Today was a nice lazy start. Ina and I both got up rather late. While she was in the bathroom I decided to heat up both focacia sandwiches that Ina’s aunt had left us. Ina thanked me but told me she wanted cereal instead. What was I left to do but eat both. The big event for the day were to be lobster at lunch and a bike ride later. I was told that lunch would be at 1:30pm. This gave me plenty of time to digest.
Come 11:30 we were all hurried out of the house, lunch had been moved up. Unfortunately the time between breakfast and lunch was not long enough for me to fully enjoy lunch. The meal started with a Rock Lobster two Mud Crabs, found in the Bass Straight (between the mainland and Tasmania), and Peking Duck. After having my fill of lobster I moved onto the plate of crab that had been placed in front of me. By the time I had moved to the Peking Duck my breakfast had caught up with me. This was also about the time I was informed there were four more dishes coming. I wasn’t able to get through much of them, but we had the leftovers for dinner.
From the restaurant Ina and I went straight to the train station where upon asking for a zone one daily pass we were given Sunday Super-Saver tickets, $3.10 for all zones (normally $6.70 for just zone 1). We were pretty happy as it meant we could stay on the train for one station longer on our return trip. We made our way by tram from the train station to the bike shop. bikeNOW is possibly the best bike shop I have ever been, this of course is just based on the eye candy. If you do not want a brief description of the eye candy please scroll past the picture.
Basically the shop carried Shimano and Campagnolo. And not the old stuff (7800, 6600, 10-speed), but 7900, the new 105, 11-speed. Basically I was drooling. I especially liked a Giant hanging in descript amongst other bikes. I could not find the battery pack, but upon seeing the front mech I knew the shop was nice, a full Di2 bike!!!. What other brands could I drool over, Bianchi and Colnago. Both brands were mostly built up properly with Campy 11-speed.
Ina and I were in such heaven to hire a bike. We had looked online and the location and price were right, $35 AUD for 2 hours. We got to the shop about 2 hours before closing. After getting the bike fit and our helmets we asked if we could ride on the sidewalk, yes you can. We rode up the sidewalk about a block before walking the bike across the street to the large park on the bank of the Yarra river containing the botanical gardens.
I had never ridden a tandem before, let alone piloted it, Ina stoked for me. It is interesting. To start the bike Ina got on the pedals and I sort of kicked like a scooter a few times before pedaling. Once we got the thing moving it worked quite nicely. Ina even got somewhat comfortable riding it. Unfortunately her handlebar happened to connect to my seat post and it gradually dropped a couple inches as we rode and from time to time would twist on me.
We were not allowed to ride through most of the park and soon found our way to the path along the Yarra. There were a ton of bikes out, a lot of very nice mountain bikes too (the closest decent MTB riding is a few hours away). We rode up one bank and down the other without too many issues. Towards the end of our ride we found ourselves right near all the sports areas, including the Australian open stadium and former olympic facilities. Also the new rugby/soccer stadium I spoke of in an earlier post. We also got nice views of the city.
We returned the bike and stopped into an IGA (they have them in the US right?). Ina found Flake, the crumbliest chocolate bar ever and her favorite, for $.99 and bought 3, I went for the green bag of Doritos, the original. They turned out to be plain. We hopped on the train and got to our extra stop saving about 5 minuets of walking.
After the dinner of leftovers Ina and I retired to her room where she continued with her obsession of Supernatural and I started playing Farm Frenzy 3. That was all we did that night, no Wii.
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