New Dog

My dad got a new dog.



Cooper is about 10 weeks old.

Busy. Sick. Tired. Busy.

So many of you have probably been wondering "where is k?" (okay, this may be few, or even one). Though I have link to my current location on the left hand column, I haven't really updated my blog in a month or so. Well, I've been busy. And sick. And sick of being busy:

• I went to Vegas in early October for too long (>24 hours) and got sick. I did get to visit the Ghost Bar, but didn't get sick there.
  
  
  
  
• Still sick, I went to Tokyo and got stuck in Narita Airport for 40 hours after they cancelled my flight. Yes, there is a DFA letter in mail to United for that one (United believes that $350 travel voucher squares us, me not so much). On the plus side, I did get well acquainted with their awesome beer machines:
  
• I cooled my heels in Australia for a week. I say cooled my heels because I was in Australia (Brisbane then Sydney) eight days for the total of 2 hours of customer meetings and 6 hours of internal meetings. Basically, one day of work for 6 days of boredom and 36 hours of travel.
  
  
• I was home for about a week and was still sick.
• I finished off the month with a quick trip to Bangkok for 48 hours.

Now, I am on vacation until early January. Maybe I will actually post something interesting between then and now.

FFF: Akasaka

Japan, japan, japan. I am disappointed. Such a great idea (it's pig! it's a burger! it's got strange toppings!) but with such a unimaginative name.

How awesome would this have been if it was called "McPig" ?

Mumbai Tourist

I had a free afternoon in India a few weeks ago and since the entire country was watching the Twenty20 Cricket World Cup or celebrating a Hindu festival, I decided to do some sightseeing with my driver Anand. I kept it short and visited:

• Gateway of India
• Kamala Nehru park
• Mahatma Ghandi's residence

Overall it was a good trip. The only real problems came as I was rushing to the airport to leave: my flight was scheduled to leave just after the Indian cricket team arrived home from winning the World Cup. The resulting traffic jam left me barely minutes to make my flight.

Video Delays

So I had promised video from India last week (and it's actual good) but I am having a hell of a time getting Revver.com to post it correctly. In the meantime, accept this picture of the sun rising over the Pacific here in Santa Cruz, California where I am attending a technical symposium:

Hopefully, I will have the video up sometime tomorrow.

Beijing

Okay, I've fixed my "firewall issues" (by fleeing the People's Republic) and I got a few minutes to put together some of the almost interesting snippets of video online. I hadn't been here since 2004 and it was amazing to see how much had changed. Behold my short trip to the Financial District of Beijing, China:


I was scheduled to fly home on Friday from China, but a business emergency has made me divert to Mumbai, India. Soooo . . . I'll probably have some video from there later this week.

c3ns0r3d

So you may have noticed that the usual stream of boring posts, strange pictures and pointless video clips has come to an abrupt halt this week. This is due to my trip to Beijing, China where I have been both surprised, and somewhat honored, to learn that my blog is censored behind the Great Firewall of China. And while I have found a hack to workaround this (I am currently sitting at a Starbucks near Tiennaman Square), it has stymied my attempts to upload videos.

So look for new updates sometime this weekend when I make it Mumbai, India.

Tiger Live

Here is the video that I threatened you with earlier this week. It chronicles my free day in Singapore two weeks ago.

Some setup, since the video audio is somewhat soft:

I went to Tiger Live thinking it was the home of Tiger Beer, one of my favorite beers in the world. Instead it turned to be a cross between a night club (they have several inside) and Disney world. If Walt Disney had taken a lot of acid in the '60s. At one point in the "experience," they actually showed hops "having sex" as a metaphor for fermentation. Unfortunately (or fortunately), they didn't let me take any video inside but I did get some video at the bar (they gave you a few free beers afterward. I think it was a reward for sitting through the "experience").

To add insult to injury, it also turns out that you can actually tour the brewery.

I also captured some video from near my hotel in Clarke Quay.

Here's the video:

And the Chickens Return

In the ongoing saga of my neighbor's "farm", it now looks like the chickens are back.


