Is a bike fitting worth it?

When I bought my bike many years ago, I spent a few hours in the shop getting it properly fitted. The blokes doing the fitting took into account my size, flexibility etc etc. They did a pretty good job - once my arse had adjusted to the seat, I was comfortable and able to deliver power through the pedals.

All that changed a few weeks ago when I bought a new saddle. Although I got it fitted in a bike shop, it was simply screwed on rather than "fitted". Within 10 minutes of leaving the shop, I was in serious discomfort. By the time I got home, the discomfort had turned into a lot of pain. I immediately sought out some tools, and dropped the saddle. After a short test ride, I dropped it some more (the new saddle was significantly taller than the old one).

A week later, I hurt all over. I had achilles problems in one ankle, burning pain in my opposite knee, terrible hamstring pains and I couldn't ride for more than 5 minutes without having to stand up on the pedals and stretch. It was so bad, I had to take a week off to recover.

After the week off, I had another go. Things were still bad, so I booked myself in for a new bike fitting. By the end of the week, the pain had travelled further up and I was getting killer, knockout headaches.

The fitting took 3 hours and ended up setting me back over $400 (once some new parts were included).

Ouch.

However, the fitter made quite a few adjustments, and they all worked. I've done another week on the bike, and all the pain has disappeared. During the fitting, it was clear that the positioning of the new saddle had bent me seriously out of shape. It was way too far forward, and I had dropped it too much to compensate for the poor shop fitting. I was unable to develop power because my legs weren't pushing in the right direction. One leg was able to bend nearly 15 degrees further than the other - a sign of hamstring lock up. Being tight on one side was twisting everything around, which produced the headaches. 

Because my saddle was too far forward, me knees were too far forward, and that led to knee pain. Orthotics were fitted into my shoes, allowing more power to be transferred to the pedals. Because I was too low, my legs weren't extending far enough at the bottom of each stroke, leading to a huge loss of power.

So yes, it was expensive. But bloody hell - it was worth it. I reckon  the way I was going, I would have spent more on physio fees if I hadn't gotten the bike setup properly.

I wonder how many people buy a bike, go for a ride, find that it hurts a lot due to a bad setup and then park in the garage and never ride it again? I wouldn't think of driving a car without adjusting the seat settings into the most comfortable and ergonomic position - but lots of people buy cheap bikes from shops that have no idea of how to use a plumb bob to check your knee position, or to use caliper thingys to check the angle of your knee extension at the bottom of your pedal stroke.

As they say - you gets what you pays for.

Collingwood

I thought about doing a bit of photoshopping here with a Collingwood jumper, but couldn't e bothered.

Sunrise

Haven't posted one of these for a while.

Noooooooooooooooo!

The Oxford Tavern is changing for the worse.

Where does the SMH get its facts from?

Paul McGeogh wrote a story today titled The race question that won't go away

In it, he states, "But there's a second-tier scandal in the suggestion in these two Florida cases that the ''stand your ground'' defence is more readily available to whites than to blacks."

Actually, Blacks benefit from Florida ‘Stand Your Ground’ law at disproportionate rate.

"Black Floridians have made about a third of the state’s total “Stand Your Ground” claims in homicide cases, a rate nearly double the black percentage of Florida’s population. The majority of those claims have been successful, a success rate that exceeds that for Florida whites.

But approximately one third of Florida “Stand Your Ground” claims in fatal cases have been made by black defendants, and they have used the defense successfully 55 percent of the time, at the same rate as the population at large and at a higher rate than white defendants, according to a Daily Caller analysis of a database maintained by the Tampa Bay Times.  Additionally, the majority of victims in Florida “Stand Your Ground” cases have been white.

African Americans used “Stand Your Ground” defenses at nearly twice the rate of their presence in the Florida population, which was listed at 16.6 percent in 2012."

Never let the facts get in the way of an emotive article.

More cooking stuff

One good thing about riding all week is that you can pretty much eat what you want - unless you are aiming to become a stick insect. I have no intention of turning into a stick insect, so I happily cook and eat the sort of stuff that the health Nazis regularly warn will turn us all into morbidly obese muffinmen.

This week's attempt was Pear and almond skillet cake.

Findings:

• It's excellent - a really tasty cake (albeit a bit sweet for my liking). I love the crunchiness of the slivered almonds. 
• It was a cinch to make - minimum mixing and mess
• Only issue I had with it was that it took 45 minutes in my stupid oven rather than the recommended 15-20. However, part of that might have been caused by me using a smaller frying pan than recommended, leading to a deeper cake
• It almost bubbled over the lip of the pan - I hadn't counted on it rising so much

I'll definitely be making this again.

Smoking

Had a go with a cheap smoker last night - scroll to the 9 minute mark to see how to do it. Yes, it actually worked, and I am going to do it some more.



Where we deviated from Jamie:

• We didn't have hot coals ready, so we threw some firelighters and charcoal beads into the bucket, lit them up and waited until they got hot
• Don't use hexamine based firelighters - they taint the smoke
• Used a packet of hickory chips bought from the shop
• Used a cake rack instead of sticks to hold the smoked meat
• Put an old fashioned metal fly cover over the top, and then topped that with a wet tea towel

Dead easy - the main bit is getting a galvanised bucket from your local hardware store. 

New power law of cooking

"The volume of chocolate pudding mix that makes it into the oven is inverse to the number of young kids helping in the kitchen".

The kids would eat an entire batch of chocolate self-saucing pudding mix raw if I let them.

Sexist gingerbread

The kids like a bit of gingerbread. I went looking for a recipe this morning. What did I find?

Gingerbread people.

FMD.

Queues

Many years ago, I visited Italy (along with a lot of other European countries). It was well before the age of ATMs being everywhere, the Euro and the ability to make cash withdrawals from an ATM overseas. We're talking the dark ages. Ancient history. The early 1990s.

This meant I had to visit a bank every week or so to either change currency, exchange travelers cheques or fill out a lot of forms to withdraw cash. Italy in particular had some weird banking laws that meant you had to go into a bank to do a lot of the things that you can do at a kiosk or ATM elsewhere.

I hated doing that with a passion. Because Italians in Italy don't queue. Especially in banks.

It was a massive culture shock for me. Over here, as in most western countries, you walk into a bank and there is one of those portable barrier thingys showing where to line up. Not Italy. You walked in, and immediately joined a massive scrum at the counter. Old women elbowed you in the guts to get ahead. Men just shoulder charged and rammed others aside. It was total chaos. Friday night happy hour at the bar in the most crowded pub in Australia is more cultured, orderly and organised than an Italian bank counter. I wonder if things have changed?

I left Italy being so thankful that we live in a civilised country where people are prepared to queue - to let those that got in line first get served first. People take their place and no one gets to jump ahead. The antithesis of Italy was when I voted at Bondi Beach one year. Like just about everyone else who was voting that day, I'd been for a swim and was lined up to vote in my Speedos and bare feet. The line was long - it snaked right out the door of the Bather's Pavilion. Just behind me was a well known multi-millionaire, also dripping wet and in his bathers. In some countries, he just would have walked to the front of the queue and brazened his way in; or officials would have seen him standing there and come out to lead him to the front. Not here - he just stood there happily like everyone else, waiting his turn to be processed and chatting with those around him in the line.

I love that. I'm so glad that we don't let those with money push in ahead of the less fortunate and less wealthy.

Oh wait........

Drugs

I'm reading my way through The Secret Race - a great book on cycling and doping. When I read the preview, I thought it would be pretty boring and I didn't have high hopes. However, it's turned out to be an absolutely gripping book.

It's also got me hankering after some EPO and testosterone. I've been feeling very flat and tired these last few weeks (I'm not getting any younger), and the way the application of these drugs is described, I could really do with some. A can of Coke just doesn't cut it anymore.

Another close call with a numpty

Friday evening in the city is usually a time of madness. The worst traffic of the week. The only place more dangerous for cyclists is around any school at pick up and drop off time - there's nothing like a swarm of mums hyped up on coffee, yelling at kids, gasbagging on the phone and driving 4WDs to put your life in peril.  At least the traffic in town is generally at a standstill. 

So there I was, barreling down a bike lane at a good clip, passing about 1km of cars jammed up nose to tail going nowhere. Up ahead, a gap opens up and a Hilux comes zooming across the road from a side street. However, there is just one problem.

