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There's nothing quite like an audience to make you nervous for a first attempt at anything — both of Jo's parents came outside to watch us take off down the very steep driveway! We departed without ignominy, and took off down the hill with frightening acceleration. I'm still not entirely used to guiding 140kg of bicycle and riders!

Out to North Lorne and back for a warm up, another very wide u-turn to turn around, then right across the traffic to commence the ten kilometre climb up to Benwerrin on the Dean's Marsh road. Much the same as last Sunday, we just picked a low gear and trundled away up the hill — unlike last week it was pleasantly cool in the forest, with no other riders or traffic.

Three quarters of an hour later we stopped at the top, hoping to relax in the shade and rest. The local march fly population made it difficult to relax for too long — 2cm long evil black things buzzing around like demented wasps, threatening to bite holes through half-inch steel plate... Any attempt to stand still for very long would quickly degenerate into a mad hop-on-one-leg dance with hands flailing in the air to drive the flies away. For some reason they seemed attracted to the suede toes of my shoes, I think I killed around ten in five minutes!

Off along the dirt road through the forest, paying careful attention to the inside of the corners and the gravel patches — I had no wish to unceremoniously dump the two of us onto the ground! In some ways the road was in better condition than the sealed road, fewer potholes and far less traffic — until the local 4WD enthusiasts drove past in a cloud of dust.

Rejoining the sealed road on the Erskine falls road we could either head straight back to Lorne or detour down to the falls. The last few times we've headed straight back, this time we turned left towards the falls — and down the precipitous hill through the forest. Too steep to be enjoyable, I was riding hard on the brakes most of the way down, knowing full well that where the road ends, you head straight into the carpark! I know now why so many tandems have drag-brakes, those slopes are scary with that weight.

There are two choices at the car-park; a two minute walk to a lookout to view the falls at eye-level, or a staircase of over 250 steps down into the forest to the pool at the base of the falls — we chose the quick walk around to the lookout! The rain earlier in the week meant there was plenty of water going down the falls.

Now for the hard part! I did a quick lap of the carpark to try and get the bike down into a low enough gear, then Jo hopped on for the assault on the hill up and out — crunch, crunch, crunch — the front derailleur refused to drop the chain onto the granny ring and we quickly ground to a halt. A quick flick of the fingers and we had the chain onto the ring, but now to try and get back on and start, heading up the steep slope. With a mighty wobble we mananaged, on the second attempt, and puffing and blowing succeeded in making it up the first of the two steep sections before having to halt in the shade under a tree. Then back on for the second section, the top coming much quicker than either of us expected. From there it was a wonderful down-hill run into Lorne, sweeping through the forest at around 50 km/hr and barely needing to touch the pedals at all.

There are two options from the outskirts of Lorne; either down the precipitous slope to the sea-front, around and back up the hill to the house, or up and down the nearly as steep undulations of Polwarth road, and not quite as far to climb back to the house. The first option would give us the grin-factor of riding through the middle of town, the second is a slightly easier ride — we chose the second.

A loud pop from under the back tyre as we descended Polwarth road, neither of us had any idea what I'd run over — hard on the brakes to avoid running up the back of the 4WD on the steep hill. Through the stop sign and into Richardson boulevarde, both wondering how far we'd manage to get up the hill, and whether we'd be able to change onto the granny-ring in time. It didn't matter, the back end went all soft and at first I thought Jo was wriggling around, then realised that we had a flat tyre. Off the bike and walk it up the hill to the house, possibly the best possible place to have a puncture! Whatever it was that I'd run over had put a snakebite into the rear.

About forty kilometres around through the forest, it felt almost as much hard work as last week's ascent of Mount Buffalo!

So there we were hoping for a weekend of sunshine and sitting on the beach! Woke this morning to the sound of rain trickling through the trees outside the window and no sign of it clearing all day. I headed out around noon to walk through the drizzle to the shops, the beach and out to the pier, the sea was the flattest I've seen for ages — a lazy swell that wasn't even breaking on the beach.

Something dodgy is happening here with the beer in Victoria. More and more pubs seem to be serving “schooners,” 425ml glasses previously unknown south of the Murray. It seems to have happened just this summer, Oakleigh, Bright, now here at Lorne. Suspiciously, they also seem to be taking it as an opportunity to whack up the price. An ordinary glass (285ml) costs anywhere up to about $2.90, $5 for a Schooner is somewhere around 20% more per litre!

