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Just like the last big storm, after yesterday, today the bike track was ankle deep in slimy mud and washed-away mulch from the gardens — and the councils had only just finished replacing the last lot!

Drizzly rain all day, and of course I left my rain jacket at home — somewhere my subconscious doesn't think I should need it in the summer.

I left work in light rain, wondering about all the motorists with their headlights on. Got to Hawthorn to discover that the bike path where I'd crashed was now covered in mud, water, wood chips and miscellaneous garbage from overflowing bins. Council workers were wading around clearing up the larger pieces, and sirens could be heard all around. A little bit further along and I realised that the white drifts all along the path weren't polystyrene foam or plastic, it was great mounds of hail! Then I came around the corner to discover the Hawthorn velodrome under water as well as a completely flooded street, and sports oval knee-deep in water and covered in floating toys and other miscellania, washed out of the houses up the street. Somewhere under it all was the bike track, so I followed the trail that others had used, picking my way on foot through the trees where the ground rose to the wall of the freeway.

Interesting fact of the day. While browsing around on plink I found that it is less than 700km from Melbourne to Sydney in a straight line — I'd thought it nearer a thousand!

After yesterday's exertions, today was a lazy day. Zero inclination to ride my bike anywhere! We sat around in the campground for the morning, watching the ducks and slowly packing everything away into the car.

A stroll into town for more food — still hungry after the ride — took longer than expected when we ran into a couple from Queensland who had a Trek-200 tandem, very similar to ours. I'd seen them yesterday riding back into town after they'd ridden up Mount Buffalo, today they were taking it easy as well!

We left Bright around lunch time, called in at Milawa to restock on the world famous Milawa mustards, then off down the Hume highway for the long drive home.

Today was the Audax Alpine Classic, a very long day on the bike! Probably the longest, hardest ride that I can remember ever doing. Two hundred kilometres of alpine Victoria, starting in Bright, over Towonga gap, up to Falls Creek, back down and over Towonga Gap again, back to Bright, then up Mount Buffalo and back!

With far too little training I was in a woeful state by the time I got to climb Towonga Gap for the second time — after starting in the cool of the morning, the heat and flies were driving me crazy, and I was climbing the hill at a miserable 9km/hr. By the time I reached Bright after 130km, I wanted nothing more than to get off my bike, eat the food and go back to the campsite. Sore legs, sore back, sore arms, but after twenty minutes of lying in the shade and resting, that nagging little voice kept telling me that I really should try to complete the ride, that it was “only another seventy kilometres,” and that there were “only twenty kilometres” or so of climbing up Buffalo...

The closer I got to Buffalo, the less it seemed like a good idea. The mountain reminded me of Mt Ventoux in many ways — a great massif rearing up in front of me, the road seemed to get closer and closer without ever gaining any altitude. Finally we reached the gates to the national park and started climbing, and climbing, and climbing... still hot, still more flies, and very little tree cover after last year's bushfires.

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Leaps and bounds and the odd minor stumble... I've nearly got all the individual RDF description files for all my photos in place. Not yet fully populated, but they've got all the basic information. Made a few tentative fumbles at reading RDF/FOAF material with PHP, as soon as I've got a working version of that I'll be moving the existing descriptions from the text files.

A slight foray into n3 rules and cwm. I've created a really simple rule to say that if image "x" depicts person "y", then person "y" has a depiction in image "x". Seems to work, after running it on the photos from December 07 and loading the result into plink, I can see photos of friends.

Damn, it happened again! After having to avoid almost an idiot a week on the bike path, finally one managed to ram head-on into me. I flew spinning off the bike, flat on my back onto the path, landing on one shoulder and feel it pop out then back in, then rolled onto the other, dislocating it as well. Managed to grab my shoulder and pull as I sat up, so it went thump back into place — painfully. End result, one dislocated shoulder, one spained shoulder, and a graze on my right hip.

On a straight piece of path near the Toorak road underpass, some 60-ish guy managed to come up behind two women riding towards me and pull out to overtake them without looking up! I yelled and swerved left off the path but the idiot then managed to swerve off the track and straight into my path! He claimed that ...I saw you and went bush — I go bush when there's danger.... With considerable frustration I pointed out that it might help if he headed left when there's danger, and that if he tried a stunt like that on the road he'd get himself killed.

Only one good thing came of it, there was no damage to Norky bike, but somehow I managed to almost destroy his bike. I think my left pedal hooked his front wheel and forced it back into the frame, there's now a Shogun Metro SE out there that has forks that bend backwards! The impact blew out his tyre as well.

We finally got to see a movie at Moonlight Cinema — the outdoor evening shows in the botanic gardens. Tonight it was Travelling Birds, a visually spectacular documentary, even if it was very light on commentary.

Being outdoors, we had out own showings as well, a combination of Travelling Bats and Travelling Helicopters! Sitting on the ground meant sore necks and arms for most of the night, but a very pleasant time spent sipping wine and eating chocolate.

My first court appearance — only as a witness! Public transport conspired to make it as hard as possible to get there. The first train I was on stopped at Flinders Street, then I couldn't find a single train that would go around the loop, finally opted for one heading for Spencer Street and hopped on to find it inexplicably delayed for eight minutes past the departure time. It shouldn't be too hard to run them on time, should it? They could at least start on time! It goes without saying that none of the information signs inside the trains were working — no chance of finding out the name of the next station — just like the trams, they're either blank or very helpfully state “Connex” or “M-Train”.

