Myself, Tom and Niall went down to Cronulla this morning to pick up my new MTB, and then continued on to the Royal National Park, the second oldest National Park in the world, after Yellowstone, apparently. Did a nice 26km ride to test out the new bike and I’m delighted with it. The rear suspension makes riding a whole lot easier. No need to stand up over the bumps, so there’s no real need to lower the saddle too much, so it’s easier to pedal efficiently. Had a great time, even though the ride we were on was pretty simple. Looking forward to getting out and about again.

S: 3300m – B: 46km – R: 8.9km

Well, it’s Friday and I’m about to leave Canberra for the final time this year. Good news is that my contract has been extended for another six months so there’s no worries on the job front. Bad news is that I’ve managed to acquire a cold, so training is out the window. I got another run in on Tuesday evening, then went mountain biking with Dean and Tom on Wednesday, ending up at the pub splattered with mud. It was Christmas party time yesterday, so many more beers were had, so it’s been an active week on all fronts. No more training for the rest of the week, but I’m collecting my new MTB this weekend, so we’ll be out for a ride in the Royal National Park.

S: 3300m – B: 20km – R: 8.9km

Tip: when you’re sitting at the table, with your bare feet under your bench, and you think it would be nice to stretch your feet out in front of you, try not to kick the solid wood leg of the bench at the other side of the table.

ps: blame the camera phone for the weird colours (apart from the second toe from the left!)

“‘They started to herd us up, they pushed all four of us together by doing tight circles around us,’ Howe said. When he tried to drift away from the group, two of the bigger dolphins herded him back. He then saw why. A three-metre long great white shark was cruising toward the group about two metres below the surface.”,1),
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Went out MTBing last night with the lads from work and had a brilliant time. Mount Majura is just outside Canberra (10min ride) and has a pine plantation on one side. This plantation, Majura Pines, is littered with singletrack and you can quite easily spend hours in there riding around in and out of trees, up & down dips and even a couple of jumps (which we didn’t do ;-)

This is definitely the way forward – so much more fun than just cruising along a fire trail. So much so, that myself and Tommy were even thinking we might come down to Canberra on a non-work trip at some stage. Something like leave Sydney Saturday morning, drive to Kangaroo Valley and do a run there, then continue on to Can-burr-I-A. Stay in a hotel, visit to debacle for some gourmet pizza/belgian beer, then up the next morning and spend a few hours riding around Mt. Majura with maybe a side trip over to Mt. Stomlo (need to find out more about that area). Then drive back to Sydney that night.

All in all, a great way to spend a few hours!

B: 40km – R: 7.5km

I finally got my arse in gear today and did my driver’s knowledge test, so I am now the proud holder of a learner licence…. at 32 years of age ;-) Given the way that the system works here I will finally get a full licence in 3.5 years time. I’ll be taking Jacqui’s car out to do a few donuts this evening!

Check this out! I found this site, BikeNames.com, ordered a set of stickers, and here they are on my bike. Looks bloody good for $5 ;-)

Well, two weeks ago my iPod fell off my lap while I was on the bus home. Two days after that it stopped working, just over a month since it came out of warranty. No choice but to send it back to Apple and eat the $380 projected cost to fix it. Well, I got it back yesterday and Apple replaced it “under warranty” ;-)

I’m either a lucky bastard, or they had a look at their records and realised how much gear I’ve bought from them over the last few years and decided to reward a valued customer. Either way it’s happy days!

    

Today was a nice spring afternoon, so Graeme decided a barbie was in order. Lots of nice meat and a couple of beers later, we’re standing around chatting when hailstones start falling! It got heavier and heavier until the place was white and we ended up having snowball fights! Tiff headed down to the beach and saw snowboarders on the grass. A weird weather day if ever there was one.

I’ve just spent the weekend down at the snow tih Jacqui, Lara and Jodi. Saturday was absolutely roasting and the snow was all slushy as a result. I could have boarded in shorts and t-shirt if I’d wanted to. Jacqui had her first attempt at snowboarding and had a great time. She wasn’t planning on enjoying it, but by the end of the day she was asking questions about how much her own snowboard would cost! However, she did admit that was more from a desire to avoid all the hassles of renting gear rather than to go snowboarding on a regular basis.

Sunday was much better as the temperature was down, it was a little overcast and the snow stayed in good shape. Mount Perisher was the place to be, and while there’s less cover than a month ago, there’s still better cover than last year. Unfortunately the crap weather that had been forecast for Saturday showed up at 5pm, and it rained, and rained, and rained. We woke up this morning and it was still raining, so our chance to board Thredbo was over and we came home early. You win some, you lose some.

That’s the end of the boarding season as far as I’m concerned. It’s time to re-focus on the fitness campaign!

My old phone finally started screwing up often enough to warrant a replacement, so I’m the proud owner of a new Sony-Ericsson K700i. It has all the gimmicks: video camera, bluetooth, FM radio, MP3 ringtones and so on, so it should do me for a few more years.