The llamas can't be too far behind. I hope.

Seoul Food

I still haven't finished editing my cinematic masterpiece on Singapore, but I did cobble together some footage from yesterday night's trip to a traditional Korean restaurant here in Seoul.


This video is embedded with Google Video, which lowers the resolution and quality a fair bit. If you want to see the higher resolution (640x480) and quality (H264 encoding) version, subscribe to the podcast in iTunes or your podcaster. I changed this over to Revver because Google Video was doing strange things with the images. You can subscribe to the iTunes feed, click here. You'll get each video as I upload them and you can sync it to your iPhone :>

I'll post my video from Singapore once I get home and I can make some sense out of it.

FFF: S'pore

A quick trip to Southern Asia this week. A day or two here in Singapore then on to Seoul for a week of meetings. I've got a full report on my escapades (in video form no less), but I wanted to post a quickie while I was thinking about it.

Behold the awesome McSpicy. Not a ordinary chicken sandwhich, nor wayward Spice girl, this may be the best FFF that I have ever had. Part chili sauce, part pepper and part chickeny goodness, this is a clearly superior local creation. With fries and a drink, it set me back about USD$6. But it was a "whole chicken chop."



I heartily recommend it whenever you are in Singapore. With a diet coke.

48 Hours

Spent last weekend visiting my old hometown Chicago. It was a super quick trip (in on Friday afternoon and out Sunday noon) to meet up with Ron and Fred, but I managed to hit maximum nightlife even while being pretty sick.

We managed to "visit" Stanleys, RedFish, Portillos, US Beer, Goose Island,Cubby Bear, The Barlycorn and a few others that I don't think I can remember. I think the best part of the whole weekend was finding out how little my old neighborhood had changed over the past few years. Sure there were some new buildings and such, but most of my old haunts survive.

I'm off to Singapore right now. As I type, I am sitting above my gate in Hong Kong International Airport waiting for them to kick me out of the Red Carpet Club. I hope to have some movies to post this weekend, as I have a my Saturday free.

Last Stop

After another overnight flight, I arrived in Australia for the last stop on the magical tour. Wednesday was a business breakfast and lunch with executives. While the lunch was non-descript business, we had spectacular location in the Circular Quay cruise ship passenger terminal. The weather was absolutely perfect. This is the obligatory shot of the Opera House from the balcony of the terminal.


Unfortuantely, I didn't get much of a chance to enjoy the weather. I had to immediately jumped on a plane down to Melbourne for another set of meetings. Up early for breakfast presentation to partners, a quick stop into office where I got to have massive flat white at Metro with colleagues. I've never posted this in my months of work down in Melbourne (which is a curious ommission with my peroccupation with java), but Metro makes two sizes of latte: just right and larger-than-your-head. Young Brett got a larger-than-your-head flat white to cope with the nocturnal adventures of his young son:


I got through my lunch presentation and headed directly back to the airport and Sydney. That night I caught up with Niall for Indian food at Karmas then some drinks. He took me to a new bar in the Rocks -- The Argyle. It was a bit too trendy but pretty nice. Lots of open space and different areas.

And they had Asahi on tap. Thumbs up there.

With that my little trip was done. I caught a 747 back to San Francisco the next morning.

Singha Stop

Another quick stop on my around the world trip brings me here to Bangkok. I haven't been in Thailand for about 4 years (since an ill-fated bank deal) and much has changed. They have a new airport (more in a second), a lot of new buildings but the same old traffic. I have to say that I am pretty disappointed in the airport. While other places in Southern Asia have some of the best airports in the world (Changi in Singapore and KLIA in Malaysia), Thailand appears to have bungled theirs. Exposed concrete beams, crazy long immigration lines and a total lack of amenities make me feel . . . like I am in an American airport. Except for the purple sword wielding ninjas Buddhas.

