Tonight I go back to work. 1400km North of here, in Antwerp. Today there are blue skies and 18°C in Barcelona, 8°C in Antwerp. Rain expected this week. This is far more mild than the -30°C they see in Canada or the -10°C Jurg and Rahel signed up for this winter. Crazy, the lot of them. So I’ll not complain.
I’ll do that in a few days.
So now I am wise. Or I was. Or I am was. At any rate, the annoying teeth are gone.
I was quite stressed going into the surgery, I don’t like pain delivered via scalpel. But the operation (in the dentists chair) was brilliant. You see: I can’t remember any of it. The anaesthetist had me under “conscious sedation”, which apparently means I was conscious for the whole thing, responded to simple instructions, but I don’t remember a single thing. As soon as I woke I had a brief memory of some part of the procedure, but now I can’t remember a thing (only that I remember remembering something – if that makes any sense).
As my father said: Oh, so why do you need the anaesthetist? That sounds pretty normal to me.
Well. Yes, I guess it does really. Sometimes I keep vague fragments of memory though. At least for a few hours.
And thank goodness Kinda, my flat mate, came to collect me from the surgery. She ran out and bought half the pharmacy that the surgeon requested, and bundled me into a cab. I was fully awake, but clearly not too steady on my feet. 12 hours later and the story is the same.
Awake that is. In my drug induced haze I took all the tablets presented to me.
An antibiotic (A Spanish version – good thing these things are almost in Latin). Fair enough.
Some Paracetamol/blah blah hidrochoruro. Guess that’s for pain. Sounds strong. Lonts of warning labels. Better get that into me!
A huge box of Ibuprofeno – that’ll last the rest of my life.
Various mouth-wash and toothpastey things for the next few days.
And something called Zamene. I had to ask the internets for help. Apparently it’s an immuno suppressent. Why? Is my immune system going to reject the absence of teeth? Or did he put something else in there? I guess it is to reduce the swelling, but I kind of like my immune system, and until I get cancer I’d prefer it continued operating.
Anyway, one of the listed side effects is insomnia.
Yep. That parts correct. It’s now 10am, and despite being promised a good nights sleep by the anaesthetist, didn’t sleep a wink last night. Plus I haven’t slept much the last few days working and being stressed about how horrible this was going to be, and I’m not tired. I guess it’ll hit eventually.
Anytime now would be good.
Stupid drugs. I knew they wouldn’t help (but don’t take away the pain killers just yet).
Maurice + Miranda and the front/side/corner/dingsbumbs of their (huge!) house. plenty of room for the Australian. And some sheep
Well, that was fun. 24 hours with Maurice and Miranda. Talking South America, talking bikes, talking bike trips, talking places to live, talking religion, talking politics, talking, talking, talking. Lucky they speak such good English. We could also talk while they showed me around where they live. Pretty views and lots of mud. Need boots next time.
I can’t tell you all of what we talked about. That’s a secret. An Iceland secret. But this has been talked about for 10 years apparently… It may also be a Norwegian secret. That could also be fun.
Kneel Maurice! you can do it!
Good, honest people. I like them. Hope to see them again some day. I’ll try harder to get Maurice to kneel in front of his own statue of the Virgin Mary.
That’s it. I will soon have to take off my shoes to count all these kids. I am full on one hand, and well into the second.
Steve + Kim gave birth to Thomas in September (my word, that is almost 2 months ago already!)
And Stu and Bec have just had Caitlin.
Actually the women gave birth, and the men stood around doing whatever it is that men do on these occasions (although Bec hardly gave Stu time to turn on the TV!). I’m going to have to get ready to cuddle lots of kids over Christmas! Before at least one of them zips off to Japan. Starting the frequent flyer account early.
Stuck on a train, 20 minutes from my destination. Some problem on the track. Whatever.
Featureless Altiplano expanse, Somewhere, Bolivia.
I have roughly 9000 photos from South America (not all mine, but some of me). I thought I should take out a hundred or so that I can show people, especially those in Aus. Problem is, I can’t remove very many… Almost all still remind me of something. Even if it is featureless expanse, it’s featureless expanse at 3000m, and I remember how it was hard to breathe. And do cartwheels on the road.
Warning: If you ask about the trip, be prepared for 30seconds * 9000photos ~ 75hours of listening to me talk about how great I am. I really have to make a smaller set…
That is the first good laugh I’ve had in weeks.
I am on the train now (behind bicycle, my preferred method of transport). Just.
