ajft

Aha! He says, having just read the manual and realised that although his last camera defaulted to having the power-saving turned on, the IXUS 700 seems to have been delivered helpfully configured so that if — say — you are stupid enough to leave it on in your bag after fully charging it on Thursday night, it will quite happily stay on all night and all the next day so that it has gone flat by the time you want to use it on the weekend.

The camera is now configured so it turns itself off, thus hopefully avoiding future tantrums by its owner.

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This morning we woke from a lousy night's sleep to find that the tent was still standing, although still billowing in around us like a spinaker in a gale. The neighbours had finally shut up after midnight, but commenced laughing, shrieking and giggling the minute they woke up, despite the odd pointed comments from other neighbours within earshot.

Breakfast and pack up, then over to the information centre centre to check in. There's a free shuttle bus we can catch up to the Mt Oberon carpark, but stupidly it doesn't stop at the information centre — it leaves from the beach, the furthest possible point from here that's still within the Tidal River campground! Shoulder the bags and drop in at the shop for a ceremonial last cup of coffee, then make our way down to the carpark to wait for the bus. Another oddity, there's nowhere to sit at the bus stop, and the nearest garbage bins are as far as you can get from the stop as possible!

The bus dropped us off at the carpark and we started on our way, off on the walk to the lighthouse, with perhaps just a little less training than we really should have had.... All the good intentions over the last few weeks seem to have come to naught, I think we'll be relying on general fitness, brute force and ignorance!

The park rangers had told us that the grass trees were all in flower, although the flowers were starting to fade this week, and the flag irises were coming out everywhere. It was stunning though, flower spikes from the grass trees up to 3m tall, and great swathes of white irises in the undergrowth. The April bushfire is still highly visible, but most of the ash has washed away, its all just sprouting black trees and bright green underbrush. Very photogenic, but...

I'd put my camera batter on charge on Thursday evening, knowing that we were going away, knowing how much I wanted to take some follow-up photos to compare to the visit in June. Unfortunately I must have turned my camera on and left it on in my bag, it had just enough juice to tell me to change the battery pack — very helpful — before turning itself off. The charger is helpfully at home too, so even if there is a power-point at the cabins this evening, I won't be able to charge it up for tomorrow! Luckily I've brought my APS film camera, as I'm still trying to finish off the last nine frames — when I get it developed there'll be one or two shots of today...

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?huh?

I wouldn't have believed it! Three days in a row all I have to do is the fairly simple task of getting up a little bit earlier than usual, then riding in to South Melbourne to a training course.... OK, so I was a little bit late leaving this morning, but now that I know the way, and know where the building is, that shouldn't have been a problem, and a new tyre should mean that all the glass in the bike lanes is not a problem either — and they weren't. I arrived at EXCOM in plenty of time, then went off to get changed — damn, damn, damn! Left my pants at home, so although I had a clean shirt, I only had my bike nicks to cover the bottom half for the day! Nobody said anything, but I stood out like a sore thumb all day! Maybe tomorrow I can finally get it right!

Then this evening there was more bike-oriented weirdness. Last night in a fit of enthusiasm I attacked the gorgon-like knot of inner-tubes in the basket in the kitchen and sorted them out into 26" mountain bike and 700C road bike versions, and pumped them all up, throwing out the obvious complete duds. Today the good ones were rolled up neatly, tied up in little bundles, and placed into labelled boxes, so hopefully we can use them, rather than going out and buying more and more new tubes!

Fetching the front wheel from Norky bike inside to fix the flat noticed last Sunday, I quickly discovered that it wasn't a piece of glass causing a slow leak after my last long ride — somehow the sidewall of the tyre has split and the tube has exploded, much like what happened to the front tyre of my road bike yesterday! I wouldn't have thought it would be too hot in the shed, and I'm surprised that it blew sitting there rather than when I was riding! Regardless, after more than two years of service, the second of the very nice Hutchinson 1.2" slicks went into the bin, along with the little metal adapter that let the Presta valves fit through Schraeder-sized valve holes in the rim. The adapter had corroded solidly onto the valve stem, not even the vice-grips coupled with several of the more powerful of the nine million names of God could shift it.

Time to fit the spare tyre then, the pair of GEAX Street Runners have been sitting in the shed since the Easter Deadly Treadly ride. I can't remember the convoluted chain of events that lead to them being in the shed — something to do with a German backpacker convinced to come on the ride at the last minute, a mountain bike borrowed from Netty, a new pair of tyres that I bought on spec. a week earlier, some new tubes bought on the day and a whole lot of other begged, borrowed or acquired equipment... First success of the whole operation I guess, the tyre fits the rim, one of the tubes from the neatly-labelled 26" box fit the tyre, and the whole works holds air!

After yesterday's fiasco, getting to South Melbourne today should be easy... I know where to turn into Inkerman street & I know where the building is!

