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  Today: 132.0km
  Avg: 20.5km/hr
  Riding: 7hr 15’

From a start at 07:20 we had until 16:05 to clock in and be within Audax's allowed time limit — our cards were punched at 16:01, according to Evan this meant we had over-trained by three minutes!

  Today: 21.0km
  Avg: 24.0km/hr
  Riding: 0hr 52’

Bright on the Australia Day long weekend; people everywhere, cars with bikes everywhere, people with bikes everywhere, bikes everywhere. The "Bushfire-induced dearth of visitors to Victoria's North East" certainly doesn't seem to apply today!

A late afternoon ride from Bright out to Boynton's winery to meet some friends, pleasantly surprised to find that the driveway at Boynton's now has a little less gravel and seems a little more navigable by bike than always used to be the case.

We'd left Melbourne at about 6pm for the long boring drive up the Hume highway to Bright, dinner of a truck-stop hamburger with the works at Avenel, then back in the car to continue up to Glenrowan, exit the freeway and follow the minor road to Oxley, Milawa, Markwood and on to rejoin the Great Alpine road near Myrtleford. Somewhere around dusk we'd joked about where this comet we'd heard about might be — McNaught something — but neither of us had any real idea of where in the sky to look. South-West-ish somewhere, straight behind us in the glare of the headlights we guessed.

Turning off the freeway and passing up and over the bridge I glanced across to the southern horizon and there it was; an absolutely enormous comet head down to the horizon, with the tail spread ten degrees or more up into the night sky! An absolutely incredible sight for the next hour or so as we tried to drive straight and stare left at the same time until finally it dissappeared behind the hills as we neared Bright.

Definitely one of those times when I wished I had a good digital SLR, and a tripod, and had taken the time to stop and try and take some photos of a sight I probably won't get to see again.

  Today: 82.1km
  Avg: 20.5km/hr
  Riding: 4hr 00’

The last weekend before Australia day, and our last chance to go for a ride and try to get a few more hills into the legs before the Audax Alpine Classic next Saturday! Woeful preparation, at least we're only in for the 130km option.

Under grey threatening clouds and through grey threatening suburbs full of grey threatening 4WDs we made our way out to Ferntree Gully then up Dorset road to The Basin, I'm only used to riding home that way so I missed one turn and we had a lot more of a major road than we really wanted. Thankfully we could finally turn off and up into the forest, only three car-loads of idiots screamed abuse, the rest seemed to just stare wide-eyed, a look we've become accustomed to on the tandem.

A pleasant hour of climbing up through the wet forest, then out in Sunday afternoon "drive in the country" traffic along the main tourist road at Sassafras, incredibly different to the old Mountain highway. Another two kilometres up to Olinda then a large slab of cake and coffees, perfectly timed as we sat inside and watched the rain pelt down, then back out onto dry roads for the ride back down the hill and home!

A mysterious rhythmic thumping appeared as soon as we started coasting down the near-perfect road surface, it appears that the back tyre is starting to wear out on the sidewall and bulge ominously. We hadn't noticed on the rougher roads, or while climbing earlier in the day. A very timely discovery, far better to find out now than half-way down Tawonga gap next weekend! The Continental Tourer 2000 tyres that we're on the bike when we bought it have finally turned up their toes after three years of fairly intermittent use.

A trip out of the house in the early afternoon to collect a few things, we returned to discover that some idiot had parked their car sideways across both our driveway and the neighbour's — and that the neighbour's landlord's car was parked in fron of that.... Tooting on the horn brought nobody out of the house so we parked in the street and went inside.

Five minutes later as I'm in the back garden the old Greek landlord comes out into the backyard showing two young Greek guys around — he's waxing lyrical about how it isn't a wide block but it is a long block of land.... Hmmm, is there more development afoot? There's two things you can do with a house like this; renovate it to a classic federation cottage, or bulldoze and build big brick boxes. These guys don't look the federation cottage type, I wonder if we'll be seeing another building permit soon... and this one would be a major eyesore and barrier to our place, not to mention leaving us feeling like we are in a canyon if it is more than one storey!

A little later I watched the two young guys get into the car and leave, unblocking our driveway. Ridiculously, half an hour later I met the landlord as he was leaving and asked if he knew who had parked the car that had blocked us in. “Car, car, I no see no car here...”. He shrugged and walked away, lying through his teeth.

We shall see....

It was still hot and humid when we woke this morning, but for the first time this year there was the sound of rain on the roof. Measurable rain too, all 3mm of it! I rode out to work in the rain, happily getting soaking wet, wondering how many other people across Melbourne and the rest of Victoria were doing much the same.

Fish'n'chips for dinner from the Oakleigh fish shop, I'm not sure why but it seemed a fish'n'chips day. Across the road to the shop and something exciting must have happened on the streets between the pub and the station, there was police crime-scene tape wrapped around all the poles and trees and three car-loads of coppers interviewing, measuring and analysing. Eye-droppers of chemicals onto strange spots on the tiles, is it drugs or blood? I guess we'll either see a big article about it in the papers or we'll never hear a peep.

