Squeak Like the Wind

Quiet work morning

I work 2 days a week on a small university campus in Canberra, and one of the nicest things about the site is the beautiful courtyard in the main building. When I walked in this morning the fountain looked luminescent, almost glowing in the new morning sun.

A few photos from the ride home today

Lunchwalk

Sometimes a walk at lunch time to clear your head is far more effective than a headache tablet...

Bikes are allowed to be here too!

I've come out on Rosie this morning for brekky with one friend and coffee with another, and finally had both the time and the inclination to stop and take a picture of this wonderful thing: I'm not sure what it's called. But I know what it is! It's a message, loud and clear, that bikes are allowed to be on the road.

Over the christmas period and in to January, I participated in a study funded by the ACT government aiming at making cycling safer in Canberra. I had a camera attached to my helmet, and I recorded about 20 hours of me riding to and from work on the roads. At the end I participated in an interview as well.

Something that happens with car drivers and bikes on the road, and was certainly highlighted with the not so recent shenanigans with Shane Warne and his chance encounter with a cyclist, is that there is an attitude that since cyclists don't pay vehicle rego fees for their bikes, they have no right to be on the road.

I'm not going to put in my 2cents worth into this debate today. But I will say this: it's wonderful to see that little patch of green paint and white stencilling, and its message: watch for the bicycles, they're allowed to be here too.

Virtutis fortuna comes

Last year, I put into place a plan I'd been working on for over 8 years.

When I was 28, I had decided that after 10 years in the workforce as an admin worker, I'd had enough. I'd gone from job to job for years. My first job was terribly underpaid (job-share) though lots of fun (receptionist at a flying school!) and at 21 I moved to Sydney. For the years in between until I started working for Bernie, a financial planner, I'd not stayed at a job for longer than about 12 months. The shortest was 2 weeks, though 12 months was about the average.

Working for Bernie was good for me - gave me a good stable base to sort out my depression, and work on things like my self esteem and that sort of stuff. But it was boring. He tried to give me more challenging work, I'd do basic financial plans and he'd proof them, but it was still boring. I'd get my work done by lunch time and surf the net for the rest of the day. Sounds fun but it was actually soul destroying. So pointless. And then I'd put off going home to an empty house, to wait for a husband who would be home some time between midnight and 3am, 6 nights a week. Yay, being married to a chef. Again, sounds so much cooler than the reality. LOL (no hard feelings! It was just... difficult, being in two different time zones). I even tried a bit of bar work, to align my hours with his, but I was even more bored and miserable. No go.

The other thing was that I was always tired. It'd always been like this - even at my first job, where I worked a 3 1/2 day week - I seemed to struggle with fatigue. I had tests, nothing wrong. Years later, tests again, still nothing wrong. More recently, when doing my regular plasma donation, the nurses at the blood donation centre refused to take any more blood products from me until I knew why I looked more and more like I'd been run over by a truck. This time they did sleep studies as well. Still all normal. There's nothing wrong with me - I just can't handle a 5 day week.

I went to a careers counsellor at 28, (who cost something like $650 and was worth EVERY dollar) and she told me, probably quite correctly, that I was going to be bored and frustrated in my work unless I got off my butt and went back to uni.

The idea was that if I was always tired, but taking a pay hit when money was already tight wasn't a great plan, I could go to uni, get a job that paid twice as much, and only work 3 or 4 days a week. A good plan!

It took close to 8 years. Heh. But I got there. I started working in Catholic schools as a school counsellor, thinking that a 3o hour week spread over 5 days with school holidays would work. It didn't. I spent the first week of the holidays lying on the couch, stunned. The second week I'd spend trying to have a life - do what I wanted to do, see some friends, and then the school term would start again and I'd start out ok, and get tireder and tireder... and it'd all start over again.

Finally, I got full registration as a psychologist, and left school counselling, and got my 4 day a week thing on. Oh. My God. It is awesome.

I love what I do. Not everyone can say this. It had very little to do with luck: the only luck involved was the dice that were thrown when I was conceived, and rolled relatively high on smarts; the rest has been down to planning, hard work, determination, and a great big dose of frustration tolerance.