Bonehead in the Hilux thinks that the bike lane is a car lane. He doesn't maneuver into the gap - he blasts through it and makes as if to drive down the bike lane. That made for some interesting evasive tactics on my part as I lent right over and zipped around him. The bloke behind me was just as surprised. Hilux driver seemed to realise his mistake after nearly collecting two hood ornaments - he gave up on his attempt to overtake the stalled traffic via the bike lane and got back into line.

Just writing about it makes my heart beat faster. Far out, it was a close run thing.

A weekend without pork belly is.........what?

Curses. No trip to the butcher this weekend to buy another slab of pork belly. However, I did try something new - a parsnip veloute.

WTF?

That's pretty much what I thought when I first read the word "veloute". So I looked it up and made it on a whim. Essentially it's soup.

But I didn't want a soup - I wanted something more akin to a mash.

Pretty easy really - peeled and chopped two big parsnips, along with an onion. Threw a big hunk of butter into my cast iron frying pan, got it sizzling, swished the chopped parsnip and onion around on top of the stove for 5 minutes (until I saw a bit of brown here and there) and then threw it into a 180 degree oven for - I have no idea how long. Long enough to cook. And I have no idea if the oven was actually at 180. It could have been 140 or 220 knowing my oven.

After that, threw it in the blender with some cream and blended until it was the right consistency. Not like mash, and not like soup. Firm enough to stand up as a blob on a plate without squidging. How much cream was that? Dunno. Started with an almost full carton and I put some back in the fridge. About that much.

It was amazingly delicious - but you probably need to like parsnip for it to work for you. Then again, even the teens ate it, so it can't have been that bad.

Kill for a coffee

There's an early opening coffee shop on Lilyfield Rd that's a favourite with tradesmen and white van man. It's at the bottom of a nice little hill where I can hit 50km/h (the speed limit) without even trying. fast moving bikes + dopey tradesmen is a bad combination. It's the spot where I am most careful every morning. The potential for being doored is huge.

This morning demonstrated the reason for that. I was rolling down nicely when a ute passed me (doing about 60 in a 50 zone). The driver was braking a bit and swerving here and there - it looked to me like he wanted a coffee, and was looking for the closest possible parking spot to the coffee shop.

Sure enough - we passed the coffee shop without him finding a car space, but at the next intersection, he suddenly charged left across the bike lane (without indicating) and stopped in a no stopping zone at the corner. I was ready for him, so as soon I'd hung back a bit and was able to get around him quite easily.

If I hadn't been looking out for that sort of behaviour, I probably would have gone into the back of the tray full tilt. It was a ute with a flat tray, so that would have been nasty. I smacked a motor bike into the back of a fat-arsed Ford ute many years ago whilst doing circle work in a muddy paddock. It didn't hurt a bit because:

a). I was not doing 50km/h
b). The back of a fat-arsed Ford ute was surprisingly soft and squishy - for metal
c). And most importantly, I was drunk and therefor floppy

Anyway, I'm glad his need for coffee didn't end badly for me.

Decisions, decisions

When the weather is like it is right now, I feel like a chick most days. "What should I wear today"? Hmm.

The mornings are easy - lots of clothes, because it is farking freezing. However, it can be as warm as 19 degrees in the afternoon, and being dressed for 6 degrees and riding when it is 19 is a one way trip to heat stroke. The answer that everyone gives is "layers", but there is only so much space in my back pack for storing all the layers that you peel off betwixt morning and evening.

I felt this conundrum mightily this evening - right in the nipples. I went with arm warmers but no jacket - that was fine on the flats and going up hill, but dastardly when descending at speed. I'd get just hot enough on the ascents to get sweaty, and then that would freeze on my skin on the other side of the hill. Thankfully, there aren't that many hills between work and home, and they aren't that big. I could put a vest on, but then I'd be super sweaty going up hill and toasty warm going downhill.

In the end, it's just easier to flip a coin before leaving work.

The safety nazis have taken over

The Silly is running a story called Off limits: 10 places you will never go in Australia.

One of the sites listed is:

Carnac Island
It's just off the coast of Fremantle, but going beyond the beach of Carnac Island requires special permission from the Department of Conservation and Land Management. Anyone arriving by boat and thinking of sneaking inland while no one's looking could be in for a very nasty surprise, however. The island is teeming with tiger snakes. For researchers in highly protective clothing, this is handy for collecting venom for medical research. For an errant daytripper sauntering along in thongs, well, er … good luck.

Having dived with the seals at Carnac, and walked around a bit of the island in my youth, this was a surprise. Yes, we all knew the island had more than its fair share of snakes, which is why we were careful to wear our safety thongs.

The seals were extremely friendly by the way - a delight to dive with. You just don't want to go near them on land.

Innovation

A small snippet showing why I have faith in the market rather than regulation.

Bought a new bike helmet today. As I was trying to find one big enough to fit my fat head, the shopkeeper pointed out that the model I had just tried on had a red light built into the rear. I’d never noticed that before.

Commuters have a tendency to light themselves up like Xmas trees – paranoia about being collected from behind by a dopey driver. Just about every commuter I see on my route has bought an extra light and attached it to their helmet.

Some smarty marketing or product dude has noticed this and thought, “Why not manufacture helmets with a light in them? Because many cyclists clearly want a helmet mounted light”.

Which is why you can now buy a helmet like that. Not because some pencil pushing bureaucrat in a regulatory agency thought it would be a good idea – but because a company took a risk, retooled their product and chucked it out there to see if people would buy it. Which I promptly did.

And thanks to a competitive market, the new helmet (with light) cost about 1/3 what my last one did.

I also got a good lesson in paying more for a proper bike fitting.

I bought a new saddle as well - the old one was well and truly worn out. The mechanic fitted it on the spot in a few minutes, but I didn't test it out before leaving the shop. About 5 minutes into my ride home, my legs really started to hurt - the new saddle was an inch or so taller than the old one, which meant my legs were being forced to extend that much further on every stroke. Before long, I was in total agony.

Of course the only thing I forgot to pack before riding to the shop was the multitool that I could have used to drop the saddle height. 

I am going to be in serious pain tomorrow.

Pig over, pig out - redux

I couldn't resist it - I had to cook pork belly again (slowly). That involved an early Saturday morning visit to the butcher with the little tackers to stock the freezer with meat, meat, meat. I had a choice between a 1kg pack of belly and a 2.5kg pack. I was tempted to go all out and get the big one, but I figured that even our family would have a tough time putting away that much pork in one go.

I followed the recipe this time - instead of sitting the pork belly in a sea of oil, I poured in water instead and slow cooked it for 10 hours.

The result was still pretty good - but nowhere near as good as the goofed-up oil bath method. The skin didn't crisp up as well at the end - I guess the steam from the water didn't help, whereas you don't have that problem if you slow cook it in oil. The oil method also produced a softer, more succulent result.

I'm now on a mission to try doing pork belly in a bath of duck fat. Choice - buy a can of duck fat, or cook some duck and save the fat.

Chemistry education - then and now

Nitrogen triiodide is the inorganic compound with the formula NI3. It is an extremely sensitive contact explosive: small quantities explode with a loud, sharp snap when touched even lightly, releasing a purple cloud of iodine vapor; it can even be detonated by alpha radiation. NI3 has a complex structural chemistry that is difficult to study because of the instability of the derivatives.

When I was studying chemistry at school, our teacher made some of this before a class and sprinkled it on the floor. As the students walked in, it exploded in little "cracks" under their shoes. The reason for doing that? Shit and giggles mainly. Everyone thought it was a hoot - it certainly got everyone engaged that day.

I imagine that would get you sacked and charged with about 50 OH&S and explosives offences these days.


The Modern Alchemist - Contact Explosive - detonating Nitrogen Triiodide from The Royal Institution on Vimeo.

Why can't some drivers hill start?

I made another doomed attempt to buy some pants last weekend. Once again, when I tried on several pairs that were the right size for my waist, I could hardly get them past my thighs. I got one pair over most of my thighs, but they then jammed up on my calves. I couldn't believe it, so I went and stood in front of the mirror and looked at my lower legs. Hmmm. They're stupidly wide thanks to cycling. I can't get both my hands around my calves. If this keeps up, I'll have to start wearing tracksuits to work.

