On the Bottom Half

Bicycle Treaded Upon

So I went FLYING!! this weekend... We did 1.0 h on the Texan again, but this time did stuff like simple stalls, incipient spins, aileron stalls, circuits. Great time, great time, and having a demonstration of a full on aileron stall was really informative. I got taught about this stuff, but thankfully never experienced it in my flying and I've never had it demonstrated before; this was good! Somebody was flying a Cirrus when we got back, and took off behind us after we landed - wealth from Wagga Wagga I'm told. It's the same kind of airplane that the Yankee's pitcher flew into that Manhattan building a few weeks ago.

On Sunday, I dropped by the Royal Exhibition Building in Melbourne, which is a World Heritage Listed building. Among other things, it served as a two-time federal parliament in the early 1900s. They had an open day to exhibit the space and there were several displays from museums around Victoria, including the Point Cook Aviation Museum (!!), and the Melbourne Horological Society - a group of people joined by a common interest in clocks. The Point Cook Museum is based at the airfield of the same name, which was the birthplace in 1913 of what later became the RAAF. I had a great discussion with one of their volunteers, who happened to be married to an Edmontonian. It's a very small world.

After that, I did some Christmas shopping (I know, I know), then enjoyed the sunshine in the city for a while before hopping the train back to Clayton whereupon I found that some wankers in Clayton had stole the rear wheel off my bike :-(

Well, I guess they needed it more than I did, because it would have been a heck of a lot less work to take the front wheel, what with two bolts attaching it and no extra wiring for the derailer system.

Augggh. On that note, I've booked my flight home!

I get into Calgary on 4 Dec, but I'm first making a stopover in London to visit a friend. Now, this isn't the permanent homeward trip I was originally planning as it would have been too darn difficult to coordinate the suspension of candidature stuff after 15 Nov, hope there were still seats available, then be able to pay for those seats. As it stands, I come back to Aus on 4 Jan and I'll let you know how things stand when I get to that bridge.

In the meantime, the last bit of Japan:

I completed, at least to the limit of my patience, my field work a couple of days before leaving Japan and used the time to package up the rock samples. And also to go for a tour around Hokkaido.

The coast on the other side of the island is a lot more wild than on my side, but on several days, the weather was beautiful and the waves weren't that big. As you go north along this road, it weaves in and out of the mountainsides, but pretty much follows the coast for many tens of kilometres.

It was a treat to have this kind of drive so accessible, but the downshot was that in stormy weather, the spray from the ocean would coat the car in salt.

A little further afield, as I neared Sapporo, I took a detour to a caldera complex west of the airport. There are several active volcanoes there, including one down which they had the downhill and super-g races during the Olympics in 1972. The mountain (Eniwa-dake) has now fully regrown with barely a trace of any deforestation left on it, meaning there isn't any more skiing to be had.

Lastly, regarding sweets in Japan: though they are rare, they are quite good. As I had so few while I was there, the ones I did have were much more rich than they normally would have been. Their chocolate is not a sugary as most, but it is good. Most snacks tend to be made with some form of rice and the variety of rice crackers is staggering! But, there are some rather odd concoctions of sweet and I'll leave you guessing thus:

posted by Kyle @ 15:21