I finished a (rather tiring) few weeks in Antwerp. I found the city utterly uninspiring. That could be partly because I was working night shift and only managed to grab a glance of the city on a drab, grey morning I wasn’t working. That and the refinery, which although interesting, is hardly a tourist destination. Miranda and Maurice have resigned to me turning up one day, neither of us knowing which day it was going to be (for those back home, I met Maurice and Miranda twice, randomly, in South America. Yes, more cyclists). They said come and visit. They’re great people. I got close, so I am.
Best way to get there: train (I don’t have my bike, and I do have my work clothes). So I got dropped at the train station. Buying a ticket, the seller tells me I’m super lucky, a train is just leaving, and has a tight connection in Brussels giving me a fast journey. But I have to leave. Now.
So I did. I rather sprinted to the platform, suitcase wheels sliding on the corners. Got to the train and the doors wouldn’t open. I could hardly notice the train was actually leaving (since I was still moving when I was pressing the open door button). Turns out I’m not so lucky after all 
Oh, but I was. A new timetable suggested that I would have about 45 minutes in Brussels. Boring… But the train station is in the city centre, I’ll just go for a wander (suitcase and all). I saw a spire, figured there’d be a cathedral underneath it and headed that way. Lucky for me, and my appreciation of Belgium. To be honest, I don’t know if I’ve visited Brussels before, but it takes a lot for a city to make me say “wow” out loud. Ok, not that much, but the old square is impressive, anything but uninspiring. Old, large stately buildings, intricate stonework, gold leaf, statues. A castle visible above the roofs. A palace on a hill… What an old city should contain. No wonder the politicians of Europe like it here.
So that was good. If I’d thought about it, I should have planned a longer stop over, even the central section could take a few hours of exploring. I snapped a few photos, marvelled at the buildings. Heard French again. Made a mental note to come back. But ~30mins later I thought I should head back and try to find my platform, I don’t want to cut it too fine. Still ten minutes ahead of the time I was given when I got the ticket in Antwerp and just as I enter the station, I hear announced the train I want to catch. A glance at the sign and I realise the time of the train is… Err, now?. More sprinting. Stairs. Train pulling up as I get there. Didn’t want to cut it too fine? How about 20 seconds? For some reason I found that hilarious (not sure what people thought of the laughing running Australian with suitcase sliding around the corners)
Lucky once. Lucky twice. Now if Miranda remembers that I’ll be at the station, I think I can call it a [good] day.
Update: 10mins from the station, and the clouds are lifting. The sun is, while not shining, at least trying to break through. That may be three. I’ve got buckleys of meeting Miranda at the station now.
Eek. Ergh. Blurghf. About the best I could come up with after spending several nights awake.
Going to visit Maurice (good name!) and Miranda in Belgium tomorrow. Or they could be in the Netherlands. Somewhere around here. Hopefully somewhere out of the rain.
Good thing I have friends everywhere (actually I don’t but Europe is so relatively small…)
[insert your own topic]
I had doubts.
I read pages on the internet.
I am again a believer.
My mind is a horrible place to have to exist in (often, but especially after a night shift).
How do I get out of here?
Since it was legally allowed I’ve been driving, as almost all do in Australia. Of course through my twenties I was a great driver, and I can back that up by the lack of crashes and the fun times I’ve had in and around cars. Yes, you can get an early model Pajero airborne, and a Sigma going the wrong way around a roundabout, in reverse, will indeed make you feel sick from the car fumes. But only after about 10 laps of the roundabout.
But since I left Aus I have decided to try and do without a car. And that’s easy when you live in the middle of a city like Barcelona. In fact to have a car is slightly insane. To park is a nightmare, and getting anywhere in the city is much easier accomplished by foot/bike or public transport (I choose foot). Which means I don’t drive all that often. In fact in can be 6 weeks between driving. Which means…
I don’t quite know how to say this. I’m trained not to acknowledge this kind of thing publicly.
Imnotaverygooddriver
Ok, there, said it. Maybe it will come back with practice. Maybe I don’t want it to. I can ride the bike reasonably well. Perhaps I’ll just leave it at that. Watch out if you’re on the roads…
So last weekend I managed to visit Jürg and Rahel at their ‘home’ in Switzerland. I say ‘home’ because they are effectively homeless still, and preparing for another winter in Norway. Crazy. Weather that is negative [some big number] with [another big number] meters of snow. Apparently hibernation is the favourite activity. Well, I hope they enjoy it.
