...

After dinner, another drink, and a long conversation, Kathy and Cec drove me back to the showground before heading home, and I walked back through the tents as this evening's two-piece cover band launched into yet-another version of Brown-Eyed Girl...

Where?

Goulburn.

  Today: 79.81km
  Total: 270km

Dark at 05:45, we are woken by Debbie's loud hailer again. The stars are still out and there are bats flying around the floodlights catching the insects. I'm convinced that we really don't need to be woken so early...

At least today's breakfast was better than yesterday's — pikelets go down a lot easier than the greasy, cheap, sausages did.

Once again I rode out with Jeff and Alan, and again we headed out at around eight AM. It doesn't really seem to matter when I get up, all the packing and eating seems to be adjusted so that we're leaving at the same time each day. The riding today was fantastic, with magnificent scenery and a fun section where we got the breakdown lane of the Hume highway for a couple of kilometres. It was quite a fast run at times, but much the same average speed as yesterday. The last twenty kilometres down into Goulburn were an absolute hoot. We picked the pace up to the mid-thirties, then high-thirties, before suddenly having to back down when we came across a large herd of cattle on the road. Hitting half a tonne of cow with a ten kilogram bicyle would not have been a good idea! Since tomorrow is the rest day, tonight is traditionally the night of the big party — unfortunately a message from a depressed Jo sitting at home put rather a damper on my enjoyment of the events.

The theme of the party was lilac — for Goulburn, the Lilac City — so most people dressed up somehow. A startlingly large number of guys just seemed to take it as an opportunity to wear women's clothing — there were some fairly diabolical sights to be seen. A quick trip to Dimmey's saw Ron armed with a shirt and tie of appropriate hue, and me with a small, purple, stuffed dinosaur. I had intended to just wear a purple tee-shirt, but the dinosaur was just to good to resist, so it was pinned to my shoulder — parrot fashion.

The dinosaur proved a big hit, for some reason it was quickly named Lillian by a number of the girls, then seemed to invoke any number of pats and comments on how cute it was — seems that wearing a stuffed purple dinosaur works wonders for meeting women! Unfortunately the cover band was yet another drab country-town two-piece cover band, playing yet-another cover of Brown-Eyed Girl and Copperhead Road, and they quickly managed to get under my skin and up my nose. Eventually I gave up, left my last beer untouched on the table, and headed back to my tent around eleven. Others in a more festive mood kicked on until 3am.

Where?

Bundanoon, Goulburn.

  Today: 71.84km
  Total: 190km

A quarter to six in the morning and Debbie's melifluous tones bellowing out woke us all. There is a distinct difference of opinion between various groups as to whether these are necessary or not — some people seem incapable of waking and organizing themselves and need to be woken while it is still dark, others quite happily get up later, then pack and eat with no outside assistance. The first group seem to need alarm clocks set for four-thirty AM and megaphones, and will complain most vigourously when woken by people returning from the pub at midnight, but think nothing of chatting jovially and rustling bags well before the sun is up.

Ron and I ignored the noises for as long as possible, then stuck our heads out of our respective tents at around seven. It was still dark, the stars were still out, but all around us people had packed, and the queue for breakfast stretched all the way from the marquees back to our tents — the opposite end of the football oval! The obvious solution was to go back to bed for another twenty minutes.

Revenge, however, was sweet. As we sat and ate our breakfast, all the people who had rushed to pack up and be the first on the road were held up for half an hour as the police decided not to open the route while there was still thick fog.

The ride zig-zagged around the Southern Highlands, calling in at Robertson for morning tea and Fitzroy Falls for lunch. Unlike the last time that we were here, however, the sun was out and neither of these places was under water! Dr Alan, Jeff and myself rode together for most of the day, sometimes being joined for a kilometer or so by others.

Later in the ride we were joined by a rather terrifying individual. He didn't say anything, he couldn't seem to ride in a straight line nor keep a constant pace, and all the time that he had his hands on the tri-bars I kept thinking of Evan's crash in January when someone he didn't know managed to fall off straight in front of him in a pack. The guy's riding style got more and more annoying, and downright dangerous at times, so for the last 15km into Bundanoon we all just refused to ride near him, either speeding well up or slowing right down to get away. He still wouldn't say anything though, not even in response to a direct question...

