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:

Pre-fab Neighbourhoods

I stole this from one of my own comments on someone else's blog. Shh, don't tell anyone (not that anyone reads this thing, anyway). It was a reply to a post on translating street names into English.

In Australia we're getting a lot of what I call "pre-fab neighbourhoods".

Someone just ups-and-buys a wide stretch of bushland where the wallabies roam, the kites have their nests in the trees, the plovers have their nests on the ground and the various skinks, snakes and goannas run free... Then they bulldoze the lot and turn it into these tiny blocks of land on these torturous "streets" where people who should have more sense build houses that are a) ugly and b) too big.

There are many things about these pre-fabricated neighbourhoods that annoy me. One is the fact that they are often built in known flood plains, but the body corporate bi-laws insist that all houses in these estates be low-block. There's a reason why the classic "Queenslander" style house is raised, you morons. Pay attention.

Another is the way they give the streets cutsey and entirely inappropriate names. 'Riverside Boulevard', for a street that isn't a boulevard. 'Hampton Circuit' for something that is clearly a Crescent. And, oh! The number of streets calling themselves "parades" or "avenues", when they are clearly just plain, old fashioned streets.

Heck, they don't even bother to plant trees along the avenues. That's completely missing the point.

Also, most of these street-like things just turn back in on themselves in a sinuous, sinister manner designed to squeeze more houses into a small area, rendering most of these estates impenetrable rabbit warrens - and some how they keep building "streets" that are too narrow for a fire truck to get past any car that might be parked on the side of the road.

I swear, this sort of thing shouldn't be legal. Heck, it probably isn't (it's amazing the way enough money can make laws 'go away').

Anyway, I guess my point is, sometimes the English speaking countries shouldn't be allowed to name their own streets. No one else should be expected to get them right under these circumstances.

Ummm.....

Came across this ad at the bottom of a web-page today:

"Killer White Teeth"
The Secrets Dentists don’t want you to know about Teeth Whitening!

I think (although I'm not sure, because I was too afraid to click on it) that this is an ad for some sort of teeth-whitening service or product, trying to use the serpent-under-the-apple-tree method for making you want it ("Dentists don't really have your teeth's best interests at heart - they just want to keep all the knowledge and power to themselves").

And yet...

I'm sorry, but it reads like on of those "Current Affairs" type gloom and doom stories. What are the secrets dentists don't want you to know, and how will that lead to your whitened teeth being "killers"? Is there some sort of toxic substance in all teeth-whitening procedures? Are we doomed to suffer some strange and fatal condition as a result of wanting unnaturally white teeth?

Thank goodness I never touch the stuff. I figure as long as my teeth aren't yellow or black I'm doing okay. Who needs their teeth to be as white as bleached paper?

For that matter, who needs their paper to be as white as bleached paper? Come on, people, that just ain't natural.

Cake Wreck

Okay,

This is now, officially, my favourite blog in the whole wide world:

http://cakewrecks.blogspot.com/

You have no idea how much of my day has been spent laughing at cake...