Running & hopping

I went for another trail run tonight. I felt a lot better than last time - still sore and struggling with the heat a bit, but I wised up and carried some electrolyte drink with me this time which helped a lot. It's funny - I've only been twice and I was expecting a bit of an improvement this time round, but I only finished 10 seconds earlier than last week. Nowhere near as buggered, but in around the same time.

Yes, this is really 'not as bad as last time'. Hard to believe I know. Tune in next week for more 'fat middle aged blokes attempt things they're really not up to' pictures.

It's always good running in the forest, especially in dusk, and you often hear things jumping away through the bush. I was lucky enough to see a couple of these guys grazing on fresh grass on  a recently cleared piece of bushland.

   Always brings a smile to my face.

Rabbit

I've mentioned before that it's illegal to own a rabbit in Queensland - well, unless you're a professional magician. However we've managed to find a loophole in the law.... 

We got this little beauty at a local butchers and once we got it home, the first thing we wanted to do with it was play outside.

Let's be honest, I'm a city kid. I'm disassociated from my food and it was a bit confronting to tackle something that could have been a pet. I know it's hypocritical, but we struggled to eat it. Not just on a psychological level either - there wasn't much meat on it and it was hard to carve as I didnt know where the bones were. Then I tried to visualise the skeleton as I was cutting, which made it worse. And we both couldn't stop humming 'Bright Eyes'.

Liz was OK with bits of meat but struggled with anything on the bone. I was able to gnaw my way through a leg, but I would have preferred it to be a drumstick or some pork ribs. I've de-boned the carcase now and and I'll use the rest of the meat in a formless risotto, but I reckon you get nicer meat, and more of it, for much less money if you buy chicken or beef.

I'd like to try it again cooked by someone who knows how to bring the best out of it, but my initial impression is that with rabbit you don't get much bang for your buck. Or doe.

Match the breakfast to the bike

Saturday morning -

Four bikes

• De Rosa Singlespeed
• Salsa Casseroll  (with front rack & bag)
• On-one Pompetamine (Singlespeed, flat pedals)
• Shogun Katana (fixed gear)

and four breakfasts

• Savoury Mince
• Avocado Stack
• Haloumi Stack
• Huevas Flamencos

Can you match them?

Radical Reels

We went out to a film festival last  night focused on adventure sports - 'Radical Reels', an offshoot of the Banff mountain film festival. Trailer is here -

http://www.banffaustralia.com.au/

It was sold out, and had been for over a month, so the theatre was full of fit, toned-looking adventurous types. And me. It was a pretty good mix of films - some winter sports, a bouldering trip to Argentina, mountain biking, downhill skateboarding, big wall & jump park skiing, kayaking and a crazy bloke doing something he's called free(base). This is solo climbing on big walls with no ropes and only a BASE chute to catch you if you fall. Very very impressive.....

http://vimeo.com/7255734

Ginger beer

I was planning to go for a ride last night, but as the afternoon wore on the weather got more and more humid as the clouds grew dark & heavy. On the way home there was a sprinkling of rain and the promise of a storm to come, so I took the cowards / wise way out and decided to can the ride and make ginger beer instead.

The recipe was:-

1 1/2kg root ginger (peeled, which drops it to 900g, and then blended)
2 lemons, 2 limes all sliced in the skin
1kg raw sugar
1kg brown sugar
500g lactose (this won't ferment out and will leave some residual sweetness)
2 cinammon sticks
6 cloves
1 star anise
1 diced chilli (added 10 mins from the end of the boil)

The ingrediants (including the essential brewing aid of a glass of previous homebrew)

A bowl of gingery citrus goodness that you could use in a thai curry or a beer - after a pianful chilli-taste I ended up just using one. Did you know you can use a spoon to peel ginger? Pull the edge towards you and it pulls the skin off but leaves the ginger behind.

 The brew

Me discovering that vigourously boiling a pot of sugary goodness for an hour is not very cooling on a hot sticky night. But satisfying nontheless.

After an hour I cooled the wort slightly, sieved it and added it to water in the fermentor to bring it up to 22l (the water was treated with a campden tablet to try to eliminate the chlorine that I think has been supplying an unwanted backtaste to all of my beer). Once that cooled a bit I sprinkled an american ale yeast (S-05) directly on the surface of the wort and I was done. Well apart from all the cleaning, mopping & bin-emptying.....

All up it took an hour to peel the ginger (next time I'll prob buy pureed ginger) and then 2 1/2 hrs from first blend to final mop squeeze. The rain didn't come in the end, but it was still an evening well spent.

Putting my best foot forward

November always seems to be a bit of a 'down' time for me. Not sure why, but I think it may be due to the imminent onset of summer. The night-time temperatures creep up to low 20s and the days peak at the low 30's and the humidity starts to build. Plus the mornings get lighter earlier - you can read in natural light at 5am. Every year it takes a few weeks for my body to get used to this and I struggle to exercise, sleep or motivate myself. It's all too easy to get back after work and just collapse on the sofa with a book and a cold beer, making the most of the evening breezes blowing through the flat. In the middle of summer that's all that anyone can do, but at this time of year my fellow Australians don't notice it much and keep on keeping on whilst us ex-pats pant and sweat to keep up - or just give up and veg out.