About the stupid driving - as I was going into the car park, the car in front nearly rolled backwards into me three times. We were waiting in line to get a ticket on a shallow gradient, and every time he had to move forwards, he started by going back about half a car length. Good thing I had left him plenty of room.

What is it with people that can't hill start a manual without rolling back 10 feet every time? Haven't they heard of a handbrake? Can't they co-ordinate their feet properly? Sheesh - if you think hill starting a Ford ute is hard, try doing it in one of these....

And yes, the pinhead that couldn't drive was behind the wheel of a Ford ute. Then again, maybe he could drive, and he was just having a hard time with a hopeless vehicle.

Apple crumble and jumping the shark

One thing I need after riding around in the pouring rain is good, hearty comfort food. And yes, it has been pouring with rain, and I haven't been wimping out and catching the bus or driving to work.

Riding in the rain isn't that bad at all. Rain doesn't generally fall in monsoonal sheets all the time - it comes and goes, meaning that on some "wet" days, I haven't gotten wet at all. I've arsed it and picked the gaps in between showers. And even if it does bucket down, it usually only pours for a short part of the ride. If you're dressed for it, it's water of a duck's back.

Here's how silly it gets - it rained all the way home, yet when I walked in the front door, I went straight to the shower to wash off all the sweat. I had been under a flooding sky for 45 minutes, and the first thing I did was to go and pour more water over myself because I had sweating pissing out of every pore. Except I got to adjust the temperature of the water. I'd hate to be poor, and unable to pour water over my leaking pores.

On to food.

I've rediscovered the crumble. For me, the secret is using a good bircher muesli in the crumble rather than plain oats. All the fruit and nuts in the muesli tarts it up nicely. I discovered this by happy accident - I had run out of plain oats, so I used up the last of a packet of bircher. I've never looked back.

I fear though that I might have jumped the shark tonight by adding just too much stuff to what is traditionally a fairly simple dish. I also threw ground almonds and dried coconut into the crumble, sprinkled slivered almonds on top and threw in a handful of dried apricots and sultanas into the apple. I'll see how it goes - I might have reached that event horizon in apple crumble cookery where just too much fruit and other whizzy bits destroys the dish.

Whatever. As they used to tell me in the Army - "If you don't eat, you don't shit. And if you don't shit, you die". With all that muesli and fruit waiting to be eaten, I don't think I am going to have any problems tomorrow.

Forgive me, for I have cooked lentils

I'm not saying any more than that.

I screw up pork belly

Geez, how hard can this be?

Pork belly
50 g garlic, chopped
15 g anchovy fillets, drained and chopped
3 thyme sprigs, leaves picked 
2 star anise
1 cinnamon stick
1 rosemary sprig, leaves picked 
pinch of salt 
25 ml pomegranate molasses 
1 kg piece pork belly, bones removed
200 ml olive oil
400 ml water

To make the pork belly, preheat the oven to 100˚C. Add the garlic, anchovy, thyme, star anise, cinnamon, rosemary, salt and pomegranate molasses to the bowl of a food processor and process until smooth. Rub the flesh side of the pork belly generously with the paste. Line a baking dish with baking paper and place the pork inside, skin side up. Drizzle the skin with olive oil and season with salt. Pour the water around the pork, transfer the dish to the oven and cook for 10–12 hours until completely soft. (You can refrigerate the pork at this point if preparing ahead.) 

Increase the oven to 220˚C and cook the pork for a further 10–14 minutes or until the skin is crisp.

Well, if you're me, it's hard beyond belief. I read the list of ingredients, then read the bit about mixing stuff in the food processor, so I threw all the ingredients for the rub into the processor and then tipped in the oil.

Oops.

The pork belly is now cooking confit style in the oven. If you can slow bake duck in a thick layer of fat, why not slow bake pork belly in a sea of olive oil?

This is either going to be an epic disaster, or it will be fantastic. I don't think it will get 10-12 hours in the oven - more like 7, and then we're having it for dinner.

Assuming it's edible.

PS - it turns out that 50gm of garlic is an entire head.

I ride; therefore, I must eat

Riding home can be a bit lonely some days, so the brain starts thinking about all sorts of things. Today, it was fixated on food. Possibly because I was bloody starving.

Over the course of half an hour or so, I decided this is what I want to cook this weekend. I had to promise my body that I would make these things - otherwise, it would have rebelled and where would I be then?

• Bread - will make the dough tonight and let it rest overnight
• Mussels - because they go so well with freshly baked bread
• Tarte tatin - already done. It should be ready to turn out by the time this blog entry is finished. More on the recipe in a minute
• Pasta - as in make my own pasta from scratch
• Slow cooked pork belly - it was fascinating to watch this bloke cook it up after he had just been on a cooking tour through........Iran. I didn't think pork belly would be that popular in Iran.

That should be enough energy to keep me going through a few more days of riding. 

As for the tarte tatin - I was going to make it days ago. I read a great tip in the linked article whereby you peel and core the apples the day before and leave them uncovered in the fridge to dry out a bit. If the apples have dried slightly, the tarte is firmer.

So of course I peeled them on Monday, smothered them in a bit of lemon juice and promptly lost them up the back of the fridge. I found them again tonight and remembered to cook the tarte.

Speaking of tarte - time to tip it over and pig out.

Pig over, pig out.

The loons the Greens reject

Whilst the Greens do their best to put a reasonable face on their party, you know that just beneath the surface, a boiling maelstrom of fadism, stupidity and ginger groups exist. This much was obvious this week when the NSW Greens health spokesman floated the idea of an inquiry into putting fluoride into water (with the aim presumably of giving an anti-fluoride loony group a soap box to spread their ravings from).

That lead balloon floated for a few millions of a second before being shot down by the Liberal health minister, the Labor shadow minister and even the Greens federal leader.

It was very refreshing to hear the idea being trounced as a "waste of money", which it surely was.

Green thieves

Two teenagers are due in court charged after a police pursuit through Sydney’s inner west this morning.
Police were in a fully-marked car behind a white Toyota Prius on Averill Street at Rhodes about 1.30am today (Sunday 9 June 2013), when the Prius allegedly made an illegal turn. A registration check revealed the vehicle had been reported stolen from Woy Woy last Wednesday (5 June).
Police activated warning lights, however, the vehicle accelerated and a pursuit was initiated. It continued along Concord Road where seconds later it struck the back of a Hyundai Getz; it then crossed the median strip and hit a BMW travelling in the opposite direction.

For crying out loud - what sort of person steals a Prius and then tries to make a run for it?

Thieves aren't getting any smarter.

Then again, they might have had a choice between stealing a Prius and a Ford, and decided to steal something that would at least get them from Woy Woy to the city without breaking down.

What kills more birds - duck hunting or wind turbines?

Just a thought - if Greens hate the killing of birds so much (ala duck hunting), why aren't they marching on wind turbines with pitchforks and firebrands?

Choice: it's getting cold, or I'm getting soft

Funny thing about the fog - it's actually nice and warm (for something that is supposed to be cold and damp).  I've been quite comfortable riding into work before dawn when the fog has been around as it's taken the edge off the morning cold.

Just when you get used to something nice, it ups and disappears on you. This morning was crystal clear - and crystal cold. Within a few minutes of hitting the road, I thought my arms were going to freeze off. I was cursing myself for not adding a thermal shirt under my jersey.

That quickly passed - by the time I got to work, I had sweat pouring down my face and dripping down my arms. If I'd added the third layer, I would have died from heat exhaustion.

I need to remember that sort of thing next time I find myself going soft at 0600.

And they call cyclists reckless

Had to drive somewhere this morning. It was foggy as hell - sensible people were taking it easy.

It was also a bit dark.

Some drivers though are invincible. One decided I was dawdling a bit, so she overtook me up the parking lane. Luckily for her, no parked cars emerged out of the fog for her to smash into the back of.

As dirty as a hippie's armpit

Hippies. Not the cleanest people who ever existed. I had a look at the bike over the weekend and decided it could do with a bit of a scrub. It really had started to look like it was owned by someone with a beard and an aversion to washing.

I got as far as scraping the built up road gunk off the chain - that took several applications of grease remover. After that, I was stuffed. The rest of the bike looks like Glastonbury in winter.

Morons

As we all know, morons come in many shapes and sizes. I had an absolute moron spree on Friday morning.

