OzHpv weekend day 1

October 30, 2016

Southern Cross / Spencer Street Melbourne

Spencer St 1 Ballarat.  Gardener by bike.

Spencer St 1 Ballarat

Spencer St 2 Ballarat

Cup of tea at Spencer St. 2 Ballarat.

Hi

This blog entry is going back a few weeks now, I have been quite busy, so am only now catching up and posting a few photos online.

This year, the OzHpv AGM was scheduled for Ballarat.  Pete Heal's Round-Australia record bike was on display alongside an eclectic assortment  of other bikes and trikes, and this was as good an excuse for a trip as any other.

Early on the first day though, I had a bit of work to do.  Some bike frame timber routing I had started was ready for pickup at Clayton.  Don had done the routing for me, all I had to do was pick all the parts off the routing machine and clean up, and the parts were all mine to enjoy.  So I drove out to Clayton and was there not long after 7am, and worked on the routing machine and then came home, shoved the bike frame bits into the shed and packed a few things in the working trike and headed to the station for a midday train to start the OzHpv trip.

The country train terminus in Melbourne is called Southern Cross but was previously called Spencer St. after the street it's on, and I got there in plenty of time and was able to shove the seat up the frame towards the front to make it a bit smaller for travelling onto the train.  It was a holiday weekend and the train was pretty busy and the luggage area pretty full, but I had no problems with carrying the trike on the train either way.

Got into Ballarat, and went to the publicised meeting place a few minutes late, but couldn't find any ozhpvers and headed off in the direction they might have gone, around lake Wendouree, a well known stomping ground for Fiona Elsey Cancer research rides.  Soon I gave up trying to find more recumbents and settled down to some lunch and to sort out navigation to the scout camp where we wre staying from my map book.  Spencer St Ballarat - good, it's that street opposite, just point the trike in that direction, keep going, and a few inexplicable street name changes later I would be there.  Unfortunately not!  I ran out of numbers in that Spencer St before I reached four hundred and thirty something where the scout camp was  meant to be, so needed to try to work out the navigation again. 

As well as the map book, I spoke to a lady watering her garden "Do you know where the Pax Hill Scout camp is?"  "No dear, I only know my way to the nearest Coles" , so it was back to the map book.  Another lady was concerned for my welfare, particularly as there was were ants crawling round and I was sitting in the gutter. "They'll get in your bag" she said.  Well the bag didn't matter, what if they got in my jocks!

Anyway, TADA, there was another Spencer St. in Ballarat and I headed off there to find the scout camp: yes, it was there at the end of the road and after looking round a bit found the huts where we were staying.  Noone was there and I spread out a bit, had a few cups of tea and waited for the others to arrive.  Richard was first, he had ridden 2 days from Howlong to get there.  (To be Continued)

Garage Sale Day

Bike outside Spensely St Primary, loaded with tomato plants.

Jamies flight simulator

Jamie Friday

Garage Sal booty: Tupperware, Beer Stein, Teapot, Ukelele

Jamies Flight Simulator

October 24, 2015

Hi

This year, and last year the fete at the local primary school coincided with an organised national garage sale day, with many houses organising garage sales.  What better day for an inveterate, rusted on garage saler and op shopper to get out and about on a bike, trike, er, thing.  Y'know.  Anyway, the weather was very nice and I think I got round to about 10 garage sales plus the school fete. 

At one of the garage sales Jules took an interest in my trike and posted a brief entry in her blog.  There is a vidoe if you click on "contraption".  Hmm, whats that? Never heard of one of them before!

The garage saling is very sociable, and there is often some gentle banter and discussion about the sales.  One lady was spinning wool on a wheel outside her house.  With me it didn't get to haggling....

7 tupperware conainers for 20c each and I offered $2.00: "do you want to pick up a book as well?." "No, not really, have a nice day".

At Jules's sisters sale, I had already agreed on 2 beer steins for $5.00 but a nice bottle opener "Aussie Bottler" was thrown in gratis and for free.

At the fete, I cought up with fellow bike builder Jamie Friday.  His kids have left the primary school now but he was back to oversee the running of his human powered creation, a "Flight Simulator" consisting of wooden aeroplane models running down fishing line and controlled by kids moving poles back and forth.  Actually Jamie really didn't have to be there, it was all running very smoothly and harmoniously from what I saw.

Bye Now!

Regards

Steve nurse

Wet Day

Trike with DVD player in the back.

Tailbox

November 5, 2015

Hi

For the first time in a long time,  we had some real rain overnight, about 24mm, which was more than we had in the whole of October.  Anyway, I rode through some of the rain to work this morning, and was quite soaked when I got there.  There were some spare pants in the cupboard, so I put them on, but hung around most of the morning with a wet shirt till I needed to get up and take a walk anyway, then went down to the local op shop for a dry shirt. 

They had shirts, and a DVD / Video player as well.  Now our video's been playing up lately, so a replacement seemed like a good idea, so I bought the player, which seemed very new and had a "working" sticker on it.  The nice lady in the op shop let me put the dry shirt on in the change room and I wandered back to work.

At the end of the day, it had stopped raining, and I was able to bundle the player into the bike and ride home.  Still to plug it in to see if it actually works, or if its too compliated for me to operate but we shall see.

Regards

Steve Nurse

Edith on Cup Day

Edith with wine, the winnings, and the winning ticket

Christine and Edith

Hi

Before I launch into this blog post, I just want to say that I have fallen behind on my blog posts and emails, and hope to catch up soon, but meanwhile I will use the tactic of jumbling up the blog posts and not reporting them in chronological order.  In an attempt to make this less confusing, but which will probably just make it more confusing, I will put a comprehensible date at the start of each blog posts, which relates to when the events occurred.  Here we go.

November 3, 2015

Well,  Melbourne Cup day is a holiday for some in Melbourne but not for us hard-working-university-type-people-with-deadlines, so I rode into Uni in the morning.  About midday, my wife Christine rang and said out 103 year old neighbour Edith was coming over, and could I come home a bit before 3pm when the Melbourne Cup horse race was on.  So I did just that and needed to do my duty before the race, giving out glasses of wine and setting up our prodigious gambling for the day, 8 horses each for 50c the lot for $1.50 total prize pool.

Well Edith won, and so did the first ever female jockey to win the Melbourne Cup, Michelle Payne.  Michelle had been across the news as the feelgood story of the race for several days prior, along with her brother Stevie who was the strapper for the horse Prince of Penzance.  The horse won at 100 to 1 and everyone including me is kicking themselves - why didn't I put $5.00 on her?

Anyway, congratulations Edith!

Regards

Steve Nurse