Saturday on the beach, grey and cool and still. The sea is flat, no waves, no people. Trudged my way around to the pier past rockpools and crabs, flotsam and jetsam at the high-tide line. An interesting pair of words that; “flotsam” and “jetsam”. Do they signify different things, are they ever used seperately, or like “goods and chattels” and“kith and kin” do they always occur together?

Phone message: “action this as it has issues” GAAKKK!! Please speak english. I must get down through my reading pile to Don Watson's Death Sentence. Then I must club some of my cow-orkers to death with a copy.

Yeow! Our friends at Garry and Warren Smith Holden have now fixed the problem with the cooling system idiot light in Jo's car. As suspected, the light was coming on because there was something wrong when the car was started and the engine was hot — not because the sensor needed recalibrating like they did last time! $580 to get the fan replaced, thanks Holden, that's one bloody expensive fan on a four year old car! This evening the cupboard was bare so we walked across the road to the shops for dinner at the local Japanese/Thai restaurant. The wasabi managed to make itself felt through my cold-dulled sense of taste!

Walking through the underpass at the Oakleigh station we saw a groovy old tandem that looked as though it was an ex-hire bike that had seen some hard life. On the way home we stopped to take a look at it, just as its owner arrived to ride off and catch the train. A very friendly and talkative Mexicali, he claimed his bike was over 80 years old — hard to believe, but its certainly seen some hard work and bush-mechanic repairs!

Sitting out in the garden as the house cooled down afterwards we could hear a possum in the old apricot tree, unconcerned with us watching, it forraged around before heading off into the orange tree to hollow out a few more ripe fruit. I managed a photo, even though it was so dark that it was pure guesswork to point the camera in the right direction.

A wonderful sign that I walk past nearly everyday, the juxtaposition of the “welcome” with the barbed wire all strikes me as funny. There's hardly ever anyone in the R.A.O.B., but occasional we see a car drive in. See [R.A.O.B.] for more details I guess!

Another scene that sums up Australia; we'd just finished the grocery shopping and stopped in at the Vietnamese bakery in the mall for some fresh bread for lunch. What should we choose? Would it be the French stick or the Turkish bread? Turkish bread from a Vietnamese bakery in a Greek suburb for Australia day lunch!

[http://philwilson.org/blog/2005/01/how-to-export-firefoxs-history-to-text.html]

How to export Firefox's history to a text file.

Riding home along North road, a car passes too closely. Lady driver in the Audi (vic SVC-222) has the mobile phone in her hand and is busy staring at the display as she taps in a phone number. As I went past her to the front of the lights I gave her an evil glare, but she didn't notice, too intent on her phone... The lights changed to green, I took off, three cars passed and then came the Audi, this time the phone firmly clamped to the ear, busy chatting away. The major annoyance was that right next to her in the right lane was a police car, the two officers completely oblivious to all of this, or at least not bothering to do anything about it. Gee, thanks guys.

Ok, so we chose the 85km option — the soft option, the easy option...

Starting at 07:40 from the car-park down by the Ovens river in Bright, the first challenge was taking off up the steep road in a great bunch of other cyclists. Chatting with the older couple on the KHS tandem beside us showed that despite far more experience on the bike they weren't all that happy with a crowded hill start either.

Off in the cool of the morning eastwards to Wandiligong, a little way past that village, over a pick-a-plank bridge then a u-turn at the first checkpoint. No easy task performing a u-turn on a narrow country road on a tandem! We ended up getting three-quarters of the way around and having to hop off and skip around the rest of the way — very undignified.

Back to Bright, then on down through Porepunkah to the turn off for the national park. Mount Buffalo looms ominously larger as we approach through the forest. The rocky slopes are facing north, getting the full benefit of the sun, and only marginally shielded by the trees that were burnt away in the bush-fires of 2003. Onwards and upwards, pick a low gear and just pedal, pedal, pedal up the mountain. Somewhere between eight and eleven kilometers per hour, partly depending on the slope, partly depending on how accurate the speedometer was, since I hadn't recalibrated it after swapping it over from my other bike!

Two thirds of the way up Mount Buffalo was a much-needed water stop, half a dozen other riders rested in the shade or tried to stretch their calves. Time for a rest, a muesli bar, a quick photo of Jo and the bike, and to top up the bottles with metallic-tasting bore water, before getting back on the bike for the last third of the climb.

Finally the top of the climb, then just a few kilometres of undulations across the plateau before reaching the Dingo Dell checkpoint. It was tempting to laugh as the organisers shouted out “85km riders stop here, 100km riders another three kilometres to go....” Both the 85km and 100km rides started at the same place, both went to Wandiligong and back, both climbed the same route to here. It seems that according to Audax Australia the difference between 100 and 85 is six! Later calculations showed that, as we suspected, the 85km ride was a shade over 90km, and the 100km ride was just under.