Bundanoon seemed the opposite of Bowral though, the pub was warm and friendly, as was the rest of the town. The only unfortunate aspect was that the town swimming pool — advertised by Bicycle NSW in the ride guide as being on the campground. It is on the campground, unfortunately it had been emptied by the council, apparently because they always empty it at this time of year — the arrival of a thousand cyclists couldn't convince them to keep it open for an extra week!

Where?

Bowral, Bundanoon,

  Today: 84.43km
  Total: 118km

Dr Alan, Jeff, Ron, Jim and I rolled out at 8:15, fueled up on porridge and in good spirits. The pace was a little high and Ron left us to ride at a more comfortable one. Jeff and I moved to the front on the first of many short sharpish climbs.

Alan and Jim weren't as quick on the way up the hills, but they more than made up for it on the decents, we ended up riding in two pairs to the morning tea point. Jeff and I stopped to adjust his seat, then looked up to see the other two flash past with a shout and a wave.

Many jokes were made today about the Aussie battler doing it hard — everywhere we looked we seemed to see yet another —bush retreat or enormous house in the forest. Hardly typical of a rural area though, most of it being expensive getaways from Sydney. The bush was a mixture of freshly burnt trees and stunningly bright green regrowth after the bushfires earlier this year.

From five kilometres before the lunch stop at Bargo Sportsground until almost afternoon tea, the road headed up almost constantly, climbing around 300metres. There was a brief respite in the descent to afternoon tea, then the killer climb of the day, the last two kilometres before a screaming drop into Bowral. I had just reached the top, sweating heavily, when a few large drops of rain landed. No sooner had I thought how refreshing that was when the heavens opened and visibility dropped to around 4m! Some riders leapt off their bikes to struggle into spray-jackets — a rather hopeless gesture — the rest of us just squinted into it and descended as carefully as possible into Bowral. By the time I reached the bottom, the rain had stopped and everything was steaming in the sunshine! This set the tone for the rest of the afternoon, with a number of rapid, short showers, followed by steamy sunlit periods.

In the evening Bowral turned out to be quite a disapointment. It's a snooty kind of town, all antique shops and ye-olde tea-rooms, having a thousand bike riders in town with money to spend didn't seem to matter, so everywhere it was business as usual. The shops all shut early, so nobody could get any chips or snacks, and the pubs all shut at 10:30, the one we were in refusing to serve anyone after about 10! They made it abundantly clear that we weren't really welcome, and I think most of the riders will repay it in kind, by avoiding the town in future!

Where?

Camden, Bowral.

  Today: 33.9km
  Total: 34km

By the time I arrived in Warragamba I'd catalogued a few more minuses to sitting in the back seat of the bus — the seat won't recline, and it was right next to the toilet, luckily the latter just stank in a chemical, rather than biological, manner.

Disembarking at around eight it was a typical start to the ride. Hundreds of people milling around, bags over there, bikes over here, friends over there, queue here, do this, do that....

As usual I'm feeling tired and sore, the bus trips and travelling to the rides always seem to do more damage than the rides themselves.

There aren't so many of the piggies on the ride this year, in fact the overall numbers look down as well. Ron, Bushy, Lenny, Stu and Janelle are here, and Kevin is riding to Camden for the day — everyone else seems to have better things to do with their lives. Kevin and Ron were wearing dark glasses and drinking Red Bull to try and avoid their hangovers from a big night at the Walacia hotel last night. Luckily the Red-Bull promotion girls arrived at just the right time....

First coincidence of the ride was me discovering that Ron had bought a new helmet two weeks ago — exactly the same model and colour scheme as the one I bought yesterday.

I'd forgotton just how little cycling a lot of the participants here seem to do — my daily commute isn't far, but at least half the people seem to have no idea on how to ride in straight line and not wobble out in front of anything and everything that passes. The closest call I had was with one of the police motorcyclists though! He passed down the wrong side of the road, then slowed and did a u-turn, unfortunately swinging into my path as I approached at around 50km/hr! Kevin was behind me, and amazed that I managed to swerve around the BMW, I think I was amazed too, none of it was planned, it was just the automatic reaction when 280kg of police bike appeared in front of me!

