Opinion Australia

For the first time since the wife changed her job I missed my morning walk. She’s finally got fed up with spending two hours on the revised bus route and asked me to drive her to the nearest train station.

Since the new timetable was implemented, the bus picked her up by the side of a dual-carriageway on an unlit deserted stretch of road where (if I wasn’t with her) she’d be standing alone in the dark… not safe at all. The bus would then meander around several suburbs before joining the crush on the M2 car park taking hours to get her to work.

In contrast I drove 15 mins to the nearest train station. From there she can catch a train, ride in relative comfort and safety for 50 mins and get to work relaxed and far earlier than is possible with the bus
No competition really is there?

The only problem is that it’s too late for me to go out walking with the dogs. I think I’m just going to have to bite the bullet and go later on… probably after I come back from having taken the kids to school. It won’t be quite as good… nor will I have the motivation of actually being *out there* to begin with… but we’ll see.

Can’t go today anyway, I have to go see the ‘diet doctor’ this morning… I’m sure the new arrangements won’t go down too well with him.

It went down even less well with the dogs who were frantic when I left without them this morning! Awww….

We were a bit miffed about not getting a free hat. We’d booked, arrived at the right time… but were disappointed. We discovered that thousands of people *hadn’t* pre-booked and had just ‘arrived’ yet they were all given a hat without any check made about who should or shouldn’t be on the bridge and/or get one.

We felt the least they could do was ration the damn things! When we got there there was still another 5 hours before the walk closed… still it was one small hiccough in what was otherwise a nice day.

We walked across with no problems. It really isn’t a hard walk at all and was quite nice without the traffic there to deafen and choke you. Having said that I think the oldies would have struggled.

In total through the day we walked around 17 kilometres and I’m not sure the old mans legs could have worked for that long. We might have had him sitting on the old lady on her wheelchair and pushed them *both* home!

By the time we were off the other side of the bridge and back in Darling Harbour we were shattered… *but*… were in possession of two souvenier hats!!

Twice the wife saw a group of people all wearing hats and asked them were they got them as our kids had missed out… and twice someone very kindly gave the kids one of theirs.

Just shows there is still some good in the world cos I doubt I’d have done it. We’d have asked for one each and probably kept them all.

As it is the kids won’t be seeing these for a while. I’m going to pack them into a plastic box with the other few little souveniers we picked up and leave them there and then… if any of us are still around… they can hoik them out for the 100th Anniversary and probably be the only people who’d have one!

What a magpie eh??

By the time we were finished the kids were ready as well… and hungry… so we moved on to the monorail and bought a ‘family pass’ so we could get on and off as often as we wanted.

Usually we’d not bother as it doesn’t go anywhere interesting but this time it actually went where we wanted… the Queen Victoria Building… or ‘the QVB’ as it’s affectionately known!

I like the QVB, it’s a quirky little place full of shops of an idiosyncratic nature ranging from cheap lace and touristy junk, to fine art with a selection of decent small cafes and restaurants to boot.

After wandering around looking at the shops for a while we gravitated to a small restaurant tucked away at the top of the building. I had the grilled atlantic salmon with salad, the wife had Thai beef with noodles… and the kids their ubiquitous nachos, and wedges with sour cream and sweet chilli sauce… ewww.

The salmon was probably farmed but was still *very* acceptable. I tried one piece of the Thai beef but it wasn’t highly flavoured enough for me. Odd really as the salmon and salad were very delicately flavoured.

We sat quietly chatting and reading the Sunday broadsheets until we felt we needed to make a move leaving a decent tip because of the excellant service we’d received.

From there we began to make our way down to Darling Harbour where we intended to catch a ferry to the far side of the bridge.

According to the wife’s pedometer, in total yesterday we must have walked around 17 kilometres… you’d have thought that might have helped reduce the weight a little… especially since all I had to eat were two of the ‘diet bars’, a salmon salad and a little ham on our return… however it *didn’t!

In fact, I put a kilo on… which seems a little odd since I doubt I even ate a kilo all day. There is something strange going on somewhere.

Still, I wasn’t strained, stretched or tired after it. In fact I was up and out this morning even though I (again) didn’t sleep too well. Despite having walked so far yesterday I was even able to ‘power walk’ at least a kilometre of this mornings walk.

So… the exercise is doing me good even if the weight isn’t falling off me in lumps. It *is* going down though… and if that’s what’s happening while I get a little fitter… it can’t be bad.

From our conversation last night it would appear the brother is about to become a reader of the blog… and hopefully will make some of his pithy comments (no… I said *pithy*) to amuse and educate us all.

Welcome bro.