Half an hour or so of resting and eating. Jo was so hungry that she managed to get half way through a muffin before she realised that it was fruit-cake and not chocolate.

We took it easy going back down the mountain, every time I let off the brakes I could just feel the tandem leap ahead and want to keep on accelerating. No way, not with this amount of experience on the bike, was I going to try and set a descent record! Several times I was glad to have the bike travelling quite slowly, as one after the other, idiot motorists pulled out to overtake cyclists heading up the mountain and drove straight at me, expecting me to instantly swerve 150kg of tandem out of their way.

Despite the stupidities of Victoria's motorists we made it safely back to the valley floor, then all that remained is the ten kilometres or so back through Porepunkah and to Bright. The excitement was over, we knew we could ride the tandem up the mountain, our bums were sore and we were tired. Two kilometres to go and both of us wanted nothing more than to get off the seat and sit on something — anything — other than a bicycle saddle.

Completed! Three quarters of an hour to spare as we pulled into Bright to drop off the cards, then sit in the shade and watch as the first of the 200km riders came in! Total distance 87.87km, an average speed of 18.5km/hr, both meaningless with the calibration not set, four hours forty-six minutes riding time. Now it was beer time.

The town of Bright must be cursing that Australia day falls on Wednesday and there's no long weekend. From memory, in the past Bright has been packed, today it seems like a ghost town. There are quite a few cyclists around, but nowhere near the numbers, and nowhere near the number of families, partners and friends.

The morning was taken up by some very important sitting around and relaxing, followed by a visit to the local street market and a chance to catch up with other cycling friends, including Andy and Suzie from Wide Open Road, who we haven't seen since the tour in 2003 in Switzerland and Italy.

Late in the afternoon we unpacked the tandem and took it for a shake-down cruise along the railtrail and roads, down to Porepunkah and then Boynton's winery. Sure is quick and cruisy on the flat roads, tomorrow will tell how we can handle it on a real hill! We resisted the impulse to ride up Boynton's drive-way, the rough loose gravel is enough of a hazard on a single mountain bike.

Saturday night in Bright on the day before the big ride was more dead than I would have imagined. The Alpine hotel had a loud hendrix-inspired band practicing feedback, and was charging $5 just to get into the pub, consequently it and its beer-garden were nearly empty. The Star Hotel had a total of five local punters, all sitting silently glued to the trotting, the dogs or the Keno screens. The barman suggested that it might liven up at eleven when their $3 disco started ... we didn't hang around long enough to find out.

I spent the day worrying that the tandem and all the camping gear wouldn't really fit in the car — worrying needlessly as it turned out. Half packing the morning, we hurried home after work to dismantle the tandem, then fit everything else in around it. In theory one tandem is smaller than two complete single bikes, in practice they are just so very unwieldy.

Six thirty and we were on the road, into the city and the usual slow Friday evening crawl through the tunnel and onto the Bolte bridge, then follow the traffic onwards to the Hume highway.

Dinner at the Avenel roadhouse. It's one of the few roadhouses left on a major highway that I know of that hasn't been bulldozed and rebuilt as a sterile McDonalds-esque plastic mega-café. More importantly, they still make a wonderfully messy hamburger with the works.

Fun and games with an idiot in a ute and a Firefly bus. P-plate driver in the ute was travelling at around 95 on the highway where the speed limit is 110. The bus tried to overtake the ute but was speed limited to 100km/hr. Ute-boy sped up and sat alongside in the left lane. As we approached from behind the bus driver put on his indicators and tried to pull in either ahead or behind, both times being stopped by the idiot in the ute speeding up or slowing down to block him. Finally the bus pulled in in front of the ute, then as we approached the ute swerved into the right lane and pulled up alongside then stayed there! Eventually he dropped back behind the bus after we flashed the lights at him — there are some scary drivers out there!

Eleven p.m. and we finally made it in to Bright, hellos and introductions in the dark to the others who were already here, everyone sitting around and relaxing with a beer or two under the stars.

Out for an evening tandem ride tonight, time is catching up on us to get ready for the Alpine Classic on Sunday! Even though we've entered to do the 85km baby-version, I really think a little more practise was called for!

The gawks and stares and comments are hilarious, anyone would think that we've got two heads or something.... Some of the motorists look as though they'll either drool into their own laps or swerve into a tree. So much for “Sorry Mate, Didn't See You!”

