Holidays!!

Last night I was too tired to watch Le Tour live so I am watching it now as I write this - kind of disappointing that I couldn't stay up, but that's what PVR's are for :D

I got up this morning, pottered around the house for a bit, had some brekky and then jumped on the bike! I decided that I was going to try to take photo's of my ride so I attached my work lanyward to my camera and hung it around my neck under my jacket.
I headed towards Fairfield shops to get my $5 voucher for a local shop - my local council is trying to encourage people to go to their local shops any way other than by car! Living Local they are calling it and I think it's a great idea.

Back streets of Fairfield:


After collecting my voucher and a fold out pocket sized map of the area, sc0re!, I headed towards the Main Yarra Trail


Trying to use my camera while riding and without stopping was an interesting challenge to begin with, but I soon worked out that I could just lift my the bottom of my jacket and use the camera that way - that explains some of the out of focus shots and the angle of some of them... like this one
Yarra River:


Before I left home the clouds outside looked VERY black but the rain radar looked mostly clear apart from a band of rain heading my way... as you can see I decided to go for a ride anyway and risk it... and it really didn't take long before it started to rain, but I found shelter
under the Studley Park Road Bridge:


This duck didn't seem to mind the rain though...


After about 5-10 minutes the rain stopped and I was on my way again. One of the things I love about this part of the Yarra Trail is that it goes through the Collingwood Children's Farm where you can ride past all kinda of animals... like goats


Being Melbourne, it didn't take long for the sun to come out and make everything look great again:


The Yarra trail really is a lovely way to ride to the city, it takes a lot longer, but you don't get views like this (see the blue sky but very wet ground!)


or this:


If you go via the road.

The wind was terrible today too, a really strong westerly, so strong that at one point, on the flat I was spinning at about 60rpm on my 25t sprocket and doing 16km/h. I was suprised how long it took for me to get to the city via the path, but as you can see it is really scenic and quite enjoyable if you don't have any real timelines to meet.
Once I hit the city I crossed over the Yarra (nearly getting blown over in the wind!) and headed back towards home past the MCG:


Despite the sunny skies in that photo I soon got rained on again :( My ride ended up being a 1hr 20 minute (25km) pootle - my longest ride since I hurt my back 10 months ago! My back seems OK with it all, so far, but I did get sore knees at the front during my ride and a bit of a sore bum. The sore bum I know is lack of conditioning and I am going to assume the sore knees are the same, I had a fairly low cadence for the majority of the ride too as I was just pootling along enjoying my surroundings.

After having lunch with a friend and having a nana nap I did a heap of much needed food shopping. The average amount I spend normally at the supermarket is about $40-$50 a fortnight or so and then I do my fruit n veg for about $20 and then spend about $40 on meat. Today my groceries cost me $106 and my fruit n veg cost me $30 and I am yet to do my meat shopping. I bought so much food at the supermarket that I haven't had to buy for a while - mostly things for cycling like muesli bars and also a few different breakfast foods (I normally just eat porridge at work for brekky) and some other bits n pieces for spending two - three weeks at home. It should mean though that in the long run I end up spending less money as I will be eating food I have in the cupboard and fridge.