Sean's Blog Downunder…

A couple of months back, when I fetched Stuart from school he had a violin with him. All the boys get a instrument and they attend “Strings” once a week to see if they have any talent. So its been three months now and I attended a parents strings recital at the school last week to see all the boys perform what they have learned in the last few months. I was suitability surprised to see how good Stuart is and he is pretty interested as well. His grand father “Buddy” is visiting us so he played a little for him which I recorded to remember and compare later.

Click on young Stuart below and Enjoy…stuart-ryan

Stuart Ryan

Well I had the privilege of getting an invite to the pre-opening function of the Apple store in Sydney last evening. To be honest it was pretty boring as I had been in a number of Apple stores around the world already, but the beer was free and the snacks were tasty. It is a very impressive store and for people that have never been on one this one is very big covering three floors and a lot of glass and space. It will be humming with Apple enthusiasts all the time I think.

Yes there were already a line of about 10 geeks waiting for the official opening which takes place Thursday 19 at 5pm AEST (24 hours later). Why someone would want to wait for more that 24 hours outside a store I have no idea. Life is far to short. I walked passed the store at 10am this morning and now the line is much longer and all the way up around the corner in King street. mmmmm maybe I do not know something?

A great store, however the only disappointment was that we did not receive a “Goody” bag. Very sad when you consider how much the store cost. I think a free 3G iphone would have hit the mark and made a couple of people happy, even though I don’t think I would have traded my BlackBerry

Well this past week end we took part in the Eastlink Cycle Challenge to commemorate the opening of the Eastlink freeway between Frankston and Ringwood. Well I must say I was very disappointed in the overall organization of this event.

There were 6000 riders in the challenge and as you can imagine and appreciate no easy task to organize. However apart from the chaos at the start the organizers never even contemplated the potential of the danger that was clearly very visible. They sent us on our way from the start but it was very confusing as we stayed on the one part of the freeway and were told that we need to be careful as the race riders (Pros) would be coming back in the same direction on the same road.

Well they were not wrong…… 6000 riders on a three lane freeway and then 20km into the ride we all had to cram into one and a half lanes as the front riders are returning on the same road. Pretty much a very frightening experience well the opposite part of the freeway remained closed. To add to this toilettes and water stands were erected on the same road when we turned causing more chaos when riders wanted to stop.

Then to top it all off coming back through the halfway mark on on out to Ringwood we hit all the fun riders …. like 20 thousand of them all out for a Sunday stroll. Kids on small tricycles and so forth ? it was an absolute shambles. One cannot understand how more people were not injured.

Anyway we still had a nice ride on a new road which was enjoyable.

Well time to start blogging again I think. I have been really busy and its no excuse but I though I would say it anyway.

A couple of months ago I started Cycling again. This was due to a couple of beers at my son Stuart’s school Christmas party where a couple of my mates committed me back onto the bike. I have not really cycled seriously since departing the shores of South Africa, Cape Town where I used to cycle regularly and have completed a number of Argus Cycle Tours.

Well I still had my old Cannondale (Courtesy of my father in-law AJR) so it all started again. After a couple of rides I was getting a lot of banter because of my “old” Cannondale and the pressure was just to much So I took the plunge and purchased a new bike. Mmmmm Trek Madone SSL6.9, wow that was like going from a Volkswagen to a Porsche. Really the move from a steel frame bike to a carbon fibre one was amazing. Group set change was also very nice now getting the extra gears and I no longer had to reach down to change them, yes the Cannondale was pretty old and had served both Alfred and me very well.

Now I have been back on the road with the boys for the past six months and even braving out the winter and it’s fantastic albeit fresh in the mornings.

Thanks Campbell and Capt Reid for the inspiration. Now if I could only keep up with you guys, the Rocket Man and young Stuie Mellington I will be fine.