Wednesday, June 06, 2007

When It Rains, It Pours!!



How exciting! Not one, but two bloggable events! Today, we are having a "Rain Event." It started last night about 7:30 - a steady downpour. And here it is almost 24 hours later and it is still raining! On the Australian Broadcasting Corporation Brisbane Radio Station, all the callers were ringing in with the amount of rainfall in their area. 42 mils, 68 mils...whatever that means exactly who knows? I haven't heard if any rain is falling in the dam, but everyone is hoping!

We have been keeping track of our water usage over the last month. Over a four week period, we were at 144 Litres per person per day. This is pretty close to the goal of 140 litres. We could make it more easily if we never had to fill our pool. It is interesting to notice how it varies with how much washing you do - did you wash all the bedding and all the towels? the extra load of bath mats? It all adds up rather quickly.

As interesting as the rain is, we had a little adventure last weekend. Tim signed himself up for a mountain bike Marathon. We drove to Southeastern Queensland to Kooralbyn Resort. The scenery on the way wasn't that lovely. An abbatoir, a sawmill. There was a burnt out shell of a car winched up on the branch of a tree. We couldn't figure that one out - was it a warning? was it modern art? was it rubbish? But the resort was nice - our room had cable TV (finally the French Open Tennis!) and it had an X-box. The hotel was full of male cyclists and a convention of lady scrapbookers. I've never stayed in a quieter hotel. I think everyone was tucked up in bed by 9 pm.

The race was 65 km. And from the looks of the map, most of it was uphill. The climbs had names like The Wall and Breathless. The descents had names like Kamakazi and The Slide. The worst section was The Marbles - huge bolders that everyone had to carry their bikes over. Tim had serious leg cramps and was totally locked up after 30 km. But he soldiered on and finished in just over 4 hours. This was great because he was hoping to finish in under 5 hours. Well Done Tim! We were very proud of him. 3 days later and his calves are still killing him, so he hasn't signed up for another one yet. I'm sure the memory of the pain will fade and he'll do it again! We'll keep you posted!