At Camden we set up camp for the first night as it started to drizzle, then the drizzle turned to rain while I crawled inside and slept for an hour or two to recover from the overnight coach.

A couple of hours sleep and I felt refreshed enough to face the first meal from Tom & Ben's catering. Tonight it was a tasty lasagna, the only problem being keeping the rain off it to stop it diluting away! Then it was off to the bowling club for a beer and a brief hello to some friends, then up the street to the nearest pub for a few more beers and a few more hellos. Being a Saturday night in the pub, there was a strange mix of people, with Camden residents in their Saturday-night best on the one hand, and bike riders — some still in nicks — on the other.

Where?

Cootamundra, Warragamba, Camden.

  Today: 0km
  Total: 0km

The start of another RTA Big Ride... It was 1PM when I left Melbourne in Joey's car, brand new helmet in hand, all the usual accoutrements stuffed into duffel, and Norky bike laid across the top.

A relatively event-free drive to the Victorian border, with far less traffic than I usually encounter when we drive this way at night. From Albury to Gundagi there was a huge thunderstorm visible to the east, dark and foreboding, not a good sign for a week's camping! It faded away at the turn off, then another appeared ahead as I neared Cootamundra — Coota to it's inhabitants. The rain arrived at the same time I did, big, fat, heavy thunderstorm rain, so I parked the car and retired to the nearest pub to consider my options — what to do between seven PM and three AM in Cootamundra on a Friday night...

The first beer wasn't a good start, a chipped glass cut my lip and the barman's look at the glass seemed to indicate that it had a good week or two of life left.... I left and walked up the street to the next, for a counter tea of bangers and mash, and another beer or two.

The showground wasn't supposed to be accessible before midnight, but I decided to drive around at 9PM to scope the place out, partly because map provided by Bicycle NSW was so poor and I didn't want to get lost! Not only was it open, but people were unpacking bags and bikes, and some even had a tent up and were having a few hours sleep. I decided to join them, parked the car and curled up in the passenger seat for three very uncomfortable hours of sleeping in an Astra.

Around half-past midnight I woke and stiffly got out of the car, then did what little packing I needed before wandering around and wasting time until the coaches arrived at three. Foolishly, I got into the first coach — this is always the one that they fill completely, but has the advantage that it might leave a few minutes ahead of the others. I ended up with the back seat to myself; above the motor is noisy, above the rear wheels it bounces, but two seats to myself and I found the pillow hidden behind the seats that the driver keeps for when he has a sleep in the back. Somehow I managed to sleep most of the way to Warragamba, apart from the forced stop at 6AM at a BP diner on the freeway at Marulan. It must have been one of the worst prepared places I've ever visited, some people were still queueing to try and get food while the rest of us where being usherred outside and back into the coaches! Shocking service, ridiculous prices, lousy food — standard roadside diner.

Where?

Cootamundra.

A shorter day than yesterday — but far more manic. A state of national emergency — or similar — was declared this morning, so ridiculous amounts of caffeine and adrenalin were expended in performing nerd-like miracles while stupid people stood around and asked stupid questions.

Wide-eyed, staring, shaking slightly and jumping at loud noises, I dragged myself away at a little after seven-thirty to ride home and attempt to unwind.

A stupidly long day — started at 0930, didn't get to leave until 2330 — the last four hours were spent sitting around babysitting a phone while Novell support engineers from the US and Europe tried to put back the pieces of a rather broken NDS.

A SMIDSY... my first for the year. Straight through the stop sign in front of me, I hit the brakes, I slide to a stop, he smiles, waves apologetically and calls it out.

The weekend's over, petrol price is back down. Obviously the threat of war is receding, as it does at the end of every weekend....

Blissfully empty paths on the ride to work this morning — all the rest of Victoria is on holiday, only us poor university workers on Federal awards have to go to work....

Sunday, pancakes for breakfast, housework for the rest of the day. Not so interesting, but necessary.

The Melbourne Gran Prix is on today, for the last three days we've been able to hear the cars down at Albert Park, about eight kilometres away. They sound like a swarm of demented bumble-bees. Jo's been watching it on TV, so I'm getting the sound in stereo — one channel from the TV, a slightly delayed one from reality....

