ajft

  Odometer: 19884km
  Distance: 68.53km
  Average speed: 18.93km/hr
  Time: 3:37:14

The weather is starting to resemble spring time, the excuses for being lazy and not going out on the bike are getting harder to come by — even with the inflammatory anti-cycling attitudes being drummed up in the media — so Jo and I took off for a ride this morning. Just the normal ride, along North road to the beach, turn left and head down to Mordialloc. One... two... three... four... five... I gave up counting, motorists on the mobile phone — but I've got to remember, it's the cyclists along here that are the menace. Once at Mordialloc we stopped for a coffee, palm trees in the sunshine, is it still Melbourne in winter time?

On south down Station street, a fascinating mix of houses, everything from tiny old weatherboard shacks to the latest stylish bay-side life-style apartments, and every vehicle type to match.

The south-westerly breeze was increasing and starting to cool us down, so it was pleasant to head inland and onto the track alongside the Patterson river. A strange site really, a waterfront development that looks like it would be more at home on the Queensland Gold Coast than here in Melbourne — I wonder what all these pristine water-ways and private boat docks will look like after a few years of neglect, silting, and cold, wet winters? For some reason whoever built the cycle-track has decided that each bridge should be under a metre wide, and with heavy metal gates at either end, so it was slow going until we got away from the development and were heading inland alongside the creek. Bird-life all around us, ducks, cormorants and a few pelicans, the snake-like neck of one bird convincing me that it was a thing called a darter — a cormorant-like bird I can't recall having seen previously. Of course I was too busy having fun just cruising along in the sunshine to take any photos!

Under a few very low road bridges, through some sections of track in desperate need of maintenance, flood damage has half-washed away the safety railing in places, left mud and silt in others. Finally there appears above the trees in front of us a few of the larger buildings of Dandenong. I was starting to get confused, since I thought that we ought to be heading more westerly, and that we'd missed a turn somewhere, but the track just continued on with no turn offs right into the heart of Dandenong. Here we decided to leave the track and try to head back towards Oakleigh — we knew that the railway went there, we hoped that we could follow it without being forced onto major roads!

Some fascinating little shops in Dandenong, spice smells and unusual goods spilling on the footpaths, an impressive new train station — all glass and light, such a surprise compared to the other stations I'm familiar with in Melbourne, maybe Richmond will one day look like this... Amazingly, we then found ourselves on a little-trafficked side-road that paralleled the train, and were able to follow a series of similar roads all the way back home! Dandenong, Noble Park, Springvale and Clayton all thronging with life, shops and restaurants from most parts of South-East Asia. The food smells and the voices reminding me of some of the streets in Vietnam!

Amazingly, the only place where we had difficulty in staying alongside the train-line was near Westall road, heading North-West along Queens Avenue it seems to finish at a tight corner heading South, so there was a delay while we indulged in a little exploration; first on the north side of the tracks where the road also ended and a spur line blocked any progress, then back on the South side we followed a foot-track between the back of the factories and the tracks, and that track joined back onto the official bike track at Westall road.

What appeared to be a footpath onto Westall station then turned out to be a bike track on through to the next road along the line, then only a few hundred metres more and we were at the very end of Haughton road — the road that continues in a piecemeal fashion alongside the lines all the way to Oakleigh station!

It took nearly four hours all up, and only covered a touch under 70km, but it was a fascinating bit of exploration through some very different parts of Melbourne. We enjoyed the last of the afternoon sun in Oakleigh with a beer and a plate of snacks from one of the cafés in the mall — we need to go on more of these rides to places we don't normally visit!

Every day our little street fills up with people parking their cars while they work in the offices or the singing school across the road — no problem, except for whoever drives this car that parks closer and closer to our driveway. He seems to have assumed that because we don't often drive it during he day when he arrives, that we'll never drive it during the day and so he happily parks blocking our exit.

I was tempted to put a note out asking if he could just leave a little more room — but a friend of ours did that and ended up in court because it was deemed to be against the law for him to have touched the car! I think half the problem is that we haven't got a ramp up from the kerb, must get around to asking Monash city council about that...

Aha! Finally found the bit of Victoria's Road Rules that I've been after for months. Paragraph 2, Rule 134, Part 11:

1. Exceptions to keeping to the left of a dividing line

   (2) If the dividing line is a single broken or a continuous line, or a broken divided line to the left of a single continuous dividing line, the driver may drive to the right of the dividing line to overtake another driver.

So those obnoxious drivers in Haughton road who squeeze past me nearly every day when there's no oncoming traffic should be perfectly capable of pulling out and overtaking me legally.

