Day 277: The New Coffee

The 'Gang' as Belinda calls them have moved the coffee venue and changed the day. It used to be that the Canberra Riders group gathered on Monday nights at a cafe in Fyshwick which made it easy for me to get to on the way home from work, now it's held at a little pub on the University of Canberra campus which is over the other side of town and it's on a Wednesday night instead. This has made it much harder for me to get along to catch up with the folk on the forum.

I was actually able to ride my bike to work today and the conference I was attending finished up a little early so I made the decision to get along to the new coffee. It had been a while since I've made it to one of these catchups and it showed, I only recognised a handful of people there and nobody recognised my bike. It was good to catch up with the guys (in a non gender specific sense) I knew and have a 'coffee' with them, if you look closely you can see what's left of my coffee sitting on the tank of my bike. It was even better to be out on the bike for the first time in ages.

My opinion of the new (to me) bike is changing, at first I was happy with how it rode but didn't think it was a very pretty bike. Tonight in the sea of grey and black bikes that were at coffee I thought at the very least it stands out in the crowd, even if it's not the most gorgeous bike I've ever seen. I'm still thoroughly enjoying the ride, and while I'm on it I don't have to look at it. I think I should ride it more often so I can spend less time looking at it in the shed.

Day 253: Lanyon Laziness

After a substantial sleep in Belinda suggested we take Henry and Daphne down to Lanyon Homestead for an afternoon coffee. I hadn't been there before so didn't really now what to expect, what I found was a little cafe that opens onto a big paddock. Henry had great fun running around in all that open space while we were waiting for our coffee, which wasn't bad even if it did take a long time to make its way out to our table.

Today's photo of Henry was taken at maximum zoom with the sun behind him and I'm still getting used to which settings work best in which conditions, this one worked ok but it's a little grainy. I still wanted to use it because it's just so Henry, he was having so much fun and you can see it written all over his cheeky little face.

Day 127: May Task - You

I decided that today's subject being 'You' could really only be interpreted as being all about 'Me'. So I chose to gather a few things that are a little bit 'Me' instead of doing a predictable self portrait.

Running through the things I gathered, there is:
- My helmet (not the mouldy one, this is the one I use for racing)
- My favourite sneakers
- My phone which is a necessity for work and play
- My favourite cuff-links (a gift from Belinda, they're in the shape of steering wheels)
- My sunnies I really hate the glare
- My family (on the screen of Belinda's laptop)
- My 'Mr Grumpy' coffee cup
- My car and bike keys

There were many other things that I would have liked to add to this collection but I ran out of time (if you look closely at my phone you'll see it was midnight when I took this photo) and the collection would have ended up looking like a trash & treasure stall. I am indeed a complex individual.

Day 89: Lazy Coffee

After giving Belinda's parents one of the Aldi Coffee Pod machines for Christmas last year, we were pretty impressed with how easy it was to use and how good the coffee was. The coffee machines were very popular before Christmas and Belinda had to work pretty hard find one as most stores were out of stock within days and sometimes hours of getting them in.

Recently, Aldi have started advertising the machines again so this afternoon I thought I'd drop by to see if they had any in the Queanbeyan store on my to pick Henry up from daycare. They had plenty so on a whim I bought one along with a box of assorted pods.

My theory is that we can use the quick & easy Aldi machine for coffee during the week and save the more labour intensive traditional espresso machine for use on the weekends. It's really only Belinda who uses our big espresso machine during the week, so I figure I'll be saving her some effort making my coffees each morning... I'm quite the thoughtful husband aren't I.

Day 80: Tall Mushies

After all the rain we've had lately I've noticed some strange looking 'shrooms growing along the path that leads from the car park to the office. I took this photo on my way back from grabbing an afternoon coffee using my cup to give some perspective on how tall these Mushie's have grown.

It's a very strange formation on this one, I've not seen this before and all the other equally tall Mushrooms nearby have narrow, elongated bell shaped heads on their long stalks so this one's quite unique. I have no idea what species these things are, but I am sure that none of them look particularly appetising.

Day 9: "Coffee"

There's a regular gathering of Canberra Riders on Monday afternoons, we call it "Coffee". I like to get along as often as I can to catch up with some of the folk I ride with over a beverage or two and even though we call it Coffee, for me the beverage is usually a beer. Today Coffee was at the Civic Pub which worked quite well for me but not so well for those who actually come to Coffee to drink Coffee, this may have attributed to the smaller than usual numbers.

I'm pretty sure that today was the first time in roughly 2 years of me making semi-regular appearances at Coffee that I actually showed up on a bike! I think some of the 'gang' as Belinda likes to call them were starting to doubt that I even owned a bike...