catchUp
In current events…
Alex and I took a recent trip to Sydney to enjoy a bit of beachside relaxation during school holidays. Shacking up at the Manly Pacific, it was a nice reprieve to hear the ocean outside the balcony door instead of the normal toxic dischord of the traffic in Canberra. As a result of his volunteer work with the Sydney Symphony, we were invited to take in their performance at the Opera House. While the interior concert hall itself wasn’t breathtaking, the way that the architecture of the interior stairs and lobby areas plays on the building’s signature exterior design gives the place a timelessly elegant feel. To round out the cultural enrichment portion of the trip, we browsed the Museum of Contemporary Art’s bizarre display of works — no photography allowed.
We hired a pair of bicycles and rode the trail from Manly out to North Head to see the breathtaking views afforded to those who take the footpath to the very edge of the cliffs, and even got a chance to peruse the street markets in Manly and the Rocks. At the Manly market, we were lucky enough to pass by Linda Olstein’s booth of elephant paintings. She proudly announced to us that she had “just gotten into hippos” and beamed animatedly while showing off some of her more recent work. She went on to point out that “each one has it’s own colourful personality,” and we picked up a miniature of one red-orange elephant to grace our lounge room bookshelf.
Back in Canberra, the Olympic Torch Marathon passed through the heart of the city on it’s global circuit. The citywide excitement carried straight on through to ANZAC day, highlighted by mass consumption of beer and traditional TwoUp gambling. For the afternoon, people gather ’round to watch the coins toss into the air and bet spontaneously amongst one another. If anyone should drop his beer amidst the jostling crowd, the requisite punishment is for him to take off his footwear and chug a mixed shoe-full of his friends’ contributed beer. (Give the video a minute to load, and the watch the Aussies go crazy!)
Only a few blocks from the house (perfect when you’ve got a nasty flat you don’t feel like fixing), they offer a full range of services and advice, as well as all the biking gear one might ever need. The basic tune-up they performed for our hybrid bike left it running flawlessly, and despite the multiplicity of my obnoxious phone calls for cycling advice, the voice on the other end of the line is always friendly and knowledgeable. As they boast on their own site, “Ride Shop is the ultimate destination for everything related to cycling…”