But enough bitching. I got a pretty nice hotel (Grand Hyatt Erawon) and a day or two of downtime somewhere most people pay good money to vacation in. So what did I do? Drink. Yeah, spent almost my entire Sunday sitting in a beer garden drinking beer and writing (which i am really behind on).


That is not to say that I wasted my entire weekend. I did get a chance to see a few things along the way to the beer gardens. The easiest was right next store to the hotel: The Erawan Shrine. Apparently this was built to appease superstitious locals during the construction of the hotel and has remained for hte past forty years. It's pretty packed twenty hours a day or so. I took this photo around 11 PM on Saturday night.


I'm off to Australia to round out my trip.

Just Stopping By

Blew through Kuala Lumpur today. Arrived early on Friday morning, express train to the city, straight to some client meetings then out for a drink with some old friends. Up early on Saturday to catch my flight to Bangkok.

This is a rare moment of zen while I wait for the client to show for coffee in the Hilton Lobby. Past my Adidas is Julan Tun.

Dogs on the Roof

As you might have guessed by my sidebar or the general absence of posts, I am traveling again. With some new pages sewn into my passport and a shiny new Indian visa, I left last Sunday for Mumbai (through Zurich). I'm staying in the Land's End neighborhood of Mumbai (this being the end of the island that sticks out in the sea) which is pretty interesting. A case in point:

While not as scary as Snakes on a Plane, the dogs who live on the roof of my hotel are far more interesting. I have no idea how they get up there, but I do know that they love it. They sit on the edge of the roof and look out at the sea, bark at passing people and generally have a good time. They are just a few of the hoardes of stray dogs that inhabit Mumbai (even more than the number of stray cows). More interestingly, they all seem to be exactly the same mixed breed.

Also interesting in this picture is what you see in the background. The abdonded hotel that you see (SeaRock Hotel) was one of the sites hit during the terrorist bombings in 1993. In a strange coincidence, a Bollywood actor was sentenced to six years in prison for his part in that bombing this week.

Before I left for Kuala Lumpur today, I went out to the old fort next to the hotel.

Skull And Crossbones

So I know what it means when people ask you to Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia. And I know what it means when you wake up with a horse's head in your bed. But what does it mean if you wake up and find a coyote's skull in your dog bed ?



I think Louie's may be pissing someone off.

Goodbye Australia

Since Friday was my last day in Australia after my eight month stint, I decided to do two uniquely Australian things to round out my stay.

Footy

The inexplicable game that is Australian Rules Football is a insanity passion in Melbourne. Friday night, I snagged a ticket to see the battle for last place between Richmond and Melbourne (most of the teams are suburban Melbourne neighborhoods). Life was good -- we were rooting for Richmond (go tigers) and they thumped Melbourne 124 - 75.

Less good was bitter cold (it dropped to about 40F) and the 8 renditions of the Tigers fight song that we had to endure after the game. Here in the US, we can only hope that it doesn't invade our shores.

Vegemite

A brown, salty paste that is commonly spread on toast. It is vile. Or so I remember from the last time I tried it in 1999.

And I am happy to report that nothing has changed. Vegemite, still nasty.

This completes my prolonged assignment in Australia. I'm home for a stretch, then off to India, Malaysia and . . . Sydney again.

Drama

I am unsure why this is so funny, but it simply is.



It could be that today is my last day in Australia after eight months of constant travel (found on Kissing Suzy Kolber).

Wombat

To take advantage of my last weekend in Melbourne, Chris and I went to the southern most point of mainland Australia, Wilson's Promontory. Wilson's Promontory is about 2 hours south of Melbourne. It wasn't a bad drive but the weather along the coast was a bit brisk.

Wilson's Promontory is a national park that kinda sticks out in the Bass Strait between mainland Australia and Tasmania. Having been a national park since sometime before the turn of the 20th century, you get to see a wide range of wildlife. Just inside the gates to the Promontory, we happened onto a glen with a wombat, several kangaroos and an emu.


I wanted to get out of the car to get a better picture of the wombat, but the emu was huge, pretty mobile and didn't seem to be in a good mood.