Somewhere down towards St Kilda the bike didn't feel quite right, then I realised that the front tyre was going soft — all that bloody glass I swore at yesterday. I made it through St Kilda to Milddle Park, then stopped at Penny Farthing cycles to buy a new inner tube — I suspect that the spare I'm carrying has a slow leak.

Helpfully, the guy in the shop offers to pump it up for me, saving me from having to do it with the mini-pump I'm carrying. “There you go,” he says, handing it back. “Nice and hard.” Too right it was hard, I wondered what pressure he put in, but they were busy with the five other customers who all came in for inner tubes or puncture repairs, so I put the wheel back on the bike and continued on my way.

Half a kilometre up the road I glimpsed a flicker on the tyre, looked down thinking that I'd picked up something stuck to the tyre and was reaching down to flick it away when a sound like a rifle shot when off — the tube blowing out through a huge tear in the sidewall of the tyre!

Damn, damn, damn! Just how high did he pump that tyre up?

Walked the bike around the corner to the next bike shop, fuming gently to myself, and ask for a new tube and (now) a new tyre. As I'm standing there muttering about shops that over-inflate tyres, the owner from Penny Farthing walked in! I hadn't realised that he runs both shops. He takes a quick glance at the tyre and tells me it's buggered, all my fault, I should have bought a new tyre months ago....

Finally on my way again, $44 poorer, filthy dirty from two tyre changes and the road grime on the wheel and once again ten minutes late — just like yesterday.

Just get out of bed a little early, get on the bike, ride into South Melbourne and get to a training course. Not too hard, is it?

I intended to leave at 7:30, since I was fairly sure that the advertised 8:30 start was really "08:30 for 9:00". Didn't manage to leave the house until 07:40, off through Murrumbeena and along Dandenong road. Somewhere along Normanby road in Caulfield there's a tram turning left and I can't quite see the roadsign through the windows — it must be Inkerman street so I turn too. Play tag with the tram all the way down to St Kilda where I realised that I was on the wrong road! Not too wrong, just one road south of where I wanted to be. Around the Esplanade, then back up Johnson street and left into Canterbury road.

Lots of glass in the bike lane, a bike lane less than the width of road bike's handlebars in places, and lined with parked cars the entire way! Definitely a dangerous place to be, but I'm pretty much the only traffic moving past the bumper-to-bumper cars all the way to South Melbourne.

Not quite sure of where to turn, guessed correctly, then turned left instead of straight ahead into Montague street — no problem, simply do a u-turn through six lanes of rush hour traffic. Off up a block or so, cross at the pedestrian lights to where EXCOM is...

Damn! Seems that EXCOM have moved out of that building and there's no sign of where too! Stupidly, I didn't check my confirmation notes about the booking since I knew where they were located!

A quick look around, then duck in to ask at the printing shop next door. They've never heard of EXCOM! But by coincidence one of them is doing a print job for the company, grabs the folder and reads me the address — luckily its just around the corner so I make it round there only ten minutes or so late!

Two options for this morning; I can stay in bed, get up at a reasonable hour and then have a leisurely bacon and eggs, or I can get up far too early, fumble my way into my bike gear and go out to join some friends for a ride up to Kinglake and back. Sure enough, I've picked the riding option — about time I got my lazy self out and rode up a few hills...

First surprise, sometime between getting home last Sunday and this morning Norky bike's front tyre has gone flat — I guess I picked up some glass. Quick change of plan and the road bike — desperately in need of a clean and some lubrication — goes into the back of the car and I head off to meet the others in Alfington.

Eight o'clock rolls around, as can be expected the three of us turned up in the opposite order to our distance from the start. I arrived first, Evan ten minutes later then Kelvin, who only had to ride a block or two from home, was quarter of an hour late. Then off for a tour of the suburbs on a twisty route that they seem to use on a Thursday evening, before we were out of the suburbs and heading towards the hills.

It is definitely a long time since I last went on this sort of ride! Heading up the lst long climb towards Kinglake I was left well behind, dropping down through my gears and winding up through the forest trying to simply get there in one piece!

Another side escapade with a third-party blogging service. Google support led me a three week long merry dance in refusing to reset the password on my blogger account unless I could provide them with the email address. Not knowing the email address was the only thing stopping me from resetting it myself! Leaping from link to link, I found myself looking at someone's photos in an MSN spaces account. Just for fun I tried the login button and was most surprised to find I could get in, and that a bare-bones space already existed for me! Fleshed it out a bit, despite annoyances with it being — surprise surprise — quite Windows-specific and not working well with either Mozilla or assorted proxies. Will I be bothered to update my MSN space though, that's the question...

Browsing through the recent photos on Fotothing and I came across some pictures of tropical aquarium fish. Beautiful as always, but annoyingly unlabelled, so the curious viewer is left not knowing what they are. Reminded me of fish I used to keep, then of other pets I've had over the years.

