Overdoing the dencorub

I think I might have applied a bit too much extra-strong Dencorub recently - I'm losing skin.

 Just glad I spotted it when I did, who knows how far it could have gone?

  

He doesn't sleep - he waits.

Some interesting advertising going on at the minute. The incumbent 'Labor' (sic) party has released an ad where their leader (and current Premier) Anna Bligh says that 'the polls show that the opposition (the LNP) are going to win, and it's up to you to make sure they don't win by too large a margin'. She suggests that that would lead to excessive power being held by the LNP and invokes the ghost of Joh Bjelke-Peterson and the ultra-conservative & corrupt semi-police state that was Queensland in the 80's. It's an interesting tactic. Have they really thrown in the towel and are trying to limit the damage? Or is it one more political game to un-nerve any uncertain voters and push them Labor's way?

At least there's still some humour to be found amongst politicians

Going Postal

The Australian Electoral system is broadly similar to that in the UK, but there are a few differences. For instance there are three sets of elections - local, state and federal - instead of the two that the UK have (local and national). This coming weekend is the Queensland state election, and it's a campaign that's coming down to the wire.

Another significant difference is that voting is mandatory over here. If you don't vote you get a fine of around $40 and presumably a sternly worded letter from the Australian Electoral Commission. And you're not excused if you're out of the country - you need to submit a postal vote, find an overseas voting or nominate someone to vote in proxy. I was actually looking forward to my first ever Australian vote (and it's accompanying sausage in bread) but unfortunately I'm flying to Thailand that day, so I'm having to submit a postal vote instead. This isn't so bad as it gives me time to have a look at the ballot paper and figure it all out.

If you look closely you can see another difference - I'm able to either just select one candidate or alternatively rank them all in order. The second option comes into play if there is no clear majority - the candidate with the least votes is discarded and the second choice of all votes for that candidate are added to the main poll numbers. And so on until a clear winner is decided. Cunning, although of course not cunning enough to prevent a hung parliament at the Federal elections a couple of years ago! Federal ballot papers do not give you the option of a single nomination - you are supposed to rank all candidates - although I heard on the radio today that you are legally allowed to select only one candidate and that it still counts as a valid vote , it's just illegal to tell people that that is an option. That makes no sense at all, which almost certainly means that it's true*.

It's interesting voting in a new place. Back in the UK I would never have voted for the Tories, even if they promised free beer and mountain bikes to all, because of the devastation wrought on the country by Thatcher and her evil toadying cronies. Conversely my parents would never vote Labour because their socialist policies take money from the dedicated earners to scatter wastefully amongst the bludgers, and have almost bought the country to it's knees many times. Over here all of the old opinions and prejudices are gone (I sometimes still struggle to figure out who is in which party) so you get to look at it with an unbiased eye. The mandatory vote changes the tone of the campaigns too. There's less of an attempt to inspire the population into getting off their butt and taking positive action, instead they know you will be at the polling station anyway so there's a lot of nasty negative campaigning designed to make you not want to vote for the other side.

Of course it doesn't really make any difference at the end of the day - big business & mining interests are bankrolling all of the major parties to a greater or a lesser degree and will continue to get what they want at the expense of the nation. But that's not going to stop me making my mark!

*Allegedly

Not that I should be complaining

http://vimeo.com/33584769

Knee news

I've spent the week limping around and struggling with the heavy clutch in the Landy. It's not been lots of fun but I can feel it getting better day by day and hopefully it will be stable and secure when I'm carting backpacks in & out of long-tail boats or hiking over slippy rough trails. Not sure how I'll go with the climbing, will make a call mid-week about whether to insure myself for it.

Yesterday I managed a 5km walk to the shops & back so that was a good sign. I also picked up some extra strength Decorub (Deep Heat for any UK readers)

This stuff is viscious. It's like when you're at a sushi bar and accidentally swallow a huge glob of wasabi lurking in the soy sauce. You know it will pass and you know it won't kill you, but my god it hurts until it dies down. Handy hint - don't put it behind your knee, because if you do then when you bend your knee you get a double-dose...