Further into the park, we found a nature center and the only settlement on the pennisula, Tidal River. Not much to see, except that it was absolutely overrun with King Parrots. They were everywhere, even walking up to people for food.


Since we were all the way down there, we decided to hike to the highest point in the park, Mount Oberon, to get a better view. The climb was about 2 miles and 1200', but the views were fantastic.


This is the summit looking west back towards Tidal River.


This one looks south towards the Bass Strait.


All in all, a pretty good trip.

I'm With The Band

You meet interesting people flying international flights. This is good because often times you are sitting next to a person for the better part of an entire day. And I've been pretty lucky over the past year. For example, I sat next to a professional cyclist on my flight home from Japan a few weeks ago.

Now usually, I am not a great seatmate. I don't really like sitting next to people and basically just keep to myself. But I got lucky on my trip out and there was no one in the middle seat so I was in a pretty good mood. That is, until I saw my seatmate's reading materials. He had a large, leatherbound with gold gilted pages. I almost panicked thinking he might be ... religious. And talkative. Not wanting to chance it (it is a 14 hour flight), I immediate went into immersion mode by pulling out the laptop and putting on my headphones.

About half way through my fifth or sixth song, I catch a better glimpse of his book. It turns out it isn't a bible, but actually a trade handcover called The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists. So probably not a religious guy after all. Just odd. But I can deal with odd. Hell, I know odd pretty well myself.
Realising that danger is over, I come out of immersion mode and took off my headphones. He asks me about my mac, turns out his MacBook Pro was stolen a few weeks ago (note to self: do not leave lappy in your pickup). He's a bit into computers and we talk about some normal Mac stuff, mostly related to music software. During the course of the conversation, he asks why I'm going to Australia. I give him my sad story and return the question. "Concert," he says. Curious, I ask for details. Turns out he's a sound engineer for Brand New, a punk pop band. A punk pop band I actually know. He's surprised, as am I. Turns out, he tours with a lot of bands from Primus to Lisa Loeb to the White Stripes. It's a pretty damn interesting conversation.

As we part after clearing customs and such, he stops and asks if I want to come to the concert on Friday night. And as you well know, I don't have a lot going on in Melbourne, so I accept. He says if he can swing it, he'll send me an SMS. Cool.

I have to go straight to a customer meeting after I land so I quickly forget about the conversation and go about my work week. However, come Friday afternoon I get a SMS: "I'll put u on the guest list for tonight if ur interesting in coming. Doors open at 9pm." I look up the club that they're playing at and it turns out it is only 5 blocks from my hotel. Certainly worth at least a fly-by.

Around 9 pm, I cruise by the venue. And there is literally a line around the block. Crap, best laid plans and all. Of well, I'll grab some food and if the line peters out I'll go in. I go around the corner and settle into Nandos for dinner. Finishing my Double Classic, I get another SMS: "There's a long line. If u make it here before 10 let me know. I'll meet you outside with a pass.." Damn, this is getting better and better. I finish my sandwich and head over. The line is still huge, but emboldened by my inside contact, I just walk up to the head of the line. "I'm on the list," I tell the bouncer. He looks me over (as I am twenty years older than everyone in line) and tells me to go see the ticket people. I scoot inside to jeers in the crowd. I give my name to the ticket lady and she searches the list. "Sorry, I don't see your tickets," she says. I say that the band left me passes. Apparently, I've said the magic words. "Oh, you're with THE BAND." And she pulls out a different list, with only 3 people on it. And my name is at the top with VIP next to it. Almost giddy, I repeat after her, "Yes, I AM WITH THE BAND." She is now quite apologetic and says that I should go right in. Emboldened by my new found status, and sensing that my American accent might let me pull this off, I start towards the entrance then stop and ask "Oh, will I need a bracelet to get back stage? I've never been here before." At this point, she is almost falling over herself. She says that they don't do bracelets, but she can get someone to take me if I want. This is a little higher risk that I had intended, so I decline and walked in.

