I just realised I hadn’t put up the few photos I took when I did the Adelaide Motorbike Christmas Charity Toy Run with Damien in December. I just realised due to getting back into mountain biking I haven’t actually been for a weekend motorbike ride since last year! Click on the photo below to go to the album with a few other photos.
Did you know you can offset the damage you do everyday to the environment with your vehicle by purchasing carbon credits? Now that you know, you don’t have any excuse for not doing it other than being a cheapskate 
Thanks to my brother I can get away with being a cheapskate, because he just bought enough carbon credits for my motorbike to be carbon neutral until June 2008. Cheers Mike!
Check out the Carbon Neutral sticker on my windscreen, and the Carbon Neutral keyring. Very classy!
I finished up at work on Friday before Christmas, and enjoyed a scrumptious feast with pretty much every ETSA employee there is, at ETSA Park, the netball stadium. That afternoon I watched my friend David To play and easily win a tennis tournament (both singles and doubles) where he won $2k prize money, a trip to America, and a wildcard entry into an ATP tournament.
I went home that night to our new kitchen which had pretty much just been finished with the renovations we’ve had done throughout December. We spent all night putting furniture back to normal. The Madsen’s came from Melbourne to stay for Christmas which was awesome as always. Carl helped me achieve a new high score playing Time Crisis 3 arcade game. We played soccer, and with his very last shot at goals to me he sprained his ankle badly. It was a shame as we were just about to go for a motorbike ride. Christie came with me for a motorbike ride instead. It was her first time, and I think she is hooked! I went to Morv’s family for Christmas Eve dinner and breakfast the next day, and then we came to my house for Christmas lunch. There were 18 of us in total at Christmas lunch.
That night, we went up to Lobethal to see the lights. It was cool to see them for about five minutes, but it gets a little repetitive and so we went home not long after getting there! It was also a bit far to drive I thought. Apparently there are photos on the internet anyway, we should have just looked at them!
On Boxing Day the Madsens left really early in the morning. I cleaned Aunt Cherilie’s car for her and finished drying it literally as they were driving off at 7am. Only a couple minutes after they had left, Dad spotted a koala in the gum tree above our driveway.
It was ironic how Christie had said the night before how on the motorbike ride was the first time she’d ever seen a koala in the wild, and it was a pity that she couldn’t yell loud enough for me to hear through my helmet so we could have stopped to look at it.
After seeing the koala, my family and myself went to Nanna’s to open some more presents. That afternoon, I went for a hike with Morven, her sister, and Archer-Bald (aka Archie). Archie was a little fella that Morv got from Myers. Every Myers employee got a little bear on a lanyard for Christmas.
Since Boxing Day, I’ve got back into running a little bit, started going to the gym again, and discovered the REAL source of my back pain I’ve had since I hurt myself skiing in Austria last year. Regardless of whether or not the pain is a result from the skiing incident, I have (allegedly, according to the Physio) no lower abdominal muscles, and I have really strong hamstrings from long distance running. This is bad bio-mechanics, because it results in my back doing all the support work when sitting down and standing up, or whenever. Basically, my abs are so weak they can’t take the load away from my back to give it a rest. So, I’m not providing my back with the proper environment for it to heal. So, every day, I’ve been doing heaps of sit-up crunches. Who knows, maybe in a few weeks I might even have a decent six-pack!
For New Years Eve, Morven and I went to the Perry’s house for a vegetarian barbeque. It was delicious! Rachel (Ben’s sister) actually did most of the work, including the invites of her brothers friends. After dinner, we went to Mick and Sarah’s house party in Norwood. I had taken an esky full of pre-mixed drinks and nibbles for the two of us, and we were set to have a really awesome night. I had driven us there, and we were going to leave the car there overnight and catch a bus home. The next day I was going to run back and pick the car up. When we got there, I immediately joined in on a game of throwing some random glow in the dark thing. Unfortunately after a couple minutes, my hand connected with a bee in mid-flight and I got stung. 
So, I had to get my old man to pick me up because I’m allergic to bees. It was my right hand, and it swelled up like a balloon that night. I was asleep in bed before midnight too, how demeaning! This is the second new years eve that I’ve gone home early due to bee stings! The other time was a party at Tom Roders house, where I had got stung during the day and was dancing that night. It wasn’t until I had been dancing that my foot swelled up so bad I couldn’t get my shoe off!
