Clearly I made a couple of bad decisions. I chose the wrong time to bail out of Doug’s 2004 Australian Tour drinkies at the Fed Square wine bar.

And I chose not to bother to get my umbrella out and doing its umbrella-thing when walking the half-block to the station. After all, how wet could I get? Quite wet, as it happens.

(Those shiny things up top aren’t my many grey hairs revealing themselves, but droplets of water).

Ahhh… the smell of wet wool.

Oh well. Fish’n'chips made it all better.

Dear PHL970,

You know where you exit off the Westgate Freeway, onto Kingsway? Well you know how there are three lanes turning into Kingsway? You know how there are solid lines there leading from the freeway exit, around the corner into Kingsway?

Well the general idea is that you follow the lines. So if you’re in the left hand lane from the freeway exit, you end up in the left hand lane on Kingsway.

You don’t drift across while turning, miss my car by a few centimetres, scare the crap out of me, then continue driving merrily on your way oblivious to my horn honking just behind you.

Oh well, on the bright side, I did brake sharply enough to avoid hitting you. It would have been a bitter end to what until that point had been a thoroughly nice day.

The three weeks is over, Marita and Justine return from Europe to the real world today. The airport web site says their plane is running an hour late, but hey, given the distance they’re coming, that’s not too bad.

There will be photos and tales of the European summer heat, historic buildings and ruins, long bus trips to catacombs that were closed, searches for working telephones in Vienna, cobbled streets in Bratislava, Vatican treasures, Roman birds dropping Roman birdshit, hydrofoil rides down the Danube, difficult to pronounce Hungarian words, fabulous views from ancient cathedral towers, and many more.

I can’t wait.

PS. Judging from the Changi airport web site, some kind of delay at Singapore. Gotta love the web.

Not its usual bustling self. What happened? Evacuation? Riot? Mass protests at announcement of John Farnham touring again?

No, Olympians on Swanston Street.

Man I hate it when I’m looking for a big piece of coloured card for one of Isaac’s projects, and I dash into the newsagent that merged with the post office, look around, and they don’t have any. Then further down the road I dash into the post office that merged with the newsagent, and they have plenty, $1 a pop, I’ll take two thanks, and oh damn there’s only one queue, and one guy serving.

I’m in a hurry but I need these now, so I’ll queue. Behind the couple who are paying numerous bills (WE HAVE B-PAY AND THE FREAKING INTERNET FOR THAT, YOU KNOW) and querying why the guy didn’t rip off the bottom bit off the bills (No, he says, we don’t rip off the bottom bits) and buying a magazine (No wait, is it this magazine? Or did I already buy this issue? Hold on now, I’m not sure) and buying stamps (how many do we need? Okay here’s some for overseas. Cards only. Oh, we have to write “Card only” to get the cheap rate? Okay. Now local ones, how many? 1… 2… 3… 4… JUST BUY A FREAKING 10 PACK!!!) and fumbling with their change (WHY DIDN’T I BRING $2 CHANGE, THEN I COULD LOB IT OVER THE COUNTER AND RUN FOR IT) and multiple receipts and making small-talk with the guy behind the counter (I’M ALL FOR A CONVIVIAL RETAIL ATMOSPHERE, BUT I’M IN A HURRY AND THE QUEUE BEHIND ME’S GETTING LONGER) and querying again why the guy didn’t rip the bottom bit off the bill.

Ten minutes queuing, then all of ten seconds for my transaction. And I beat them out the door, too.

Bet they’re the same people who walk slowly down the middle of the pavement, blocking both sides.

I finished Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash a few weeks ago. At some stage I’d like to read it again, as some of the theology references flew past way over my head. But thoroughly excellent nonetheless.

Last week I started reading Bill Bryson’s A Short History Of Nearly Everything. The opening chapters talk about the creation of the universe, and I couldn’t help but think of the Monty Python Galaxy song

“So remember when you’re feeling very small and insecure
How amazingly unlikely is your birth
And pray that there’s intelligent life somewhere up in space
‘Cos there’s bugger all down here on Earth.”

So I read about the Big Bang, the way the universe grew into what it is today, the infinitesimal likelihood of the events that have resulted in (allegedly) intelligent life. Then I looked up from the book, around the train, and had this strange feeling of inconsequentiality and pointlessness.

Hmmm. It passed after a few minutes.

With thanks to Trish for the idea, here is my bike. I bought it about a year and a half ago. I don’t ride it as much as I’d like to, but with the price of petrol going through the roof, maybe it’s time to start using it more.

I took this by using the camera on a tripod with the self-timer set to ten seconds. I did half-a-dozen “click camera, run to bike, put up stand, jump on, wait for frenetic beeping from camera, then ride in front of it” pictures. The first one taken turned out to be the best.

Want to post your bike? Link in the Trackbacks or comments.

• Past photos in this series
• Notes on creating the image map/hot spots with text

If you’ve just eaten or anything, go read something else. This is a bit gross.
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