Toy Time: Specialized Langster

After a couple of weeks of taking the Underground to work, I'd had enough. The weather has been unfeasibly warm (anyone would think it was summer!), making it like an oven in the carriages, and tourists (pah! ;-) were everywhere. The entrance to Oxford Circus Tube was starting to resemble the inlet to a meat-grinder - I guess the full trains coming out the other side were the sausages.

As a bike-fan from way back, it seemed to me that a bicycle was the answer. Google Maps confirmed it by telling me it was 5.3km to work and that the biggest change in elevation would be the three steps down from our front door. After a few days of visiting bike shops, talking to colleagues and trawling t'Internet, I found exactly what I was looking for on good-old eBay:
The Specialized Langster in SR-71 Black. Eagle-eyed readers will note there's just one big cog at the front and one little sprocket at the back, rather than the usual proliferation. Yep, this is a one-speeder, and that means all the extra mechanisms, cables and levers can be left off, saving a heap of weight. And I'm sure any Tools reading this will confirm that one Sprocket is all you need!

To use the trusty car analogy, if a mountain bike is like a 4WD, and a road bike is a sports car, then this bike like is a Formula One car - absolutely everything non-essential is stripped away in the name of performance. Over here this machine sells for £400 new - with no pedals - but I found the deal of the year on eBay. I got the bike, as new - ridden 5 times for a total of less than 50km, plus clip-in pedals, the matching shoes (in my size), helmet (in my size), windproof jacket (in my size) and a bike computer (aka speedometer) - for £250. We've speculated that perhaps the previous owner bought all this gear while going out with a bike-mad girl, and just wanted to be rid of it when the relationship ended? Who knows - but one thing is for certain, I scored a sweet deal!

So what's it like commuting on the mean streets of London Town? Well, I was expecting the worst. Back in Australia I had given up on using the roads to bike-commute after a halfwit in a ute ran me off Burwood Road and I brought myself to a halt using my face. My Melbourne experience taught me that peak-hour traffic can be aggressive, unpredictable and intolerant - so logically London should be 3 times worse, right?

Wrong. I couldn't believe I was riding in one of the world's biggest cities! Perhaps because of the Congestion Charge, perhaps because driving in Central London is best left to professionals, the roads are quiet, and the drivers observant, courteous and patient. Taxis move across to let you slide to the front at traffic lights. Bus drivers flash their lights to let you merge in. And people understand that there's no point roaring past a bike when they'll be passed back at the traffic lights 100m down the road. It's a weird feeling trundling along at 15 miles an hour while an Aston Martin V12 Vanquish purrs quietly behind you, waiting patiently and leaving plenty of space!

So I'm hooked. Each day I ride in I save £4 in transport costs - this bike will pay for itself in no time. It takes 20 minutes door-to-door, plus 5 minutes of freshening up when I get there; so I can leave for work 10 minutes later than I did before. I'm getting good exercise, but it's actually less sweaty than taking the Tube on a warm day. The only question now is, can I bring it back to Melbourne?

Die Werkzeuge in Deutschland

As already blogged by Brush and Matty, we had a bit of Tool reunion last month in Southern Germany. Brush was a most gracious host, picking us up from a typical RyanAir-airport (125km from the city it purports to serve) and providing us with excellent Bed and Breakfast facilities at his place, including a fantastic genuine German breakfast of white sausages and eggs - delicious! He also blew us away with his Deutschensprechen, being so fluent now that he can engage in wittenbanter mit the locals. OK Brush, I know how much it annoys you so that was the last of my patented Deutschenmanglen in this post. Well, apart from that bit...

Being much more diligent bloggers than us, both the other guys have already blogged about our visit to Burg Hohenzollern, a fantastic castle perched atop a mighty peak. So we'll be lazy and just stick in some pictures:

Not content with that, Brett also took us to Tübingen, a lovely traditional town:



And to top it off, we headed into Frankfurt to experience one of the high points of the local traditional cuisine, Handkäse mit Musik - yes, you read that right, I didn't just make it up - "Hand-cheese with music". This turned out to be a very barnyard-scented, cow-esque cheese which was augmented with a raw-onion-and-vinegar garnish. Quite how this could be described as "music" was beyond us, and luckily Brett only ordered one serving for us handkäse novices to share - it was ... interesting!