It makes me laugh when people say "you're so lucky" in response to me telling them I work a four day week and love what I do. That's just ridiculous. I made this happen. I was lucky enough to be born with a good brain in my head, and I didn't fuck it up - I used it. Like Caesar is purported to have said, "Luck is the companion of courage", or "you make your own luck".

A bike ride, and a near death experience

Another day of sleeping in. I vaguely remember sleeping in as a teenager. I didn't actually sleep, mostly. I tended to get myself a good novel, curl up in bed, and stay there until some time in the early afternoon when hunger would drive me out into the real world, seeking breakfast and perhaps even some sunshine.

My niece stayed in bed until about 2pm. I was pretty impressed. We slept until about 9ish, and blamed that on daylight saving. Heh.

We didn't have many plans for the day, and I see no reason to chuck a happily hibernating teenager out of bed if we have nowhere to be, so when she finally emerged we fed her, and threw her on a bike.

Unfortunately for her, Canberra can be a bit... thingy... in the spring. Apparently it's not a nice place to be if you have hayfever. Or asthma. She had an asthma attack about half way round the lake, despite our very easy pace on the bikes. We'd been riding for about 25 minutes at that stage. So, pollen + slightly asthmatic lungs = near death experience. Not cool! Thank goodness for my happy purchase of a bike rack, I rode home in 11 minutes flat (I told you we'd been riding slowly! LOL) and grabbed the car, and did my best Squeaking Knight in Shining Armour impression. Hooray!

Another day with no purchases, though it was pretty easy considering we spent half the day just chilling at home. Nice.

Day 3: Success! :)

Gettin' Dirty!

I went mountain biking yesterday for the first time in ages. And the first ever jaunt on my own. Oooh, excitement and risk and stuff!

I live near one of the niftiest mountain biking spots in the universe, but I haven't really been able to get out there unless scabbing a ride from a friend, since I haven't had a bike rack on my car. And with the price of towbars being what they are, I wasn't keen on having one installed on my old bomby. So, with the purchase of a cute new(ish) car, I went with the "in for a penny, in for a pound" philosophy, closed my eyes to the price tag, and bought me a towbar and a decent bike rack.

Squee!

The excitement has been enormous! I went out to Stromlo yesterday and almost went home again without going for a ride, as there was a very large event in progress when I got there. Lucky for me, I'd accessed a different entrance to the park before, when I was going out there to do trail running. So I wandered off to this entrance, and instead of being utterly crawling with a thousand humans and their canine companions, it was relatively empty. Awesome.

Why is this important? Because I'm unco-ordinated, and keep falling off my seat, and hold people up, and get all worked up because I'm embarrassed and flustered and just generally not enjoying myself. Which, ya know, kinda flies in the face of the whole point of it. Riding = fun, right?

So off I went. There was the occasional collision with rocks and trees, which is generally how me and  mountain biking work. At one point after a few too many enthusiastic brushes with death-by-close-encounter-with-a-rock the two guys sitting on top of the hill junction were treated to a surprised "shit!" followed by a disgusted "fuck" as I staggered to a halt and toppled slowly sideways. Elegant I am not, nor polite. And not even family-friendly. Ah well. I righted myself, and pretended to fuss with my water bottle, and slunk quietly behind a bush while I waited for them to move on. Nothing to see here, boys, just a dusty, happy Squeak swearing to herself and rehydrating. Um, yeah.

  The view from the top is apparently pretty good. I haven't gone all the way up there yet, but got a nice photo from about half way up. Yesterday's jaunt was more about familiarising myself with the trail network and seeing how lost I could get myself while still being able to navigate back to the car. All in all, a pretty successful morning. And WOW, my legs are sore. Heh!

Lucky Ted is a tiny stuffed toy about 3-4cm long which I used to carry in my pocket when I rode a motorcycle, and is now happily perched on my mtb handlebars. Cute!

And then, just like that, it was spring

Zoomed around being sociable and spending a bit of pocket money at op shops today. Awesome fun! Brekkie, biking, beautiful friends, life is good. Spring in Canberra kicks arse.