The first 3 were cyclists - two had their helmets dangling from their handle bars. I hate that - if you don't want to wear your helmet, leave it at home. It won't protect your skull from impact unless it is on your head and tightly strapped on. The 3rd had a hoodie over his head and I could hear the music blaring as he blasted past me - straight through a red light (which is what the first 2 morons did too). He didn't even seem to glance left or right before proceeding.

I was shaking my head at their stupidity when the lights went green. I started moving forward, and then slammed on the brakes.

A bus went straight through a red light in front of me. If I'd been rolling up to the lights when they changed instead of stopped, I would have smacked straight into the side of it.

Sometimes the only thing that saves you from the morons is sheer, dumb luck.

I can even stuff up making apricot balls

I had a go at making apricot balls today - muesli, dried apricots, honey and butter into the blender etc etc.

The recipe included a cup of coconut, so I chucked that into the blender too.

Whilst the ingredients were blending, I read the recipe.

It said to throw all but the coconut into the blender, then roll the balls in the desiccated coconut.

Ah well, I saved one step and it made no difference. And they don't shed little bits of coconut everywhere.

I'm socked, Bob. Absolutely shocked

One of the linkys on my sidebar goes to Bob Carr's blog.

It was revealed this week that, not only does Bob not write his blog these days - he doesn't even read it.

Makes two of us, mate.

It became pretty obvious after the election that Bob's blog was no longer an interesting download from his fertile mind. Instead, it had become a stinking swamp of press releases with all the interest of the back of a packet of cockroach baits.

I find that interesting. The intertubes were once hailed as a better means of keeping the elected in touch with the voters. Instead, it has become a medium for pouring out sanctimonious, dumbed down pap that nobody bothers to read.

Did Vivid

Had a look at the Vivid light festival this week. The photos I took are pretty useless in comparison to what the pros have been putting on line - it's definitely worth a look.

Thoughts:

1. It's a grand celebration of electricity and electric lighting. I hope we can afford to continue having these festivals in future.
2. There's plenty of things to keep young kids interested
3. It would be bloody awful to be pushing a pram around - the crowds were pretty intense
4. There are 60-odd displays to see - we saw about 1/4 of them and it was still good
5. The burgers and hot dogs on sale in the street market in the Rocks looked excellent - pity I'd had a feed before I got there
6. Photos don't do it justice - you have to turn up and experience it
7. Don't bother showing up during the day!

Labor party giving away free kicks

We had a pamphlet shoved into the letter box today - I've scanned the front of it. It must comprise the biggest series of free kicks given away to any candidate in yonks. Craig gets his name mentioned 6 times - priceless publicity paid for by the Labor party and distributed via the valuable time of the decreasing number of local Labor activists.

The inside is a whinge about how his family made their millions from gambling - and includes a statement which clearly mixes up turnover and profits.

But look at the above picture - what's not to like about it? Beer, smokes and pokies. Only the most sour faced nanny staters could find those images objectionable. If anything, they'd appeal greatly to traditional blue collar Labor voters. I don't smoke anymore, and I don't gamble - but I don't have a problem with those that choose to do so. And that beer looks awful tasty and refreshing. So much so, I had to go and put some beer in the freezer so I could have one with dinner. I now have a lovely positive association between nice cold beer and Craig Laundy.

And notice the use of the colour red and the naming of the Liberal party? That's amazing, given that Labor candidates have taken to using Liberal blue as their colour and avoiding any mention of Labor in their literature.

First rule of politics - never mention the name of your opponent. Just refer to "my opponent".

This has to get a mention in the next volume of "The history of stupid".

A day by the bay

Morning.

Mourning.

Death on the Bay?

I was zipping around the Bay Run a few weeks back when I came across a gaggle of coppers directing foot and cycle traffic on the path - something had happened, but I wasn't slowing down or stopping to find out. The last thing plod needs at times like that is a bunch of rubberneckers.

On the way home, when I passed the same spot I noticed a lot of plastic bags on the ground (not shopping bags - the sort of bags that electronic parts are sealed in) - that was odd.

I thought little of it until a few more days passed and bunches of flowers suddenly appeared on a tree at that spot.

ah.

I still have no idea what happened. Heart attack perhaps? The plastic bags might have contained something used by the paramedics perhaps?

I only remembered the flowers just then - I happened to be riding home early, and saw them before the sun set. You'd never spot them in the dark.

I'm thinking of all the old people that I see on the Run every day, strolling along and chatting with their friends. If you were going to pick a way to leave this world, that's not a bad way to go.

That's a lot of raw fruit and vegetables

I've been watching a very interesting BBC documentary called "The truth about food".



I'm not sure how much truth there is in this show, given that it's one of those modern documentaries that has been jazzed up with all sorts of devices to make it interesting enough to put on TV. Instead of a Professor Julius Sumner Miller lecture on a topic, the modern show requires a celebrity spending time in a helicopter flying over Austria to explain how long it takes poo to move through your guts.

That aside, it's worth watching if you're getting on a bit and wondering about constipation and bowel cancer. One of the things they do in episode one is lock up a bunch of subjects in a zoo for 12 days and feed them nothing but raw fruit and vegetables. They have to eat 5 kilos of raw fruit and veg a day to get enough calories. Plus one olive soaked in brine for their salt intake.

5 kilos is an awful lot of cauliflower and strawberries to be getting through. They can't cook any of it, so things like potatoes and pumpkin are off the menu. I was amazed at the sheer mass of food you need to consume if all you have is the raw stuff. And all they seem to do is lie around all day on lounge chairs gossiping and carrying on.

Personally, I'll stick to steak.

Was definitely time to clean the desk

I cleared up my desk at home today.

Found the Kindle that's been missing for weeks - it was under a stack of papers right in front of my keyboard.

Found a camera too. And a $100 Bunnings voucher.

Off to see what else I can find by cleaning up under the desk.

Lost my Kindle

Damn and blast. I was really enjoying Nick Cater's book. Now I have to clean the house in order to find it.

A good day for some

After days of mist and fog and rain, it was nice to see the sun for once. And fluffy pink clouds.

It was a lovely morning for a ride - not such a good morning to be driving (or crashing or breaking down) on the Anzac Bridge. The white care above was stuck in the middle lane with the bonnet up - the police turned up just as I got there. About 100 metres further up the bridge, there was a ute parked in the left hand lane with the hazards on - the driver was yaking on the phone and I couldn't work out if he too had broken down, or if the bloke above had smacked into the back of him and he was reporting the prang.

Not that I really cared much. I simply pitied the drivers that would be stuck in a rather large traffic snarl if those two cars weren't moved quickly.

The fog

There's a bridge in there somewhere.

There's a bay out there somewhere too. Not too much rowing going on in that murk.

Teenage kitchen mayhem

The teens got it into their heads last night to bake some biscuits. I suggested they print out the recipe, pulled out the ingredients they needed, told them to put away the washing up first and left them to it.

I saw the first batch come out of the oven - they were actually pretty good for a first attempt. In fact they were pretty good full stop. I then hit the sack, expecting that they'd clean up after themselves.

Hahahaha - I am such an idiot. I got up to find the kitchen awash with dirty utensils, and the bench tops caked in hardened biscuit dough. The teens of course were out, so I was stuck with the washing up. What astounded me is that they used every single mixing bowl that we own - all 9 of them - to make a batch of biscuits.

For crying out loud - it's not like they were making Heston's black forest gateau, which takes more utensils, gadgets, bowls and trays than I can count to produce. In fact it needs about three kitchens to come up with the different layers.



I need to have some words with them about efficiency and effectiveness in the kitchen. And washing up after themselves. Plus they didn't leave me a single bloody biscuit!

The feeding zone

No, I am not talking about a section of road in a race where team staff hand out bags of food to the likes of me. The idea of me being able to grab a bag at 40km/h, sling it over a shoulder, rifle around inside for goodies and not crash into dozens of riders around me doing the same thing is laughable. If I want a feed during a ride, I stop at a cafe and lunch like the French.

What I'm referring to is the optimum time to have lunch, assuming you've ridden to work and are planning on riding home. If you eat too early, you'll be starving by the time you're hopping on the bike. Too late, and you're riding home feeling like your guts are full of half a buffalo. Which is what I did today - after being trapped in a long running meeting, I was famished by the time I emerged from the office.

The solution?

An enormous burger with a side serving of onion rings.

