Well me thinks this'll be the last post for the year, considering my time from now 'til well in to 2012 will be spent packing my abode, driving, riding, SUPing, eating, drinking and pretty much not sitting in font of a computer, it's a safe bet.

So here's a few to round things off.

Firstly, everyone knows I believe motorised transport is the devil's work, in general, and you've probably heard me espouse that 'four wheels carry the body, while two wheels carry the soul'; this machine straddles the line but in my mind is perfectly okay. Jon's bike moments after we picked it up from the shop with a brand new paint job and general workover, pretty!

Digital street life while in Christmas shopping hell.....(BTW, don't go sunglass shopping after Christmas drinks, it's so easy to think the 'second pair half price' justifies the price when you're a little tipsy).

....iPhone life.....

....and while removals are also hell, luckily I have friends like Jon, Rach and red wine to help clean and remove shit......

It's out of Canberra in less than a week, my time here has been good, bad and ugly but wow, the memories from the last three years are endless and varied. I will be back and if not I have certainly made countless friends for life.

So, if I don't speak to you before then, have a great Christmas and see you in the New Year!

Started with a roam around civic.

Friday arvo drinks at Uni House, gave dink to the Wig & Pen, followed by The Phoenix. My body didn't make it home intact...

Jon was kind enough to pull together a picnic by Old Parliament House. Then he poisoned me. What I remember was fantastic!!

And what better place to stash some more images from Tuesday night....

So, quite under the weather from the day before, I decided to partake in an adventure to Wee Jasper with Jon. His briefing was somewhat lacking in detail; he neglected to mention the 17km hike we would attempt to the top of Mt Wee Jasper, which with it came the need for food, water and suitable walking shoes..........never the less, the walk was spectacular.

We almost made it to the top before my body began to shut down. We headed back down the mountain while Bell fought on. Ice-creams at the pub.......

......then of course Jon tried to drown me on the way home.....

What better way to feel alive, such a great day in hindsight!! Finished off with steak and veg on the BBQ, thanks man.

Picked up a bargain price Kona Humu humunuku nuku apua'a the other day from a lovely young lady who needed some cash for overseas travel. I thought of modifying it, making it fixed, adding bling etc, but it is damn perfect exactly the way it is! With 68cm wide bars, sprung saddle, 2.3" tyres, moto levers and Vs. Dirt or street I love it.

Rode to work via dirt yesterday, then headed in to town with Jon for a beer or two. It rained, a lot.

But with Lykke Li loud in my headphones the ride home was the best ever.

I'm guessing there's a few of them. So it seems the thing to do when in such a predicament is to make the most awesome fridge-magnet-finger-puppets!! Here's my selection, made by the Unemployed Philosophers Guild

History FYI: More recently, revisionist historians have pinpointed the birth of the Guild to the time it was still cool to live in New York City’s Lower East Side.  Two brothers turned their inner creativity and love of paying rent towards fulfilling the people’s needs for finger puppets, warm slippers, coffee cups, and cracking up at stuff. Check it here.

The weather looked like it'd be crap so some guests cancelled, other guests fell sick; but Rach and I soldiered on, to the best weekend I've had on the coast in a long time.

We ventured through the muddy mountains to get there, better than fighting the hoards on the highway, and  could see the menacing weather in the distance........

........luckily it held off and within minutes of reaching the coast we were swim-suited up (or 'bathered' up because we're from Adelaide) and in the water.

Apologies for the inundation of happy snaps, but I just bought an Olympus Tough waterproof camera; now one of my favourite toys!! (Of course I may be biased as I seem to have taken a super-swimsuit-model with me.....)

The waves started taking their toll on our bodies so we headed to the hostel for a relax, then a walk around town before dinner. (Black & Whitey film goodness still to come...) Oh, and by the way, never go to The Marlin Hotel......

Next day it was breaky at the beach........

........some exploring along the coast on our way south......

_......before jumping back in the water at my favourite old haunt, MacKenzies Beach south of Batemans bay.

And of course I love my iPhone randoms, so here's a few.

We departed the coast after what felt like a long weekend at the beach and had dinner with my favourite god-daughter; life doesn't get much better.

As promised, some average, grainy B&Wness.

I'm moving back the the 'ville over Christmas break, I like to think of it as my third home after Adelaide and Canberra. Headed up there for a couple of days to do my handover last week. Wow, my photography style has changed in the three years since I lived there last. I was overwhelmed with the amount of photographs I wanted to take that I never would have thought to take in the five years (in two separate installments) I have already spent there. I felt naked without the Leica, what was i thinking leaving it at home! Oh well, in a month and a half I'll be back, resuming the position at the bar.

I'm no stranger at all to 24hr mountain bike racing but I never thought I'd paddle on the water for 24 hours, last October I didn't even know what a paddle board was!

The race was run by the Burley Griffin Canoe Club and was open to a range of classes of floating things, from sea kayaks, to skis, to paddle boards. My crew put forward three teams, two serious teams of four that paddled through the night and one more casual team of eight. I was in the 14 foot Hobie team, a board that I so want to own now, mmmmm, 14 foot carbon goodness.

So I turned up for the 10am start and the wind started building, reaching up to around 30km/h in patches through the day but thankfully calming at night. We set up quite a HQ and readied the boards, before the action began.

Shaggy and Mr Miyagi opened for their teams, deep in the pack of sit downs, followed close behind by Pebbles.

Of course, as with all 24hr races it was time for the team to resume the waiting position, each lap taking 30-40 minutes it was a pleasant break before you next hit out. Worlds apart from mountain bike racing there was absolutely no need for warm ups and cool down, so even the 'one lap on, one lap off' regime we undertook at night was easily undertaken; unheard of in the MTB world, where it's double or nothing at night!

Then the inevitable happened, the sun started going down. No worry though, it was balmy and calm, a dream meteorological circumstance. Glow sticks mounted to the boards we fought through. I had an absolute ball paddling at night, not a pain or frustration and well lit by the surrounding street lights.

I was also lucky enough to score my favourite 24 lap, the dawn lap where you depart transition in complete darkness and arrive back in full light, a new day.

I ended up paddling 45km in the 24 hrs (4.5km a lap x 10) and both teams finished closely. We took out every cup but most importantly, that of the highest donation count, we managed to raise almost $1500 for The Cure foundation!

As more info comes to hand I'll edit this post, now it's time for sleep.

Of course there's no way to replicate Melbourne's alleyways, but Canberra holds a few surprises, after all, the Sydney and Melbourne buildings are nearly 100 years old, gasp!!!

So I met up with Adam and Tabitha at The Phoenix where I first had a play with some of Adam's stereograph images. He really has wet my appetite to find a Holmes Viewer and get going on making some of my own. He pointed out that a pair of 6x7 images (uncut) are of the correct dimensions to do such. The cogs have started spinning.

Then it was time to load the Rolleiflexs and for me to bring out the mammoth Koni-Omegaflex before we hit the streets. The Koni with the M6 around my neck was the perfect combo for MF, 35mm and shared metering. I had a ball before we headed inside for Japanese!.

So how did the Koni go? Well the lens seems nice and sharp as reported. It seems foolproof, apart from my obvious focus issues. It's really heavy (especially when carting it around on the tredly). All good really, except, is my head bent? It seems almost all of the images are tilted slightly to the right........?!?!?!?

I dare say it'll be another couple of rolls before I'm confident all is good with this one.

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