It was super good to see them again, talk about the trip and a bit about what they’ve done since / have planned. Meet some of the people they talked about. Experience some of Switzerland, A walk in the mountains, Cheese Fondue in the forest, big meals with friends and Röste (described to me as Swiss Hash browns, but much better). Unfortunately I was still ‘jet lagged’ from working night shift in Belgium, so I managed to fall asleep at almost every dinner table. A little embarrassing (but it was hard to stay awake after a big meal, of excellent but heavy food, and everyone around me talking Swiss German). But Denise and PB (Rahel’s sister and partner) spoke excellent English so they kept me entertained when I wasn’t dozing off. Actually Denise loves Australia, she has several Aussie flags around the apartment. Good one!
Jürg has some photos of the cheese fondue gathering (after riding there in a horse and cart), but I was too busy eating to take any. Yes, I ate cheese fondue (I normally avoid cheese like the plague).
I’ve been asked how the yacht race went. This proves that at least one person actually reads this. Wow.
It went fine. We won our class, despite terribly calm conditions. The following facts are completely made up, but are basically true. The race was 90miles, from (almost) Barcelona to Mallorca, and had a cut-off time of 36 hours (or something). Which should be plenty of time. It took us 30, and we were some of the first (who didn’t give up and turn their motor on because they were bored of just sitting in the middle of no-where, doing nothing).
The wind at the start was so feeble that a pile of yachts almost crashed because they didn’t have enough force in their sails to change direction. For about an hour I used my (phemominal) bodyweight to hold the jib out and stop it flapping. I honestly didn’t noltice we had started, since I was up the front and couldn’t hear the conversation in the pit. After an hour I guessed we must be racing now. So I assumed the correct racing position:
The trick is to know what side to be on (I generally avoid the sun – that often tends to be the wrong move, so I’m told…)
Overnight in Mallorca, then back with decent winds. Took 15hours to get back, we weren’t racing. I even got to steer for a while (that didn’t make us any faster). It’s harder than it looks to do well.
At least it was a very fine day (or two or three). Lots of stars. Not a lot of sleep.
Since we parted ways in early Feb 2008, (20 months ago!) after doing battle with the first part of the Patagonian winds, I haven’t seen my long time (6 months!) cycling friends Jurg and Rahel. But it looks like this will change this weekend. They have gone home to Switzerland, for one month visit before heading back to Norway to hibernate. And work. They tell me spring will bring another journey, but they’ve already done over 40,000km (one lap of the planet) so I’ll be interested to hear where they go from here.
I’ve been working nights and weekends, so a long weekend is due. Switzerland is not far from Barcelona. I’ll see them Thursday. The only problem is they are super busy, working, visiting family, organising to move back to Norway. I hope to tag along, and not get in the way too much.
I hope also to visit Maurice and Miranda (also from the bike trip) the week after next. I tried last weekend, but working nightshift doesn’t really allow all that much socialising time…
Pity these trips are on planes. My poor bike isn’t getting out all that much.
Just after counting the months since I left Jurg and Rahel, I wondered how long it’d been since I left Oz. June ‘07. I’m back for Christmas this year. 2.5 years. [nerd alert] That’s almost 8% of my life so far! No wonder the family are keen to see me again 
I went for a run this evening, before work. This in itself is not particularly worthy of note.
Running is often a good time to think. Normally the depth is limited to breathing and going faster, but tonight my thoughts drifted to my heart. No, there were no romantic revelations. I was kind of surprised that I could keep my heart rate at only a little below 3 beats per second for almost 3/4 of an hour. I shouldn’t be – I do this three times a week at the moment, but normally focus on my pace rather than heart rate (the GPS watch helps a lot with that). I remembered reading that mammals hearts all seem to have a life span of about 1million beats, but my mental arithmetic isn’t so great when dashing along the road (note I don’t often use the word dashing, especially to describe myself, although feel free to do so at any time ). A swift burst on the calculator tells me that this would be unfortunate – most humans would therefore have a lifespan of less than 10 days. The internet is wonderful – it reminds me that the number I should remember is 1 billion beats, which modern medicine has recently more than doubled to 2.5 billion (’s true, I read it on the internets).
But: At 3 times the normal rate, could it be that running hard for an hour actually cuts your life expectancy by 2 hours? Running like this three times a week for 28years would sum to a year off! …Although you’d be pretty fit 50 year old, and probably more likely to be hit by a car or get in trouble with frostbite in this part of the world.
My conclusion was that I should take up meditation and beer. Sleep a lot. Stop running like this. Hang around forever. Actually anything that means I can stop running . I can get there with almost any starting point, given enough time.
That was it. In 46 mins, you’d think more thoughts would pass through ones head. Only when I’d finished and I noticed my achillies tendon give off the familiar warning feel did I think something new, and that was “oh, no. not again”. Followed by “petunias”. And remembered that not two weeks ago my left calf was damaged so that it hurt to walk, and today it is fine. Sometimes I find the recovery powers of these bodies is truely amazing.
