le Tour de France - Our Time

And so another Tour de France ends, Cadel Evans puts on a good show but fails to win back to back championships.  Bradley Wiggins wins the Championship, a first for England.  Thomas Voeckler while claiming the King of the Mountains, also claims the title of the most interesting face of cycling, the grimaces that flash across his face as he pushes up those mountain stages are a sight to behold.  Peter Sagan wins the Sprinter's Green Jersey and if this year is anything to go by, he will be a GC champion of the future.

I am sad to see the Tour end, I love Phil Liggett's and Paul Sherwens commentary, I love the French countryside and the images of the peleton train stretched out along the road while they power forward to catch the break-aways.  I love the quirky displays the little french towns put on while the peleton races past.  I love the thrill of seeing the cyclist's traverse the narrow streets and the many sharp corners, the steep descents and torturous ascents and those huge round-a-bouts where the peleton spilt and rejoin.

I was impressed this year by the spirit of sportsmanship shown by the riders when the peleton 'sat up' to allow Cadel Evans and others to rejoin after someone threw carpet tacks on the road and caused countless punctures.

Most of all though, I will miss watching it with my hubby.  We have very different tastes in TV shows and le Tour is about the only sporting event that both of us watch together.  So for 3 weeks of the year, we sit down at 8.30 p.m. and share an hour or two in front of the telly (longer on weekends).  We chat about the race, yelling at the idiots who run on the road, we laugh together when Phil gets something wrong in his commentary, we rewind bits to check out the crashes (and weren't there a lot this year??) and we cheer for all the Aussies, and for all the breakaways trying to stay clear of the thundering peleton.

So now le Tour has finished and hubby and I go back to our normal nightly routines, me in my study and him in his ... a little sad really.  Viva le France, Viva le Tour can't wait till you are back next year.

The Time Has Come

"The time has come," the Walrus said,

"To talk of many things:
Of shoes--and ships--and sealing-wax--
Of cabbages--and kings--
And why the sea is boiling hot--
And whether pigs have wings."
Lewis Carroll (from Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, 1872)

And so I think the time has come, as sunshine graces our skies, to turn my thoughts from my 'Winter of Discontent'.

My hubby has been home now for 2 weeks - and no sign of him being whisked back to Adelaide. This weekend (which in Perth is a long one anyway) we both also took Friday and Tuesday off to spend some 'us' time together. Five whole days - wonderful.

Friday saw us head to Yanchep National Park and have a BBQ lunch, sharing the space with only the birds, the sunshine and a few flies (although really only 1 or 2). The breeze was chilly, the skies were blue and the company was special.

Need a hand with that BBQ?

We had to eat keeping our eyes on the over-friendly kookaburras, magpies and 28 (Port Lincoln) parrots - all of whom thought our sausages looked like something they wanted to share.

If you look closely you can see them here, just waiting for an opportunity to share!!

Coming for a closer look

Do you need a hand packing up?

We got to watch them brazenly come close and then try and see each other off so that they were the only ones there if a small piece of something happened to fall to the ground. Yes it was tempting to share with them, but working for a conservation agency, I know this only makes them more aggressive, and so we restrained ourselves.

Well I suppose the scraps on the BBQ will have to do - LOL

What a fabulous country we live in - bushland close to our city, filled with native wildlife and with facilities that encourage you out of your lounge and into the fresh air.