Love Like Winter

As residents of Australia would be aware, we're well and truly in the guts of Winter. Let me paint you a picture.

Waking one morning, riding the bike in an Easterly direction, watching the suns rays filter through the low cloud. The sky is pink and orange. Glancing in my mirrors, the sky is a dark grey, cloud is thick. The day is going to be fine, 18. I watch the sun climb into the sky during my ride to work and park the bike up at 7:30am. It's cool and its windy. A nice winter's day.

Waking one morning, no light, no sun. I decide to drive to work. Walking downstairs I start to hear the patter of rain, and the view of the city is gone. Just little red lights peeping through mist and cloud where the towers should be. It's raining. Raining for 4 days straight. I'm getting moody. I hate walking on wet ground. The water absorbs into my jeans and runs up my leg. I drive home in the dark in the rain again.

Luckily, the weekends have been relatively okay. It's still been fairly glum and rainy, but glimpses of sunlight work wonders. Last weekend I headed out to the Margaret River Chocolate Factory in West Swan to buy some chocolate for my favourite Swedish boys. I dragged Robin along and we ended up heading out to O'Brien Road - "the" most popular twisty road for riders in the Perth motorcycling community. This road has a reputation for being "dangerous". As far as I'm concerned, it's designed and maintained to Main Roads guidelines. It is in fact quite safe. Some riders however take it upon themselves to view it as a race track and go belting through there with little or no experience of the road.

We parked up on the second right hander, where mates of ours have come off. In both cases, riders had some injuries and bikes were seriously damaged or written off. Walking around the area for nearly an hour, we found pieces of bikes all around the place. Triumph Daytona, Kawasaki ZZR, Honda CBR, Ducati bits, lenses, trip meters, cracked screens, headlights, fairing screws. We could have filled up a small rubbish bin of items. Robin took me up and down "the line" for that corner - looking into it, it seems easy with the exit of the corner in sight. It does however tighten up and you can see the exact point where people who are going too fast have realised that they're not going to make it and single tyre trails run off the road, through the gravel and into the bush.

Getting back into the car, driving the road at between 60and 80 km/hr we stopped again at the corner where Peter Brock died. It was interesting driving up O'Brien road. In a car, you have time to look around and actually see what the surroundings are, compared to the usually swift pace on a bike.

At the top of the road, we turned around and headed back down towards the highway, seeing the road in reverse, and picking the "tricky" corners. We stopped to check out the river that runs down the hills, taking time out to enjoy the sun that had come out during the day. Later in the afternoon we headed towards Midland for lunch *Nando's is SO GOOD*. It's also amazing what a new set of windscreen wipers does for your visibility!

It was also the Birthday party of Simon and Justin last weekend - with a shindig at the Scarborough Surf Life Savers Club. A bunch of us met up early to get the party organised, having dinner at the local pizza/pasta place. Of course, the order was stuffed up and I didn't get my damn lasagne. Luckily Rich and Robin waited up for me and we caught up with everyone soon after I inhaled my dinner. A cracker of a night, with my handbag going missing then being found by the barman, only having 95c for a coke (which was $1) but still getting one, seeing all my mates there (even ones that have been away for aaaages), meeting some new people, smoking cigars, drinking breezers, and genuinely having a great time. The evening ended with most people heading out to the Mustang Bar but I chose to head home and chill out.

Woot! Partay.....!

Birthday Boi - Simon

Robin and a different type of flying V

The lovely Sean

Neil and Jake

Simon's better half, Annie

Sunday was taken up with Lee, heading out to the Breakwater tavern for a pint and a meal. As usual, it was pissing down with rain and he was kind enough to drop me off at the front of Hillary's whilst parking up the car. *very nice of you Lee, thanks!* We ate, drank and decided to head out to the city to do some shopping for sunglasses. Not really the right weather for sunnies considering I wore them for the first time about 4 days after I bought them cos there was no sun! But still, we headed in and hit Sunglass Hut - where for some reason, I always buy my sunnies there. Maybe cos the guy at the counter is cute. Having spoken to him when he served us, I concluded he was a fag (hehe!). Either way, he "advised" us to go buy a copy of Cosmopolitan to get 20% off - sounds like a good deal to me! Lee and I then scrounged around the city to find a copy of the damn magazine which was sold out in the nearest newsagency. Then looking for the coupon!!! Last time I bought a girly magazine was a Cosmopolitan in year 10 (about 10 years ago). Wow, I've aged. Anyway, back to me... I picked up a pair of Oakley Riddle in pink after Lee was bashing me for not being girly enough. He got Oakley Gascans, also which I really liked and I may still get a pair one day. We then chilled out and watched Monster's Inc. With Bacardi and Cola of course!

Oh yeh, there's also 35 days to go :)