Spent last night at a dinner for the Trade Minister, Mark Vaile. Dave’s company had bought a couple of tables, and Dave got to fill one, so he just invited a load of mates for some free food and wine. The event itself was a bit of a fundraiser for the National party so there were speeches and an auction. Listening to all the political waffle was pretty tiresome, especially when I support the Opposition, but when there’s steak & creme brulee on offer I can put up with quite a bit, especially as it wasn’t costing me anything. Apart from the speeches, it was a very nice dinner with a good munch of friends, which was Dave’s intention all along.

Just got back from NZ today. Had a fantastic time. Lots of high quality snow; too much, if indeed there is such a thing. Spent the first week boarding every day, in knee-deep powder. The contrast between the conditions last year and what greeted us this year were amazing. Powder, while being more fun anyway, also has the benefit of making it easier on steep slopes, so I managed to cover more terrain this year too.

Met up with Bevin, who’s in great form. She has settled into Wanaka nicely and is enjoying life there. Brought her up to Treble Cone and went boarding with her in Cardrona a couple of times too. She seems to be quite comfortable on any slope, but not too happy picking up speed yet. She’s progressing quickly.

The weather turned on us a bit in the second week. Lots of snow storms, meaning almost total whiteouts on the slopes, so we took a day off. Myself and Kev did some sight-seeing, the lads sat on the couch and ate, we all got trashed that night, Sean & Tom had an egg fight in their apartment, after literally crawling home, and Paul slid down an embankment, narrowly missing ending up in a stream. There was an avalanche in Treble Cone the next morning, which was fine by us as we were still drunk, so we hadn’t made it up the slopes that morning. Rumours flew, but no-one was injured.

Spent a couple of days in Queenstown after Wanaka. Brought Bevin with us and introduced her to Fergburgers. Myself, Bev, Neil and Sean had booked a trip to Milford Sound, but it got called off as the airport was snowed in. Went boarding in The Remarkables instead, which was almost as much fun. Said goodbye to Bevin that night as she returned to Wanaka, then went out and got drunk on Honey Vodka as it was our last night in town. Did a bit more sight-seeing, then had a go on the Luge at the top of Queenstown Hill. Great fun!

Overall it was another great holiday. Plenty of Brewskis, Fergburgers, mulled wine at the Cardrona Hotel and snow. What more could we ask for. No doubt the scales will indicate the downside tomorrow morning!

I’m off to Wanaka to catch up with Bevin and go snow-baording in Treble Cone. Yee haw!

Well I finally got the 2003 skiing video done, just in the nick of time. The deadline was for a viewing on Monday night, regardless of the state of the movie. I had almost all the editing done, and wrote it out to video tape. Everyone showed up in Tom’s to check it out along with some nibbles & jar. At an hour long, it was a bit longer than people were expecting, but since everyone laughed the whole way through, it was deemed a success.

There were two main issue, both with the audio; it got a bit out of sync for some reason, which I have now fixed, and some of the background tunes were a little loud. I just have to fix that, then do some white-balancing and it’s finished.

…here

Just ordered myself a Sony DCR-PC109 video camera in preparation for the trip to New Zealand. I ordered it online from a shop in Adelaide, saving myself about $250 over the street price, and I’ll save a further $170 because I can get the GST back when flying to NZ.

It should arrive on Monday.

This Land, a shockwave animation poking fun at both Bush & Kerry. Good for a giggle.

Myself, Kevin and Tom headed down to Perisher on Friday for some more snowboarding. Woke up on Saturday morning and Jindabyne was covered in snow, which was something we’d never seen before. We had to put on chains as soon as we left our accommodation at The Station!

Saturday morning was a bit overcast, and it was snowing, but conditions were still brilliant. A howling wind picked up in the afternoon and we decided to call it a day early. The conditions were so bad it took us almost two hours to travel the 30kms back to Jindabyne, since there were a few amateurs around without their chains on.

Sunday was pretty windy, and quite a few lifts were on hold as a result. It wasn’t looking like a promising day at all. We headed to the Interceptor and spent some time there as it was one of the few sheltered areas of the resort. That kept us going until lunch time when we decided to head over to Mt. Perisher. That turned out to be an inspired decision as the conditions were excellent, so we spent the remainder of the day carving up Towers. Kevin was moved to declare the day “hardcore” ;-)

So, we’ve all got our skiing/boarding dialled in for the trip to New Zealand in two weeks. Looking forward to it!

Myself, Jacqui and Tom went to see Touching The Void last night in the new Greater Union in Bondi Junction.

Great movie, and very well done, though it would have been better if I hadn’t seen Joe Simpson interviewed on Andrew Denton the previous evening, as it was essentially a distillation of his narration of the movie. It makes you wonder what you’d do in the same situation. I’d never even get to that situation because I don’t think I’d ever be prepared to trust someone else’s abillity enough to consider climbing such a mountain alpine style! Would I have cut the rope? I guess so, since I can’t see what other choices he had, though maybe if I was a mountaineer something would be obvious. Incidentally, I originally typed ‘mountaineer’ as ‘mountainerr’ – maybe more appropriate in this case ;-)