So anyway, I was due to go back to work today but the doctor yesterday advised not to, because of the antihistamines I’m on. I keep randomly falling asleep! I’m also on antibiotics because it is apparently infected. What I don’t really understand though, is what does it mean that I am infected. Does this mean you can get stung by a bee and NOT be infected? I’m not sure. What does infected even really mean? I think there’s a very grey line going on here. Either way, I should stop typing soon because my hand is getting sore again.
Lately I’ve been watching Torchwood, a spin-off TV Series from Doctor Who. Also, a great documentary I watched with Morv yesterday (except I fell asleep) is March of the Penguins. I highly recommend it if you have any interest in penguins at all. Very fascinating!
Finally I have finished writing about my recent holiday along the Great Ocean Road. Please click on any of the photos to go to the photo gallery containing the complete collection of snapshots.
Day 1 (26th): Left Adelaide and stayed the night at Mt. Gambier in a caravan park. It was a long ride on open road, with lots of wind so we were very tired and had an early night and a good sleep in. I got a tad freaked out about the side-wind whilst doing 110km/h, but you can’t complain when you get to see giant lobsters!
The Big Lobster
Day 2 (27th): Left Mt.Gamber and stayed the night in Warnambull. On the way we stopped somewhere near beachport to record movies of us riding, and doing the odd wheelie, etc, to make for an interesting DVD. (Note to my mum grandma: I was the photographer, not the stuntman!!) It is about then that I think we were really starting to act like a real bike possie. Simon and I bought ear-plugs because of the turbulent wind noise from the head-wind at high speed was probably exceeding 110dB(A). I’m always going to carry earplugs on my bike from now on, because it’s just not worth the risk of damaging your ears.
Me checking out the scenery
Day 3 (28th): Left the guys early to ride to Apollo Bay where my cousins Carl and Christie and Uncle Chris were camping, along with my cousins second-cousin (Jonathon) all the way from Denmark! Rode in to meet up with the guys at the St Kilda Base Backpackers that night. With my cousins that day, we had gone to the beach. It was possibly one of the nicest beaches I’ve been to in Australia apart from in Queensland. During the beach fun, we played soccer, wrapped Christie up in seaweed against her will, and then buried her in sand at a rate that she couldn’t escape from, and then buried Jonathon in the sand. I would like to publicly apologise to Christie for being so mean to her with seaweed. Sorry!
Carl, Christie, myself, and Uncle Chris
Day 4 (29th): This day we went for a ride into the city, and checked out the motorbike stores. One of the guys (Shannon) got a quote for a trade-in deal on a Yamaha R1 from his R6, and now we have to convince him to follow through with it so he can do phat wheelies on the way home. We then did some ‘normal’ shopping and I bought a book on marathon running. I haven’t really read much about marathon running before, so it should help me a lot.
Day 5 (30th):I’m currently writing this from my Aunt’s house in Melbourne. I came here in the late morning, cleaned my bike and washed her car, had lunch, and gave her computer some maintenance. Right now I’m sitting next to Carl each of us with a laptop, in the dark, simultaneously watching the movie Virus whilst exchanging geeky comments every so often. I’m trying to convince Carl to create an online journal like myn I just heard that their family friend from Denmark, Karen, has just got engaged! Lana and another person I haven’t met are coming in tonight in fact they will be here now I think, so I will head back to St. Kilda where hopefully they will still be shortly after this movie. Tomorrow for NYE I think I’m going to my other cousins house Daniel, where he’s having a house party with his house mates. I got home to the backpackers place fairly late, and went for a quick walk to stretch my legs. During this late night walk I spoke to Ben on the phone who told me that Jordan is in St Kilda!! In fact, he had been at a pub that I had been to a couple nights ago. Calling him immediately, I discovered he was staying in Fitzroy. I ordered him to get out of bed so we could go for some drinks, and I cabbed it over to Fitzroy to meet him, and several drinks were enjoyed. What coincidence!!
