The Scooby Roll

Favourite mountain bike stacks

 Some of my favourite mountain bike stacks have been performed by

• Lazy Ray - who could forget the day that he put the power down from a standing start, snapped his chain and went over the bars ROFLMAO
• Dean0 ... what more can you say
• MaxR for his superman impression while showing us how to jump a small log near the stepover 
• ... and most of the rest of the DH Wed morning crew at one time or another

but I didn't have a camera to record them so I have posted some that I did capture at some downhill events ... always a good source of carnage material.

This one from Illinbah appeared in Inside Sport. Enjoy.

The rest are from a downhill event at Brookfield.

Stay upright and have a safe and happy Christmas.

Building site holiday

When is a holiday not a holiday?

When you have two building sites next to your house and every tradesman and his noisiest machine are there to make sure that work seems a better place to be. Oh, and its been 12 months since they started.

To add to the noise, the constant north easterly winds have created a constant stream of aircraft as well.

Perhaps there will be another severe storm to chase them all away. Hail has never sounded so good!!

Note: a whopper of a storm came through early afternoon ... thunder and lightning and no tradies.

Rolling again.

The injured shoulder is well on its way to full recovery so given the green light to get out there, I've wasted no time using it to get rolling again .... both in the kayak and on the mountain bike.

Dean0 and I took the shoulder out for a test run at Daisy for an easy Sunday afternoon cruise.

.... it was then onto a koala spotting night ride through Daisy. Glad to see that there really are koalas out there in the Koala Forests.

Always great to get out with mates to test the fitness and catch up on the latest.

Once in a blue mo...

There are a lot of good causes out there but with a little help from a few friends, decided to show my hairy side by growing a mo for MOvember in support of Beyond Blue and Prostrate Cancer Research.

After numerous comments about 'bum fluff' and the like .... due to the fact that my Mo was hard to see being mostly blonde with a hint of grey .... I decided to turn it blue for the rest of the month. It looks more blue in real life but you get the idea.

If you have any spare cash and want to support your mates, why not put a few dollars towards a good cause. I'm sure that you will only see a blue Mo only once in a blue Moon. ;-{))

http://au.movember.com/mospace/990950/

Ups and downs in Nepal

Thought I'd drag a few photos out of the vault from a trip to Nepal in 2004. Lucky I had two good shoulders then otherwise I might have found myself falling a looooong way down. ;-)

We travelled on tracks not used much these days, not seeing any other people for 4 or 5 days at a time. Although there was that Maoist rebel that travelled with us for a while as a "friend" of one of the guides. It was a time when you had to pay cash to the rebels (with large guns and knives) to enter their territory,  but they gave you a receipt so that you could show the next group that you had already paid. Scarey at times, but very civilised really.

There is nothing like being in the mountains with peaks towering to 7,000m around you. A trip I had wanted to do for a lifetime. Carpe diem.

Eagle boy ... lizard whisperer ... what the???

If you can't ride your bike or paddle your kayak you will find other things to do. Annoying the local wildlife is always fun. I'm not sure who was out-staring who with my lizard encounter ... in the end it didn't bite me and I didn't bite it ... so it all ended well.

In the case of the wedge tail eagle, I think it was taming me. It let me scratch its neck like it was a puppy. Its talons and beak were pretty serious weapons though.

The animals of SE Qld will be happy to know that I was back on my bike today ... first time in three months. Might even go for a paddle soon. :-))

Creek at the end of the Street

Living only 5km from the centre of Australia's third largest city, I am lucky to have a 51 hectare forest reserve at the end of my street. It is a great place to keep fit and all this rain is making the forest and creeks look great.

A nice wave

Surgery done, so time to rest and drag out an old photo or two. This one is SurfGaz in the mid 80s at Alexandria Headlands ... not a bad wave for a bloke in a fluro wetsuit.

Same bloke in the fluro wetsuit on a hollow left hander at Treachery Head. Surfaris were good fun.

Sandy boats and muddy bikes

With only a few days before my much anticipated shoulder surgery, I got out for a paddle and took photos of my muddy mates at a mountain bike event. All great fun.

More muddy bike photos can be found here.