I had three people stop me to ask me about my Yakkay helmet today, two of them were mothers who said almost word for word the same thing: "my daughter won't wear a helmet and I worry about her, but I think she might wear *that*". Woohoo! I point out to people that it doesn't have an Australian Standards sticker, so technically you can still get pulled over and "booked" for not having an approved helmet. I must say, however, it'd be a pretty mean cop to issue a ticket when you're obviously wearing a proper (beautifully made) helmet, when I see so many people riding in plain caps, or just plain without.

It is a shame about the AS thing. I was speaking to a guy in a bike shop who told me it costs something like $10,000 or something outrageous like that to get a helmet tested for the standards, so it figures that bike shops are reluctant to do it. I wonder if I could raise the money for it...? ;)

Weekend of recovery

I'm feeling a bit better, on the mend! This sick business sucks a bit, and I'm not very good at being sick - I fear I suffer from "man-cold syndrome", where the slightest symptoms will convince me that I'm DYING and need HELP NOW OMG THE PAIN THE PAIN and DRUGS! I NEED STRONGER DRUGS etc etc. Anyway, today I'm actually feeling like doing things other than faffing about on facebook.

Part of the mental lift is thanks to my dear friend Michelle, who came and visited this weekend with her boyfriend Drew. They came despite my dire warnings of contagious lurgy, and it was great. Chelle is a keen jigsaw enthusiast, and helped me finish off the 1000 piece puzzle I'd started weeks ago and couldn't be arsed doing much of. Butterscotch schnapps was also ingested, for medicinal purposes of course. It made me feel surprisingly better. LOL. So, yay for friends who inspire you to get off your butt and DO things. I'm pulling out an old knitting project which had been going really well but put aside. Feels good.

One of the things I do when hanging at home with very little to do is that I get very involved in the drama that constantly swirls round the bird feeder in the back yard. This is one sassy young rosella, madly porking out with a hungry sulphur watching him. I bang the window when the sulphurs come over for the seed - fatties can go find their own food - but the rosellas know they have right of way, and make the most of it. The sulphur would fly over, the rosella would spook (I mean he is 10 times his size) and fly into the tree, I'd bang the back door, the sulphur would retreat to the fence, and the rosie would fly back to the feeder and continue his frenzied gobbling. Rinse, repeat, until rosella is full and does the flying equivalent of waddling away. Heh. Very sweet! At this time of year, I think they all probably need a good feed, so the backyard is a revolving door of lovely parrots and cockatoos (as well as other less desirable winged friends) wandering through for a free feed. Yay.

Another sunny Saturday morning ride

Another ride in the sunshine!

Canberra gets quite chilly in winter. It's usually about the same temperature or colder here than in Hobart. Not! OK! *sigh* I don't handle the cold very well. I had a massive emotional implosion when the first cold snap hit, and then was sort of all right for a while, and it's starting to get to the point in winter when I've counted the days 'til the solstice, and survived that, and about a month or so later start twitching and saying things like "Rightyo Winter, you've had your fun, now it's time to, you know, fuck off. No, really. Because I've had enough." And I start wondering how seriously one should take those fleeting homicidal urges that come when you check the weather forecast and realise that Sydney, only 3 hours' drive away, is 15° warmer today. Eeeeeyeah.

So. The only thing that keeps me sane in Canberra's cold winters (7 below last night, yuck) is the fact that although they're cold, winters here are mostly sunny and bright. You'd better have your sunnies handy all year round when you live here!  And riding off for a late morning tea-and-yummy-things is a divine way to spend Saturday morning.

This pair had stopped for a picnic - zooming about on a tandem, how cute!

"we" stopped for a coffee on the final 2km leg of the round trip - popped into the little coffee holder and slurped on it for the last leisurely few minutes. Yum.

 

 

 

I'm not sure what the deal with this little road is - it leads to nowhere, from nowhere. I'm certain there's a story there but I don't know what it is. Any ideas? I thought perhaps the creek was a man made channel rather than a natural creek, but the road didn't start again this side. Intriguing!

Finally, just a few photos I took of the bike, I've been playing around with my cute hipstamatic photo app on the phone.