Judy left my place early Friday morning and headed back to Canada. Work was uneventful and it was nice to have another week done. I managed to get a fair bit done on my report cards without really feeling like it was taking away much of my personal time.
Friday night Lu, Cas, and their nephew Simon showed up at my place around 10 pm. I stayed in their home the week earlier in Echuca. They stayed the weekend and it was nice to be able to return the favour.
Saturday morning I was up early and back to the Melbourne airport. This time I headed to Brisbane to see my friend Jenny Smith (from Canada) and her family. It was a really great weekend away and it was nice to spend time with her and her crew. She has a great husband and two wonderful children.
Anyhow, Jenny and her daughter Emma picked me up at the airport at little past 10 am and we headed straight to D.F.O. (designer warehouse shopping). I haven’t really come to Australia to shop so to no surprise of mine I didn’t buy anything. They were both successful though getting what they wanted and needed. From there we headed to Jenny’s home in Wellington Point. It’s an outer suburb of Brisbane but it’s right on Moreton’s Bay and really beautiful. We did a walk to the point and Jenny told me lots of interesting things about the area. We spent the evening at home enjoying great Thai food before I totally crashed and had to go to bed (I haven’t been sleeping much the past few days).
Wellington Point
(King Island in the Distance)
View from Wellington Point
Me, Jenny, and Emma
Saturday morning Jenny, Ray, and I were up around 4 am. Yes, you read that correctly. Jenny registered me for the Mousdash 10.5 km run for Movember. It’s a run to raise awareness and funds for Prostate cancer. It’s tradition for the men to grow a moustache in the month of November for this run. Anyhow the race was a drive away and it started at 7 am. We left the house at about 4:45 am and were at the race sight before 6 am for on sight registration and what not.
Jenny and Ray pre race
(Notice Ray's two week moustache)
Jenny had mentioned that I might want to check out the web site because the run was a bit hilly. Hilly was an understatement. The run started at the base of Mt Coot-tha and went up, up, up. The look out for the city of Brisbane is on Mt Coot-tha. Anyhow if you’ve been following my great running this year (ie the non existent running) you’ll know that a hilly course is certainly something I can’t really run these days. So, I did warn Ray and Jenny that they might want to bring snacks as they waited for me to finish the race.
But back to the race. The course starts on an up hill and just goes up. For any of you that have done the Peach Classic Triathlon it’s like the run portion of that race but it starts at the bottom of the first major hill - ie no flat section to warm up with first. It felt like we went up and up and up. We hit the look out some what quickly but we still continued to climb. Obviously at some point we did get to go down hill but I swear there was WAY more up hill than down hill.
You can make out the start banners and you can see the course went straight up hill.
(this was taken after the race)
The MT stands for MOUNTAIN!!
What I saw for most of the run (or maybe I should say walk)
The photo doesn't really show the up hill but TRUST ME it was up hill)
Proof I made it to an aid station.
Anyhow eventually I finished and managed to run my slowest 10.5 km run ever!!! But I didn’t expect much more than that since I’m totally out of running shape,and it was HILLY!! The pictures I have don’t do the course any justice unfortunately.
If you look in the distance on the left at the back you can faintly make out a television tower. I ran PAST that tower. This picture was taken on the way back to the car so hopefully it gives you an idea of the UP HILL running/walking I had to do.
After the run we went for a great breakfast in Wellington Point before Jenny and Ray took me for a drive to Manly (not the Sydney one the Brisbane one) and Wynnum. Both are on Moreton’s Bay and both are very beautiful too. They were telling me about how they weren’t all that desirable locations but it just had us all laughing because it was so beautiful on the water. They also showed me a traditional Queensland house - built on stilts. Unfortunately I didn’t get a picture of the houses.
Manly
From there we returned to the Smith-Smith house and had a wonderful lunch before they took me back to the airport for my flight back to Melbourne.
Nancy H. returns to Melbourne tomorrow night and so I’m sure we’ll get up to some trouble. Barb F-F and her husband Dave are also in Melbourne at the moment . Barb, Nancy, and I all worked together in Canada except Barb and Nancy are now retired. It will be really great to see both of them at the same time.
Anyhow that’s the update for this weekend. Next weekend Nancy and I are heading to Daylesford which is the “Spa” capital of the state of Victoria. My report cards are also due on Friday for colleague editing so some where in all this fun I need to make sure I get them finished.
Only five more weeks until I’m HOME!!! So much to do still and so little time left.
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