jarrad writes notveryregularly at the moment

..yep, it's true, and so its recap time! Hooray! I think i'll start with the most recent and work back as far as my memory will take me.

Kings Canyon.

What a rad place to spend a few days over Easter. Po and I piled our selves and our extraordinarily large esky in to the back of Jess and Geordies Suby and we hit the road. It's about a 300km drive SW of Alice, the middle 100 being dirt, and G kept us suitably entertained with his awesome driving (and Jess on the way back - thanks guys!). After arriving mid-arvo on the Saturday we set up camp and went for a drive to check out the deal-i-o. We managed to squeeze in the Rim Walk on dusk, which proved a magic time to do it. No flies, no tourists (except a few buzzing around up top in them whirly birds), perfect temps and magic light. (Damn, 'magic' twice. Ah well, it's a rad word).

The unfortunate flipside to this was that we had now exhausted our legal options for Kings Canyon.

Bring on the 'stealthwalk'!

I won't delve too much in to the meaning of our newly-coined pursuit. Suffice to say, Kings Canyon is a massive massive park with some amazing amazing things to see, or so we hear..



Now, with that done and dusted, it was time to hit up the town! Bring on $40 steaks and toneless renditions of 'Home Among the Gum Trees'! Yeehoo!

ok, NOW its flowing..

It's been raining on and off for a few days now, sometimes quite heavily, and you could tell that everyone was expecting - hoping - that the Todd would flow. I don't know when it last did flow, but I do know that in the 6-odd months we've been here theres been barely more than a drop fall from the sky. According to BOM we had 0.1mm in the entire month of November, and i'm quite sure that 2009 rated as the driest on record for the Alice. And we don't even have water restrictions!!

Well, Po and I got quite excited by the trickle of beer cans and empty cartons that was the Todd flowing 2 days ago.

The river had dramatically widened the next day, certainly qualifying as a flowing river. Yippee! But the rain had eased. The clouds were rising and dispersing. We went to bed thinking the levels will be dropping back down to the festy trickle of the day before...

Damn no! Piffing down rain over night and through the morning. The fact that gutters here are viewed as a pointless extra meant we had a curtain of water sheeting down all around our apartment. The yard was going under. My thongs even started to float away (just like Rachs at New Years..!)

I got an excited call from Po at 11am. "Stop studying! Get your arse to the bridge! And bring the camera!". The river was thumping. Everyone was out, and excited, to see the Todd flow. One guy on a surfboard was floating down the river near Heavitree Gap. Police, ASTC and SES were out in force blocking the crossings and warning would-be lilo-ers about jumping in.

It's another quirk of Alice that 4 of the 5 river crossings (for vehicles) flood when the river really flows. The Todd effectively divides the town in two, so when there's closures, a traffic jam 100's of metres long forms either side of the one bridge across. Amazingly though, not an angry 'beep' was heard. (This, from a town that gets pissed at having to wait 1 minute for a train, or having to change lanes for a cyclist.. mind you, they probably ARE all pissed)

Ok, now back to the study..

Last minute bash in the Alice

Ah christmas.. riding, eating, sifting. The day of the year really.

7:30 was a nice casual start time for a ride with Po, Suze, Clarke and Julia. What started out as a completely overcast sky, soon cleared to a clear blue one but the cool breeze held firm to give us some great riding conditions. Out on the fence track, up along the helmet track, and return via roo track and 5-ways.. a nice way to spend 2.5hours.

Po, Suze and Julia on the Helmet Track.

Suze, Po, Julia and Clarke.

It was then off to Suze's house for breaky. If only every breakfast could be like this! Eggs, bacon, haloumi, salmon, garlic mushies, salad, fresh turtle bread, avo, juice, coffee , champers... 1pm with bellies bursting it was time to head home and take up the sifting component of the day. And sifting better come through and shrink the size of my belly because we've got a mountain of food to get through before we board our flight tomorrow arvo!

Aw'right - happy christmases everybody! Enjoy yourselves, and see you in Melbourne or up at Buffalo:)

3 days to Buffalo

Aw geeze i'm excited. Just a few short (incredibly loooong) days to go till we fly south to Mt Buffalo. Best part number 1: hanging out with our posse of friends again. Best part number 2: we're packing some bikes. Hai Hai! Best part number 3: wedding! Yippee!

Logistically a bit of a nightmare, having to rely on lifts to get from Melbourne to Buffalo to the Yarra to Melbourne, but man it'll be rad. We've been dreaming of the trails we'll ride (dreaming of BERMS!! AW FEED ME SOME BERMS!) Up there on the list is Beechworth. Haven't ridden there since the 6hour a few years back. Then theres the trails at Mt Beauty. Never ridden there. And then theres the hills. Ah, I can't wait for some real (Australian) hills. I'm sick of a little nipple with barely 50m vertical gain being called a hill. Damn flat Alice. (We have a bunch ride here called the 'Hills Bunch'. Still trying to figure out where the hills are...) It's certainly been going from one extreme to the other - moving from Bourg St Maurice to Alice Springs.

Hai!

Denti done

Yay! Built and ready to roll:)