Blog
Bit of a Crash
I was out last night on a ride and was almost home after about 40km
when I had a bit of a crash. It was dark so I was checking my speedo while
passing by a street light when I realised the kerb was curving right and I
was heading straight into it - then bang! Thanks to the speedo check I know I
was travelling 36kph at the time 
.
Very lucky for me I went over the gutter into some vegetation between the road and footpath. So I got pretty dirty but not hurt, I didn't hit anything hard at all! That was me, but my rear wheel hit the gutter pretty hard and was bent a little. My brifters were pushed out of position but that was an easy fix. Still need to fix the wheel but I have a spare (from Ruwani's bike).
VMware Workstation on Ubuntu 8.04
Well I ran into a problem with VMware Workstation (v6.0.3) since the kernel modules wouldn't build on hardy. Thankfully Igor Guerrero Fonseca has already solved the problem and his fix worked for me. Take a look at his blog: VMware 6.0.3 in Ubuntu Hardy 8.04 kernel 2.6.24.
Upgraded to Ubuntu 8.04
I upgraded my desktop from Ubuntu 7.10 to 8.04 on the weekend. I'm
pleased to say it was a non event and everything is still working
. Thanks to the iiNet mirror it only took 21 minutes to download
the 1311 packages (install said ~1GB worth) - nice!.
Perth Freeway Bike Hike 2008
Sunday saw me up early for the Perth Freeway Bike Hike and what a day it was!
I rode to Bull Creek station to get the train down to the 60km start but the trains were 100% full and the platform was 100% full too - i.e. no chance. Without a car I jumped back on the bike and headed south. On the way down I managed to flip my bike over, took a graze to the elbow, all while having a phone conversation! (also the cause of the stupid move which resulted in the flip).
At approx 7:12 I rolled into the A group starting area just in time to hear them counting down and off I went again. My plan was to catch up to Graeme since Ron and Phil mentioned he was up the front but by the time everyone got out the starting area we were spread out over a km. I was pushing hard to move further up until I met some other guys going the same speed and we kinda formed a group. This may have been the 2nd or 3rd big group out of the A starters - many riders joined on and we had a pretty big pack all the way to the end. We were really moving although I think with better co-ordination we could have pushed a little quicker.
A few times after people would wreck our pace line the guys behind would surge and surround us leading to some scary situations.
In the end I finished in 1:27:56 averaging 40.3kph over the 59.06km.
After 21km + 59km we had a short ride to Ron's place and enjoyed a long relaxing breakfast before heading home (+46.33km). So all up I would have done approx 125km for the day.
Blog Neglect
It's a new year and I haven't blogged for months - but we've been busy:
- Felix is now 10 months old, already! He's crawling around everywhere, standing up, standing and moving around holding onto things, his top 2 and bottom 2 front teeth are through and he's bigger. I need to upload some more current photos.
- We were in Sydney for Christmas with my family. It was great to see everyone again.
- I was in Melbourne for linux.conf.au 2008. This was awesome as always with too many talks to see but thankfully most were recorded. Go check them out. Ruwani and Felix came along as we stayed with Ruwani's sister who took the week off. There are plenty of great vegan and vegan friendly restaurants in Melb which was nice.
- I finished out 2007 with 3000km on the bike. That was pretty good I thought, although many months were a bit weak due to laziness and/or travel. This year my goal is to double it to 6000km.
- Our house is finally moving along. Site works are complete, the slab is down and they are preparing to start the (rammed earth) walls. Exciting stuff and I'll put up photos of the progress soon.
Sleeping: Shot with my old 2MP Canon IXUS - rather grainy and poor white balance. I only just found the battery charger after about 2 years!
[ see entries for: 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004, 2003, 2002, 2001, 2000, 1999, 1998, misc ]
