first decently long ride

A gorgeous Sunday, took a ride  

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sweet green roads thru idyllic countryside; cars a refreshing rarity

 

I've learned to understand and agree with Tim's description of Tassie as the "road kill capital of Australia"; there was not a single kilometer of my ride -- especially on these sweet  back roads -- where i was spared riding thru a cloud of rotting roadkill.  Absolutely reminded me of the eggplants I cleaned out of the greenhouse last week. Will i ever be able to see one again without thinking of dead wallaby?

to Evandale, a small historic village where there were to be races of twopenny farthings, the old bikes with the scarily high front wheels.........  that turned out to be yesterday, but it was a sweet place to ride to and lounge in.

had a fine laksa in the beer garden of the local while listening to some local musicians......

unique juxtapositions that could only be found in the colonies

Of course i schmoozed with lots of locals, from a guy with a profoundly obscene corn dog

John, a sweet old man who was intrigued by the BMW because he used to race bikes,

to an intriguing character I met at the Muse Cafe (owned and run by Gunther a German immigrant*), who had been working behind the lines with the CIA when he was with the Aussie Army in Vietnam; he called it "the worse mistake i ever made."   some horror stories there...................and is now engaged to a university professor in China and preparing to move there to live:

 found some bizarre church art on the way home:

and now for motorcycle info:

* while waiting for a fine cappucino at Cafe Muse, i spent some time speaking with the owner and  barista.. when he told me he was German, i mentioned that i was riding a fine German motorrad parked right outside. He said, "a BMW?" and my (usual) reply was "are there any other motorcycles?"

when i jokingly added,

"ive heard of one called  Ha....Ha... Har.....  Har.........Harl........"

as if i couldn't quite remember the name, he said,

"hey -- we're not talking plumbing parts here!"

I'm going to work that in...

once again, I refer to Tim, my local guide to all things Tassie, who had told me how here -- as compared to everywhere else in the motorcycling world -- very few motorcyclists acknowledge each other as they pass on the road.......and he was right.   Of the 12-15 motorcycles i encountered on the 200 + km ride, only two acknowledged my motorcyclists' wave.

Very strange; I'm completely used to most Harley riders ignoring my greeting on the road -- which i've always thought sad and childish -- so I wasn't too surprised when the local hardass wanna-be's in their grimy leather, black t's , vests and gloveless hands ignored me.  On these narrow two lane roads, designed for another, smaller-car time, it's even stranger to be ignored by non Harley riders since we zoom past each other only about five to six feet apart.

However, i WAS surprised at the reactions of many non-Harley riders; some seemed surprised, others seemed even more surprised when i waved with my right hand (Throttlemeisters very expensive and not common here). and others just roared by and completely ignored me.  Could it have been the RT?  Are they seen as yuppie motorcycles here?  more on that later.

and speaking of Harleys;  helmet use is compulsory here, and i asked the fierce looking guy in black, behind John in the photo above, how he felt about that.  His response: 

"I hate 'em!  But it sure was a good thing when i came off my bike.."

hmmmmm.

he's not a one trial learner, but he was wearing a beautiful pair of black leather racing pants, and a handsome well-made black vest (can i stop using the word black when referring to Harley riders' gear?) and a helmet.  I'll let you guess the color.

If only we'd stop trying to be happy we could have a pretty good time - Edith Wharton

Motorcycle at last...

finally took Tim's BMW 1150RY out.

what a treat to be back on a motorcycle again:  the smooth hum of the engine, the solid braking and the temperate air across my face at last got me excited about this trip in a way i had not yet experienced...

I admit all the plastic on the RT made me a bit nervous: unlike my bare, unfaired GS,  if i dropped this, the damage would be horrific.   all that beautifully shaped plastic roughed and scraped and scratched.  since i had not been on a bike since I put my GS away for the winter last fall, there was a bit of concern about an unfamilar motorcycle.  But it was beautiful: I've always prefered the 1150 engine to my current 1200 -- it just feels and sounds more like a motorcycle -- and this was a great reminder of that difference.