Right. Dinners done. Time to go to work. Still in Antwerp. Still cold, but less wet today. It’s been a while since I’ve dealt with horizontal rain (maybe Patagonia?). Would be happy to wait a long time for it again.
Planes or Trains.
Europe has a high population density. There are trains everywhere. You might think I could make a train journey work.
No. In almost every case (of longer trips) I have tried so far taking a plane is about half the cost and 4-5 times faster. For example, I’m looking at a way to get to Zurich from Antwerp. It turns out it will be cheaper to go to Amsterdam and fly than it would be to go via train. Make it harder to use the trains and guess what? We wont use them. And on the hard point – the internet sites are terrible! Want to cross an international border? Forget it. I must be missing something here, I hope. It’s easier to take the bike, just takes a bit too long when you’ve only got a weekend to play with.
Nothing much happens, life continues, I don’t write anything on the blog and people still read it. Very good. Maybe I should write something then.
Ok here goes.
The weather has definitely changed. My Northern American friends write nasty things aboot the coming winter. So leave Canada, at least for the winter. Barcelona today: 26°C and sunny. It did rain for a week about a month ago. You should have seen the coats and scarves come out. I think it was about 20°C. Then the weather cleared up beautifully for Mercé. Barcelona’s week of festivities and street parties. For all I know it could have rained for the last two weeks – I was in the far NW corner of Spain, right up in Coruña. Lets see if I can get a map to work:
A Coruña. Pleasant, small. Actually fairly polluted for such a small place. The old city is quite lovely, but the new… It looks like about the 60’s or 70’s someone went mad in the town hall, and built a whole pile of lego block apartment buildings with no respect for the street layout or aesthetics. Maybe next time I’ll try to demonstrate with fotos. Unfortunately several stunning examples of hideousness were between our hotel and the old city, and one or two (or three or four) amazing seafood restaurants. Oh, and it rains in A Coruña. Aparently the climate is similar to the UK. They tell me now. I got caught in a rather nasty downpour exiting another nice restaurant.
Also, so they tell me, there is a tower over the body of the giant that Hercules killed. I claim ignorance of the legends of Hercules, but I didn’t know that people were claiming they might be fact, and actually know where the bodies are. Convieniently, it looks like a very good place for a light house. The city shield has a skull and cross bones on it; they’re serious. This is slightly surprising, since A Coruña is about as far away from Rome as you could get in the Roman empire, when it was around (ok, no it’s not, but it’s a damn long way without a car). Maybe he came wandering. Maybe he was on a bike trip.
So work was pleasant. The Spanish are working winter hours now. So 0830 to 2000. Long day. Also long lunch. No siesta, but the lunch is of average restaurant quality. Amazingly good for a canteen. Everyone shuffles past the counter, selects their two plates of food, anything from salad to whole fish, + bread, drink, desert. We all sit down and talk / eat for a while. Coffee is brought round. Very civilised. Then roll back to work. At about 2pm. So we’re not hungry again until about 11pm. Which is fine, because any earlier and the restaurants are shut. Eat something, return to the hotel, check some emails, get to sleep around 2am. Back up at 7 to start the day. After two weeks I’m completely buggered! the work wasn’t so hard, but the sleep deprivation is killing me. I just fell asleep in front of the computer for 2 hours (and missed my opportunity to go for a run today).
The future. I’m “home” (in Barcelona) tonight, there’s another yacht race this weekend. Back on Monday. Another night at “home”, then off to Belgium for two weeks. Awesome, another month where I’m at home for two whole nights. I’m still trying to work out why I might be single…
My ignorance of Wasp stings has been cured. For about 12 hours my head hurt like it’d been hit by a baseball (or bat), then a headache until about 24 hours, then it faded into nothing really. So that was good. I was expecting a reaction similar to the reaction to a bee sting. But it never came. Thank goodness. Maybe the European wasps in Aus are different to the wasps in Europe. Or the stories are to scare us. Maybe none of the fauna in Aus is actually that deadly, and it’s all a story. A theory to be tested at a later date. On someone else.
The guy who I saw in the first aid tent (at the Half marathon) when I was being treated apparently did not live (I don’t think I mentioned it). I count that as seriously unfair. Go for a run (ok, a long one), have a heart attack (assuming that it was a heart attack). Bit of bad luck.
