Drifting along

I dug out my drift / freeline skates this week as well, and tried them out on Burleigh Hill. I forgot how quickly they picked up speed - this may look mundane, but at the time it was terrifying! It's amazing how much I don't bend my knees as well...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FE6R2VX2Zbc

Views from the 15th floor

When we weren't in the water or sampling local views we spent a lot of time just hanging out on the apartment balcony just watching the world go past and soaking in the views...warning - picture intensive post...

 

Pigs & Pints

The last time we were down in Burleigh we decided that it would be the perfect place to set up a craft beer bar. Unfortunately someone beat us to the punch, but fortunately they located it right next to our hotel. The Pigs & Pints is well worth a visit for friendly staff, its fine range of Burleigh Brewery beers on tap, a wide range of bottled beers and some very tasty American-themed bar snacks.

It's on the Gold Coast Highway just behind Burleigh Arcade  and looks like this

Sadly it's also only open on Wednesday - Sunday, which on a hot Tuesday afternoon with a thirst for hops was a very unfortunate thing indeed...

They need a flag they can hoist when they're open so that local hotel residents need only descend from their balconies when it's worth it...

Surf's up

One of the reasons for going down to Burleigh Heads was to get back in the water, and our apartment on the 15th floor of the Burleigh Beach Tower gave us a cracking view of the water. Sadly it also clearly showed us the weak, late breaking waves... 

We were keen to go though, and managed to get into the water at least once a day for a couple of hours at a time.

 It may not sound much, but to our untrained bodies it was pretty exhausting. This sums it up...

We surfed Burleigh & Currumbin, and checked out Kirra as well. And on the way home we stopped off at our 'usual' spot on the Spit 

It was pretty blown out but that didn't stop the crowds...

We've decided that this year we'll try to fit more surfing in and get a larger, more stable board that will give us a chance of standing up - the 5'6 finless Albacore just isn't a good board to learn on! So in advance of a Summer chasing the curl, here is this week's tune - Bombora, by the Atlantics. Who bizarrely are Australian despite the fact that no part of Australia touches the Atlantic...

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOW0697mfBs

Chill out

I'm slowly getting back into the local time zones but last week has taken its toll. Jet lag is a weird & insidious sensation best summarised by a colleague who said ' I woke up in the hotel and found I'd locked my chewing gum in the safe but left my passport on the desk'. You lose the initial doziness and spaced feeling fairly quickly but for me at least it takes a few more days for everything to start feeling right again. I'm also waking up every night panicking that I'm late for my flight home and not recognising that I'm in my own bed, and now I think of it I think I get this after most overseas trips (but oddly I never get that confusion when I'm overseas). It's a shame because the weather over here is perfect for evening rides but I'm just not feeling it right now. Hopefully I'll be able to kickstart myself over the weekend - I have a bike rebuild on the cards as well which should inspire me....

Until then I'm just relaxing and recovering. Which brings me to the tune - the seminal, beautiful and quite possibly unique 'Chill Out' by the KLF. This last for just over 44 minutes (I'm sure it's not a coincidence that that is the length of one side of a C90 cassette) but it's worth listening to the whole thing. So sit back with a couple of your favourite relaxing beverages close to hand, turn off your phone, close the door, relax, enjoy and of course chill out...

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5S_lktstwrs

Du-bikes

An overseas visit wouldn't be complete without a bike analysis. The locals use bikes quite a bit, and these are regular workhorses for the local delivery guys

Every local shop & restaurant has a couple of these outside and you can phone through orders for delivery, be it a bottle of water, a meal or your dry-cleaning. Most of the time a two wheeler works well and can easily be salmoned against the flow of traffic, but for the larger shops they need more boot space... 

There's also an odd trend in high-barred BMX bikes, although I think the pegs are used more for taking passengers than grinding the local ledges. The wheels are cool though   

Seems to be a bit of a 'thing'

as are branded bikes - this one a hummer. Not so sure about the mountain bike it's locked to though!

Regardless of the frame material, wheel size or componentry always remember that a bike is a bike and therefore cool... the text on the right says 'Ride Bike, Enjoy Life' and that sounds like a mantra to live by...

Deira & Bur Dubai

On my last full day in Dubai I visited the northern parts of the city. This is the 'old town' area of Dubai and was originally centred around Dubai creek, a trading & transit hub based on fishing and pearling and located on the major waterway of the area. Warning - this is a very picture intensive post...it was a big day!

The 'creek' is still a major part of the transit infrastructure and is a little larger than I expected

There are a couple of bridges but most people cross the river using the 'Abra', or water taxi

and the river is still used to ship in a lot of produce, from food & drink to white goods. That dhow could fit a bit more I reckon...

The north side of the creek is Deira, the most traditional part of the main Dubai city, which is a strange mix of half built (or half ruined?) buildings backed by new structures

Interspersed with a few mosques

ridiculous traffic (why are you hooting? There's 100 cars in front of you!)

and a few 'souqs', or market areas. The new spice market was still under construction

 but in the back streets were the old spice souqs. They smelled even better than they looked!

After a few hours of wandering around Deira I caught an abra and crossed the river. That was an experience in itself - you basically take a seat and wait until it fills up, and then the driver walks around the edge taking the 1 Dirham fee. He then promptly backed out into another abra, which was a bit concerning

but after a bit of shouting & gesticulation we were on our way...

and I started to relax...hey, if the worst comes to the worst the camera is waterproof

It took about 15 minutes to cross the 'creek', dodging tourist boats and dhows as we went

The southern side of the creek is Bur Dubai, which is based mainly around the riverfront. By this time I'd been wandering around in the hot sun for a few hours and was starting to feel the 38 degree heat, so it was time to seek shade in the Dubai museum. The old fort was more than a little oppressive   

but the underground gallery provided some welcome relief and some interesting background on the history of the region. For instance the bedouins really liked their goats in the evenings

 and were early adopters of break dancing

At this point I was ready to go back to the hotel, but I couldn't help stopping by the Bastakiya region. I was tempted to grab a quick burger but didn't want to get the hump

 Instead I wandered around the beautiful and strangely deserted 'old town'

Despite what it looks like I don't think these are intended to be celebrating gay pride...

 Still slightly creepily deserted

Look - a person!

By this time I'd been out in the sun for over 5 hours so I beat a footsore & undocumented retreat back to the hotel. Not a bad way to finish a stay in a strict Islamic state...

It was a very interesting morning. If you're in Dubai for more than a couple of days it's well worth taking a break from the glitz and glamour of downtown and checking out the Creek area.