The power finally came back almost twelve hours to the minute after yesterday's outage. Four-fifteem a.m. and every clock started beeping and the radio started blaring, I think I'd only been asleep for a little over an hour in the 30°C night.

There was a diesel generator thumping away all night at the end of the street powering some important part of the railway at Oakleigh station. A couple of minutes after the power came on and we'd reset the alarm clock and tried to go back to sleep, the fire brigade all came charging down the street with lights ablaze and sirens on! I think someone may have forgotton to unplug the generator when the mains came back on.

Needless to say, Wednesday the 17th is a very slow, quiet day as I try to make it through the working hours in my new stuffy, airless office.

Revisited... 2007-Jan-20

We bumped into a contractor on Saturday morning, locking up the gates onto the tracks as he was clearing up. Seems that the mysterious brick windowless building at the end of the platform contains a compressor and some 1960s era electrical equipment which is all part of the rail-signalling system. The power outage on Tuesay damaged it and they had to run a spare compressor all night to keep the points working — not a generator as I'd thought. When the power came back it ran for almost a day, but then it blew up and caused a blackout. Of course there are no parts available for a roomful of 1968 electrical equipment, but he'd repaired it and it should keep running until the next time it breaks down!

Six p.m. and all is strangely quiet — very, very quiet. The power failed at about four thirty and we thought it was just the building, or maybe the campus... then a cow-orker heard from his kids that there was no power at Oakleigh, then from others that the effects were more widespread. A forty degree day, all the air-conditioners in Melbourne thundering away and then bushfires damaged the main interstate transmission lines and it all went dark.

Left work at half-past five and slid past the traffic jam in Clayton road, literally sliding in the melted tar, all sticky and slippery. Every second motorist in the jam was illegally on the phone to their loved ones. Then half-way up North road my lack of hubris bit me on the bum as I ran over a nail and had it go blunt-end-first through my back tire. Changing a tube in 40°C heat at the side of a busy road is no fun.

Home at six and it is silent, 40°C outside, 30°C inside. All the clocks are off, all the whirrs and whines and motors are silent.

Manually recorded rainfall from the rain gauge in our back garden.

  Today: 124.2km
  Avg: 22.7km/hr
  Riding: 5hr 27’

An early start, out of bed at 05:45 for breakfast and to drive down to Geelong, every second car on the freeway seemed to be carrying bikes. With no idea how crowded it would be at the ride, we parked in the first car-park we came to and rode the three or four kilometres to the Botanic gardens — an unnecessary precaution as it turned out, but a good way to check the tandem and warm up a little.

...

Out on the road it was very hot and very windy. Since we were doing a loop of the Belarine peninsula, at various times the wind hot north-westerly managed to hit us in every possible direction. At times we were cruising along at 45km/hr on a flat road, at other times slogging it out at 15!

Lunch was grabbed from the Seabreeze general store, just outside Point Lonsdale. I think the couple who were running the place must have thought the gods were smiling on them — several thousand cyclists streaming through buying up an eating everything they could!

The weather turned against us as we finally came back into Geelong, the wind swinging more to the west and rain starting. Caught up with a few friends and grabbed a huge tasty burger, then a beer, then took shelter under the awning of a marquee as the storm front hit. Horizontal rain and howling winds quickly dispersed the riders as they arrived, few stayed to watch the riders warming up for the criterium later in the evening. As soon as we'd finished the beers we extracted the tandem from its parking spot against the fence and rode back to the park where we'd left the car — almost being knocked flat by the next wind storm as it came through!

Ouch! I've never felt really happy with the way that the Edge clipped into its mounting bracket, the bracket always seemed a little too flimsy and the unit a little too heavy.... Well today it proved me right, coming into the Uni. I hit the speedhump and it flew out of the bracket, hit the deck and shattered the display. Hunted around and found that GME Electrophone is the local agent for Garmin repairs, so gave them a call (+61.3.9798.0988). Seems that just like Canon last year, no real repairs get done anywhere other than Sydney. Posted it off to GME in Sydney for repairs — hopefully under warranty.

[2007-Jan-23]: Rang up the Melbourne office of GME to get the phone number for the Sydney office of GME to find out what has happened to my Edge. "It couldn't be repaired so we're waiting for a replacement unit." Nice of them to call me and tell me, but that would be customer service and apparently that just isn't done! At least when I asked about the broken mounting bracket that I'd forgotten to send she promised to send one.

[2007-Feb-07]: One month and two days later a new Edge 305 (serial #37465581) appears at the door. A single sheet of paper with the text "repairs quoted more than replacement value". Sadly, despite the verbal promise, there is no replacement mounting bracket so I now have three bikes, one Edge and only one mounting bracket.

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All of Lorne seemed to be in recovery today. Garbage from New Years Eve covered every flat surface of the beach, the parks, the roads and the carparks. Dazed and subdued revellers walked around slowly, talked quietly, relived last night's antics. Down by the surf club several hundred Harleys and their owners lay on the ground, hung over or sleeping. The whole thing seemed to make a mockery of the council and police with their “Zero tolerance, no sleeping in cars, no alcohol in public” policies.