4 months today

Dave here.

I tend to be a bit of a numeraphile.

As a few examples, Saje and I have been married for 5013 days as of today. Personally, I think that deserves some kind of major recognition event since putting it into days makes it seem much longer more amazing.

We have been parents for a collective total of 7535 days when adding both children together. That's almost exactly 150% of how long we've been married (to the first decimal place at least). That value will never happen again in our lifetime.

Hopefully point proven. QED.

The biggest number that stands out to me, however, is 4 months. We're 4 months into our Australian adventure and I feel I represent all of our family when I say that I feel we're making the most of it. The vast majority of it has been 'up' time, where we're on the go and on the road or in another city taking in all that it has to offer.

As such, I won't lament about how quickly it's going, but rather point out a few of the photos that may not have made the first cut on the blog. Here we go:

Mid-air on our way here - the leg from Vancouver to Ghangzhou

 Our first visit to the boy's school and learning about the COLA - covered outdoor learning area

 The amazing view in Leura of the 3 sisters - literally eating our on the edge of a cliff

 Our first (and still favourite) wine tour

 The craziness of the drive through the Blue Mountains to get to Sydney / Manly for our family adventure away.

 The iconic moments where we have seen some of the traditional touristy stuff too

 burying Big C in the sand in Manly at his request

 A weekend away in Oberon with more amazing views of this vast country

 Showing Canada pride wherever we can - like the Carillion in Canberra

 and finally one of the most beautiful sunsets from the edge of the Cudgegong river.

Brisbane Spartan Race Report

To start off, I'll let you know that I completed the race and have earned my first ever Spartan Trifecta.  I am writing this blog post on my phone, so if the autocorrect makes me say things that don't make any sense, please forgive me.  I'm still in the Gold Coast.

 So we drove to Sydney on Friday morning and caught a one hour flight up to the Gold Coast.  I acted like a 3 year old at the window of the plane as it was landing!  Everything was so beautiful and there was just kilometers and kilometers of gorgeous beaches and coastline.  I took about 10 photos while my friends laughed at me.

These friends are the right friends to have as they know people in the Gold Coast who are letting us crash at their place.  Their place is about 90 minutes from the race site and we needed to be at the race site by 6...so the alarm went off at 3:58 am.  Ugg.

What you can't see in the pre-race selfie below is that I am so worked up that I am practically wetting myself by this point in the day.  I know that I have 21+ kilometers ahead of me and I am absolutely terrified.

 Rob and I had agreed to run the course together so I at least had the consolidation that he would be able to tell the medics where to find me should the need arise.

All too soon the agreed upon wave time was announced and we were off on the course.

 For those of you who like that sort of thing, here's a couple of versions of the course map.

 His is the elevation diagram in feet and miles.

This beauty below is a new obstacle. You have to climb up the lower wall, then get out under the overhang (it angless outwards as you can see) and then on to the cargo net and then finally down the inside.  I tried to get good photos...I did my best, but photos were not the primary objective here.

 Rob and I were chuffed to have both made it.  I should say early on that we agreed to make it more of a "selfie Spartan" than a "take no prisoners and try to kill ourselves Spartan".

 Below we are at the highest point that the course hit.  This was around the 7km mark and it was a long hard climb to get to this point.  We were trying to get a shot of the hill top behind us, but didn't do well with the photo.  Some people ran past us and mocked us for stopping to take selfies.  Meh, we ran past them a few minutes later.

 What I am trying to capture in the photo below is the most horrible sandbag carry I've done to date (isn't the most recent one always the worst?). We grabbed HEAVY sandbags and then had to climb up a trail with challenging footing for about 400m.  Coming down the same 400m with the sandbags still on with the uneven footing was very hard.  It was the only obstacle all day that I actually wanted to just not finish.   We had earlier carried sandbags for 1km and then had to cross balance beams (slippery, wet, muddy balanced beams) with them.  My back and shoulders were screaming!

