Saturday, September 5, 2009

On top of mount Coot-tha..M






... all covered in treeeeeess
I went for a bike-riiiiiiide
and was gen-rally pleeeeeeaaased!

So the sun made its appearance, and I got air in my tires (which I had to deflate prior to boarding the plane), and loaded up with emergency CO2 cartridges in case of a flat, I headed from home to the nearby Mount Coot-tha. It was a delightful ride, with rolling, but false-flattengly up-hill and then a full-on climb to the summit. At the top were pretty much all of the broadcasting stations in the city: channel 7, channel 9, channel 10, one after the other. A little ways down was the lookout, with a restaurant and snack bar-cafe. I stopped to replenish my resources with a lemonade and a muffin. Don't be fooled by the lemonade, it's more like a lemon-flavoured Italian soda, which I knew to expect, and thoroughly enjoyed. I then made my way back down with a slight detour on a side road to check out the Australian bush, and then headed back through town, on now hilly, but now false-flattengly down-hill roads all the way home. I was quite warm when I arrived, so I followed my mom's perennial advice to "get in the pool"!

In the end it was a lovely day, and despite nearly killing myself twice due to unanticipated traffic coming from the "wrong" direction, I made out quite well! I have also (mostly) gotten over the weirdness and danger of biking on the left side of the road and feel pretty comfortable out there. Another experience to add to the slew of delightful experiences since I arrived here to make my time here tons of fun!

5 comments:

CGDK said...

Hi, I just stumbled upon your blog -thought I'd just say (a late) welcome to Brisbane! Hope you have a lovely time here and you enjoy your work.
-Carleen

Unknown said...

Did you buy that doohickey thingamajig attachment for your whatchumacallit that we talked about to inflate your tires?

Dad

Joel'n'Marlene said...

Arg! No I completely forgot! I'll be going back to the bike shop with Joel next weekend (!) so I'll be sure to pick one up then. Unless my Argon is easy enough to reach in the storage unit so Joel can pick it up when he's there this week...

Joel'n'Marlene said...

By the way, thanks for the welcome Carleen! I've been finding Brisbane fantastic and having a great time!

Unknown said...

J'ai finalement réussi à entrer sur votre blog. Quelle bonne façon de communiquer avec un grand nombre de personnes à la fois.
J'ai bien aimé tes photes des plantes de là-bas. La corne d'élan est vraiment immense! Et bien sur la plage... tu me fais rêver.
A-tu vu des kangourous? Et a-tu pu manger des mangues fraîches?
Ici la température continue à être gagnifique. J'ai fais un somme dans la balançoire hier après-midi toute emmitoufflée dans mes gilets et couverture car c'est frais à l'ombre. Et c'est très sec. Love, Mom.