Geez, it was good. But boy, did I pay for it a few hours later when it was time to dash. My guts were still grinding through the better part of the back end of a cow - it felt like I'd swallowed half a breeze block.

So the feed zone for me is around noon, and I have to stick to foods that won't wipe me out on the ride home. Creamy pasta is a disaster. The only pasta I can eat for lunch is home made stuff that isn't heavy as lead. Salads can be too light - if I have salad, I definitely need a pre-ride afternoon snack. Same goes for laksa - I love the stuff, but it doesn't fill me up. Laksa + no snack = bonking on the way home.

Most Indian and Chinese dishes are also a disaster - if I'm going Chinese, I stick to steamed fish and stir fried vegies. Fish and chips are a no-no. Any form of Subway, McDonalds, KFC or pizza is definitely to be avoided at all costs. Thai food is generally pretty good, and I love a good green papaya salad. The only downside there is the chilli tends to lead to an unpleasant afterburner effect.

This does tend to limit the options a bit - except that I've found I can eat just about anything the Japanese care to throw at me. The only downside there is the cost. If I could afford it, I'd have a bloody enormous bento box lunch every day - preferably with lashing of eel.

Melbourne weather in Sydney

Flipping Mexicans - they come north and bring their blasted weather with them. Cold and dry one morning, warm in the afternoon, raining the next morning, sunny all day and then rain on the way home. Thick fog this morning followed by sunshine and then more rain.

The fog this morning was that thick, surreal stuff that we don't get that often in Sydney. Visibility was about 100 metres at best and it did a good job of keeping people in bed. Gone are the days of fighting through packs of pedestrians walking around the Bay Run - I saw no cyclists this morning and only a handful of joggers. You've got to be tenacious to get out of bed in this weather and exercise - it's no wonder most people get fat over winter.

Although it's been wet and cool, the weather has been anything but miserable. It drizzled on the way home last night, but I reckon the dampness when I got home was 50% sweat and 50% drizzle. It was the sort of drizzle that you'd barely bother putting up an umbrella for.

What gobsmacked me though was the reaction of the teens when I got home. Their sport today was cancelled because of the rain - because the teachers are afraid of the OH&S paperwork they have to fill out if someone slips over on the wet grass.

Yep. In case someone slips WHILST PLAYING SPORT on the wet grass.

Oh dead God...........

That sucks

Riding in the snow really doesn't appeal to me.

Cadel Evans is fuming after a mechanical problem with his bike in snowy conditions cost him his second placing at the Giro d'Italia on the penultimate stage.

In a three-week race contested in the most brutal of weather conditions, it was a desperately cruel blow for the 36-year-old Australian who has sent a strong message to those who doubted he could rediscover good form ahead of the Tour de France.

With his bike malfunctioning for the last 2km up the last climb to the Tre Cime di Lavaredo summit, Evans lost a further 1m30 seconds to be 5:52 behind stage winner and race leader Vincenzo Nibali (Astana), who was all but assured of a glorious victory in his home country.

Much more painfully, he was powerless to stop Colombia's Rigoberto Uran (Sky) taking 1:11 from him to overtake him in second place with Evans 1:09 behind in third.

Evans brushed aside his BMC Racing team staff as he dismounted at the finish, examining his gears and bike and seeing the sprockets covered in slushy snow which may have prevented him using his chosen gear.

I have enough trouble with my gears when it rains - the front derailleur gums up with grit and stuff and sticks on the big cog, so I tend to find myself unable to change down when I really need to. I'm now quite adept at unclipping my right shoe and then belting the derailleur with a sideways blow with my toes in order to get it onto the small cog. Trouble is, that trick only works on the front cog. Snow would be a nightmare on the rear cluster. I have heard stories from Canberra riders about cables freezing and refusing to move in winter.

Cadel will just have to take a lesson from me - when the conditions are awful, carry a very small can of WD40.

Arts, crap and all that

Tim Blair draws our attention to a crappy new exhibition:

Difficult territory is a cornerstone of the visual arts – so artist Mikala Dwyer knew it would be confronting last night when she invited Balletlab dancers to empty their bowels as part of a performance at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art.
The two-hour act saw the six dancers, masked but naked beneath sheer garments, move around a room in the gallery before sitting on transparent stools and performing – only if they were moved to do so – what is usually one of our most private and rarely discussed daily acts. 

I spent half an  hour this morning searching for the annual reports of the organisations involved - Balletlab and the ACCA. I gave up trying to untangle the spaghetti-like tangle of funding sources - the way that our money is funneled to these organisations via state and federal bodies is unbelievable.

Let's just ignore the funding for a while. We know that tax dollars get poured into all sorts of weird art every year that seems to be viewed largely only by a small elite. I could rant all day about that.

Instead, let's talk about the fixation of this artist on crap - and what that says about the world today.

I have dealt with a lot of crap in my life, so I'm not squeamish about it. I've shoveled large amounts just about every sort of domesticated animal crap you can think of - horse, cow, sheep, chicken and pig. I've spent time around large flocks of chooks, ducks and geese, and believe me, they can  produce a lot of crap. Remember when cars didn't have air con and you left the windows down in summer? I learned quickly not do to that if chooks etc were around - it was a quick way to end up with eggs and crap all through your car.

I've crapped in the bush more times than I want to think about. You don't wander off into the bush alone when on a patrol or in a fighting position - you crap where someone can see you and watch over you. If you don't like crapping in front of other people, stay away from the army. The video below is not a bad depiction of how things can be. The army made me an expert at digging, constructing and filling in 4 hole crappers. I always managed to do something stupid that resulted in me getting the crap jobs.




Crap is something that has to be dealt with - if you don't deal with it properly, you end up with Cholera outbreaks in Haiti that kill thousands of people.

We forget how awful most cities were until proper sewers were installed. The annual death rates from crap related diseases were incredible. If you've got some time to kill, I strongly recommend having a look through Sewer History. It's fascinating.

We don't have to deal with crap anymore. When we need to crap, we don't need to go outside, dig a hole, crap, and then have a look at the crap as we shovel some dirt onto it. The largest domesticated dogs don't produce anything like the amount of crap that you get from the horses that a farm of 70 years ago would have had. We no longer see horses in our cities - cars having seen to that. Disposable nappies have largely removed the need to deal with the crap our kids produce. Thanks to the flush toilet and a host of other advances, crap is largely removed from our lives. The only time crap gets reintroduced is when we travel to the third world and find out how the poor deal with crap. Or more likely, fail to deal with it.

Which is probably why artists are fascinated by it - they no longer have to deal with it. Our modern life has removed us from farms, farm animals and long drop toilets. Shoveling crap, or stepping in it, is no longer a daily problem. Hey - that's an invention I forgot - those little plastic bags you use to pick up dog crap. Even dog crap has largely (but not entirely) disappeared from the urban landscape.

I have only one thing to say to everyone involved in this arts project - go spend some time on a proper working farm - preferably a dairy perhaps. You'll be over this crap before you know it.

I'm so tough, I'm amazed I haven't rusted

The office isn't equipped with enough bike parking for everyone that wants to ride when the weather is good - if you aren't in the garage by 0730, good luck with finding an easy place to park the bike. It reached the point this year where we were going to have to start double stacking to fit them all in. Cycling to work, and on weekends, has become so popular that the company is now handing out branded kit to cyclists for participation in events, and the last such event saw a pack of 30 of my work mates tooling down the highway together.

That was summer. When the weather was nice.

It's now getting pretty ugly. It's not that cold yet - I haven't switched over to the full length gloves and dug out the undershirts - but it's nippy enough to need booties and limb warmers. And we're now getting rain reasonably frequently.

I don't mind the rain, as the cloud cover makes for a warmer morning. Yes, there is a big difference between 7 degrees and 11 degrees, even if one is dry and one is wet. For me, a wet 11 degrees is comfier than a dry 7 degrees.

The rain though has washed away all the soft cocks. There were a few days last week where mine was the only bike looking for a parking spot. Everyone thinks I am nuts, but the only things you need for riding in the rain are a good spray jacket and a tough mental attitude. The body might be soft, but the attitude is not. Whenever I start riding on a miserable, dark, wet morning, I think of this:

• I slept in a warm, dry bed last night
• I had a full night's sleep
• In 45 minutes, I will be in a hot shower
• After the shower, I will dress in dry clothes
• After that, I will have a good breakfast with a nice coffee

I then think back to my time in the reserves many years ago, and the miserable conditions during every winter exercise. Broken sleep. Hard ground. No shower for a fortnight. Rat packs. Rat pack coffee. Being wet and cold for days at a time. Filthy clothes. Shaving with cold water. Thawing frozen fingers in a container of coffee.