There's always a couple of weeks of 'early summer' in late October / early November where it seems intolerable, I can't believe I have to endure this for 3 more months and in my head I start to book tickets back to the Old Country. Then there's a lull in the conditions and I start to acclimatise. The fans come out, the hair gets shaved off (not happened yet this year but it will do soon), I think about getting the air-con in the car degassed (but never quite get around to it) and I start being sensible about exercising in the heat.

So last night I went out for a run after work. I've been running once every fortnight or so recently, but decided it was time to make it more interesting and go for a trail run at Daisy instead. Trail running is a secret vice of mine - I really enjoy it, although I have to keep it quiet because my bikey friends can't understand why you'd go to the effort of driving out to singletrack and not take a bike with you. I think it's also much better for you than jogging on the street - the varying conditions on the forest floor mean that you're not always impacting the same muscle groups every step.

When I finish a street run my shins are sore for days afterwards, but when I finish a trail run the ache seems to spread itself throughout my entire body. Particularly my thighs - presumably I'm lifting my legs higher to step over and around things, plus there's a lot more climbing to be done - but also my arms & shoulders, I'm guessing because there's a bit more balance and drive required from my upper body.

Normally I run 5km in around 30-35 minutes on ths street. Last night I ran just over 6km in 50 minutes, and my body was reminding me about that extra last km all the way to the end. Plus it was 26 degrees and humid, so despite loading up with water I still finished with a dehydration headache.

I got home and after cooling down I helped out with dinner - roo steaks on the barbie with chargrilled zucchini and fennel. And a couple of cold beers to help with the temperature control. Perfect.

All in all it was a great night - that is once the headache went away, the aching subsided and I could walk again.

Cannondale

I finally finished Liz's mountain bike build over the weekend too. It's a Cannondale F1000, rebuilt with a variety of parts from a variety of mates! Thanks all.

And to those not familar with Cannondale 'Lety' forks - yes, it is supposed to look like that....

Harvest II

For some reason I wasn't able to upload posts from my phone yesterday - it created a blank post and nothing else. Still, that blank post provoked a comment which more than many of my other ones do! Cheese, bikes, beer, sharks - all pass unnoticed. Does that say something about my writing style? :)

Anyway - Harvest festival is over and it was officially a very good day. A hot one so I needed to do a fair amount of shade-lurking early on, but I braved the sunshine for Mercury Rev. They were very good, although sadly they didn't play anything from the earlier albums.

Obligatory fan-boy 'This is me & Mercury Rev!' photo (taken by an obliging gentleman behind me). Yes my cap is on backwards - the sun was behind me so I was protecting my neck.

After Mercury Rev and a couple of relaxing strawberry cider / tequila cocktails I wandered down to watch Death In Vegas

Hard edged dance music with overlaid with samples and distorted guitars. They were awesome and I danced pretty much the whole way through. Their final track morphed into a kind of goa-trance anthem and I found myself waving my hands in the air sizing fish like back in the rave days. Which probably provoked great amusement amongst the mainly non-dancing Brisbane crowds who had obviously lost their cardboard boxes. Their loss.

After Death In Vegas I shifted back to the Windmill stage for Mogwai, a bunch of Scottish post-rock ambient funsters with beautifully mellow tunes. So mellow in fact that at one point I dozed off. No pictures, but imagine some grizzled bearded Scots in flannel shirts looking at their guitars.

I grabbed a bite to eat and then somehow managed to get a stage-side position for the Flaming Lips -  not in the main body of the crowd, but peering down an access passage. The Flaming Lips are renowned for their live shows and they didn't disappoint. The lead singler initially appeared on stage in a large ball, which he then rolled around on top of the audience for a while

 Then they pushed out a whole stack of large balloons, which the crowd batted around for most of the gig

There were audience members jumping around on the edge of the stage in costume too, I'm not sure how they were selected but there seemed to be a large proportion of young women with shapely legs wearing short skirts

 As I say, my view was exceptional

 Guitars, balloons, cheerleaders, charismatic front men, great tunes - what else do you want from a gig?

Ah yes - lasers.

 and of course confetti fired from cannons

I think everybody enjoyed themselves :)

After the Flaming Lips pretty much the entire audience headed to the main Riverstage to watch Portishead. Which, from my position in the crowd (and after a few more tequilas), looked a lot like this.

I listened to a couple of tracks and whilst they were very good I wasn't getting much of the ambience from where I was, so I went for another wander and found a burlesque show with electric violins and flaming hoola-hoops

This seemed like a much better option so I stayed there for a while.

By then it was getting late (9.30!) and I was starting to crave my bed. I left about 10 minutes before close to beat the rush on the busses and was walking past the Riverstage just as Portishead finished - the cheers were huge so it sounded like a great show. But that's both the joy and the pain of festivals - there's always a few things you miss for every one that you see. That's a lesson we can learn in life. You may expect to spend quality time with sulky West country folk, but you might end up at the carnival instead. 

Harvest festival

I've been a bit low over the last few weeks so I haven't been posting much. Which is not to say that good things aren't happening - they are in spades - it's just that when I sit down to reflect I get a bit *Meh*. Indefensible in many ways.

Anyway, breaking continuity i'm at 'harvest festival' in Brisbane botanical gardens right now, a one day festival featuring a few of my favourite bands. One of which is mercury rev, the best band *ever*. I first saw them at Reading festival in 1991 and soon after at the Boardwalk in Manchester, so this is a little different backdrop!






In typical Australian nanny state style you can only buy mid-strength beer (at least it's Coopers!) but if you plan ahead you can smuggle in tequila (allegedly).

Should be a fun day - let's see how we go!