I've spent half the afternoon performing site maintenance on wyvern. Too many half-installed packages, strange snippets of downloaded code, weird files that don't mean anything anymore. Time for a little organization....

One such snippet, a little something I found while looking at online weather information...

Breakfasted up on Bridge Road after visiting the markets, then hurried home to change and ride down to Port Melbourne to join Evan and Kyllie for a bit of a bike ride. We weren't sure where we all wanted to go, the only thing we agreed on was avoiding Albert Park and the congestion around the Grand Prix.

Getting to Port Melbourne was a challenge — every road seemed to be bumper to bumper with cars, stationary and fuming — both drivers and cars. Squeezing through the gaps wasn't too hard, but some motorists were grumpy enough to deliberately try to squeeze us into the gutter and prevent us passing.

We met up a little late, decided to head for Williamstown via the punt. Neither of the other two had ever ridden along the bike paths or caught the punt — the differences between people who cycle for “training rides” and those that do it for “social rides” can be amusing — and vast — as again are the differences from those who just ride a bike for transport.

The ride through the park under the Westgate bridge is surreal, a well landscaped bushland park, but with a concrete freeway arching up way overhead. The punt's jetty has moved about a kilometre up the river, and apparently did so over a year ago, so it must be a while since I last rode along there. The price hasn't changed though, $5 still gets a day return over the river.

After a surprsingly cheap coffee in Williamstown we headed on around the bay, just as the clouds turned to rain. Now that we were here we all wanted to contine, so two of four put on their spray jackets, the other two of us just turned up our collars... Down to the time-ball tower and the Southerly wind was strong enough to blow the rain away, and to lend a very unfriendly look to the waves on the bay.

There's a path from here around the bay and beaches, completely different to the bayside bikepath on the Eastern side of the bay. This part of Melbourne feels more like a coastal town, isolated from the rest of the city. We rode along past wetlands, between industrial sites and drains, around a local cricket ground and past the Kororoit Creek fishing club. Pelicans, cormorants and other waterbirds were everywhere.

After a lap of Cherry Lake in Altona, we decided it was time to start heading homewards — the afternoon of slowly meandering around on the bikes had lead us a surprisingly long way. First retracing our steps to Williamstown, then catching the punt back over the river. Rather than ride back around the bay we headed up along the river through Port Melbourne's industrial area, nearly everything dead at the weekend. This almost meets up with the bike track through the city, which ends at the Casino, but there's a block between the casino and the harbour developments containing nothing but the exhibition centre and a major road, today even more crowded with visitors to the motor show. We made it through, pausing to chuckle at the 4WD demonstration where eagre mums and dads can check their off-road prowess over hills and through creeks. Hopefully the memories will stay with them next week as they struggle through the city traffic with their daily commute or school-taxi duties.

Four in the afternoon, back in Richmond, and time for a late lunch. A fun ride, it had taken a lot longer than we'd anticipated, but had also taken me to parts of the map that I'd never known existed!

Bleearrrggh! Late to work because I wasn't eager to be the first one to see that the servers hadn't mysteriously fixed themselves. I ended up working on them all day, finally left at 9PM after a ten-minute lunch break. Way too long to remain focused, or to have any real idea of what we were looking for. I have a very real suspicion that the old servers are now hopelessly outclassed by the sheer quantity of network clients in the University, and that any interruption or outage is enough to push the whole thing into a non-linear failure. Maybe the power outage on the weekend disconnected enough clients that when they came back, they all tried to reconnect at once and killed it all...

Lessons learned from this morning's cycle to work:

Keep Left (sign on bike path)

To the majority of pedestrians on the shared paths, this means walk three abreast, use the entire path, then step randomly to the left or right when a cyclist approaches.

Control Your Dog (sign on bike path):: To the majority of dog owners on the shared path, this means “hold a lead coiled up in your hand, and ensure that your dog remains somewhere within eyesight.”

Red Traffic Light

To the driver of the Ford station wagon, rego. Vic ROX-364, a red light means plant your foot and drive through the crossing after the pedestrian/cyclist lights have changed to green and the cyclist has started across in front of you.

