December, High and Thirsty

December, high and thirsty, and I – fool that I am – have once again ventured into the unknown without a decent amount of water. Or a repair kit, for that matter. I know I should take both, but this is the tropics, where we care little for unimportant things, like making it home alive.

Truth is, I am not going too far beyond my ken. Just a little bit further down the road. A few more kilometres.

This is a trip though time, in a way. A part of my city that was build thirty years ago, and hasn't changed much since then. Should I turn left and keep going for a few minutes, I would find newer neighbourhoods build with newer trends and building codes, but I stick with the river, following it up towards the dam. These older houses please me more than the newer ones ever could, anyway.

The path by the river changes into a “safe” cycle path that may be safe, but isn't terribly comfortable. I shift to the road. How many times have I wondered where this road eventually leads? Maybe one day I'll follow it until I find my answer. Maybe one day I'll just remember to look it up.

It seems popular amongst “real” cyclists. Two or three of them pass me, and I wonder if I'll ever feel as though I belong on the same road as someone wearing that much Lycra. One passes me only to turn around a few meters ahead. It seems the road narrows, and there is no space for such things as cyclists ahead.

Me? I haven't reached my target yet. I steel myself for jostling with cars, then notice that the “safe” cycle path is still continuing over on my right. I cut across someone's footpath to get to it. I'd rather share with pedestrians than cars, if given the choice. I like it better when I'm the potentially lethal element in the situation.

Then, suddenly, I'm there. Now what? I thought it would take me longer to get here. Should I just turn around as I planned? That would make for a shorter adventure than I intended.

I coast around the car park for a moment, wondering if I want to walk to the top of the dam for something to do. Or, perhaps, down to the river. Then I remember something I saw in passing, off the other side of the road.

It's a bird-watching platform. Built in the last year or so, with a nice, shiny interpretive sign to tell me all about the birds that come to the borrow pits. I'd never heard of a borrow pit before, although it makes sense that they would exist. Now I know what they are, that we have one, that it fills up with water every summer and that a wide variety of birds can be found here. I love interpretive signs. You almost always learn something new.

I notice the mountain range on the way back. It's a range I see all the time on the way to work, but it's a side and an angle I almost never see. I'm looking at the sun playing across the face of the mountains and I marvel at how pretty it is from this side – how beautiful and unfamiliar. I can barely take my eyes off it.

Nor, for that matter, the peacock which is inexplicably walking up the bike path on the other side of the road. What on earth...? How did that get there?

The things you see in your own town, eh?

You get what you get - Black Wolf Taipan hydration packs

It's one of the great fallacies that I buy hook line and sinker every time:

"You get what you pay for"

The truth is, you get what you get. I've lost count of the times I payed extra for the sake of perceived value, only to find that the expensive thing I bought broke just as quickly and easily as something much cheaper and "nastier". Heck, sometimes the more expensive thing was so awkward and hard to use, I ended up ignoring it and using the "cheaper and nastier" option anyway.

I'm feeling particularly burned, at present, by the Black Wolf "Taipan" hydration pack.

The first one I bought didn't even make it home from the shop before the plastic grip on the handle snapped. I took it back to exchange it for a non-broken bag, and noticed there were a few others in the shop with snapped handles. I figured this was clearly a design flaw, and decided to avoid holding it by that handle if it could be avoided.

The second bag (the replacement for the first) made it home without breaking, but never made it out of the house in the same condition. I removed the bladder to fill it with water, and when I put it back in the bag the tabs for holding the tubing popped out of the stitching. To add insult to injury, the bladder leaked.

$100 for a bag that broke (at three different places) the first time I tried to use it. I'm not getting another one of those, I can tell you.

Wondermark

Ah, that Wondermark.

Such a great addition to one's day.

Wonder Woman Movie

Thank you, DC. I was hoping you'd eventually notice that Wonder Woman could at least star in her own animation, even if we have to wait another 30 years for a live action film:

“Feeling special, turk?”

I called someone a “turk” today. Not as a racial slur because he actually was or looked Turkish, nor as rhyming slang* for “jerk”, but as a synonym for “punk” – something that could rightly be considered a little out of date.

Some bloke in a ute decided he was king of the road and didn’t have to give way to some girly on a bicycle, and as he passed I muttered under my breath, “hope that makes you feel special, turk.”

I caught myself doing it and thought, “Wow, that was very 1911 of me. What’s next? Am I going to start calling my friends ‘cobber’ and refer to nonsense as ‘mullock’?”

Apologies to any Turks, or punks for that matter, who might justifiably object to such language. I’m going to claim “too much CJ Dennis”. Can I use that as an excuse?
*****
*Yes, obviously it would fail as rhyming slang because it's only one word and actually rhymes with "jerk". As everyone knows, rhyming slang should have at least two words - the last (rhyming) word of which is consistently dropped. Therefore, if one were to use the word "turk" as rhyming slang for "jerk", one would have to put it in a phrase (such as "Regimental Turk") and then drop the "turk" (so that one would use "regimental" as the rhyming slang for "jerk").

Actually, in that example we'd probably drop everything except the "reg", which would probably then be extended to "reggie" or "reggo" (pronounced "redge-o").

It's not supposed to make sense. Stop expecting things to.