It turned out that I made the right choice. The bars were on the opposite side of the venue from the stage, but still had a front and center view of the stage. In fact, we could stand right behind and above the sound boards (where I got a chance to talk with my seatmate). The concert itself was really quite good. I never really followed Brand New before, but they put on a long show (2+ hours) that showcased a lot of different material. You can tell they have changed their sound quite a bit of the years. The crowd was really into the show, I think they sung along word for word for the first hour.

I caught up with my seatmate after the show. He thought it had gone pretty well and was ready to go out for drinks with the band. I was still shaking off my jet lag a bit so I declined to come along. They are off to Sydney then Brisbane to complete the tour.

My camera phone took some pretty crappy pictures but some posted some video to YouTube:

Japan (Condensed Version)

Since I couldn't post effectively from Tokyo last week, I bundled up my thoughts from the four days in this one post:

1. I awaken after my first night in Tokyo at the obscene hour of 4:30 AM. I had forgotten to close my blinds and by some bizarre custom, the Japanese find it neat to have sunrise before 5 AM. However, as much as the sun in my eyes was annoying, I think it was actually the sounds of dogs barking that woke me up. Although it seemed normal at the time (since I have loud dogs at home), after actually getting up I was somewhat puzzled. Especially since I was 27 stories up in the middle of downtown Tokyo. A quick look out the window solved my mystery:
   Yeah, the Japanese have a dog park on the top of a building near mine. Of course.


2. It was a beautiful day and we wanted to get out of Tokyo, so I got dressed.
   This view is west away from Shibuya.


3. We took the train two hours out to see Mount Fuji (Fujiyoshida, Japan). It was incredible. A tour bus drove us around the lakes (there are five lakes around the mountain) and we got some good pictures.
   


4. Stopped by MOS burger. MOS burger is the In-N-Out Burger of Japan. Their teryaki burger is quite good.
   


5. After getting back from Mount Fuji, we got a few drinks up in the bar. This is the same view as earlier.
   

Mistral Blue

Mistral Blue
Originally uploaded by /k.

Still posting via Flickr due to the before mentioned Blogger weirdness.

Finished up my trip to Japan last night with a group meeting in Rappongi. Our Japanese director is a keen 1950's rock and roll fan, so he took us to his favorite theme bar where they played Elvis covers. I wish I had taken some video for YouTube -- there were some priceless moments. Having said that, they did play "Pipeline" by the Ventures, which makes them alright in my book. After the 1950's rock and roll bar, a few us headed up the street to my old haunt, Mistral Blue. Mistral Blue is a converted train car and possibly the smallest bar in the world (I was standing 3 feet inside the doorway when I took this picture). It is a stop on every true rock stars visit to Tokyo -- pictures and autographs from Iron Maiden to Guns N Roses to Fall Out Boy "adorn" the walls. I hadn't been there in 3 years but it hasn't changed at all -- even the same bartender was there.

I am back in the US tomorrow for a well deserved week of R&R.

Technical Difficulties

Mount Fuji, originally uploaded by /k.

Sorry for the lack of posts. For some reason, Google thinks I can read Japanese because I am in Tokyo and refuses to display the blogger controls in English. As such, I am posting this from Flickr.

Please enjoy this zen image of Mount Fuji while I sort it out.

Lazy Sunday (St Kilda Edition)

Anglo-Boer War Memorial
Originally uploaded by /k.

I've been on flights most of the past three weekends and am off to Japan this Friday, so I decided to take it easy and just hang out here in St Kilda for a few days. However, that turned out to more boring that I anticipated -- especially when I burned through my last episodes of Heroes and the Sopranos on Friday night. So I decided that I should at least walk into Melbourne CBD to get some reading materials.

On my walk, I spotted this about three-fourth of the way there. Melbourne has a huge war memorial park and this particular memorial is from the Second Anglo-Boer War (South Africa around 1901). I'm not sure what it is supposed to symbolize but it is quite striking.

