Jim's Home Page

Though born from the doomed campaign at Gallipoli, the spirit of ANZAC is not really about loss at all. It is about courage and endurance, and duty, and love of country, and mateship, and good humour and the survival of a sense of self-worth and decency in the face of dreadful odds. - Sir William Deane

Since the weather has started to get warmer, a few people from work have been doing short one hour bike rides with us every second Friday. Unfortunately today, most of the usual suspects were out or found some other excuse, so it ended up just being three of us riding.

We just did a quick ride up to Folsom and then back down the bike trail on the north side of the dam. Because we didn't have everyone with us, I had the pace cranked up. All of a sudden, we had a "wildlife alert".

There is lots of wildlife alone the bike trail, including deer, squirrels, skunks, coyotes, and even (apparently) mountain lions. The squirrels in particular are rather psycho, getting all panicked and then running the wrong way directly onto the path in front of the bikes. It makes for some interesting avoidance manoeuvres, and on occasions, flattened squirrel.

In this case however, the wildlife had the chance of biting back, as it was a large rattlesnake slithering across the path. I said "Watch out for the snake" as I whipped past its rattle end, while Jim, riding behind me, chose the fanged end ;) Fortunately we both missed it.

A little excitement for the day.

Obviously not a lot of news that's fit to print. Work has been particularly busy with organising a large project plan that I can't talk about yet, and I have been riding the bike a lot on the weekends.

We were looking at doing the Wildflower Century this year, but my riding partner is not up to it, so it will have to wait until next year. Hopefully, there will be less bloody rain next year, and we can get an acceptable buildup.

Speaking of rain, it's still falling down, typically on the weekends. I went out for a ride last Saturday to drop off a cheque at the bank, and it was a perfect spring day. Sunny, not too hot, and zero wind. The following day, we had a ride planned, and so what did it do? Instead of maintaining the beautiful weather of the day before, it was overcast, windy, raining, andcold.

I was overly optimistic and just put on a summer jersey with a base layer. No rain jacket or long sleeve jersey. And it was erm,cold. And it never warmed up.

Next weekend, I'm on call. You watch, it'll be a perfect weekend.

Bloody weather.