The spelling abilities of University students never ceases to amaze me. It's either that or the “English Capability” test for overseas students, their English score seems to be proportional to the ability to pay full fees... Straight from the walls of one of our labs:

  LOOKING ROOM FOR RENT
  SINGLE MAIL
  CALL ANY TIME
  OPTUS MOBIL 04xxxxxx

First day of semester and it all seemed remarkably restrained at Monash. The traffic had built up to its normal chaos at the gates, but that's never much more than an amusement when on the bike....

Sunday at home, nothing to do, no urgent jobs to chase up — bliss.

We finally got to see Lord of the Rings: the Two Towers this evening. Been putting it off for weeks in order to try and use the two “Gold Pass” tickets that Joey scored from work, the only sessions that they seem to have available are 9:30PM during the week — hardly viable for a more than three hour movie! Down to the Jam Factory to see it in an ordinary session at an ordinary time — but with an extraordinary amount of rubbish on the floors. It appears that they've given up on cleaning the cinemas between shows — we were ankle deep in half-chewed pop-corn, drink cups and plastic wrappers....

What can I say about the movie that hasn't already been said in reviews? I enjoyed it, found Gollum to be memorable, found the Ents to be a little disappointing ... Lots of chasing, lots of battles, lots of swords and armour, and the ubiquitous Hollywood necessity of the light-hearted character — provided by Gimli and the non-stop dwarf in-jokes and “short” references.

Is this the last of the urgent pre-wedding tasks? Not quite. Rings have been bought, one has been collected. I think all that remains is clothes for me. As the sign on the ski-slopes at Mt Baw Baw stated quite clearly: “Grooming Incomplete.”

A CD launch for Mick Thomas and the Sure Thing's The Horses' Prayer this evening at the Atheneum in the city. Tickets were a bit steep, but its a grand old theatre and a great place to see a folksy kind of show. Assorted songs old and new, some of the new ones I'd not heard before, others I had — their cover of the Stone Roses' Made of Stone still makes me laugh... Between the sets the fill-in tape was full of horse-related songs, I suddenly realised this as Jo said something about “needs more horses,” during a western/cowboy number — it had started with “Red Pony,” but I didn't know the names of any of the others. I wonder how many other people noticed?

All over by 11:30, being used to pub shows we had thought it would be a late start and hadn't got there until after nine, by which time they were already playing. At least it meant we could catch the tram home, rather than be extorted by a taxi.

Trams home have other advantages too, there's always the entertainment value of the other people.... Tonight it was three fifteen year old girls hurrying home after seeing “the bestest movie ever.” Speaking in 100 decibel voices and phoning all their friends, we couldn't help but overhear that this cinematic treasure was “Jackass — the movie,” an hour and half of fart jokes and public humiliation gags that has reviews of one or one and half stars in all the papers...

Chaos, madness, mayhem... What else do you expect on the last day of O-week when all of a sudden people realise that Monday is the start of semester! We seemed to be surrounded by people busy losing their temper — all very undignified.

Proof that we're sticking to the pledge and making each month's pasta dish as it comes up in the calendar.... Just like last month, we've scraped in by the skin of our teeth with only one day to go.

MLP

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

Historical article on Windows NT, 2000 and XP

Just what I needed first thing this morning — a flat tyre. My bike is still filthy from last Friday's riding in the rain, I was running late, and I had to change the rear tyre — always the rear. Off came the tyre, a quick examination and out came the sliver of glass, a slower examination and out came the 5mm chunk of wire. I guess one of them was responsible!

Gardiners Creek was still fairly high after the weekend's rain, the highlight of the morning was watching a little pied cormorant and a white-faced heron sitting about a foot apart on a concrete weir, both staring intently into the same pond. They looked about ready to pounce on each other.

...and then to work. Mayhem, as expected. Too many tasks, too little direction, too much caffeine and adrenalin. Nothing changes....

Saturday morning, a sleep-in at last. I dragged myself out of bed at around 10:30, finally feeling like I'd recovered from yesterday.

Off towards Yass to the tiny church of St Mary of Mundoonan where Colin and Liz where married in 1997, and now where Casey and Zoe were to be christened. I have the deepest respect for the church staff conducting christenings — marriages and deaths must be easy, christenings are invariably full of small, noisy children, and keeping a service going under those conditions doesn't look easy!

Casey is on the left, wearing the same christening robe that I wore sometime back in 1965. Zoe is wearing Liz's robe, a much younger garment... at least I think Casey is on the left.