Perhaps as a reward for finishing the handcheese, on the way home Brush very graciously allowed Johnny to give his Beemer 1-series a caning down the Autobahn, and what a pleasure it was to be back behind the wheel of some quality German engineering. Johnny loved the thrill of seeing the speedo needle on the interesting side of 200km/h. Bec did not. :-(

Thanks again to Brett for a terrific weekend and we hope to be able to welcome him (and Belinda) to London soon. Maybe we can arrange a flat-out driving session in a Tube train!?

Lost Highway to... Southampton?

When Bec first heard that Bon Jovi had announced their Lost Highway tour of the UK, she could hardly contain her excitement! Johnny, it has to be said, was somewhat less excited. But, due to a combination of unavoidable factors - namely that Bec could not find a single other person willing to go with her, and also that Johnny is, let's face it, a genuinely lovely person - he reluctantly enthusiastically agreed to come along.


For some insane reason, which seemed perfectly plausible at the time, we booked tickets not for the London show but for the one in Southampton, about 80 miles away. This necessitated a hire car, an early departure from work and a 2 1/2 hour drive. Matters were then complicated significantly by Royal Mail, who managed to record our secure ticket delivery as "Delivered and signed for" when in fact it had been neither. After several phone calls and much frustration and anxiety, the tickets were finally in Bec's hot little hand... but not until the morning of the concert! All dramas resolved, we were finally on our way.

Even Johnny had to admit it, Bon Jovi know how to put on a rock concert. For almost 2 hours they had the crowd enthralled, belting out some of their new tunes as well as the obligatory classics that, let's face it, we were all there to hear. Highlights were In These Arms, Always, Raise Your Hands, I'll Be There For You (sung beautifully by Richie Sambora to give JBJ a break - despite still sending every woman over 30 into swoons (and yes that does include Bec), he's not as young as he once was), and of course Bec's all-time fave, Livin' on a Prayer. The crowd went wild, and Bec was in Bon Jovi Heaven.

And just to prove Bec's not the only Bon Jovi fan left in the UK:

Success In The City

Good news from London Town! After being unemployed for the entire month of June (conveniently coinciding with Wimbledon on the TV...) Johnny has finally found himself a new job.

He was hoping to get another contract role, but after 3 weeks of disappointments and zero-progress, he switched to looking for permanent work. The contract market in London is in very bad shape at the moment, with all this Credit Crunch malarkey making employers a great deal more likely to be off-loading contractors than adding more to their payroll. As this situation looks to be around for a while, even if he had picked up a contract, Johnny didn't fancy being dropped back into that market in 3 or 6 months (or perhaps even less if things went very badly!) Sure enough, within a week of looking for permanents, he had an interview, and 3 hours later, a job!

In a change from his past two roles, the new company couldn't fit all its employees into a minibus - they are 50-strong and have very good partnerships with some big, big names (Nokia, Vodafone, etc). So hopefully they won't follow Johnny's kiss-of-death pattern and go down the tubes like his last two! The company is called Icom and they build websites for "communities" of like-minded people. For example, 50% of UK universities have their Student Union websites operating on the Icom platform, which offers various cool features like a mini-Facebook for students of the same uni. Icom also developed a "GlastoNav" product which helps drunk Glastonbury music festivalgoers find bands and each other via interactive maps on their mobiles.

So the work is interesting and the job is secure, but best of all, the location is slap-bang in the middle of London - just off Oxford Street - and only a few minutes away from Bec's work. Result!

Chillin' in a Villa

May is a wonderful month in England. Not only does the weather (hopefully) start to improve, we also get two - count 'em, two! - bank holidays! We had spent the first one in Paris with Bron and Andy, so we thought we'd do something a bit different for the second one and, well, go on a trip!