Day 6 (31st), NYE: I trammed it back to Fitzroy to meet Jordan again, and we went out for breakfast, and browsed the shops all around Fitzroy, the city, and the Queen Victoria Markets. I bought two rings and a bracelet, each one has its own little gimmic, and each one is stainless steel, my favourite metal. I got a spinning ring that matches the bracelet, the bracelet has a spekky latching mechanism, and the second ring is made up of three rings that join together. How cool!
Being in Melbourne, I decided to randomly rock up to my cousins house party in Camberwell. I took my cousin’s (Carl and Christie) fathers second cousins son to the party as well, Jonathon from Denmark. It was great to meet some of my cousins friends. I took Jonathon from Denmark to the party, and still am not sure what actually happened to him – he seemed to disappear sometime after 12.
Day 7 (1st): NY day was spent basically sitting around all day due to bad weather – we waited for it to clear to do the Black Spur ride which seems to be the Melbourne equivalent to Adelaide’s 12 minute run to Lobethal. It wasn’t going to clear, so I went back at my Aunt’s and cousins home watching Entrapment with Carl, and we’re going to leave at 6 in the morning from St. Kilda to do the Black Spur which should be a 3 hour total trip including travelling time to get there. Leaving really early allows us to leave luggage behind, and we can then pick it up before checking out at ten to head off to Apollo Bay, where we’re staying next.
Day 8 (2nd): Got up at 6:30am to do the Black Spur Ride. We majorly misjudged how far away it really is, because we didn’t realise that there were such things as traffic lights every 300m on a highway for 50km! I took us about an extra hour each way to get to the start of the Black Spur Ride. The actual ride itself was beautiful! 33km of lush windy foresty jungley type road. For the way up I told Simon and Shannon not to wait for me so I can take photos of it, etc, and we planned to meet up the top. Unfortunately they decided to go to a lookout at the top. So when I got there, I couldn’t see them and rode back down again because there was no phone reception. After waiting down the bottom I called them, and discovered they were still waiting for me at the top! baah! So on their way down now, they came across a Porsche which foolishly decided to run itself off the road, and created a major traffic build up. Multiple accidents occured after that due to cars and motorbikes speeding around the corner(s) and hitting into this traffic build up! It took them ages to get down, I was so bored!
Eventually we checked out from Base Backpackers several hours late, and started our way to Apollo Bay where we would be spending the night.
Black Spur Drive, and Great Ocean Road
Day 9 (3rd): The aim of this day was to do the Beech Forest Treetop Flywalk, located inland from Otway National Park (which in turn is near Apollo Bay). It was a rip-off to get in at $17 per adult, and there was no student concession! Anyway, being seven of us Adrian asked for a group discount – but they only would give us a group discount if we had ten or more – bastards! So, Adrian spent 15 minutes rounding up a group of 17 people (i.e. 10 strangers) to get us all in for $15. Fair enough!
The Group doing the tree-top flywalk in Beech Forest
It turns out it was maybe worth the money, with plenty of breath taking views as shown below.
Beech Forest
We then continued our journey to Port McDonald, along the Great Ocean Road, and I stopped off at as many of the places as I could. Again, I was broken up from the group and left behind, as they enjoyed their high-speed overtaking, etc, on dangerous windy roads. Fair enough! I didn’t mind, as their was plenty of time now for me to take photos such as below.
Me at the Twelve Apostles (now only seven!)
Adrian’s rear tyre, now with about 30mm of bare wire a quarter of the way around the tyre showing was unsafe to ride. Below is possibly my favourite rock. I wanted to spend an hour or so at the blow hole near the razor edge rock, although we didn’t have time due to the worn tyre saga of the day. Next time!
The Razor Edge Rock
Had dinner with Trent and Simon in Portland that night. Both of these guys are great people. Ended up riding the rest of the way to Port McDonald in the dark, which was kind of scary yet extremely fun.
Day 10 (4th):Being the final day, we all really just wanted to get home. Port McDonald smelt funny. Robin’s tyre also showed signs of kevlar on this last day. He continued riding on it!
So that’s the entire trip in summary! The end. Next trip, we’re doing Tasmania – transporting our bikes to Melbourne, flying to Melbourne, and picking up our bikes (or buying new ones!) and catching the ferry to Tassie. Can’t wait!