Compared to then, riding to work is pretty comfortable. So I suck it up and turn the pedals, and before long, I'm relaxing in that hot shower.

Goat over, goat out

When I want to wind up my green-leaning friends, I tell them about how I want to get a mountain bike and start riding in national parks.

With a rifle on my back.

I call it environmentally friendly feral animal reduction.

Here's a nice story (with video) on how a national park in the Galapagos has been clearing feral goats which have denuded the vegetation.

I worked on a sheep station up north for a short period and saw the damage that large numbers of feral goats did to the vegetation - essentially, they stripped everything bare and left a dust bowl behind. Since they could climb trees to a reasonable height, they took out the trees as well as the grass and shrubs. Unless you've been there and seen the goats in action, it's pretty hard to explain it to a Balmain dweller who hasn't set foot in anything rougher than their local council-provided landscaped park (with doggie cafe and nice lattes).

I've also been to Kakadu and seen the damage done by wild pigs around the water holes - it's really impressive. Greenies would go nuts if I drove my 4WD around and around a water hole and messed it up beyond belief, but they seem to have no issues with pigs doing the same damage (and more).

I'd steer clear of eating any pigs I shot due to worries about disease, but I am fond of goat curry. If I do splash out and get the mountain bike, the hunting licence won't be far behind.

Just what we need - artists defined as "key workers"

The story - there were 15 or so "artists" living in a run down house in a very posh suburb in the eastern suburbs, until the owners finally got around to doing the place up and kicked them out. The house was so decrepit, they were paying $500 per week.

That warmed the cockles of my heart. In my younger days, I too spent years crammed into low rent flea pits with all manner of neer-do-wells. It took me back to a time when I was carefree and had enough cash in my pocket for at least two raucous nights out per week. At one point in the late 1990s, I spotted an ad in the paper for a very large, relatively cheap house at Bondi. It was obviously a dump, and it would have required 7 or 8 people to live in it to afford the rent of about $100 a week each. I was sorely tempted to take the lease and then fish around and collect a gaggle of bums to share the place.

It's a problem faced by aspiring young creative people across the city: how to afford to pursue an artistic career in Sydney, rated this year by The Economist as the world's third-most expensive city after Tokyo and Osaka?
The City of Sydney is proposing one answer. The council is pushing to have artists included in the definition of ''key workers'' - a category traditionally limited to low-income public sector workers who provide essential city services such as police, nurses, teachers and paramedics. The change would make artists eligible to apply for the limited supply of affordable housing set aside for key workers.
''There's all kinds of workers that a city needs, and not all of them will earn $100,000 a year but they are still crucial to city infrastructure and city liveability,'' Rachel Healy, who runs the council's cultural policy, says. Even established artists often earn well below the average wage, and ''there's a strong view that artists should be recognised as key workers''.
While all young people are hit by the high cost of housing in Sydney, there are strong economic and cultural arguments to help early-career creative artists to stay in the city, Healy says.
The creative industries contribute $8.2 billion to the city economy, and the sector is growing faster than all other industries, according to a recent state government draft report.
Creative people contribute much to the liveability of a city, and that cultural overlay helps attract mobile, educated graduates from all industries, Healy says. If creatives are priced out of the city, ''the overall experience of Sydney is profoundly compromised,'' she says. ''It's a very different kind of problem than, 'Oh well, it's just a bit sad that it's only the lawyers and accountants live here'.''

Ah, those were the days.

Anyway, how is a struggling artist supposed to make do in an expensive place like Sydney?

Simple - do what we did. Grow up and get a fucking job.

When did young drivers become so pathetic?

When I was young, I drove like my nuts were on fire and I needed to get somewhere very fast in order to put them out. A slew of accidents testified to the fact that I thought I was a much better driver than I really was, coupled with excess speed and a fairly reckless attitude around getting from A to B.

Whilst there are still plenty of young drivers wrapping themselves around power poles at 0300hrs, I've noticed an increase in totally pathetic P-platers. My weekend road trip took me through a number of fixed speed cameras. They were advertised well in advance, so there was no hope of anyone actually getting booked for speeding. However, instead of slowing down to say 89km/h to go through a 90km/h camera, I was stuck behind a series of young numpties who insisted on slowing down to 60km/h in a 90 zone.

60!! If the kids weren't in the car, I would have been turning the air blue with expletives. What's gotten into the little buggers?

More adventures in Gongolia

Spent the weekend at a friend's place down the coast, just past Gongolia. I've come back without the major symptoms of Gongoloidioness, which generally involve writing long rants about random stuff.

I took the bike. I'm trying to decide whether that was a mistake or not. The land around our place is relatively flat. The land where we stayed was anything but, and I failed to consult a topographic map before going on my ride. Hills. More hills. Huge freaking hills - one after the other. Good for your fitness, but insanely hard work. I thought I was going to die.

But dying of heart failure on the outer Gongolian hills was the least of my worries. Getting mangled on the drive back was a greater risk - because some of the morons driving home on Sunday night were either driving with two blown headlights, or they couldn't work out why they had a hard time seeing where they were going on a pitch black freeway at 9pm. Don't ask me what it is about Gongolia that does this to people, but it's pretty frightening.

Death to flappy straps

I hadn't thought about this in years, but it was forced into my consciousness recently.

I have a thing about flappy straps on back packs. Those of you who have lugged the green variety around should understand my lunatic obsession. When I get a new back pack, the first thing I do is set the straps to the correct length, then either cut off the excess strap or roll it up and bind it with insulation tape (black only). Or I cut a fair bit of strap off, leave a bit in case I need to loosen it later and then bind up the excess straps with tape.

There can be no flappy straps. All loose straps must be neatly tidied away.

I hadn't even realised I was doing this until Junior borrowed a back pack recently. When it was returned, all the straps were flapping loose - he'd pulled off the tape to adjust the straps, but then hadn't tidied them up again before returning it. (Actually, I found it on the floor in his bedroom under a pile of rubbish, socks and noodle packets when I had to go looking for it).

I was about to launch into a loud rant when I caught myself and stopped. How on earth was I going to explain the whys and wherefores of this non-flappy strap requirement? It was better to just shut up, find the insulation tape and tidy them up again.

How crap was your car?

Fascinating look at how the cars of the past have faded away. Here and here.

I love these videos

I love these videos that show how quickly new inventions have been adopted over the last century.

Overdrive

Overdrive - a word I suddenly thought about when I was considering taking the teenagers for a practice drive around the block. It's presumably meaningless to most of the teenagers of today - I'll have to ask them if they really understand what it means. Having grown up in the days of the three on the tree, and considering a 4 speed floor shifter to be the height of automotive sophistication, it's amazing to consider the advances that have now given us 7 and 9 speed automatic transmissions, flappy paddles and all that sort of stuff.

Back in the 1980s, I was lent for about a year a small sporty car that had overdrive. I think that was the only car I've ever driven for an extended period that was fitted with it. It was operated electrically by a button on the gear knob. Being an English car, it amazed us by working - most of the time. Whether it produced better fuel economy on the long country drives was another matter - I didn't notice any improvement. However, I'm sure it allowed car salesmen to shift a few more units of product.

I'll have to think of some more words that no longer really have a contemporary meaning. Whilst people still talk about shifting into overdrive, the overdrive itself is long gone as a useful product.

Why can't the public sector develop good services?

Catching a bus isn't that painful these days thanks to a great app called TripView. After trying the free version, I was more than happy to spend a huge $2.99 on the full version. Anyone paying a visit to Sydney with the intention of catching a train, ferry or bus should buy it before they get here. It's brilliant.

It doesn't eliminate the smelly, fat people that you have to deal with on the bus occasionally, but it takes the hassle out of catching public transport at the right time.

The software was developed by a private company. When they started, they didn't have real time information on the location of the bus or train that you wanted to catch - that was introduced this year. In fact, the public monopolies were so manic about keeping their timetabling information to themselves, that the company had to develop a way to scrape the timetables from their websites. It just goes to show how individual persistence and ingenuity can overcome bureaucratic stupidity and inertia.