Unlike most of our last-minute jaunts, however, this one was planned waaaaay in advance. Back in October while we were visiting Melbourne, our friends Steve and Carolyn had mentioned they were planning a trip back to their homeland, England, to visit family and friends. Oh and they were thinking of renting a villa in Spain for a week, and would we be at all interested in joining them? Um, let's just think about that... ;)

We decided to join them for 4 days rather than the full week, although in hindsight this was a mistake as we had such a lovely, relaxing time we didn't want it to end. A villa holiday with a group of friends / family is the perfect way to chill out, especially in such a gorgeous setting:















Much of the time was spent eating, drinking and chatting on the terrace or by the pool, although we did make one day trip to the Alhambra near Granada. The 3-car road trip over the narrow, mountainous roads was fun, if a little too exhilarating for some, necessitating a short coffee break in a tiny Spanish town, where we seized the opportunity for a group shot:


The Alhambra is a Moorish palace constructed in the 14th century. It is a stunning place, set up high in hilly countryside and full of beautifully intricate Islamic architecture, surrounded by gardens that are perfect for strolling around in. We all enjoyed it very much.





































As you may have noticed, there was a certain small difference between this and our other holidays - the patter of tiny feet, as it were. Carolyn and Steve have an almost-two-year-old named Ella, and their friends Bob and Khin have two kids, Raoul and Sienna. So how did we cope with this toddler invasion, you might wonder? Did it cramp our child-free, city-dwelling, liberty-loving style? Well, this might answer your question:

Yes, we were both entirely smitten by little Ella Bella, and who could blame us - she is one very cool chick!

Watch Your Language

Right. There's a rumour going around that we're starting to sound a bit English these days - and perhaps even getting some London accents. Well, that is bang out of order, it's a load of cobblers and totally pants. Now we may have picked up a few expressions which just save time - like to get 'em in (to buy a round of drinks) or to describe something as mingin' (nasty/smelly/generally distasteful) - but that's only because we're well wicked and we like making sure everything is sorted. Innit.

O'course you can't just say'em like you're back Down Under, that'd be naff. It's very important (unless you wanna sound like a total nutter) to swallow your T's - so sorted becomes saw'ed, and total nutter actually comes out sounding like toe'ul nuh'uh. Lovely jubbly!

If you get too knackered wiv all your practicing, and can't be bovvered going to work, just take a duvet day, and go to work the next day well fit. Then when your workmate says "Alright?" as their daily greeting to you, you can safely reply "Blindin'!"

So in summary, have we picked up any English accents? Not bleedin' likely!

Lai'ers!

Mother + Country

Last month Johnny's mum paid us a visit, as part of well-deserved miniature World Tour. After a few days getting settled into London (Portobello Road was a favourite) we left the city behind, travelling by train through beautiful countryside before swapping into a hire car to take us deep into the Lake District. As you may remember, we are massive fans of this area, and as Mum had never visited before, we took the opportunity to get back there.

To avoid being too repetitive we tried staying somewhere new - on Bassenthwaite Lake, at the western end of the region.



















By complete and amazing coincidence, we happened to be within walking distance of our ANZAC friends Kristy and Dave, who work at the Pheasant Inn - a highly-recommended pub, by the way - we knew their pub would be nearby but we didn't think it would be that close! We ended up having a quiet pint there before taking Dave the barman's advice and having a nice traditional English evening meal of a curry, at the interesting nearby town of Cockermouth. The following day we took even more of Dave's advice and visited the Jennings Brewery, which was both interesting and quite intoxicating as the visit finished with 3 halves of the ale of your choice. Earlier in the week, Mum had seemed quite surprised how largely the pub figures in English life (admittedly we had gone "down the pub" 5 times in 4 days!) - but now she was right into it, even having a go at pulling a pint!


We then moved to Keswick, our favourite town in the district. Mum is a keen walker so we took plenty of strolls around the hills and lakes, taking particular pleasure in being so "amateur" compared to the people Mum calls "Red-socks" - the serious walkers with all the Gore-Tex, backpacks and special poles. She had a good point; we were doing the same walks as them, none of which was longer than 8 kilometres, but they were equipped like they were tackling Everest and we were in T-shirts. Oh well, whatever makes you happy!



After four days in the Lake District we returned to the Big Smoke refreshed and invigorated. A few days later we saw Mum off for the final leg of her world tour: Kyoto, Japan. Now there's somewhere we definitely can't get a cheap flight to!