The loach, sold to me as a Javanese Weather Loach, it always sounded so exotic in there with the goldfish. I think it escaped from the tank over a dozen times, only to found curled up in a ball of carpet fuzz somewhere in the corner of the room — inert but still living, dropped back in the tank to resume life. I see now that they are listed as an exotic pest in Australia. Assorted goldfish over the years. An axolotl for a while. Tropical fish at various times, swordtails and gouramis and angel fish and the odd cichlid — I can remember all the names. Hairy pets were limited to Cindy the male cat and a very long-lived but exceptional wild and shy guinea pig that never had a name. An escaped budgie that flew into the garden when I was about 12 started an aviary of budgies and finches for a while, zebras and double-barred and chestnut-breasted finches, and a small group of king quail scurrying around on the ground.

Birds, fish, mammals, only the reptiles and marsupials are missing! I think a blue-tongue lizard and a long-neck tortoise fell under my care at times, the closest I came to marsupials were the kangaroos in the bush over the back fence and the possums in the fruit trees in the garden.

There, a trip down memory lane. I wonder if I've missed anything?

Sunny day, no wind, definitely time to get out on the bike. Jo and I did our usual ride down North road to the bay, then down Beach road to Mordialloc. Interesting mix of barricades around Mentone since there was a triathlon running and the road had been closed, but only closed to motorised traffic! Apparently other cyclists are allowed to mix with the competing triathletes, which sounds like a recipe for disaster to me.

Fun and games started on the way back up the bay. Somewhere around Brighton we were riding with about four others, single file on a four lane road. Screaming, shouting, abuse and roaring of engine, the usual suspects go flying past. Four young guys, P-plates on the car, exhaust pipe the size of a coffee-tin. The most impressive part was the front passenger half out of the window, screaming at us to get off the f#$%ing road, while swinging his fist and trying to punch us as he passed! Not sure of the plate, SJB-305, a red car, probably a Nissan Bluebird, but with all the badges and chrome removed. Didn't get enough of a description to bother with going to the police, as they'll only give me the usual run-around of requiring a full identikit of the driver plus a bus-load of witnesses — merely describing the car is never enough.

When will someone do something about these dickheads?

Onwards back around to Port Melbourne where Jo dropped her new bike off for its service and went off to catch public transport while I rode home. For some reason I decided to clock up a few extra kilometres and ended up riding back down to Mentone, then came home up Warrigal road — never an interesting ride, with neanderthal motorists and narrow lanes, but it certainly helped clock up the distance! First ride of over 100km in a very long time.

Sometime back near the start of this year, Jo and I decided that when we went to eat out we'd grab the book of discount vouchers, pick a random, but not too inaccessible location, and try somewhere new.... All good intentions, but it didn't last very long. Favourite places are just too convenient, too dependable. Silvio's for pizza, Groove Train for whatever it is they label their style of food. Tonight was another Groove Train night. Calzone, Prawn risotto, good coffee. What is important in life?

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The blackbirds (Turdus merula) seem to have settled on the nest in our fence. I was starting to think that after building it all weekend they'd realised it was right next to the path on Monday and moved out. This one seems to be stuck there with glue, I could creep right up to it and take a photo. Ambivalent feelings about having a feral pest nesting outside my bedroom window!

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Hot, dry, dusty and the air is full of pollen. Sneezes galore.

Discovered that there's a blackbird building a nest in the jasmine vines on the fence outside our bedroom window. In a way this is kind of cool, wild-life in the suburbs, etc. Just such a pity it has to be feral blackbirds, rather than the vanishingly small number of native birds we see around the area. It might explain all the blackbird noises we keep hearing around dawn though!

I was so tempted to do nothing all day, Jo decided we should go for some kind of a bike ride in the afternoon. It ended up being a gentle meander in along the Gardiners creek trail to Richmond, up around the river to Abbotsford, then back down into Richmond for a beer and then a pizza.

So hot and dry, on the way in it felt like mid-summer, not at all like early November! Silvio's pizza was as good as always, a garlic bread, a Silvio's special, a carafe of red wine, all delivered blindingly fast, all simple, good, tasty food. The menus have been reprinted, but nothing much has changed, they look the same as the last lot, but the prices have gone up a tiny amount and the amusing spelling “Sylvos” has been corrected to “Silvios”.

Riding home as dusk was falling, the bugs were out in force along the creeks. We rode with eyes half shut, each swarm of midges causing much blinking, cursing and spitting. Temperatures were high enough that the cicadas were singing in the trees, again it felt like late summer.

Chris and Annette's wedding in the afternoon and evening down at Brighton. Strange to see all those people, people I've probably met at some time or another, but never all together, and definitely never all in their best clothes!

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