Many years ago, I used to drink with a bloke who was a software developer for the railways. This was back in the days of the Nokia banana phone - the one used by Nemo in The Matrix. That's how long ago this was. He managed to convince his boss to buy something more advanced than the Nokia 3210, which was the most popular phone at the time. He got one that came with a very basic data service, and in his spare time on weekends, he developed an app that could push timetable information to the phone.

It was pretty hopeless, but it demonstrated what could be done with a very clunky phone and a data service that ran at no more than 9kb/s. It was also expensive to run as data services were in their infancy.

So it ended up being a total failure, but it was an interesting experiment. He tried to get some internal support to take it further - to turn it into a customer facing app - but management couldn't be less interested. Making life easier for the customer was not in their remit. They didn't think anyone would want to use it. In the end, he moved on, and I haven't had a beer with him in quite a while.

When the conservatives got into power, one of the things that they did was to force the public transport operators to open up their timetables and real time information feeds to private software developers. I imagine the Transport Minister had to beat the bureaucrats over the head with a baseball bat for months to make that happen. Resistance would have been intense, and I bet one of the reasons for resisting would be the idea that they suddenly wanted to develop an app like this, and allowing private competition would put that project at risk.

I saw things like that happen a few times when I was in the public sector. The bureaucrats would have less than zero interest in doing something until someone from outside popped up and said that they could do it. With great rapidity, the bureaucrats would circle the wagons and mount a spirited defense to ensure that the interloper didn't trespass on their turf. Once the interloper was beaten back, they went back to doing nothing about that particular issue. Protection of their turf was key. Delivering a service to the public was barely even considered.

So if you ever get to use TripView, you can thank the current Minister and her staff for belting the bloody bureaucrats until they relented and made the timetabling and real time information public. Or at least partly public. Whenever I have to catch a bus or train, I say a silent thanks to Gladys.

And people wonder why I always get my iced coffee from the same place

I have often been accused of being a man of rigid habits - for not trying new things on a whim - and instead sticking to the tried and tested. I won't argue with that too much - I have my moments where I throw caution to the wind and give something new a go, but generally, I go with what I know.

I had an early morning meeting at the other end of town this week, so I breakfasted at Vivo Cafe. After scanning the menu, I discovered that they sold an iced latte that looked awfully like what I always want - just coffee, milk and ice. However, there was a wrinkle, as the menu explained:

Cold Brew Coffee 
All our cold coffee drinks start with this base. This method of cold extraction gives a sweet, full bodied flavour without any bitterness. It takes over 8 hours to extract 3 litres of coffee!

This I was not so sure of. I always ask the barrista to pull me a fresh shot of coffee straight from the machine, and to add extra ice if necessary to cool down the drink. If the coffee and barrista are any good, this pretty much guarantees a good iced coffee. However, I decided I'd give this "cold brew" method a crack.

And the results?

For $5.80, it was almost the most expensive, disgusting iced coffee I've ever sampled. It wasn't the most expensive, or the most disgusting - but it was up there (or down there) with the worst. The coffee was insipid and sickly sweet - almost undrinkable. It's what you get when your palate has been fouled by the commercial "iced coffees" that pollute the supermarkets across the eastern seaboard - products that have 10 times too much sugar in them and nowhere near enough coffee. It's what you get when you believe the market is crying out for yet another sweet, sugary concoction. As if we don't have enough of those already!

The breakfast itself wasn't bad. Can't complain about the service. Price was what you'd expect in the middle of the CBD (ie, expensive). But the iced latte was the pits.

There goes another suit

Every now and then, I have to don black tie for an event. It's been quite a while since I've had to do this - having kids precluded us from attending these sorts of things for some years, but the kids are now at an age where such things are possible again. It was just too expensive to hire a nanny etc on a regular basis - cheaper to stay at home and be unsociable. With an event coming up, I decided tonight I should pull the suit and shirt out of the wardrobe and check that they still fit.

Just one small problem - all the cycling since our last social outing has caused my thighs to swell somewhat. Actually, more than somewhat. "Enormously" would be more accurate. I can't fit into my bloody trousers anymore! With a lot of tugging and squeezing, I managed to get them on and found to my amazement that I could do them up - the waist was fine - but sitting down or moving was out of the question. Bending over would surely result in a great deal of seam splitting in the worst possible place.

So there's an unexpected cost of cycling. New suits.

The wretchedness of trying to build a cheap PVR

My old PVR is dead. To give you an idea of how old it is, it contains a 40GB hard drive. It's ancient - not even worth trying to salvage any bits out of it.

Since Le Tour is approaching, I need to get something up and running to record SBS. I've been looking at a variety of PVRs that range from very cheap to around 500 bucks, and I'm yet to find one that really stands out and says "buy me". I want something that will record TV and allow me to copy existing movies onto it over the network - I've ripped most of our DVDs, and I don't like the idea of using attached external storage.

I was having a hard time deciding what to do, when I had a brain wave. I bought a new PC recently, so why not rebuild the old one as a PVR? How hard could it be?

Well, for something that seemed so straightforward at first, it's turned into a nightmare thanks to Bill Gates and his crew of useless programmers. I thought about building it with Linux for about 5 seconds, and then gave that idea away. I rebuilt an old laptop last year with Linux, and whilst it worked and ran well, I never gelled with the software. I'm starting to have second thoughts about using Linux.

The only OS I had for the old PC was Vista, so I plonked it on - dead easy. Then I tried to apply service pack 1. I must have tried it 20 times over the last 4 days, and spent hours looking at workarounds on various forums. I've even rebuilt the PC 5 times - no dice. It just refuses to accept SP1.

Which is bonkers, since I rebuilt it and installed SP1 and SP2 just last year. Maybe it hates me for relegating it to the lounge room. I don't know.

Anyway, my advice after dicking around with it for the better part of an entire weekend is just go out and buy a proper PVR that someone else has built.

This is good

I picked this ad up over at Samizdata, where they are arguing about whether this ad will annoy the living daylights out of you, or make you want to drink gin.



Right now, I feel like a G&T. I guess it comes down to your personality.

How do you feel about it?

The bloody weather, amongst other things

One thing you develop as a cyclists is a reasonably keen interest in the weather. There's no climate control button on the handlebars that will keep you at a constant 21 degrees, and of course there's no protection from any of the elements. Or insects. Birds. And dogs.

A few short months ago, I was complaining about the heat. Now, I'm worrying about how cold it will be tomorrow morning, and looking forward to when it starts warming up again. We're never satisfied. It's almost always too hot, too cold, too windy, too wet or too dry.

We've managed to get out of town for a few weekends so far this year, travelling down beyond where the Gongoloids live. Or the Gongolians. Either term fits (that's how I describe the denizens of Wollongong and its  environs). On our first visit, I packed the bike and went for an early morning ride around the local area of the beachside town that we were staying in. Bloody hell - I almost died of heart failure on the umpteenth hill. I have never been so knackered and ready to quit on a ride. Ever.

I can do big hills, and I can do a fair few hills, but I can't do lots of big hills with very little spacing between them where you can recover. It was like riding a rollercoaster. I met a few middle aged blokes cycling the other way - they looked as drained and haggard as I. I wonder if they were also asking themselves why on earth they were suffering so on a beautiful Saturday morning.

I missed that Saturday afternoon as I got home, showered and promptly slept for 5 hours.

We have since been back again. For various reasons (cowardice not included), the bike stayed at home. However, we did a family outing and I had the opportunity to drive the same route that I had previously cycled.

Our car, and lots of other cars, struggled to make it up the hills that almost killed me - they were deceptively steep and horribly long. It was no wonder I'd suffered so much.

Next time, I'll have a look at a map before heading out, and take note of the topography.

Phew

I think posting has been so light of late because the new template was annoying me no end. It made Blogger as slow as a wet week, and it always screwed up the layout of most posts. So it's back to the future for me.

We eat a lot of icecream

I bought this book on ice cream manufacturing many years ago - don't ask why. Back then, it cost me over a hundred bucks.

The current edition has a table showing per capita consumption for different countries. Australia leads the pack at 17.9 somethings - the table is not clear what it is measuring. Volume? Value? Waffle cones?

That's my factoid for the day. And now, I feel like some gellato.