Spitfire Saison

I brewed what will hopefully be a biscuity, malty and slightly hoppy saison today. To keep things simple I just did an extract brew with no mashing, just some steeping of speciality grains. The recipe was

3kg pale malt extract
1/2 kg maltodextrin
700g light crystal malt
20g Fuggles hops
38g Hallertau hops
14g Goldings hops
(yes, the hop was based mainly on what was in the fridge)
Saison yeast from a previous brew

Steep the crystal in water at 70 degrees C for 30 minutes (put the malt in a hop bag or a straining bag and use an esky to keep the water temperature constant)
Boil up some filtered water in a stockpot and add the malt extract & maltodextrin
Bring back to the boil and add the crystal-steeped water from the esky
Bring back to the boil and add the Fuggles and 20g of the Hallertau (watch it doesn't boil over)
After 40 minutes add the remaining 8g of Hallertau
After another 15 minutes add the Goldings
After 5 minutes take off the heat and cool (easiest to do it in the sink, just surround it with cold water and keep replacing the water as it warms up)
Once it's cool strain out the hops and pour the wort into a sterile fermentor.

At this point it's just like a kit beer. Top it up with water, add yeast and leave for a couple of weeks. Then rack off into secondaries and leave for a week or so. Finally prime bottles with sugar and syphon the beer into the bottles. After another couple of weeks, enjoy. Carefully, as I probably overdid the fermentables - the beer will be around 6.5% alcohol by volume.......

I know at this point I normally post a picture of me looking hot &sweaty over a steaming pot and holding a homebrew. So to mix it up a bit.

That's a fine Yarra Valley Pinot Noir. And no I'm not constipated, that's my 'posh' look.

Skeeter Defeater

I'm off to Thailand next weekend and although I won't be spending time in the mosquito-ridden interior, I'm still expecting to be having to fend off the little blighters overnight. The mosquito nets in some of the accomodations we've booked may not be up to scratch so I've invested in a 'Skeeter Defeater'. This is basically a freestanding tent made out of mosquito netting that can be set up over your bed - or even used as a lightweight tent if you're roughing it outside with no chance of rain.

This has been recommended to me by a couple of mates, one of whom has a habit of taking pictures of his pets inside it. We don't have any pets rat the minute, so here's an alternative. No leopardskin accessories were available - sorry Mark. I'll need to leave it to your imagination to do the rest.

 The major problem I can see with it is that there are no doors - instead you need to duck out under the edge. This is fine except I can be a disturbed sleeper. I often sit bolt upright in bed and swear randomly, once when I was training for Wildside I woke up pedalling in my sleep and I've been known to wander randomly around the flat with my eyes open but no idea of what I'm doing. This gets worse when I'm away from home, in fact I will wedge hotel doors closed with a chair to stop me ending up in the corridor.

So picture the scene - I wake up by myself in pitch darkness in an unfamiliar bed, surrounded by whining insects and with a bursting bladder from too many Singhas earlier that night. 

...and back down to earth again

Normally once I declare I'm going to get something sorted or commit to an exercise goal I end up injuring myself soon afterwards, and this week is no exception. Went out for a trail run with a mate last night in perfect conditions - a bit breezy, 28 degrees, low humidity - and was really enjoying the run until about the 2km mark. Then the inside of my left knee started hurting and it quickly got worse. We ended up walking out by the most direct route, which judging by the number of spiders webs we walked through along the way wasn't used very much.

This morning my knee was still sore and by coincidence I had an Osteopath appoint. Bec reckons I might have a grade 1 sprain of the medial ligament, which means rest, ice & ibuprofen. It's very sore today, I'm hoping that arnica cream will work miracles and at least have me walking without a limp soon. I'm off to Thailand next weekend so I'll do whatever I can to sort it out, even if that means sitting on the couch watching motor sports all weekend.