Back in Barcelona. Disappointed that my work trip to Coruña got postponed (what, you didn’t know about that either?). Only because Jürg and Rahel have cycled past Coruña while I am sitting here (writing documents). Would have been great to see them in a semi-random place. Now I’ll have to hunt them down somewhere, possibly Switzerland. On other cyclists: Stefan and Sabine are cycling around somewhere in Africa. Didn’t invite me on that trip
Got a ticket to go ‘home’ (where-ever that is) to see friends and family in Oz for Christmas. No ticket back yet… Will have to fix that. The ticket that is, not having a home is the way it is 
House-mate Kris is leaving, and replacing him is house-mate Carmen. Living in a student house is… different. An experience.
The weather is changing. It is no longer obviously summer. It is more comfortable to write program documentation in this weather. Which I should be doing now.
Word learnt today: German for Wasp (Easy enough – Waspe)
On Wednesday I saw a brochure at work for a Half Marathon nearby on Sunday. At that stage I was planning on flying to the next job on Sunday, so I went for a run that night to beat myself about missing the race. By Friday, the plans had changed, I would be in the area, but would have to work the Sunday. So I went for a faster run after work to further mourn the missed opportunity.
Saturday night (at 11pm), after working 14 hours and completely failing to carbo-load (salad for dinner doesn’t cut it) I get a call – my colleague thought that the work was going well enough that I could run if I wanted.
So I got up early, jumped on the bike and rode to Altötting – 15km up the road. Luckily the race was scheduled to start at 10:15 (why so late?) so I managed a late entry. I wasn’t expecting it to be quite so hot, or a course that was 17km of forest trails – it was pleasant and picturesque though.
I managed to stick to my plan pretty well, for the first half (go out easy, pick it up later). I think I ran low on energy at about km 17 – I just couldn’t go faster! Maybe I should have eaten better, or run less on Friday. It couldn’t have been too bad though, the outcome was roughly the same as my Houston Half time. And I can’t say I’ve been training.
So what’s with the wasps? Just after we left the start and town, we ran on the road for 3km, to get position and pace sorted out. I didn’t realise the rest would be trails, so I was just cruising along, enjoy the run. As soon as the trail started, passing became difficult. But I was just running slightly off the track (when there weren’t trees or mud) to pass people. At one of these (before km 4) a swarm of wasps were upset by something, perhaps it was having a few thousand people rumble past their home. They took a significant dislike to the Australian (I can confidently predict there were no other Aussies there) and tried to turn my head into Swiss cheese. One tried to hide up my shirt and another just wanted to make friends with my shoulder. Shoulder wasp was the dummy – he didn’t do any damage, but he was the only one I actually saw. I can only deduce the others existence by the lumps on my head and back and the pain. Man, it hurts. And I was slightly worried when my vision blurred and I started seeing big white blotches, but I kept running and my vision cleared (well, as clear as normal for running). The pain stayed until I found drugs much later (the first aid people tried to help, but their magic cream didn’t do much).
A pity really, having a massively sore head didn’t do much for the post race enjoyment. I don’t think I’ll be running too many Bavarian half marathons, so I wanted to enjoy it. Luckily I had a quick look around the (pilgrimage) town of Altötting before the start. I did hang around for a massage (never managed that before!), and a second stint in the medical tent, mainly to make sure I wasn’t going to develope a reaction to the wasp stings – before riding back to Burghausen, getting a subway and riding into to work.
Now I’m buggered. I suspect I’ll sleep tonight. I even took the elevator to the second floor. And had desert (mmm, Apfel Strudel… with Vanilla sauce… Specki!). AND took drugs for my sore head.
You can go for months in Europe and forget that Australia still exists. Apart from mentions about the Ashes (and anything else to do with sport, except soccer).
But we hit the big time with two stories today: one, how inhumane we are being in slaughtering some camels, and two how the senate rejected an emissions bill. That article goes on to say “Australia has the highest per capita emissions in the developed world and coal is its biggest export”.
re the camels, how about instead of shooting them, we find a bug somewhere that makes them infertile – much more humane. This bug, of course will have no side effects, a la cane toads, cats, rabbits… But about the emissions, I was about to make some smart arsed remark, but a while with my friend the internet, and err, that is correct. Coal being our biggest export is not surprising, but we have the highest per capita emissions in the world (developed, or developing from what I can see). Mainly from cars (in the cities), electricity generation/usage, and the aluminium smelting industry. A few years old, but interesting reading.
I’m going to have to put my high horse and halo away for a few days.
But there was nothing at all about the birth of Kev and Catherine’s newest, Sam. So I’ll help out the rest of the world by reporting it here. Congrats guys, hope you’re home soon!
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