So this bloke rocked up behind me wanting in on the selfie :)

We also did the usual stuff, up and under walls, threw a 20kg slam ball over an 8ft rope, carried a 35kg slam ball for what felt like an eternity.  The standard fare.

 I feel as though these two photos are out of order.  I'm not in the top one, but it is a great shot of what we had to do here.  There were 4-6 trenches like this all in succession. They smelled only a little bit not like sewage.  We had to get through them by any means necessary. So we jumped, we swam, we crawled.  We made it.  And we were absolutely, abhorrently filthy.

Update.  I found photos of me in this gunk (not my most graceful side):

Below is a shot of the rope traversee at the 13k mark.  This one has been at every Aussie Spartan this year. The backs of my knees are very torn up and do not take well to showers today as a result!

 There's lots more of course, but I only got a few shots (I did need to spend some of the time actually completing the obstacles!).

Some of the obstacles not listed here include the Toblerone,  balance beams (without sandbags), 2+ kilometers of wading and swimming through muddy ice cold creeks where we could not see the bottom or get a reasonable foothold due to the underwater boulders and gravel, rope climb, same monkey bars as in Melbourne, kettle bell loft, kettlebell carry, spear throw...and so on.

My Garmin says that we completed the course in just under 5 hours.  The official results are not up yet, so we'll leave that there for now.

Here I am in my fancy new Spartan t-shirt squishing that nasty hill that we had to climb up.

Things I am glad that I didn't know before I knew them: 1-there is a fast attacking, deadly snake up here called a taipan.  Once this thing bites you have about 5 minutes to live.

2:  pythons are not uncommon in these parts.  

3: Anna saw a snake slithering across the course while she was running.  

Had I known these things before showing up there is a much higher likelyhood that I would not have come. I found out about the snake spotting a full 20 hours after it happened.  Shudder.

For those of you who are asking, I have not yet set a record. Two Canadians completed a single Australian Spartan Trifecta in 2013.  To set a record I will need to do this all aging one more time.

Stay tuned, I'm registered for a second round in September and October.

Sometimes I Open my Mouth and my Mother Comes out.

As a child, adult, I still do this, I am one to leave my messes behind me when I leave a room.  Crumbs on the table or counter used to drive my mother to distraction.  Eventually the only real solution to that was to move out.

 So the other day Big C was setting the table.  The table was not clean.  I said to him "but that table is FILTHY, it is COVERED in crumbs. He looked at the 20 or so crumbs on the table and looked back at me, very confused.

 Oh snap.  My mother and I had that same conversation in the 80s and 90s.  Many. Times.

Stuff

This week has been a reasonably quiet one, all things considered.  We are in the final stages of planning our upcoming trip to Queensland and making preparations for Grandma's arrival.

This map is alternatively up on the wall and on the table as I plan our campervan driving route the 2000km from Brisbane to Cairns.  Along the way we will be taking a full day tour out to see the Great Barrier Reef and hanging out at various awesome beaches and such.

This morning after I dropped the boys off, I swung by the local grocery store and bought some meat from their clearance (just about out of date) section for dinner.  Then I went home and blew a wad on a huge trip.  I live in contradictions.

 The weather look gorgeous, but it is actually quite cold and windy.  The fire has been lit for more than 24 hours straight now.

I have an escape plan though!  I am flying to the Gold Coast in about 18 hours to earn the last pie piece of my first Australian Spartan Trifecta.  The Gold Coast is about 10 hours north of here and is forecast to be MUCH warmer.  I am happy to do that for a few days!

Mother's Day

Monkey invited me to join him at Scouts the Tuesday before Mother's Day so that I could be celebrated along with the other moms.  Australians seem to set this up as a fun active type of event.

First the boys all stuffed baked potatoes for us and then they wrapped them in foil and threw them directly in to the fire.

We played a few games, one of which would be best described as hockey with cardboard rolls.  They call out a kid's name and then we both race to grab the cardboard rolls and attempt to get the stuffed bunny through the goal posts.