Big Screen

While I have always been in awe of the 108" big screen at the Powerhouse, in the back of my mind I thought there must be a bigger TV out there. And there is. Here in Sydney at the James Squire Brewhouse I found a TV larger than me.

Yes, it is just a projection dealie, but I still sat mesmerized for hours. Even through Aussie Rules Football.

The Matrix

Phone call, originally uploaded by adactio.

I meant to post this a bit back, but I think I forgot: Most of the original Matrix movie was filmed in downtown Sydney and it turns out that a few of the scenes were actually shot right outside my hotel. Case in point, a guy on the internet has posted recreation photos of a few scenes in the movie. The one on the right is directly outside my hotel's front door. It's weird that I have walked by that (and a few other places) hundreds of times and never noticed it before.

Downtown Sydney was also the set for Mission Impossible 2 and Superman.

Santa Cruz

I spent the first part of this week down on the coast in Santa Cruz, CA at a company technology conference. Surprisingly, the conference was actually pretty good and it was nice to be back on the coast again (especially in a place without the constant fog like Pacifica). As a bonus, I also saw this bumper sticker.

Departure Lounge

My woes with United Airlines appear to have followed me overseas. When I checked in for my flight home this morning, the gate agent cheerfully informed me that my flight was delayed.

Delayed by ten hours. TEN HOURS.

And as you can see below, I didn't get re-routed on United 840 through San Francisco . . . as I am taking a picture of it as it taxis out to takeoff.
So I am holed up in a remote area on Kingford Airport, coding and watching DVDs. And waiting for my 14 hour flight back to Los Angeles...

Back From Vacation

So I haven't blogged much lately. Sure, I've been hitting twitter pretty hard (which has probably cut into my blogging), but there really hasn't been a lot going on in the past few weeks. To recap:

• I flew back from Melbourne on a long, long flight. I was happy to be back in NorCal.
• I flew to Nashville to meet up with some of my friends and play golf for a vacation. On my flight from Chicago to Nashville, Ashley Judd sat about five seats from me. I was oblivious to who she was until the flight attendant asked for her autograph and she almost bitch-slapped him. Although tired, I made a mental note to "never mess with an grumpy Judd" in the back of my mind.
• I was delayed on every single flight I took for two weeks. Sometimes short delays, sometimes long delays, sometimes even cancelled flights. I cursed "flow control" many times.
• Nashville seems a bit sleepy and backwards but was actually a lot of fun.
• I got some time with my girlfriend and dogs. Shelley is working at home a few days a week now (which confuses the hell out of Louie and Zeke) which makes life a lot easier.
• And I am back in Melbourne. It now feels like I am always in Melbourne. And I now believe that Melbourne might be the most boring place in the world. I am beginning to miss Nashville.

Just kidding about the last piece (before the entirety of Melbourne descends on my Aussie rules style and gives me a massive wedgie). To prove it, I will highlight one of the best thing about the Melbourne office: our prodigious wine selection (and extreme willingness to sample it). Back when I joined my firm (pre-Internet boom days), it was an unspoken rule that every office had a quality stock of booze. Even a corporate HQ (where I was stationed), there were Friday keggers. And in the more remote parts of the empire, it was usually much better. Unfortunately, economic reality set in, political correctness crept back and this tradition started to wane. Not here in Melbourne. Melbourne, being the heart of the Australian wine industry (Yarra Valley is close), has always had a quality selection of the vino. So much so that, they have converted an old computer (19" style rack for those in the know) into their wine cellar. We have a fairly constant supply of two to three cases of red with a sprinkling of white for consumption anytime after about 4:00 PM.

It being Friday and well after 4:00 PM, I am having a glass of the 2005 Mitolo Jester Shiraz. Bold, very full bodied with a bit of spice, The Jester is a Aussie Shiraz drinker's red. It has just come into its own (it was to be aged about 2 years) so we have a good supply and I expect to be drinking a fair bit of it over the coming two weeks.

I am off to New Zealand tomorrow to visit a customer in Auckland, so I should have something to post from there.