Surfing with Dolphins

One of the  highlights of life for me is surfing with dolphins. On this occasion a pair of bottlenose dolphins were cruising around us as we waiting for the swell to arrive.

Another time, I have been surfing a wave on my surfboard and looked across to see that I was sharing the experience with a dolphin, merely metres away.  :-))

Mortality

Unfortunately as one gets older some don't.

Put another way, eventually you will see friends and peers stop ageing as they die. In a way, you expect older family members to pass away as they are older than you, but as peers pass away it perhaps highlights your own mortality a little more.

The morning of my birthday recently, I found out a friend with whom I spent many great days sharing adventures, had suddenly passed away of a massive heart attack. Luke is the one in the middle.
RIP Luke.

Urban colours

I'm not a runner ... or maybe I am?

I have never run more than 3km in my life, which is a long way short of 10km that my 12yr old daughter and I had signed up for on Sunday. A year ago we were driving over the Gateway Bridge and saw this stream of people that stretched for as far as we could see. It was the Bridge to Brisbane. We decided at that moment it was something that we should do.

A year later, we lined up with 30,000 of our closest friends, only got to the staggered start line after the winner had already finished ... then we were off and jogging up the Gateway Bridge. An hour and 11 minutes later we had both completed the 10km .... rather surprised at how well we had done with no training or experience. Armed with the spirit to get out and just do it!!

Epic

This was to be the "Year of the Bike" for me, but has since become the "Year of the Pike" with very little mountain biking this year firstly due to wet weather then a crook shoulder. Instead of riding in the Epic yesterday, it was photo taking for me as I got images as the riders came up the last steep hill of their 105km journey. Some looked totally exhausted but others still could manage a smile.

Stephanie and me

It maybe hard to believe but Stephanie Rice and I have a lot in common. From the list below, at least four are true and one is a maybe. You be the judge.

• We both have the same physio.
• Neither of us will be swimming in the 2010 Commonwealth Games.
• We both have the same issue with our right shoulders.
• We both look good in Speedos.
• Surgery is imminent for both of us.

Its nice to be part of a winning team.

It was a hotly contested race for the "Club of the Year" as decided by five independent judges, but the submission by our current President must have shown that we deserved the honour.

If you want to discover new places by the water, check us out.

Lucky I've got legs

With 2 crook shoulders, I thought I better go for a walk with my two good legs. The Carnarvon Gorge Great walk sounded like a good idea. After about 100km in distance and 3,000m climbing over six days with a 25kg pack, I still have two good legs .... just.  Very sore but still working. Temperatures ranged from 25C to minus 6C. Weather ranged from perfect blue skies to raging westerlies and heavy rain.

It was certainly a great walk !!!

Tale of two shoulders.

Once upon a time I had two good shoulders that would let me hang off them on monkey bars then later hang from cliffs. This was all before I tried to fly with my mountain bike.

As I chased a fellow rider down a steep fire trail over numerous water bars at speed, I relaxed as I hit the next and most innocuous of water bars. Bad move indeed. As my back wheel rose sharply into the air, it catapulted me up and forward so that I flew threw a good five metres before we parted company. I landed on the hard rocky surface with my head and left shoulder, breaking my helmet and parting my AC joint very nicely. Type III to be exact, meaning the three ligaments that join collar bone and shoulder blade were snapped, never to be joined again. Bugger!! ... and I hate being winded as well.

Oh well. At least I have another shoulder and its in good condition. Well, for a few years it was. Now it has had a few cortisone injections and physio but is now my bad shoulder. Bugger!! .... at least I didn't get winded ... I don't even know how I did it??

Looks good on the x-ray, but with restricted movement and lots of pain, it has stopped the mountain biking and restricted the kayaking. My bad shoulder has now become my good shoulder. Should I just take HTFU pills and stop complaining or see a surgeon to see if it can be sorted? Would life in front of a TV suit me ... maybe "TVgaz"  or maybe  "McGaz"  hanging (not by the arms) at Maccas.

No ... its off to the surgeon.

(update: surgery booked ... credit card swiped)

(further update: almost two years later .... shoulder is great)

Foggy bay morning

Some swell fun

All good fun. Click the image to see the video.