And now for the best ribs that I have had in decades

You wonder why I blog about food and cycling a lot? Simples - I like to eat (I am  not some svelte skinny super model as a result), so I need a means to burn off the intake. I'm not big on vomiting after a meal to keep the calorie intake down.

After trashing a joint in my last post, let me introduce you to some good tucker - a place calls Ribs & Burger. They were so good, I'm thinking about going there for lunch. Right now. Even though it isn't even 11am yet.

Yes, they're in a food court, and the ribs can be a bit expensive - but bloody hell - they're good. I don't mind forking out the cash if the food is worth it, and these are worth every cent.

If you can get over the bit about it being in a food court, then it's heaven on a stick. I just wish my local pub served ribs this good - can't think of anything better than spending an evening with a fine platter of ribs and a few cold beers in a place with a bit of ambiance. (Did I mention they're in a food court, which has the ambiance of, well, a food court?)

The worst ribs ever - in the entire universe even

My food intake spans the entire spectrum from bad to good. After spending years surviving on boarding school food, uni college food and army ration packs, I'm really not that fussy about what I'm eating when I need to eat. If I'm hungry, I'll shovel down whatever is on offer. Except maybe the sheep's eyeball. Unless it comes with a tasty sauce on the side.

On the other hand, when I have a bit of time and money to spare, I like to eat as well as I possibly can. That's when the food snob side takes over. I don't see the point in eating a bad meal if you have the means to eat a good meal.

Which brings me to Pancake Parlor. We've eaten there twice in the last 6 months - mainly because the kids needed feeding when we were on an outing and it was there. And OK, I needed feeding too. It serves up the sort of bland, sweet, filling food that will tempt kids in the 4-18 age bracket to actually eat when you want them to eat.

I'm not going to fault the pancakes - they are "pan cakes". If you like that sort of thing (and clearly the Japanese students living within walking distance of Darling Harbour really like that sort of thing), then they do it quite well. Big, fat bland cakes that have been cooked in a pan and then smothered with cheap cream, icecream or syrup. Or all three. They are definitely not my thing - I prefer a thin crepe that can be rolled up and shoveled down like a cheap, fat cigar.

That's not a very good analogy, but it's early on Sunday morning, so it will have to do.

As an aside, Mum bought a crepe pan back in the late 1970s. It was electric, and it had a convex non stick surface that was perfect for making crepes. You made a bowl of crepe mix (which is thinner than pancake mix) and then dipped  the upside down crepe maker into the mix. It was the height of sophistication back then. It's pretty clear where my food snobbery comes from. It was fun as a young kid to make the crepes, and then flame them in a good glug of brandy. My parents have always enjoyed sloshing alcohol onto things and then letting the kids set it on fire. So long as the kids didn't get splashed with brandy and also get set on fire, everything was fine. My parents still do it whenever kids and dessert are in the same room. Dad would set fire to apple pie if you let him.

So I'm a crepe guy, not a big fat pancake guy. But the kids don't mind the pancakes, so we've eaten there twice.

On both occasions, I've had the ribs. The ribs are expensive at $26, and for that price, I expect pretty good ribs. I also can't take pancakes for lunch. It's just wrong.

Pretty good ribs are exactly what I didn't get. I tried the beef ribs the first time round - they were adequately cooked, but not falling off the bone, and the sauce appeared to have been painted on at the last minute. They were edible, but overpriced and underspiced. I can understand the lack of kick - the demographic they are serving are probably not interested in a really spicy set of ribs.

Second time around, I went for pig. I had much the same experience, expect the ribs were served cold. Not frozen. Not fridge temperature. Just "I've been sitting on the bench for 3 hours" cold. There was not a hint of warmth in a single rib of that pig.

Under normal circumstances, I would have sent them back for a bit of nuking. However, I gave the staff one look (The fish that John West rejected was the first thing that came to mind) and decided I'd just grin and bear it. After all, they weren't that good to start with, so eating them cold wasn't going to make them much worse.

And you know what? That was pretty much correct. The youngest has just walked over with a toy bucket and told me that it's his chum bucket. Thanks to that happening, the Pancake Parlor and the Chum Bucket are now firmly fixed in my mind as twins. By the way, read down at the link to see what chum is made of.

The sad thing is that we will inevitably eat there again, and I'll eat the ribs - again. I'm a sucker for punishment.

My guts know if I'm going to ride or not

Do you ever promise yourself you'll get up early and do something the following morning, and then you wake up at 0-dark-hundred and start shilly-shallying about doing it? You lie there and your brain starts processing the pros and cons of doing whatever it is you were going to do, and half the time, you don't end up getting out of bed.

Now that the weather is getting wetter and colder, I'm experiencing more of those moments. It's OK during the week - I  have to get to work, and the later I leave, the worse the traffic will be. Is there really much difference between leaving at 0600 when it's 12 degrees and raining or at 0700 when it's 13 degrees and raining and the roads are full of half asleep drivers who are more dangerous than a Nigerian with your bank account details.

The weekends are something altogether different. I don't have to do anything, but I like to get up early and get some exercise and preferably a bit of social interaction with some other cyclists.

The clearest indicator of whether I will ride or not is my guts. I have some sort of subconscious connection between the lizard component of my brain and my bowels. If the primeval part of my brain knows I am going to ride, then the bowels start moving and it's game over - I have to get up, crap and then go do a few miles. 

I think this is because I went for an early morning swim many years ago, and found that as I was walking towards the beach just before sunrise, I had an absolutely overwhelming need to do an enormous crap. It's a good thing the public toilets at North Bondi were open at that hour - otherwise, I would have crapped on the grass out of sheer necessity. There was no holding it back.

Since then, my guts have never let me leave the house for any form of exercise without voiding themselves first. It doesn't matter what I'm doing - swimming, skiing, running, cycling or just going for a long stroll - the guts are taking no chances. They're never getting caught short again.

So for me, I don't have to stuff around trying to decide whether to ride or not. If the guts say "go", I go. And frankly, they usually make better decisions than my brain.

More great cullinary disasters

Made chocolate mousse tonight. You know how it is supposed to be soft and fluffy and light?

Mine is like aerated concrete.

However, it's pretty potent. More than a few spoonfuls supplies a rush like 6 cups of coffee and a tab of speed.

Something from a seat of learning

I give you - the Bristol stool scale. Developed at the University of Bristol. This has nothing to do with home furnishings.

See? Not everything that comes out of modern unis is complete crap.

Stupid decisions = bad outcomes

Friday was one of those days when I must have taken some stupid pills after lunch. I couldn't believe how idiotic I was when I rode home. For starters, I misjudged how fast a car was coming towards me at an intersection, and I rode right out in front of it. Thankfully, the driver was smarter and faster reacting than me, and they braked and avoided running me down.

Not 2 minutes later, I made a silly overtaking decision and narrowly avoided a head on prang with another cyclist.

After that, I took it really, really easy. I'm convinced things like this happen in threes, and I didn't want number 3 to end up with me getting carted off in the back of an ambulance.

Here's my gripe for the day - people make stupid decisions all the time, but there are some that are adamant that the bad outcome they just suffered was a result of a stupid decision they made earlier. Blame always has to be sheeted home somewhere else. I know that if I'd ended up under that car yesterday, it would have been my own damned fault for being a bonehead - and I'd learn my lesson and not do it again. What is it with some people that refuse to admit they were stupid, and continue to make the same stupid  mistakes again and again?

Cream snobs

I've done something right.

I've raised my kids to be cream snobs.

I whipped up a self saucing chocolate pud tonight. In anticipation, I put "double cream" on the shopping list - that's the best stuff to have with a rich chocolate pudding.

The missus obliged and duly brought home a tub of double cream. However, I forgot to mention that some of the local supermarkets are no longer stocking proper double cream - they only carry cream that has been thickened with gelatin. I've found that out from reading the ingredients of every tub of cream in the supermarket fridge.

So we ended up with gelatin infused cream in the fridge - an abomination in my books - but I was none the wiser.

The kids got a bowl of pudding each. The cream was put on the dining table for them to serve themselves.

Both tried the cream and said, "I'm not eating that". I was told in no uncertain terms to return to the kitchen, find some proper cream and whip it up. Which I did. Bless their little cotton socks. They might be unable to read the ingredients on a tub of cream, but they can tell crap when they see it.