Mt Buller Beerfest

After my day of hard riding, I attended the Mt Buller BeerFest which was held practically outside the front door of my hotel in the Village Center. It was a small, intimate affair -- there were only about 100 people on the mountain -- but we still had more than 50 people of all ages.

• Mountain Goat Hightail Ale: Malty. Rich smooth finish. Low hoppyness. Nice. 85.
• Jamison Mountain Ale: Darker. Even malty-er. nice finish. Higher alcohol -- maybe like a barley wine. Dark wheatbeer. 88.
• James Squire Amber: somewhere in between the others. More hops, less malt.
• Bearings Draft: Lighter, pilsner type. Geelong based. Nice but a little nondescript. 82 at best.
• Holgate White Ale: Belgian. Banana esthers. White. More hoegarden than hoegarden. 86.
• Chieftain Amber: Nice. Malty but complex. Interesting finish. Beer drinkers beer.
• What's Brewing Amber: Nice but not remembersal (?). I might go visit these guys, since they are just down the road from Melbourne in Geelong.
  
• Holgate Winter Ale: Porter. Unique in Australia. Nice. Not extremely chocolately but very drinkable w/ a smooth after taste.

The picture below shows the Village Center, the beer tents and the "band."
I think I may have some more beers, but truthfully, I don't think I could remember how to work my Treo after the Winter Ale. I topped the night off with some of my new found mountain bike rider friends at the only pub/restaurant open on the mountain.

Bike Buller

After arriving pretty late on Friday night, I awoke early to catch some breakfast and get up the hill for some biking. Mount Buller repurposes their ski lifts and runs during the summer to be open for mountain bikes. They've paired up with an American manufacturer, Kona, to become one of their approved bike park. While the prices were a bit steep, I decided to hire one of their downhill bikes -- the Kona Stinky. The Stinky is a slightly longer travel, stouter, more downhill oriented bike than my Stumperjumper FSR at home.

Mt Buller has a number of downhill runs, but most of them are pretty advanced. I picked the ABOM run, which was rated intermediate, instead of the International run, which at expert had several jumps and 2 meter drops. This was a wise choice, ABOM was extremely rocky and pretty technical. Unfortunately, half way down I realized that the Aussies reverse their brake levers from Americans (left is back, right is front). Not before going over the handlebars once. But none the worse for wear, I made it down to the village.

After I completed my first run, I decided to hook up with a guide that was leading around another group of riders up from Geelong (near Melbourne). This was cool -- they were worse than I was -- and the guide knew a lot of less downhilly type rides around the mountain and village. This was great since I got to see a lot more of the mountain and get away from the developments. Unfortunately, you still needed to use the chair lift to get back up the mountain (the stinky is a really heavy bike). I believe that I may have used up one of my nine lives here -- I fell off once and felt like I was about to the six other times. This shot is over my shoulder as I went up the lift.

I got in about 7 or 8 runs before calling it a day. All in all, well worth the time and effort.

Morning on Mt Buller

I woke this morning to a scene from my old house in Pacifica: fog rolling over the mountain and through the valleys. When I woke and opened my shades, we were completely fogged in. Five minutes later, it looked like this. You need to click on the photo to see it full size.

Off To The Snow Fields

Due to high hotel demand (the Melbourne F1 race and the FINA swimming world championships are in town this weekend), I have decided to flee to the hills for the weekend. The closest "mountains" to Melbourne is Mount Buller, which is located about 4 hours away by car. Although the drive was an adventure (I really don't drive much and I certainly don't drive on the left side of the road much), I made it up here before nightfall. I was pretty proud that I only drove the wrong side of the road twice.
Mount Buller seems nice so far, but it being low season (it's just getting into the fall here in Australia), there's no one here. When I went down to the pub/restaurant there were only ten other people there -- the waiter told me that was everyone staying in the hotel. That's a little creepy -- almost like "The Shining."
I'll post more news tomorrow -- I am off to mountain bike and attend the beer festival (you knew there was a hook here didn't you?) tomorrow.