It's a shame I didn't manage to take a photo of the outside, suffice it to say that this shot is of all of the interior. It doesn't take many family and friends to completely fill the church.

Services also are a rarity, apparently they are held on the fifth Sunday of the month, when a month has five Sundays....

The rest of the afternoon was spent just up the road at Colin and Liz's house. The adults ate, drank and talked, while a myriad of small children leapt on the trampoline, played on swings, and chased each other around the deck in a kind of tricycle-criterium event.

Strange wet stuff falling from the sky... I think I've read about it somewhere. Hmmm, its called rain.

Yes folks, after a total of 12mm of rain for all of January, and only two days of rain so far this year, it's been raining solidly since about 9PM yesterday. Good news and bad news.

The good news is that it might help a little with the drought... the bad is that it might prompt the state government to lift the nominal water restrictions and get people back to their normal habits.

The other bad news is that it woke me up around four this morning and I couldn't get back to sleep. At five I heard the neighbour's sprinklers come on outside the window, at five-thirty they went back off again. At six I gave up and got up, roughly two hours earlier than normal...

Riding to work was a pleasure, 20° and warm gently rain, the smell of eucalypts — the not so pleasant smell of Gardiners creek — brim full with all the plastic and rubbish from storm-water drains all over South-East Melbourne...

Then it was sheer bloody mayhem all day today at Monash. A fantastic display of the fabled dance of “everybody run around like a headless-chicken frantically leaping from crisis to crisis...” Perhaps a little project management is needed — or more importantly, was needed about six months ago...

Arriving home, all I wanted to do was to sit down, relax, unwind, and perhaps sip an ice-cold beer... But it was not to be. I had to clean up, pack for the weekend, then get in the car and drive for eight hours to Bungendore in time for my nieces' christening — and what a drive that was!

Friday night and rain never make it easy to get out of Melbourne, tonight was no exception. We left home at 6:00PM, and after twenty minutes had managed to get to the freeway, probably a ten-minute walk from home! Not a good start, and the freeway was completely stationary, so we turned around, headed back out of Richmond to the north, skirted the city and rejoined the freeway/tollway somewhere around Footscray. Then it was just hours and hours of driving in rain that ranged from torrential to light drizzle, all the way to the Victorian border where it finally stopped.

Somewhere up around Gundagi the rain started again. then nearer Yass it all got a little too exciting... A car in front was about to overtake a semitrailer when the truck swerved out across both lanes, flashing its lights. The car dropped back, then tried again, again the truck driver swerved into his path... By this time, I'd caught them up and pulled into the right lane, intending to pass the dangerous-seeming driver and be well clear of him he swerved into my path and turned on his hazard lights, the truck in fron also turned on its hazard lights.

Suddenly I realised what was going on, as we crested a slight rise and there on its side across the centre of the freeway was a recently crashed semi-trailer, bits of truck and cargo across the road. Unfortunately the cargo was cattle, but luckily it was dark, so we didn't have to see too much. A few people were walking around the wreckage with torches, so the rest of us drove carefully past, peering into the rain and night, trying to spot the black steers that were running around on the freeway!

Safely past, we let the adrenalin ebb as we made our way onto the Barton highway, then the minor road from Murrumbateman to Bungendore. This last stretch is always nerve-wracking, it comes at the end of a long night's driving, and there are always kangaroos at the side of the road, potentially leaping in front of the car...

Tonight, however, there were hopping fauna of a different kind. With it being the first decent rain yet this year, all the frogs for miles around were on the move... the roads were alive with frogs leaping across in the lights, desperate to cross from one side to the other, or back again! I've no idea how many we hit, as it was impossible to even try to avoid them.

Two AM and we finally made it to Bungendore, said a brief hello and dropped straight into bed.

Trying hard not to lose my temper at Monash... Why do people seem to spend so much time and effort avoiding work? I get the feeling that if they put only half as much effort into doing jobs as they do in passing them around like hot-potatoes, everything would get done a lot quicker....

Autumn is coming — I can feel it in the air on the morning rides to work, its almost uncomfortable riding in the short sleeved shirt....

Yet more content-management stuff... I've almost given up, but here's another couple of interesting candidates.

