November 2006

Went cycling to Port Melbourne after work. The weather was so enticingly sunny that we went on towards St Kilda. As usual it was blowing a gale, despite the sun. These kite surfers were enjoying it.

At dusk, both the reed boat and this pretty sailing dinghy looked magical.

Went to the You Yangs again to do the Western Plantation Trail. I'm getting better -- I even did some of the technical bits. Not, of course, those in this playground which The Mountain Biker had no trouble with.

We saw some Shetland Ponies on the way out. They had foals. This one was gallopping towards its cousins. It was tiny, and looked so cute.

We started another blog today, which will contain posts on topics of more general interest than our daily lives. Also, for that blog we're using 'standard' blogging software. This means you can post comments there. We hope you will. This new blog will not get posted to every day, only when something blogworthy happens. It has an RSS feed so if something changes you will notice if you bookmark the feed. Here it is.

Thanks for your comment, Cat! And for noticing that something has changed.

Happy Birthday, Father-in-law!

Went to Lysterfield Park Lake again, this time properly prepared (i.e. we took a picnic along). Round two on the Buckle Trail, and the extra bouncy on my front forks helped a lot (perhaps I should have read the manual?). I even went over a couple of logs.

Having survived the Buckle Trail we thought 'why don't we just cycle around the lake'. Bad move. The Scout had omitted to mention the inordinate number of steep climbs that this involved. So I was not at all happy by the time we finally made it back to the car.

The picnic, however, was lovely, looking over the lake. Slightly fewer other-people's-children would have been nice -- are all kids really that noisy?

Having regained some strength through ingestion of protein and carbohydrates, the Obsessive Cyclist then went off on his own to do some more trails and, it turns out, got to see some local wildlife. I, in the meantime, watched the sailing on the lake.

Having my long lens with me I also tried to shoot some birds, with varying success. They are very fast and won't sit still -- every photographer's nightmare. Still, these two shots turned out ok.

Today's plan was a sortie to Williamstown, 13 km from Melbourne. It was described as a 'historic maritime village', which sounded interesting enough. Having determined that for some reason the ferry takes a whole hour to go 13 kms we decided on the train. That still took half an hour, largely because it made a nice big loop around all the major train stations in Melbourne (except the one next door to our flat) before actually setting out towards its destination.

Today was a Bank Holiday in Melbourne. It's a week of horse races that are taken very seriously here so it's a city holiday. Predictably the weather was terrible -- 16 degrees and the perpetual wind chill made it feel like 10.

Having zero chance of a ticket to the Big Race (and not that much inclination either, given that from what we heard the chances of cuddling a horse are pretty much nil) we decided to take our mountain bikes to Lysterfield Lake Park for the first time. The weather forecast said "showers clearing early afternoon" so we threw the bikes into the car and made a detour to Knox City Shopping Centre, which is pretty much adjacent to Lysterfield Park.

I have seen Australian shopping centres before. Generally I'm underwhelmed but having seen Highpoint I thought there might be a chance of redemption for them yet. Wrong. Knox City not only had nothing in it that remotely elicited any desire in me to buy it; it made me feel that I didn't want to return there ever. This is not a natural feeling for me to have towards something billed as "the second-biggest shopping centre in Australia". [I wonder which is the biggest?] The quality of the merchandise in the average small shop (which is what makes or breaks a shopping centre), was far lower than at either Chadstone or Highpoint. Since I am The Shopper and determine such things we will not return to Knox City.

Having completed our survey of Knox City, the weather showed absolutely no way of improving, despite the weather forecast. So we went to Lysterfield Lake Park anyway. On previous visits, The Obsessive Cyclist had always moaned about those "lucky people" (only he didn't say "people", precisely) having mountain bikes. Now we had bikes too. Considering that it was my very first attempt at mountain bike trails other than the "introductory" Western Plantation I think I acquitted myself well enough. At one point in the trail even The Mountain Biker bailed out.

Today's theme was the acquisition of a barbecue. After all, it is the Aussie way. By a total coincidence our endeavours brought us stumbling into the biggest shopping mall in Melbourne -- Highpoint. Also, the first shopping mall in Melbourne that had several things that I actually wanted to buy. So we ended up with a barbecue. In addition to which I ended up with various other items of clothes whose purchase was something of an impulse.

Also, it's Race Week in Melbourne and lots of people are around dressed similarly to Ladies' Day at Ascot. An abundance of hats is in evidence. It rained yesterday (!), and the resulting left-over puddle gave me a chance at an interesting photograph.

Even though the time stamp on this entry clearly shows it's Saturday, the reason it gets blogged so late is because of the Friday night. As in, went for a few beers after work and ended up in a restaurant on Southbank.

On the way, an interesting shot of our work place with a church in front of it, and a view of the North bank under an almost-full moon.

Given that we had the opportunity to watch this magnificent fire show four times tonight it must mean that we were in the restaurant for four hours. After the pub, that is.

In the evening, the weather looked much better, as evidenced in these pictures -- typically Melbourne. One should carry around a suitcase at all times for all possible weather conditions.