Another one of those wet Melbourne weekends! During the afternoon Jo and I headed over to the other side of Oakleigh for a walk through the wetlands — what used to be an uninspiring patch of flood-prone vacant land with a concrete storm-water drain through the middle, has been landscaped and replanted as a native wet-lands. Apart from the massive quantities of cans and plastic rubbish washed into the creek, it all looks quite attractive and is obviously very popular with the local bird life.

Every time we come here there are water birds galore, today was no exception. Ducks, coots, grebes and moorhens everywhere, then surprisingly, two adult black swans accompanied by their four cygnets appeared through the reeds heading straight towards us. I thought they were being inquisitive, or about to beg for food. We quickly discovered that they were being highly territorial! I was in the middle of kneeling down to take a photo when the two adults half-spread their wings and started hissing and charging at me! Jo and I hastily beat a retreat!

Its also a popular spot with people; walking, running, dog-walking, bike riding. A few too many ignoring the “dogs on leads” signs, but that seems to be mandatory for dog owners, everyone knows that those signs all apply to other people's dogs....

Its been a while since I've met quite such an aggressive motorist, one who's prepared not only to scream abuse but to try and hit me with their car — unfortunately tonight was such a night.

I pulled up at the lights to turn right from Clayton road into North road, drawing alongside a dark blue/green Ford station wagon stopped in the through lane. As I got level with the driver's window she flicked half a cigarette's worth of glowing ash straight out, half in my face, half down my leg. Surprised — and stung where it burned — I yelled out “Yeow!”. She looked out the half-open window and “Sorry, didn't see you”. All I said was “Use your ashtray” and she launched into a tirade of abuse, “don't have a f'ing ashtray”, “you shouldn't be riding at night”, “I'll f'ing ash where I f'ing want, you f'ing c***”, etc etc, meanwhile shaking the cigarette furiously out the window at me and trying to flick more ash onto me. “Just use your ashtray!” I shouted as the lights went green, starting to pedal forwards to get away, she planted her foot and swerved in to my lane, throwing my arm out for the impact I smacked down with my hand on the bonnet and took off around the corner as fast as I could into North road, she tore off forwards down Clayton road, still screaming abuse at me out the window!

Unfortunately I didn't see the registration, the plates were dark and the light above them wasn't working, so it was pointless to visit the police and go through the rigmarole and get nothing done.

Only good point of it was that there don't appear to be any burn holes in my clothes — only in my face!

The days are getting longer, the sky is sometimes still light when I ride home in the evenings, warm and sunny at lunch time I escaped from the windowloess brick box and went for a walk. Around the shiny new multi-story concrete carpark and over to the lake. As soon as I sat down the pigeons started waddling over to beg for food.

It seemed to be a day ideally suited to sitting inside and eating. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, chocolate biscuits, walnuts, apple strudel.... Cold and windy outside, swirls of rain and the threat of hail.

Warm and tasty scrambled eggs for breakfast, accompanied by the second half of our weekend tasty fresh loaf from one of the Oakleigh bakeries.

A brisk walk in the wind took us over to Hughesdale, or maybe Murrumbeena, I'm not sure exactly where one suburb ends and the other begins. When I moved to Melbourne in 1996 I lived in Rosella street just around the corner from here. There are now two cafés on the stretch of Poath road that used to hold only a greasy fish and chips shop and a video games parlour. The Homebrew beer shop has closed and become a café called “Brew”, the old fish 'n chip shop is now the “Turtle Bean café”. A toss of the mental coin and it was the Turtle Bean for lunch; hot soup, red wine, toast slabs an inch thick and a bruschetta piled high. Yum!

The creep of the cafés... Murrumbeena, Hughesdale, Oakleigh, all still within “a reasonable distance” of the city and becoming increasingly desired as real-estate. Maybe we bought a house in the right place! Now if only there was a decent pub within easy walking distance — from being spoilt with riches in Richmond there's only “the Junction Hotel” in Oakleigh — an uninspiring place offering “pokies” and “sport bar”.

“Going Forward on a Day By Day Basis” — Uggh! Congratulations NASA, that would have to be the bureacratic double-speak quote of the day! No wonder the space shuttle has problems when the people in charge choose to speak such gibberish.

Gaslight music has closed for the last time! Heard it on the radio and read it in the news — it must be true. Seems to be ages since I last visited, its been years since I spent a lot of time and money buying CDs, and I never spent much time in the CBD anyway. Good memories of the shop and the people though, there always seemed to be something of interest when I did get in there...