Rode over to Hawley Beach, a growing community on Bass Strait (the strait between Tasmania and Australia):

BEFORE............

  
AFTER:

a great and refreshing dip in the salt.  ahhhh.  here at last, and at last i feel rightside up -- which is to say,
upside down. or are the rest of you upside down ?

If only we'd stop trying to be happy we could have a pretty good time - Edith Wharton










                                            

           

bicycling these green hills

a fine easy ride, 14 miles, av speed 13mph...  early evening...

soft low hills with crops picked and unpicked...  sheep vacuuming up the remains in meadows already harvested.

distant views at what i can only call a human scale: can see perhaps two or three miles to further dark green forested hills that form the backdrop to this farmland, but I can't see much further.  there is something very comfortable and relieving about these intimate views across the green and tan rolling hills, so unlike the grand but almost incomprehensibly vast landscapes of the American West.  I simply love this landscape, as i do the similar ones of NZ:  nothing oversized,  nothing grotesquely disproportionate, and -- i just realized -- no billboards. 

 
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Litter is almost non-existent: yes, i've seen a few beer cans and such, but unlike our roads with their dismayingly frequent beer cans and bottles, plastic bags fluttering along barbed wire fences, and the steady stream of fast food packaging, these roads are virtually litter free. I'd like to attribute this to an appreciation of the land by the people, but the fact is that there are few fast food places and, as Michael Pollan says, where you fuel your car is not where you fuel your body.  Gqs stations here certainly do have the usual racks of candy and coolers of soda, but they don't have fried chicken, pizza, sausage or breakfast burritos.

 In a neglected paddock next to a neglected house, a neglected small cabin cruiser on blocks; scrawled on the prow where the name would usually be proudly painted, the boat's new name: "not for sale."

the few cars passing are too close and going what feels like too fast on these narrow roads...

in a small-scale landscape like this, even my 14-mile bicycle ride today leaves me feeling i've been somewhere, traveled some landscape, experienced it, breathed it.


If only we'd stop trying to be happy we could have a pretty good time - Edith Wharton

HERE AT LAST

the two following tell me i am really here:

got a mobile (cel) SIM card for my Kiwi phone. unlike our frustrating phones, i can take this anywhere in the world, buy another SIM there and use the phone there.  at the same time, using a pre-paid mobile account means i pay  40 cents for every HALF minute on the phone, and 25 cents per text.  arghhhhhh.  

and then found this on the kitchen counter this a.m. For those of you not familiar with Vegemite, all i can say is that 

for me the health benefit of the high vitamin B content is vastly overweighed by the sheer foulness of the product.

Smelling it -- no, just thinking of smelling it -- is like stepping into a shed filled with very wet sheep....

all was saved at lunch -- the benefits of living on a farm: go out and pick these just outside the door:

went into town to a sweet cafe and were forced by the friendly locals to devour these:

and finally to the local "op-shop" where i picked up some cheap second hand work
clothes, and something familiar to keep the sun off: 

another glorious day; about 75 degrees, clear, sun, and cool breeze in the shade...........

If only we'd stop trying to be happy we could have a pretty good time - Edith Wharton

IMAGINING TASMANIA

 Quick drive over to Narawntapu National Park for a walk on the beach........


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Whenever I'm in Australia or NZ, I attempt to imagine what the reaction of the first settlers here might have been to the strange new world they had come to... we've seen -- or can see -- almost everything on our planet online, but they had only slight and completely subjective news from the first explorers...

