Little Sister

Back in work, I had to quickly come to terms with having the smoothest leg in the office, once one person had found out they would tell 2 friends, and they'd tell 2 friends and so on, and so on... I carried on about my daily life, though waiting till after dark to go jogging and generally being seen in shorts as little as possible.

On Friday night, I hit the Martins Place Bar (MPB) after work, along with the rest of Sydney so it would seem. I bumped into the first Australia Big Brother 2006 evictee (which was about as amazing as you're guessing), before some friends and the girls minus Trish showed up. We went on to our private karaoke room. What followed was pretty interesting - and surprisingly not quite as similar to the first few weeks of Pop Idol as I thought. After belting out 'Bittersweet Symphony', I did backing vocals to 'Don't You Want Me Baby' in the style of Frank Butcher... Pretty soon our time was up and we fell back home.

The start of the week was to end my stint at 'Select! Recruitment' and herald the start of a short sebaticle before starting my new job the following Monday. My time there doing what was a pretty mind-numming job (sorry Lisa/Jodie if you're reading!), was actually a nice introduction back into the civilised working life and has at the very least got me back into a routine of being up before 7.30am each day.

Wednesday finally arrived. I took the bus into town and into Clarence St Cyclery to pick up my new best friend. A Mountain Bike which would be my gym membership, my 'thing to do when bored' and the first posession measuring over 75cms in length in over 7months. I rode it straight to Central Station and hopped on board the 12.03: Destination: Blue Mountains.

Things on the journey were spiced up immeasurably when a tramp (somehow with a valid ticket??) decided to crowbar his way into a conversation I was having. He rightfully guessed that my face wasn’t very ‘English’ looking, I mentioned Austrian as one of my parental ancestories, to which he claimed “We are brothers!” in an Eastern European accent. Turning out to be Slovenian, it damn near killed me. He asked me to help him and his stuff off of the train at his stop – I was only too happy to help, to remove the smell… it was taken a bit too far when he gripped my arm in an act of solidarity between us “European Brothers”!

A little later, I pushed my new bike off the train at Katoomba - my home for the next few days. I dropped my things in my room, and got pedalling (not drugs!).

I quickly arrived at the 3 Sisters viewpoint, took 20minutes to make some pictures with all the other tourists, checking out Queen Elizabeth viewpoint and then the decidedly inferior Prince of Wales viewpoint (named after there visit during the 90's). I considered this my warm up as I completed around 6km's of cycling for my first day. The following day might be a rude awakening!