I blame it on the foot-coffins :). 

From high tea to high hopes - and possibly high farce

Brisbane is often portrayed as a large country town, but it has some classy elements to it too. Today we went for high tea

It's amazing how the flavours of ribbon sandwiches, scones and pastries are enhanced when you stack them on a tiered plate. Champagne at 11am helps too.

Later that day I was reflecting on what I'd written the previous day and realised that I didn't play around on my BMX enough. Sure, I'll use it to ride into the city and a 20k+ ride on a BMX is not something to be taken lightly, but I don't muck around on it and use it like it should be used. One of the funny things about writing a blog is that you can use it to put your personal goals out into the public eye (well, at least into the eyes of the 20 or so people who read this on a regular basis!) and that in turn can have an impact on what you do. For instance I'd like to think I'd be barefoot running as much in a blog-free world as I do now, but knowing that people will ask me how it's going helps get me off the couch and round the block. It's an extension of Heisenbergs uncertainty principal - when other people are observing something the chances of it changing will increase.

So in that light, something else I'm trying to learn is bunny-hopping a bike with flat pedals

My style is currently terrible, both in the 'looking at the front wheel' sense and also the fact that I'm currently using a straight vertical hop and pulling the bike up instead of the far more stylish & effective manual to hop, also known as the j-hop  . It's still hard work though, exploding* out of a crouch and trying to lift the bike underneath you.

So it's out there - I want to learn to bunnyhop properly. Let's see how we go.

*Obviously when I say 'explode' I'm exploding like a paper bag, or possibly a balloon pumped full of hot air.....

Never mind the diameter, feel the fun

Took the Roadrat into town for breakfast today and it was fun. Not sure why having a buzzy freewheel is so exhilarating, and it may be just that I'm not spending enough time mucking around on bikes and ANY ride is a good ride, but it was a most enjoyable roll around. Autumn is upon us so the oppressive heat is fading - sure it's hot in the middle of the day (31 degrees today) but the mornings and evenings are gloriously refreshing.

The Roadrat is built up as an urban 29er at the minute - wide(ish) riser bars, 35c 'Sammy Slick' tyres on 700c wheels, Avid SD-7 V-brakes, SNAFU flat pedals - and and did I mention it has a White Industries freewheel? The top-tube pad looks like a hipster affectation but this is also my 'roll into town for shopping / drinking' bike and it means I can lock it against posts without scraping the paint on the top tube. It rides nice, but the big wheels make it a little harder to chuck around.

For that I have my BMX. Short, low, twitchy and hard to pedal, but guaranteed to leave you smiling. Once your backache fades.

Of course both of these are geared for the road - for dirt there's always the clown bike

Not sure if I have enough wheel sizes though - I really need one of these for the set

Clicky clicky goodness

I received a very welcome package from the States yesterday

Inside nestled a White Industries freewheel, displayed like the bling that is is. The only disappointment was that there wasn't a hallelujah chorus built into the box that played when it was opened

This mighty fine & very clicky freewheel will be replacing the crappy 'Dicta' freewheel I foolishly put on the Roadrat. When you're leveraging your entire body weight into the pedals as you climb a short sharp climb it's never a good thing to hear creaks and groans coming from the rear hub which leave you wondering if the whole thing will let go at any moment, plunging your knee and then face into the stem & handlebars.

 As any cyclist reading this is sure to agree, it's a thing of beauty.

Shhhh!

Well the Queensland Health Service came through for me, I rang the doctors surgery at 9.30am yesterday and got an appointment for 3pm the same day.* It took them about 20 minutes of heavy syringing that left my shirt sopping wet and some poking around with mini tweezers but finally both ears were declared clean - it's a marvel! I can hear top-end sounds & sibilants much more clearly, in fact when I got in the car I was confused at first but figured out that I could hear my shirt sliding over the seat. Even as I type this I can hear a whole symphony per keystroke.

