Friday, September 11, 2009

Another fantastic bikeride




Well, it's Saturday again so I went on my last solo bikeride, seeing as Joel get's here tomorrow morning. He's actually 1.5 hours into his flight right now, should be getting his meal pretty soon.... I headed Northwest to the D'Aguilar Range and up to Jolly's lookout. The ride was 50 km (31 mi) roundtrip and 500m (1500 ft) elevation gain. Felt tougher than that... It was really nice and worth the ride, and the nice thing about riding up into the mountains is that the return trip is mostly downhill! So I heard a story about how the magpies get very ferocious during mating season and have a habit of dive-bombing passers-by, especially cyclists. I have even seen people with eyes painted on their helmets and straws pasted to them to deter the magpies. How big a problem could it be, you ask yourself? Well: I got divebombed by a magpie on my way back today! He hit the back of my helmet twice! It was too bizarre. It didn't hurt or anything was it was distracting and I watched the whole thing as my shadow on the asphalt in front of me. Too weird!

Hopefully we'll have more tomorrow about the fireworks show I'm going to tonight, including a "dump and burn" by the RAAF F-111. Should be interesting!

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Awesome. You're going to see an F111 do a dump and burn at night? Do you remember the F101 VooDoos in Bagotville? The boom boom on takeoff as the afterburners kicked in were real crowd pleasers, but the F111 beats the F101 anytime. The dump and burn is a maneuver to "distract" heat seaking missiles approaching from any angle. Prepare yourself for quite a show.

Unknown said...

By the way, say "Hi" to Joel for us. Remember, he must take it "easy" the first few days in Australia. You know, until he gets his circadian rhythm back in sync.

Joel'n'Marlene said...

So the dump and burn was AAAAWWWWSSSOMMMEEE!!!!

One of the F111's flew RIGHT over us, you could feel the heat on your face as you looked up! And the sound was incredible! It was really exhilarating! They did a simple fly-by at the beginning of the fireworks and then during the grand finally they did the dump and burn. Wow! Plus it's the last year they do it so we really got to see something unique.

I think I want to be a fighter pilot...