I got a small dose of their experience yesterday as we walked over to an expansive grassy area near the parking lot: about 100 meters away, i saw two dark objects; at first i thought they were large rocks, but the realized they were wombats; a mother and baby.  as we got closer, i realized that my lifelong idea of the animal was wrong: instead of being about the size of a small dog -- a beagle -- the mother was about 5 feet long and stood perhaps two feet at the shoulder. Solid and thick, she reminded me exactly of a small hairy hippopotamus, and as they grazed on the short grass, her slightly lumbering movements were heavy and deliberate.  Despite our slow approach, the pair quickly moved into the taller bush and disappeared.

Tim tells me that some people keep wombats as pets and their size gives them substantial weight around the place: if a wombat wants to sit where you are, he'll just come over and push you out of the chair.  after realizing how solid and chunky they are, i can believe it:  the mother must have weighed a good 250 lbs, all in a tight little package.

Surprise number two:

turning toward the larger fields, i could
see a number of animals bent over,
silhouetted by the low evening sun:
Forester kangaroos.  the nearest was
at least a hundred yards away and stood
up to watch us as we watched it with our
binoculars.  back to the sun, its  furry ears
were highlighted; i could see the small front
paws almost touching each other, held in front
of its chest.  in the field beyond, another four
were grazing, bent over like old men examining
something on the ground.  One hopped acoss,
perpendicular to our line of sight, and i could see
how he used his long thick tail for balance:  it was
one (slightly) fluid movement -- if you can call hopping
anything but jerky.   push off with large rabbit-like rear
paws, quick balance with tail, and land on those large
rear paws again, small hands held up to chest.

Other animals:  black swans and black parrots...








 gorgeously empty Baker's Beach...

feet wet in Bass Strait...

 Baker's Beach at sunset, view to Badger Head

and a drive home on roads lined with eucalyptus trees glowing in the last flames of the sunset.
Bennet's wallabies stood in the cleared verges along the road; some watched and others
bounced away back into the bush as we drove home.. 

If only we'd stop trying to be happy we could have a pretty good time - Edith Wharton

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If only we'd stop trying to be happy we could have a pretty good time - Edith Wharton

Farming...

the surge of interest in locally grown food,  urban gardens, and growing your own food is great, but the fact is that farming is
continuous damn hard work.  There is no rest in the growing season:  Tim and Anna hand-pick zucchini for two hours EVERY day -- and that's just the start of the work.  A bit of tea and then time to snip the parsley, cut eggplant and rhubarb and complete whatever daily maintenance and cleanup is required.  Today I spent an hour in the steaming greenhouse picking up all the rotting eggplant that had been trimmed off the stalks over the past weeks, and learned why Anna was so pleased that i was available (and willing) to do it:


rotting eggplant smells just like rotting meat.

Not quite as instant gag-producing as, for example, rotting chicken (just imagining that while writing those words turns my stomach), but foul enough.  the skins are strong enough to hold the partially-rotten fruit together -- until you pick it up -- but the underside has often decayed thru, leaving behind a smear of brown...

I know that from now on, when i eat, I'll be thanking whoever grew and picked the food.

And speaking of picking food, another revelatory experience: went with Tim to deliver a load of vegetables to his local buyer, and everyone working there was Anglo.  It was a genuine surprise for me to enter a labor-intensive operation and not see a single Hispanic laborer doing difficult dirty jobs.  this again reminded me and reinforced the sad truth that more than most Americans want to realize, Hispanics -- often illegal and so, reviled by the right -- actually make America run, and we should thank them profusely instead of hounding and deporting them.

Just as most previous waves of laboring immigrants, once distrusted and resented by the previous arrivals -- Africans, Italians, Irish, Chinese, Germans, Japanese -- now see themselves as a vital and legitimate part of the American experience, i trust that the ridiculous onus of being "illegal" will someday be a badge of courage and contribution.

 LOCAL HEADLINES OF THE DAY:

                        BUT WHO TELLS THE PENGUINS?

                                                                                                                    AGAIN: DO THE GRASSHOPPERS KNOW?

If only we'd stop trying to be happy we could have a pretty good time - Edith Wharton