Out of bed early for another bike ride — seven o’clock start from Evan’s house for a loop out to Kinglake and back. Somewhere on the road to Bundoora I ran over a large metal staple on the road — the kind that holds cardboard boxes together — and punctured my rear tyre.

There seemed to be a lot of cyclists out on the roads, Evan and I wondered how many of them were training for the Alpine Classic. Either that or like Annette, they were trying to find some hills to train for BV’s New Zealand tour in about a month!

Probably about 100km, Fitzroy to Bundoora, then out to Wittlesea, a very sociable climb up the Humevale hill, stop at Kinglake bakery for coffee and a pastry, then down through St. Andrews, Hurstbridge, Greensborough and back to Fairfield to visit the canoe club and see if anyone was still there from their morning paddle. Home in time for lunch and then the whole of the afternoon left for normal household chores!

This evening Jo and I finally managed to make time to head off to see a movie, we had to get to see the third of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, the Return of the King, before it vanished from the cinemas — as so many of the movies on my “to see” list seem to do. I thorougly enjoyed it, I thought it equal or better than the second one, and both of them better than the first — the first just seemed to peter out at the end…