Where's the BikeCam™ when you need it? Not once, but twice this evening on the way home I came within inches of being flattened by morons who decided not to bother giving way to traffic on the roundabouts. First one was just out of Monash on Woodside avenue, moron in a red station-wagon, Subaru I think, rego. TBX-197, flying up Koonawarra street, doesn't bother to slow, straight out in front as I'm halfway around. There's that sickening feeling in my throat, in my stomach — I can't stop in time, I can't get my foot out in time — I screech to a stop, jack-knife the front wheel turning to avoid hitting the car door, I nearly fall off. The jack-knife saves me! The front wheel twists out of the way as the idiot shoots past and on his way, somehow I twist back the other way and stay upright, then manage to force down on the pedal, keep riding and not fall off.

Nearly home, most of the way up Haughton road and there's a Ford sedan waiting at the roundabout in front of me, the two cars in front of me go through, then as I'm part way round, the driver waiting floors it and shoots out in front of me! Not so close this time, I merely brake and swerve and shout and shake my head in disgust.

  Odometer: 19810km
  Distance: 79.05km
  Maximum speed: 65km/hr
  Time: 3:25:37

Too many months of being lazy and only riding to and from work. No more excuses, time to go out today and ride up a mountain — a little mountain at least! After yesterday's miserable weather today was fine and sunny so I took the opportunity while Jo was out for the afternoon and headed off eastwards to Ferntree Gully and up and over Mount Dandenong. I'd forgotton how many of the residents of Knox and Ferntree Gully seem to drive dirt-encrusted 4WDs, and how many of them take delight in being obnoxious to cyclists, especially lone cyclists. Lost count of the number of times I was tooted at, swerved at, or showered in gravel as the morons swerved off into the side of the road after passing me.

It is definitely far too long since I last rode up a hill! The first few kilometres of the main tourist road are the steepest, and at times I didn't think I was going to make it. Proof that I need to do this more often.

Sassafras and Olinda were bumper-to-bumper with people out on their Sunday afternoon drives, people in cars being frustrated with people on foot crossing the roads, people on foot being frustrated by the people in cars as they tried to cross the roads. The newly reopened Skyline restaurant at the lookout was packed, every tourist in Melbourne seemed to have come up for the day to have a look around.

Sitting around at the top for a while I started to get cold, time to head back down the mountain to Sassafras and turn off to come down the old mountain highway. It's a wonderful swooping downhill run, winding down through the forest, but not so steep as to be frightening. The temperature climbed as the altitude fell, quite comfortable by the time I reached Bayswater for the trip back around to Ferntree Gully and home. A few more morons in 4WDs, a blast on the horn from some idiot in a ute — all standard outer suburb motorist behaviours — then the big hill back up Ferntree Gully road and home. Three and a half hours, a shade under eighty kilometres, more riding than I've done for months!

?huh?

Are the neighbours moving out? Has the old lady died? I wonder if I'll ever know, in nine months we've never been able to speak to them, the guy seems to avoid eye contact the few times that he is out in the front garden.

My camera behaved oddly with that second photo too. It claims that the data is corrupt, yet downloaded it and other programs can view it. Is it the camera? Is it confused? Most likely, has CPL sold me a dodgy, borderline memory card....

I thought that it was about time I entered Bike Vic's ATBIAD ride. Hang on — $110 for a soggy salad roll and a ferry ticket? No thanks. Jo and I may well ride down to Sorrento and back, but I don't think Bicycle Victoria will be getting over $100 for the privilege! With over 5,000 entries, what do they do with the more than half a million dollars from the entries? I know it doesn't go to the volunteers who man the route, and none of it goes to the charity du jour — I've sent them an email asking why the big increase from previous years.

Jo is beset by end-of-financial-year woes and had to go in to work today for a few hours, I spent the time constructively poking around at the local markets — unsuccessfully looking for a nutcracker to deal with yesterday's fresh walnuts — then went on another exploratory walk along the railway and down into Huntingdale. The amount of dumped rubbish is amazing — and depressing. Seems that the industrial residents of Monash have little, if any, respect for the littering laws.

The dead-end street where the shop fittings from the newsagency were dumped has been cleaned up by the council — but then promptly refilled with a trailer-load of mattress-sized pieces of foam and drums of chemicals from a local upholsterer. Further down in Huntingdale a mechanic was at work — busy changing the oil in a van, then hosing down the concrete and washing a sump's worth of old engine oil down into the gutter and on into the storm-water drains.

A fascinating walk, but definitely depressing in the amount of litter out there.

Go the giant catfish! So this is what was lurking around in the Mekong while I was boating around above!

646-Pound Catfish Netted in Thailand

Fishermen in northern Thailand have netted a fish as big as a grizzly bear, a 646-pound Mekong giant catfish, the heaviest recorded since Thai officials started keeping records in 1981. The behemoth was caught in the Mekong River and may be the largest freshwater fish ever found....

