Syd-en-knee and getting back into the cycle of things

Last weekend we traipsed up to Shitty-knee for a weekend of catching up with friends and seeing some stuff that we wouldn't have found without their help. And the best thing we found, other than the set of Home and Away @ Palm Beach, Kerry Packer's (Jamie, rather) house and hot girls wearing little, was the Newport Arms hotel. Touted as the biggest beer garden in the southern hemisphere, I wouldn't argue with them. Its awesome!! I stopped counting at 3 bars outside, and just enjoyed it, although the weather did NOT play ball...

The view from our window of our hotel on Darling harbor. Not too shabby 8 floors up.


No matter how many times you go across the bridge, you can never stop being amazed at how big the bloody thing is. Its genuinely huge!!



So aside from the pub, we lobbed to Tuggerah to visit a friend and looked at the central coast and its beaches, thanks to them for the hospitality!!


Hanging out on Shelly beach where the water temperature wasn't what the advertised in the brochures!! Needless to say, travelers don't pass up opportunities to get wet, so in we went.


Then back to Newport to catch up with family and baby Jasper (I know he appreciated the visit at 7 months or however old he is...), have a surf in the first decent waves in a long time up there, and then back into Sydney traffic. F#$k that!!! You can keep the traffic, and the woeful roads, I'm going back to what I thought were nice roads......

On the topic of those nice roads, what is up with the users of them? I was abused, spat at and had bottles thrown at me at 2pm on a monday, in the space of 4 hours... Whats up with that?? From home to the 'nongs and around, no less than 4 cars had a red hot go at me for reasons I cannot fathom. I mean I'm one bloke pedaling on a 4 lane highway, am I that much of an inconvenience? A few of them were told, before I gave up and got back to the music.

Pedalling circles is slowly becoming easier after a 4 week layoff, but getting back on is not easy as we all know. I'm working hard at getting some k's in for the season coming up, and we'll stick at it whilst the weather is nice. 5 hours on the bike toady, after taking a mental health day, helped put a few in the bank, and I'll keep chipping away at it.

So this is what happens when you try and put a housing estate on an old tip. It sinks, and so does your money, then you fence it off and consider what to do with it for the next 15 years... Brilliant...

This is down at Mornington today, the smoke is all over the place, and getting worse with the north wind. The whole way down the coast and back it was miserable and smoky, looks like we are in trouble again this week with fires, with the firies not even permitted to leave the front line to eat at the moment near Bairnsdale, they are getting meals to the trucks at the moment! Crazy!!


And I can't even help out by cleaning up without getting it hung on me. Whaaaaat, the water happened to be really hot alright...!!

Out on the Virtue tommorrow night at the Fatties ride hopefully, so I'll post some more impressions after that.