 I won.  These hips don't lie.  

Then we all played hungry hungry hippos.  The team puts one member on a rolling board and then sets you in to the middle of the fracas to use a laundry basket to get as many balls as you can.

 After the burnt potatoes were consumed we got banana boats (if you don't know what these are then you have never been camping).  They were served with custard and were delicious.

On Mother's Day Big C lept out of bed and raced in to the kitchen to make me breakfast.  He had some hand made gifts for me and I got lots of cuddles in bed.  It was fabulous.

Post Mother's Day (Monkey was camping on Mother's Day) he took me out to Outside the Square Cafe and treated me to afternoon tea with a really delicious lemon cheesecake.

Scottish Mail/Male

I asked my dad to mail me a package. In February.  That package was of some vitamin B12 that I thought I would be able to acquire here, but I can not.  There was also a Lululemon tank top.  Nothing perishable, nothing urgent.

My father is nothing if not one to follow instructions.  He heard that it needed to get here, but that there was no need to hire a courier.  So what does my dad do?  He digs deep in to his Scottish heritage and chooses to ship my package using surface mail.  Surface. Mail.

Canada Post, having offered this service, but not having anyone actually select it since they stopped using horses to deliver the mail (much like how Bell Canada offers touch tone service as an upgrade to rotary dial, but no one actually has rotary dial) now had a choice to make.  Do they just ship it over on the next plane like they would with every other package?

OH HELL NO!

Canada Post, as any good government entity would do, formed a committee.  They drafted up a terms of reference.  They argued about the membership of the committee and the Terms of Reference.  They formed a new committee.  They agreed to ship it over the surface of the earth.

So they ran a hiring competition.  The first round was unsuccessful.  Such a shame.  The correct person would need to be bilingual.  Back to the committee.  Sadly the meeting did not have quorum.  Competing priorities and all that.  Finally the competition was run, a candidate was selected.  Victory!  Only $500,000 spent so far.

Finally ready for it's voyage, the package was neatly tucked in to a pack and strapped to our successful candidate.  He dove in to the waters at Dow's Lake and made his way as directed by Google Maps.  He swam, he kayaked, he hung out on various beaches.

 Finally, today, having climbed the Great Dividing Range he arrived on my doorstep, dripping, a bit cold, a tiny bit exhausted and triumphantly handed me my tank top and bottles of B12.

Thanks Dad, next time remind me to ask Mom to ship stuff to me.

Camp Cudgegong Part III - wrapping up camp

After a supper of mashed potatoes n gravy, rizzles (imagine a super greasy hamburger without a bun), mac n'cheese, peas, carrots and then jell-o / ice cream for dessert, we made off for the evening campfire. Monkey did a great job offering up a skit for the ventures to do and got a lot of laughs.
The sunset on day two outdid the sunset on day one and before we knew it we were gazing at tens of thousands of stars. It was truly inspiring, but unfortunately my phone was unable to take a good photo. We could see many constellations and easily could see the massive stream of the Milky Way.

Sunday morning we awoke to another gorgeous sunrise over the river with mist gently rising off it in the 4 degree temperatures.

We enjoyed a breakfast of bacon, eggs and sausages.  Monkey was delighted.  Again, I feel that I need to wring our my arteries upon my return home.

Our last 'station' was supposed to be canoeing, though with the 30 km/h winds the boys opted for a quick boatride instead.

After lunch the boys had a 'chariot race' made from the logs that they had lashed together. Monkey's team started out strong, but struggled with the turn around and didn't finish first. Monkey was pretty Ok with this, especially considering that the winning team won a box of chocolates.
Finally we packed up, closed the camp and headed home to Saje and Big C.
It was a delightful weekend and we are surely set for a great night's sleep in our own beds with walls to stop the wind and keep the heat on the inside.
Our pillows haven't looked so good in quite some time.