Stromlo revisited.

Since going down with a few guys a few weeks ago we were hooked and we had to go again soon! So while the girls went out to get their nails done i went out to ride the mountain.
3 degrees! It was that cold in the morning, crazy fog too!
Gah already made 2 blogs today, I'll let photos do the talking. Photos thanks to Matt
View from the top. ahhh....

Just having a small break before go go for epic downhill!
Jings Spitfire, nice looking bike apparently it doesn't ride as good as it looks. :(
Clifton had a bit of a mechanical mishap.
Getting shuttled to the top, also being asian. lol!

It was a great day, many falls, many spills. Clifton fell into a pile of thorns narrowly missing the big pile of mud. Trieu had a big fall into a pool of mud too, Matt legged it into a big puddle and Jing had a nice serve of karma after giving Clifton the finger. I hope his elbow is ok, lol.! I had a commando roll fall...going uphill ! lol


It was such a fun day, much laughs and much dirt too.

Canberra weekend!

So I slept fairly late the night before and considering the long drive i would be doing i decided instead of leaving at my preferred 7am, I woke up at 9 and left the house at about 11.
So two bikes packed up in my sp23 very neatly and square too! Quite proud of that too. It did take a little bit of effort and dismantling of the front wheels but it still left plenty of room for anything else. So one bike for Stromlo and one for Bel for her to get around ANU in.
Ok, about the bike. The bike was donated from Dave because he wanted to get rid of it and Bel wanted a bike to get around uni in. It was in great condition, all i did for her was change the tyres put a new rim strip in and lube the chain. Also since i was going down to Stromlo on Sunday what a perfect opportunity to deliver the bike to her a day early!
So picked up Joey and off we go to Canberra, with "Pudgy" which she brought to keep us company!
But before we left, i realised i had no spare tubes for Sunday so i stopped off at the local bike shop to pick one up. Realised this is the first time going there in about a year, they have changed management and the price of a tube is 10 bucks now. Not cool.
We had one stop at Goulburn maccas for a a coffee and then by the time we got down to ANU it was roughly 2 in the arvo. She was quite excited to see us and us to see her too. We just had a small lunch and chilled in her room, watching that disney animation "Up" and just drinking tea.

For dinner we went to an Italian restaurant called "La Scala". It was quite busy thankfully we made a booking. When we made our order though the waitress did say to us that they are super busy and wont be able to put our order in just yet and so the meals wont be ready for a long while. I was glad she told us in advance so i wouldn't get pissed off at the service but then again should this really happen?

I was also glad we got bread with balsamic vinegar and olive oil because that didn't need to go through the chefs, usually the balsamic vinegar and olive oil is served together in a small dipping bowl. Instead we got a small bottle of olive oil and a small bottle of balsamic vinegar and not even a dipping bowl to pour it in.
By not expecting our meals to come anytime soon, we just sat and chatted about random chit chat and by the time we did get our mains we had realised we had been sitting there for an whole hour. But it wasn't just us, i believe other people who got there earlier than us has been waiting for their meals a lot longer than us.
We got a chicken risotto which had some fancy name to it that i found hard pronouncing. And it was quite obvious that despite the delay in food they had rushed this dish, with the risotto being undercooked and not quite enjoyable. Although the creamy taste was quite nice, it was the only thing keeping me.Also a grilled chicken breast served with potato puree and salad. Chicken was cool, mash was nice but salad was poor. I got the fettuccine with napolitana and .... some funky word for deer meat. lol, anyway yes, carbs galore for me. It was nice to get cooked pasta and the sauce was quite light, contrast to the sauce that was in the risotto.

After dinner us three headed over to Bel's friend place to pick up a blow up mattress for me to sleep on and again we just sat and chatted about crap. I was secretly amused because his roommate left something hanging off his door handle and it was quite obvious he had a lady friend over.

After about midnight we went outside again and i got a chance to play with the poi again. It amused me to keep playing because i could see a lot of people were looking at me playing with fire. Even a lot of people in the uni lodge opened up their windows to look.

Hehe.

Rays 21st

Last Friday night was Ray's 21st/going away party. Rock up 2 hours and the party is in full swing, nice!The first thing i noticed when i walked in was a big giant pig getting spit roasted right in the middle of his back yard, mad!!!

First time seeing something like this but it was great! Honey coated ( I assume), slowly cooked, constantly spinning on the spit. Quite entertaining, tasty too!
Shame, i was going to Canberra the next day and had to drive early in the morning. So to have a safe trip i decided i shouldn't drink and go home early. I didn't drink, but i also didn't head home early. Despite the lack of alcohol i still had fun, I will miss Ray ( when he leaves that is), and it was nice to hear about his highschool shenanigans .

It was also gave me a chance to play with my poi! Hehe, oh so fun.

The wick, being a smaller one does not last as long as i would like but that is fine. I guess it means i can develop a routine that does not need length so it shouldn't be too much trouble. Also the length is perfect for me too!

Poor little trees

Poor Little Trees by Steven Burke

New poi!

This was such an impulse buy. But now i can finally say i have my own set of fire poi to play with. I hope i don't burn down someones house.

Car night!

Last night after work I went to Will's place so he can help me hoist up the car and show me how to change my oil and oil filter.I got there with maccas in hand and it turned out to be a car night with some boys. Clifton needed his regular corolla suspension changed over to its rightful sportivo springs/shocks. When i got there they had only just done front passenger side, apparently it took them close to 2 hours to get the first shox fitted. Damn car stuff must be confusing! But when i got there i helped out, everyone already knew what to do, so taking the old one out was pretty quick.
Clifton ripped out the interior of the car hoping that there would be time to do the rear shocks too, but he didn't think time would be on our side so that's for another night.

Then it was the sp23's turn! Oh gosh that put a lot of strain on my mentality. We thought that changing the oil would be best done on the ramps, but that's where the problems started. I couldn't get onto the ramps without scraping my bumper, I was petrified about driving onto the ramps fearing that i would go too far and over the ramps, destroying my underbody.
What had happened was my tyres were wet and so, rolling on (while burning my clutch!) the front driver side wheel rolled on fine but the passenger side slipped. This was where i was shitting myself thinking that the stand was going to slip and take out someones ankle. So we scrambled and quickly got a jack to lift it up to seat the front end of the car on these smalls hoists. Then i found there was a plastic guard protecting the underbelly of my car, how frustrating.
When the guard was taken off (which has slightly been chewed at from scraping it on driveways! ARGH!) and after much oo'ing and ahh'ing of my car, off goes the sump plug and out comes a very thick, black stream of oil.
This is my old oil filter.
And this is my new one. What a difference huh!?
After everything was drained and plugged up, in goes close to 5 liters of new oil! Crap, i never knew that an engine contained that much oil! But even pouring in new oil proved to have some difficulties, because the new oil was so clean it was so damn hard to see if i had put enough in or if i had put too much! We ended up thinking we put too much in, hoisted the car up again, drained a bit but in the end we put in about the same amount we took out. Doh!.

When that was all done it was about 2am. Gosh that took a long damn time just to change my oil. But good thing is now, i know what to do and hopefully it shouldn't be too hard next time.

Pictures.

I find this image somewhat captivating. It was taken on a SLR using film medium. And looking at this guys photo diary/album/photoblog "my little dead dick" I'm quite liking the the pictures alot more than what digital SLR's can produce.

Edit: Another photo