Arrived at the court and went through the rigmarole of metal detectors and beepings, signed over my camera for safe-keeping. Up to the second floor to the information desk, then wait quarter of an hour until it opens, then get told to go back down to the ground floor, across to the other side of the foyer, and back up the stairs to the first floor and wait! An hour or so of waiting, a brief description from the prosecuting officer of what will happen with the magistrate and barristers, and a lot of sitting around waiting. People come, people go, I recognise a few faces from the train on the day. Suddenly its all over, the defendent has changed his mind and is now pleading guilty to armed robbery and two counts of attempted robbery. No witnesses are required and we can all go home without having to give evidence.

An old Colnago road bike? Dumped at the side of the road? Maybe, maybe not... It was covered in dirt, the tyres were old and cracked and flat, ancient Suntour ten-speed derailleur. Obviously stolen and dumped... but maybe stolen a long time ago! On closer inspection the mystery deepens; firstly, the Colnago stickers don't look quite right, they've faded and aren't square on the frame, it also seems to weight a ton. Then I had a look for the serial number — it's been filed or ground off. The paintwork looks badly applied, and running a thumbnail over it makes it flake off, revealing a metallic red underneath. Just what is it?

Out of bed early for another bike ride — seven a.m. start from Evan's house for a loop out to Kinglake and back. Somewhere on the road to Bundoora I ran over a large metal staple on the road — the kind that holds cardboard boxes together — and punctured my rear tyre.

There seemed to be a lot of cyclists out on the roads, Evan and I wondered how many of them were training for the Alpine Classic. Either that or like Annette, they were trying to find some hills to train for BV's New Zealand tour in about a month!

Probably about 100km, Fitzroy to Bundoora, then out to Wittlesea, a very sociable climb up the Humevale hill, stop at Kinglake bakery for coffee and a pastry, then down through St. Andrews, Hurstbridge, Greensborough and back to Fairfield to visit the canoe club and see if anyone was still there from their morning paddle. Home in time for lunch and then the whole of the afternoon left for normal house-hold chores!

This evening Jo and I finally managed to make time to head off to see a movie, we had to get to see the third of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, the Return of the King, before it vanished from the cinemas — as so many of the movies on my “to see” list seem to do. I thorougly enjoyed it, I thought it equal or better than the second one, and both of them better than the first — the first just seemed to peter out at the end...

Redid some of the PHP that generates my photo albums last night, the handling of folders for the scanned APS films was giving me grief. Needed to regenerate some thumbnails as well. As a result, all sorts of folders have been touched and old folders stirred up to the top of the most recent list.

I still need to change the annotations to read from an RDF file, then I'll need to move all the existing textual descriptions into RDF...

Collected the photos from Kodak today, 40 images, $29 for processing and CD — no wonder I don't use the APS film camera much anymore! A fascinating collection of pictures though, spanning November 2001 to December 2003. It'll definitely stretch the memory having to go through them all and annotate each one.

Late in the afternoon I headed out for a little ride to stretch my legs, thinking I'd have a bit of a spin up the Dean's Marsh road and try to beat a time of 30 minutes for the climb. Coasting down from the house the turn-off is hardly a warm-up, but better than nothing I guess. Stood up almost the whole way, trying to pace myself, but ride quickly. Unfortunately I blew up and completely ran out of energy, about 100m from the corner where the T-intersection sign is at the top of a slight rise. Exact same spot as last time, the legs and lungs just wouldn't work anymore, I dropped down a gear and sat down and slowed down, watching the clock tick over past 30 minutes. 30’ 15" to get to the corner at the top, then a ten minute rest accompanied by much coughing and wheezing.

A far gentler return ride though, off along the dirt road through the forests to Erskine Falls, then back onto the tar for a a swooping descent into Lorne.

Richmond to Lorne; all day on the bike. 08:40 left home; 09:40 at Mordialloc — courtesy of a group ride with Hilton, Chris, Frank, Joe, a few other Deadly Treadly people and two Ironmen/Triathlon guys out for a spin. 10:40 arrive at Mornington, lots of people everywhere, a ten minute break and a chocolate croissant for elevenses.

Back on the bike and along the coast with increasing traffic. Dromana to Rosebud was bumper-to-bumper. Grumpy motorists fuming and losing their tempers.

Met a girl from the Australian Triathlon team — or at least that's what the label on the seat of her pants said. She was riding way too fast for me and wouldn't stop to chat, but I kept catching up as she got caught up in the traffic. The odd driver hooted and made hand gestures, yelling at us to get off the road — it didn't seem to matter to them that the bike lane was either full of double-parked cars, broken bottles, or blocked by cars with open doors. All they knew was that the cars weren't moving and the bikes were, so obviously it was our fault!

The queue for the Sorrento ferry stretched half-way back along the coast to Rye — more filthy looks as I sailed on past all the hot motorists to the foot-passenger counter, bought my ticket, then sat in the shade to wait. The ferry was packed, the crew definitely earning their money today!

Ten minutes late in leaving, then a dead flat bay for the crossing to Queenscliff. Lunch on the boat, and not much else to do but sit and watch the water go past.

I managed to leave Queensclif ahead of all the cars, then followed the signs towards the Great Ocean Road, intending to retrace the route of the November Deadly Treadly, only in reverse. Somewhere I missed a turnoff and kept following the road signs, then ended up on the Great Ocean Road, but half-way between Geelong and Torquay.

The ten kilometers to Torquay was a drag, lots of noisy traffic, and pushing into a strong southerly, then from there it was still 55km or more to Lorne — longer than I'd anticipated! Too many drivers with P-plates and bad attitudes. With the driving I saw, its a wonder that the road toll is as low as it is.

Finally arrived at Lorne at 17:40, a touch under 200km, nine hours by the clock, 7hr 42’ on the bike. The last climb up Richardson boulevard and the driveway to the house was very demoralising. The cold drinks and a chance to sit down and relax were very welcome.

Where?

Richmond, Mordialloc, Mornington, Dromana, Rosebud, Sorrento, Queenscliff, Torquay, Lorne.