[http://www.raelity.org/apps/blosxom/]

Blosxom. A simple blogging type thing.

[http://www.celsius1414.com/blog/?category=meta/phposxom]

PHPosxom. A PHP version of Blosxom.

The most amusing observation from watching the specials attached to the Lord of the Rings DVD last night — a severe case of anti-product placement. I think it was the half-hour special for the American Sci-Fi channel, we only noticed because they were using the same footage as the other two specials we'd just seen. Every time any recognizable corporate logo would have appeared, it was pixellated out by a large hovering blob on the screen. Someone in the crew wearing a Nike cap — blob over the cap. Peter Jackson wearing a fleece vest with a logo on it — blob over the logo. Someone wearing a logo on a t-shirt — blob over the shirt. This is getting ridiculous! Are they going to start pixellating out cars in the street if the manufacturer hasn't paid? Will people who aren't the focus of the show have a blob over all their faces?

[http://www.googlism.com/index.htm?ism=adrian+tritschler&type=1]

find out what Google thinks of you, or of someone else. Sadly, this is what it says of me...

Googlism for: adrian tritschler

adrian tritschler is still very involved with sophos

Recharged my camera and uploaded the weekend's photos. I definitely need to work on the PHP pages to display my most recent albums and things most recently changed. It might even be an idea to have tiny thumbnails appear on the day they were taken....

A minor inconvenience occurred this morning when Joey and I awoke in our tram to find that we had forgotten to extract money from the ATM in the pub last night, and after paying for the accomodation had less than $10 between us for breakfast! Pure carelessness, an indication to the degree with which we all rely on the availability of electronic banking — until we find ourselves in a country town where they don't have any!

Toasted Ham and Cheese sandwiches are nice and cheap, breakfast in Neerim South had now depleted our combined funds to a grand total of $3.70.

After a brief exploration of the main street of Neerim South, we drove off to visit the Tarago cheese factory, and although the smell was still available to the public, the visitors centre and shop were closed. Visitors with being directed to go and buy the cheese from various local — and not so local — supermarkets. Very dissapointing, since the cheeses are worth a visit, and the tourist brochures for the area all say to visit!

Neerim South, Neerim, Neerim Junction — we didn't get to visit Neerim East or Neerim North, but all the others came and went in the twinkling of an eye. Neerim Junction was able to provide fuel and money to aid us on our way. A pause at Noojee for a coffee at the Red Parrot Café, then on up the Latrobe river valley…

The old railway trestle bridge was popular this morning, about half a dozen cars were parked at the base, and quite a number of the people walking around were wearing their souvenir t-shirts from the weekend's chilli festival. I think its the last surviving trestle bridge on the old railway line, all the rest have either been dismantled or lost in bushfires, I hope this one lasts…

Back on the road, we decided to visit Mount Baw Baw, since neither of us had ever been there before. A twisty road through magnificent forrest the entire way, tree ferns along the edges, mountain ash and beech towering over us. Signs periodically warned us to beware of log trucks, and enormous stacks of logs at the side of the road were being seasoned, reminders that logging is just about the only industry in this area, any comments regarding conservation will be instantly equated with unemployment.

We had our own minor logging adventure at one point. A tree had fallen across the road and half a dozen cars stopped while everyone pitched in to try and clear the road. Nobody had a chainsaw — its not something I often carry with me — so it was slow going with a handsaw and many hands. With impeccable timing, one of the management staff from Mount Baw Baw turned up just as the broken end of the log had been removed, giving a gap just wide enough to squeeze a car through. Two minutes work with a chainsaw and he cleared the entire road — it probably hadn't been worthwhile anyone even attempting to remove the broken piece!

Once up at the Mount Baw Baw village we parked the car and got out to walk around and admire the view — and hopefully to find some lunch. Lunch was out of the question, not one of the shops was open, in fact the only signs of life was a group of guys from a bucks party sitting around with an inflatable sex-toy drinking beer, and a couple of people painting a ski-lodge.

Compared to many ski villages in the summer time, Baw Baw is quite attractive, there's none of the bare wasteland of concrete and gravel that most of them seem to turn into — I guess since the main attraction is cross-country skiing, there isn't the range of down-hill runs. Even so, there was building works a plenty, with the whole village given a desolate air by the complete absence of people.