After a slight hiatus of a month or so, Jo decided it was time to resume her search for a shiny new road bike, so off we went to see what is on offer now, with the end of financial year possibly inducing sales in the stores... Fitzroy Cycles were covered in signs loudly proclaiming 20%-50% off everything — the only problem seemed to be that the bikes we'd seen for $1500 six weeks ago had been marked back up to the RRP of $1899 and then “discounted back down to $1499! Three test rides on three different bikes, two from Avanti and one womens' specific Specialised, then off to Ashburton Cycles to see what was to offer in another store...

Not much it turns out! Ashburton had not a single road bike in stock, but referred us off to the sister shop — the boss had apparently taken the last road bike and transferred it to the other shop. The boss turned out to be someone we knew from the Deadly Treadly tours, slightly short on stock but long on advice and knowledge. Still no new bike, but we're getting closer...

I did pick up a spare tyre for my road bike and a new D-lock, the old one is starting to rust inside and is getting difficult to open. I think it must be at least ten years old though, and considering what it's been through — including a twist in the arm courtesy of riding off on the Katana with the lock through the wheel — I think it gave good value for money. After a recent furor where it was shown that half the round-keyed locks on the market can be opened with a Biro, I was keen to get a lock with a flat key. The five spare keys seems a bit excessive, but the Bulldog DT #5012 from OnGuard looks like it'll fit the bill. The additional four foot of braided steel cable will come in handy for locking other bits up too!

Also cycling related, the Tour de France starts tonight, three weeks of sleep deprivation because SBS will be broadcasting every stage live, and owing to timezones they all start at around 11:30 at night! I decided not to stay up and watch, tomorrow's half-hour hi-lights of the prologue should suffice — choosing instead to browse around on Google maps and look at various points of interest. My house, of course, then that of my parents', a few spots in London where Jo used to live, and then to round out the cycling for the day, l'Alpe d'Huez in the French Alps. Broadband access a must! I could spend hours viewing places this way!

A bit of fun and games and I've managed to configure privoxy to automatically add in the headers to work with the authenticating proxy here at Monash. No more 407 errors for me!

HTTP's Basic Authentication is quite basic. With a username of username and a password of password, a single header is added to every HTTP request, of the form:

Proxy-Authorization: Basic dXNlcm5hbWU6cGFzc3dvcmQ=\r\n

The username and password are base64 encoded, to find your string, something along the lines of:

echo -n username:password | mencode

Should do the trick. I've used that before, but couldn't locate mencode so the following perl snippet works.

use MIME::Base64;

print MIME::Base64::encode_base64($ARGV[1]);

Locate your privoxy config files, I'm not really sure where in them to put it, but you'll need to add the following config line:

{+add-header{Proxy-Authorization: Basic dXNlcm5hbWU6cGFzc3dvcmQ=\r\n}}

As a result of this I've now got tla working, after setting http_proxy=http://localhost:8118/. Presumably other programs that are proxy aware, but can't handle proxy authentication, can be made to work in a similar fashion.

Yeesh, I rang Canon to say I didn't want to go ahead with the repair, since $164.13 is more than a second-hand IXUS300 can be had for, and to ask when can I pick up the camera...

Surprise... there's a $44 fee for rejecting the quote. Feels to me almost like blackmail the way that one is worded!

Did anyone tell me this when I brought the camera in? No, of course not.

On the back of the receipt I got is a wonderfully vague statement in amongst all the other terms and conditions:

Additional charges, including quote rejection fees and freight costs, may also be payable by the Customer.

No indication of what these charges are, when they apply or anything else! As far as I can tell, they can decide to airfreight it to Canon Japan and I have to foot the bill!

I got grumpy.

I got put on hold.

I got told “As a gesture of goodwill, the quote rejection fee will not be charged. You will be contacted when your camera is ready.”

The whole thing has left a sour taste in my mouth. I've had nothing but good things to say about the three Canon cameras I've bought, but this whole rigmarole is very depressing.

A grey morning, poor visibility, wet roads. Just what I need, first moron of the month — the lady in the blue falcon wagon (OCR-023), she sits beside me at the lights SMSing on her phone, then when the lights go green drives off, eyes still firmly on the phone in her lap as she veers into my lane towards me. I point at her and shout out, “Put the phone down!” She looks shocked, she points at herself and shrugs “What have I done?” her expression seems to ask as she drives off...

It must have been something about the weather though; nearly home this evening, riding along in the cold and dark and rain, if anyone should be in a bad mood I'd think it would be the cyclist and not the motorist ensconced in their heated 4WD. With no traffic heading in the opposite direction the driver of the black 4WD, RGO-346, couldn't possibly pull out to overtake me, choosing instead to skim past inches from my shoulder and blasting on the horn as they did so.