sweet ride

Today I forgot to take all my raffle tickets for the Townsville BUG 'win a commuter bike' raffle to work. Doh. So instead of delivering them a single km at lunch time I had to ride home at the end of the day, get the tickets and deliver them west to Kirwan, a suburb about 6 kms away. Well I want you to know.

Every day. Every single working day of my life I cycle home into the teeth of a reliable afternoon onshore wind, because I work to the west of my home. Some days it is just a wee hauling of the log. Some days it howls to make you laugh and gasp as the tears stream from your eyes. But today, today was special because I grabbed my tickets at home (and some lemons and limes for Bec!) and I turned my back on that wind and fairly flew that journey west. Magic, and best of all the wind dies down around 6pm, so I had a cruisey ride home too. Sweet

all too much

Blogging is like housework, if you leave it go it all gets to be too much and you are tempted to bring in outside labour to put it all right. However, I am way to cheap to outsource, and who on earth would do this for free so bear with me while I catch up.

There have been dogs.

Harmony at dinner time, ructions at other times,  lots of cuddles and sitting on knee.

last weekend I was doing housework and was just moving the plug of the vacuum to another socket when there was the most extraordinary sound, and I looked out to see my neighbours Umbrella tree Schefflera actinophylla had split and half had just fallen down on a still morning. Crazy!

and then orchids bloomed because we had a shower of rain a week ago...

There was a farewell for a valued colleague and I couldn't be there but sent a photo. Hope we spelled out 'Love you!'

and turkeys were born. there is a wee blob above the adult which is a baby. 

a nest of Pacific Bazza chicks at the Uni, 

cut flowers from the garden. Hotel foyer quality arrangements for free, love my garden.

the smell of gardenia fills the house

Oh boy! An interesting and fun meeting and workshop in Brisbane. Well worth the trip. I am in as a member.

WTF does this mean - from the mapping bingo exercise

Fun! Mapping! Wine! I am in heaven.

Alpaca hats from Peru for loving two dogs for two weeks! What a deal! OK, that is it, time for dinner.

and how I rode

It has a pretty good week the last week, more than 200 kms but less than 250. A couple of rest days and then a another good ride. Out the door before 6:30 am and the heat is on. My legs are rested but heavy in the soup of morning. Sweat flows. The smell of sweet blossoms, the stench of bats. The wind fits and fights me at every turn and I am ass up and forward against it. Cicadas scream and my ipod can't compete. A beautiful ride, I arrive at work soaked and elated. I love this commute.

summer arrives

...and there is intense heat, and the roll of thunder that never manages to turn into a storm. Madness at work. A sustainability workshop which is a big DUH! to those of us who get it. Want How to to save the world? Don't be greedy. Share. Be kind. I am too old for strident demands. Don't eat meat. why? Are we going to die because there are cattle, sheep and goats? Is is really all their fault?

What do we do at an institutional level. Here is my list:

1. trust employees to buy ethically rather then institutionally, no more 'preferred suppliers'
2. turn off the friggin' air conditioning from May til September.
3. set the air con at 25 degrees when it is on
4. showers and bike parking and clothes lines for  bike commuters for f***s sake.

What a hard day of nonsense. All the problems we face are human constructs. Change management issues, we need to meet and talk and work through it. People can make it work, but we need to relate as people, and I am all done in.

other people's work

After a long weekend of near comatose recovery from work, sprinkled with really fun shifts working the main gate at the Townsville Cup on Wheels, I think I will share some links to other creations which show off where we ride in good ol' Townsville.

a woman training in Townsville, lots of familiar road here

last race, Townsville cup on wheels

enjoy. Meanwhile somebody hit the switch here, and it is really hot!

lost the plot

...or at least the desire to write the plot down. It has been too long since I put anything up here. It really has just been the usual drill. Ride, work, eat, sleep, repeat. We are caring for a couple of dogs for a friend, and they conspire to keep me from blogging by leaping onto my knee, then wrestling and kissing me and just generally making it impossible to type until I am too tired to remember what I was going to type anyway. I am therefore doing this at the end of the day before I escape the office. People are obviously missing me because my legion of followers (all 6 of you) are turning up in new places like Linked In and facebook seeing if I am still around. I appreciate that. So now to get some photos up because I do take em and this is a good place to keep em.

The promised photo of my son actually using his mug that his Aunt made at work because it is his favorite.

orchid pollination. we have the vine but not the right insects for nature to take it's course. The master at work

the map library, don't get me started on the map library. Downsizing AGAIN and  feeling close to tears most of the time.  I am re-homing what I can (this series is off to the National Library of Australia) but these things take time and I don't have a lot. I am going to have to get very creative with the space I do have

strange tree on campus that I never noticed in bloom before

this is actually a bloom. It is like something from Dr Suess

lots of riding and coffee to cope with the stress of the library thing

the solar eclipse! nerdy glasses! early ride! perfect! it was so good I forgot it was my anniversary - oops. When every day is good you stop looking for some to be better than others.

well at least somebody remembered

but wait it was a really big bunch so there is more

spent several hours doing an audit of bike parking to help develop the plan  to improve facilities on campus, and (of course) to update my maps. This will be a priority for improvement in my report!

and finally a shot of a fantastic old Schwinn all loved up and parked in the rock garden (another source of disaster and stress due to signage from hell issues, but that is another story) What a sweet bike!!! 

Can you plan for the unknown

Today was our School of Earth and Environmental Science planning day, and while I am normally a bit dismissive of these sorts of things, I found it useful and informative. (Is it just me, or is this font really annoying and different from the usual?) Anyway, we are at James Cook University, and sometimes the wildlife was the best part of the day.

Hanging out for leftovers. I have learned that if it is cheese, it is kookaburra food

 All the usual suspects. I adore this building at JCU, it is our best tropical architectural example of  design for the tropics, and was sadly not replicated all over the campus.

 The future. Or not.

When I got home there were this many FREE delicious tomatoes from my rouge self planted bush on the footpath. So we are winning. I can't predict the future, but there will be cycling, and tomatoes.

note, the font has gone from a big, big serif to the usual on publish. Phew.

road hazards

This morning as I turned into the dam there was a surprise across the road. What looked to me to be a dead pig the size of a cow! I told the Rangers about it, and they assured me that pigs are solitary beasts, and if I got close there wouldn't be a mourner in the bushed defending the remains. Upon my return I found the poor thing was smaller than he seemed, so I took my photo and then went back to confess to the Rangers that tales of giant pigs may be grossly exaggerated.

I was a bit concerned that there are pigs in these parts, because if you hit one it is going to hurt you more than it does them. However, on closer inspection this poor hairy porker was shot, and then prepared to be hung for dressing. You can see the loop of white rope through the rear leg. The Rangers speculated he fell off a truck going around that corner.

The only thing more deadly than hitting a pig would be getting hit by a flying pig off a truck. The roads are fraught with danger around here! Ride safe!