We were not really dressed for an alpine trek — even the 2km walk to the summit of Mount Baw Baw and back on the fire trail should probably have required more than my t-shirt and Jo's sandals, but we headed off anyway. Maybe it's the famous last words as left by other dead people, but I guessed that even if an impenetrable fog appeared from nowhere and the temperature dropped, we were on a well marked road less than a kilometre from the carpark! As it was, we'd only just left the summit when it did start to rain, so the return to Baw Baw village was at a quicker pace, and we headed straight back down along one of the ski-lifts rather than circle around on the road.

The summit of Mount Baw Baw is barely noticable as a higher point on the track, like most of Australia's alpine peaks, it seems to be merely higher than the surrounding land. There's a large stone cairn with the remains of a surveyors' trig-point, a faded wooden sign stating “Mount Baw Baw, 1576m,” and then towering over them all, a collection of radio masts and communications dishes belonging to Telstra.

Summer time is maintenance time on the tracks — there's a pair of picnic tables just before the summit of the mountain, and then a clearing to the northern side, with more picnic tables and a magnificent panoramic view to the north.

We made it back to the car just as the rain turned heavier, unfortunately it then simply stopped, leaving just enough to keep the roads slippery, but not enough to top up any of the farm dams. Driving back down the mountain was a careful task, the four motorcyclists in front of us being even more careful through some of the dips and turns.

Eventually we made it back to Noojee in time for a very late lunch at the general store — the fantastic hamburgers more than made up for the wait. Contented, we sat on a park bench making a mess with the hamburger juices, and watched and listened as a group of ten motorcyclists strutted around telling each other tales of manly-ness and cornering heroism. They were still there when we left, but passed us shortly afterwards, 30km/hr over the speed limit and the last few forcing on-coming traffic into the gravel in their haste to get past to stay with their mates.

There's not much to do the rest of the way but to drive home. Gradually the traffic grew thicker and thicker along the Yarra valley. More and more people heading back from their weekends away, or their Sunday drives. Eventually we made it home, pleased with the weekend's events and explorations, but content to sit down and relax now that we were home.

First stop on the Gippsland Gourmet trail was a berry farm for an expensive, but very tasty, ploughmans lunch, and some time to sit and examine the map of the region — to best plot our assault.

It seemed like a good idea to head straight up to Jindivick, scout out the area for possible accomodation, and then decide whether to visit the “Hot Sauce & Fiery Foods Festival” in the remains of the afternoon today, or to try something else and go there tomorrow. Jindivick turned out to be tiny, with signs directing us on past the town towards the Redback Chilli Company — I'd known that they were a sponsor, I hadn't realised that the whole festival was on their property! I'm not sure what I'd been expecting, but it turned out to be a great afternoon out — with far more the atmosphere of a country show than of a city food festival. It was all very laid back, some stalls selling products with very blokey names like “Arse-Burner” and “Devil's Sauce,” but a wide range of other flavours, products and recipes. One of my favourites was the Grand Ridge Brewery, with their selection of award-winning beers. I'd only tasted their Pilsener previously, the full range is overwhelming and it was hard to pick a favourite. I think the Moonshine won on flavours, but the Wheat Beer and Pilsener seemed better suited to the afternoon in the sun….

…and a very pleasant afternoon in the sun it was. The chilli festival seems to be a bit of a cult thing, there's a fair bit of he-man heroics in who can eat the strongest chillis, but there's also a fine selection of tasty salsas and sauces arrayed across the lower half of the 0-10 chilli scale. Curiosity got the better of me, after a spicy but edible seven, I tasted one of the “Devil's Sauces rated at seven-and-a-half to eight… This necessitated a long rest in the shade, sipping more cold beer and listening to the blues band playing in the back of the truck.

We left as they closed for the day, sated, and with an interesting selection of chilli jams and sauces to sample over the coming months.

So what else is there to do in the region once the festival has closed? The signs to Tarago resevoir beckoned, so carefully avoiding the metre-wide potholes we drove up to the park and explored. Noticably similar to Sylvan Reservoir, which isn't really surprising since they're both part of Melbourne's water supply, and both were built around the same time. There are only so many ways that you can build a dam with a grassy park too…