Wonder of wonders, we managed to find — and follow — almost the entire length of the Rosstown rail-trail. All by accident too, heading out at around 18:30 meant that we didn't want to ride into the traffic jam that is North road, so we dived off into random side streets. The rail-trail meanders along side-streets from Oakleigh to Elsternwick, sign posted with varying degrees of helpfulness. Some of the signs we only found after going past an intersection, turning the wrong way, doing a u-turn, then coming back and seeing the sign for the opposite direction — and doing a u-turn on the tandem is no easy task!

Even more amazing, not a single yell of abuse from a motorist in two hours on the bike, maybe the tandem makes them smile a little more than normal.

One thing I did notice, this tandem riding is hard work! It seems that since both riders have to pedal in step, one can't coast without the other. As a result, both tend to spin, and to spin without resting — lots more exercise!

Strange dreams last night. I don't often dream, or at least, I don't often remember my dreams. A cold and a blocked nose meant I snuffled and moaned and dreamt about the tandem and getting on and off boats and being given $300 in bright orange counterfeit $100 bills — but somehow not noticing that they were counterfeit until I tried to spend them. I wonder what it all means?

Managed to spend an entire day at home around the house and the garden, it seems to be ages since we've been home for a weekend!

Uh oh, the Alpine Classic is in a week, we thought it would be fun to do the easy version on the tandem, (85km and up Mount Buffalo) and we haven't been on the bike since about easter last year! There's only one thing for it then, get the bike out of the shed and go for a ride. Merely extracting the big beastie is a task enough, a bit like one of those puzzles where each piece seems to depend on moving another piece first.

The ride was hardly a strenuous workout in the hills, just a ride down to Mordialloc and back, but hopefully it was enough with the last couple of weekend rides up the Dean's Marsh road from Lorne! I guess we find out next Sunday...

Off to see a movie this evening, the first movie for months. The Motorcycle Diaries, down at the Brighton Bay. It had been in my list of movies to see for quite a while, the review in the paper gave it one star, but after seeing the movie I'll just have to guess that the reviewer is a grumpy old grouch who thinks its cool to put down everything he sees. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Yes, it was a little slow moving, but I thought it added to the slow dawning of Che Guevara's political consciousness. Beautiful South American scenery too, I must go there some day....

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It's 9:50 in the morning, it's 27°C in the office, there's no airconditioning, I've been here three minutes, and on the way I've had to deal with an idiot in a bike shop.

I am NOT having a good day.

sigh you would think that when someone tells you that your wheel will be ready that afternoon and they take your phone number, that there's just the faintest chance that they might ring you up if they decide that they can't do anything.

No, not a chance. Get up this morning, get dressed in bike gear, walk around to the shop with bike over shoulder. There's my wheel sitting beside the counter with a note on it "needs new wheel". Put tyre on wheel, put wheel on bike, walk bike home, get changed, drive to work.

11:00 — the day gets weirder...
One of our doors is missing.
Two carpenters apparently walked up the hallway, removed the hinge-pins,

and have taken our door away.

Nobody knows why.

Smited by the finger of god. That's the only excuse, I can't possibly have been clumsy enough to pull up at a traffic light, pause as I saw it change from red to green, then have my foot slip out of the cleat as I rode off. Tipped over to the left, flicked the wheel to the right, and down I came on my knee on the front wheel!

Total damage? Potato-chipped front wheel, a little skin off the knee, and a medium-sized bruise to the ego.

Extra points to the second motorist to pass, he tooted me for lying on the road in front of him, at least the first one just drove around me.

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Hardly a finish! More like a bit of a start. Some jiggery-pokery and I've got an XSL style sheet that generates passable pages for my most recent photos. The business of having them all in folders that represented individual films worked ok for the scanned APS films, but got a bit cumbersome with the digital images. It was also getting to be ridiculous maintaining parallel folder structures for photos and for everything else.

So what have I got? How does it all work?

1. Fullsize JPG photo file comes out of the camera
2. Titles are added to the images in Adobe Photoshop Album 2.0 starter Edition
3. GPS coordinates are added to the images with the wwmx.org's Location Stamper.
4. Websize and thumbnail JPG files are generated using ImageMagick
5. EXIF data is extracted from the image to an N3 text file.
6. I edit the N3 files and add in the descriptions and any other bits and pieces, such keywords of what and who is depicted.
7. The N3 files become RDF, the RDF becomes HTML, the world sees the HTML.

For now I've got the titles and the descriptions displayed. See the rose on this page if you don't believe me. Coming up Real Soon Now™ will be some form of handling of the tags — I promise.

Very ugly, not fully automated. All very piecemeal. But it's mine, all mine... (cackling laugh trailing off into the distance)