*For the Australians reading this and think 'and?', the average waiting time for an appointment in the UK was often 3-4 days, although once in Manchester I had to wait for almost two weeks and when I turned up at the surgery they buzzed me in and the receptionist was behind a wire mesh. 

What?

After a lazy weekend and a musculo-skeletal massage that felt like the masseuse was trying to pop my arms from their sockets, I was in the strange position of not having any niggling aches & pains in my back or legs. No limping, no groaning, no applications of icepacks or ibuprofen gels. It was odd, but it was nice.

Unfortunately the good feelings didn't last as I got water in my ears during a shower and, impatient to get it out, resorted to cotton wool buds to extract it. It turns out that this is the worst thing you can do as it impacts & compresses all of the unpleasant stuff in your ear into a tight wad.

This must have been pressing against my ear drum because it not only affected my hearing, it also made me dizzy, slightly disorientated & grumpy

and not at all like my usual self

Liz jumped on the internet and found lots of videos showing how easily ears could be syringed out, although  when I repeated that search today most of the videos seem to relate to dogs. Anyway, she was keen to give it a go and it felt a bit like this

Wasn't as effective, but I think it's on the mend as I'm only feeling the hearing loss today.

Couple more Father Jack videos, just because I can.

and one for Liz

French failures

The French cheeses were eagerly awaited but unfortunately didn't live up to their original promise. After a few weeks of ageing in the fridge the Brie looked goo-ily good to go

The Camembert was a little firm looking but still was wonderfully creamy inside it's soft white shell

Unfortunately the flavour wasn't there to back it up. Both cheeses smelt great but were very bitter and hard to eat. You could pick out some of the intended flavours but then they were over-ridden with a harsh strong flavour that shouldn't have been there. Sadly we had to throw them all away :(. I got a magnificent cheese-making book for my birthday and it reckons that soft french cheeses are very temperature-dependent and hard to get right, so I guess the cheese cave needs a renovation.

My next cheese was a herbed feta that came out overly-soft and overly-herby, so I was a bit disheartened after that. So this weekend I decided it was time to get back on the cheese-horse. There was a beer ride planned the same time but the persistent drizzle that was falling at the time that I would have needed to leave helped me resist. Predictably the weather then cleared and I got a picture message from of the boys showing how much they were missing me

but by that point I was committed

    

and the end result was 8 litres of milk converting to this much halloumi - the squares at the back are infused with birdseye chilli, garlic & pepper. This is ready for 'cooking', as halloumi is almost-boiled in it's own whey for an hour or so to give it it's firmness and ability to be cooked without melting.

Cheese making is basically lots of waiting around so whilst I was doing that I also decided to upgrade the Ubuntu operating system on my Dell Mini-9 travel computer (I take this instead of a tablet as it has an SD card slot so I can upload photos). This is one of those things that computer people say which sounds nerdily impressive, but in reality it's a lot of downloading, waiting and swearing interspersed with frantic google searches. Ubuntu 11.10 only part installed and wouldn't boot, I could reinstall the previous Ubuntu 9.10 but some of the patches that were needed to get the wireless working were no longer available and so several hours later I managed to get Ubuntu 10.04 on and running. The battery now isn't charging, but anywhere that has Wi-fi will also have powerpoints so I'll look at that another day.*

Nerd humour - when I uploaded this I realised that there were 4 operating systems on display - using a Windows laptop to download the software, loading it onto a Ubuntu netbook, listening to the radio on an Android phone and resting the Mini-9 on a Mac. Who says that Apple's aren't versatile?

*Addendum - after trying pretty much every suggestion I could find on-line to no avail I gave up and ordered a new battery from e-bay for $20. When I looked back at the netbook it was charging. This is now being written on the netbook with battery power. Go figure!