Melbourne Shenania: the Non-Tennis Saga

Pictures may follow.

Anyway... Melbourne.

So, ridiculously early morning on Thursday. Up at 4:20am, to be picked up at 4:35. I got to bed before 11, so I was doing better than most of the others (apparently they only started packing when I went to bed).

There were 6 of us boys heading across for 3 days of Australian Open tennis action (plus a Sunday of wandering around Melbourne like lost sheep, looking for the cleanest toilet in the CBD). I had also taken my soprano sax to get its 12 month service (which was more of a 20 month service, but who's counting?)

Ok, this one's a bit of a long story...

So, I had my sop with me and we got in early, so I had intended to just drop it in at The Music Shop, in Clarendon Rd, South Melbourne. I had done the whereis search and found that it was only 900m from where we were staying. Anyway, I saw that, had a quick look on the old computer, but didn't take too much notice. So, when we arrived at our hotel in East Melbourne, I took my sax with me, intending to just drop it in on the way from our walk to the tennis - a couple of kms from our hotel. We got onto Clarendon Rd and started walking. I was sure we were heading in the right direction, but the street numbers were heading in the wrong direction. It was suggested that I turn around and head back in the opposite direction, but I insisted that it was farther up, and was wondering whether there was another section of the road ahead. The road ended and we went through Melbourne Park, and I was rather confused - but still convinced that there was another Clarendon Rd somewhere in Melbourne.

I asked passers-by if they could point me in the direction of it, and most people were quite unhelpful, with every answer revolving around a tram. So, I caught a tram. I had $2.65 in coinage for the tram ride. I needed $2.70. The system doesn't take notes. I always find it ironic that a) the inflexibility in the system renders someone who wishes to follow the rules a common criminal (fare evader), b) where they would otherwise have been able to score $2.65 for my patronage, they instead scored nothing, and I still got my ride into town, and c) it's so non-user friendly in the instance where by a set of unfortunate circumstances, you're not carrying ample shrapnel.

Anyway, having arrived at Fed Square, I proceeded to walk past Grant Hackett, then stop, and have Grant Hackett walk past me, and then continue on before walking past him again. I finally found an information person who was very useful. And he had a map, and showed me where I was and where I wanted to go and the best route. It just so happened that I had walked in completely the wrong direction off the tram... oh well, I was now on the desired path.

I walked the few km to The Music Place on Clarendon Rd and dropped my sax in. I explained that my sister-in-law's brother had looked it over and had a little list of tweaks that would probably be useful. So they were all happy with that. Then I asked "Would it be ok if I checked out some tenor saxes?" "Nope." "Course you can. What sort of sound are you after? What have you played before? Who do you listen to? Are you after a beginner, intermediate, or professional instrument?" It was a serious case of 20 questions, and I really don't listen to much music. Even as I write this I'm not listening to music. But I explained that I like the idea of a slightly dirty sound - as opposed to the sharper, brighter sounds that you tend to get from your Japanese manufacturers.

So, I tried a few horns - I started with a non-laquered vintage style tenor sax. I wasn't having much success with it. I tried another again, before finally getting onto a black nickel horn. A black silver colour. Shiny, but still with a dark sound. We were getting somewhere, but with the mouthpiece I was struggling to get a decent sound. So change of mouthpiece. The hardened rubber mouthpieces (plastic mouthpiece) generally have a darker sound, while the brass ones have the sharper, brighter sound. So, at first we stuck to the hardened rubber mouthpieces. I kind of produced a muffled sort of sound. It just wasn't working. The guy who was selling it to me, finally says, "You need something with a bigger opening, we'll try this one. These guys have everything upside-down and back to front - their brass mouthpieces sound really dark whereas their hardened rubber ones are very bright." Anyway he puts it on and I give it a blow and the air just flowed, the sound just flowed, it all came out. An enormous sound. Big dark sound. Oh, it was a thing of great beauty. I could sustain a big sound for a goodly lenght of time. I could get reasonable attack. I was hitting notes better than with the other ones. I was confident to give it lots of air (ie blow hard). So I was sold on the Jody Jazz metal mouth piece.

"So, what's the story with price?"
"Oh, that's not important. Don't let a minor detail like that worry you."

So I didn't.

Hmmm. Oh well. Significant dent in hip pocket later, and I was wondering how the hell I was going to get my tenor back to Hobart. We hadn't checked into our hotel yet, so I couldn't just take the sax back there, so I decided to leave it at the shop and pick it up later - which I did. I ended up getting up early the next morning and jogging into the shop - a good seven or eight km away. It was a good little jog, and so I picked it up, and took the tram/walked back to the hotel. I was back just as the other guys were finishing breakfast.

Anyway, apart from having the old "demonstration tootle", and the "I'm playing outside on the balcony tootle cos you don't want me playing in here" (where I got a "shut up" so I stopped, then a "we want more music, play more music" so I started playing again for a few minutes), I let it be.

Anyway, the story of getting the sax onto the plane was also quite gold. So I'll recount that before starting on any tennis. There was no way that I was going to let Tiger airlines take my precious baby under the plane. It was coming with me. The boys were, for the most part, of the opinion that, no, I was not going to be able to take it on as carry on baggage.

I got to the check-in counter and the lady weighs it and it was under the 7kg limit. But she says "I don't think that's going to fit. You're going to have to check it in." To which I reply, "No, it has to come with me. It's not going in the hold." And she looked across at the guy on the counter next to us and she said "What do you think? I mean, it's under 7kg..." And he just said "No. Too big." Anyway, I reasserted that it was, under no circumstances, going in the hold, but that I didn't mind if they had to stow it specially once we were on the plane. She looked at me and said, "Yeah, that's fine, it's just that I don't know if it'll fit. I'll tell you what, I'll let it through, but if the security people won't let it through, then you'll have to come back and check it in." "Ok."

The security guys didn't have a problem with it, and when it came time to stow the luggage in the overhead lockers, there was heaps of room for it. I reckon I could have bought a baritone sax and stowed in there without any problems, there was that much room.

So, my stresses dissipated rather quickly once I got all that sorted... anyway, that's most of the non-tennis part of the saga...

Where are they all going?

Where is everyone going? Three going away parties have just been and gone in as many days - last Friday it was a sad farewell to the 'bat, or Wombat as he is more commonly known. Saturday night was farewell to Mr ABC in an Australia themed party - appropriate considering he's heading to be the Canberra political reporter. (Is "the" the right term? There must be a few of them. Either way, we're talking radio reporting.) And Sunday was a farewell to the Chief. Big Dave heads to the Alice for a spot of teaching.

Somehow I snuck in a bit of a shindig of my own in on the Saturday afternoon - after racing a 3km track race.

Coming off a solid night on Friday night - solid in terms of a few ales that slipped down all too easily - I was feeling raring to go for a big breakfast... The breakfast was indeed significant: abalone and swiss cheese wrapped in bacon and baked for a half hour or so; croissant and jam; a bowl of fruit salad; and finally a taste of rhubarb. I was hardly in a mood to push myself to death's door, as is the status quo for running such events. So I just followed out my training partner and gradually got slower as the race progressed. We ran the first km in 3min23, the second in 3min27 and the last also in 3min27. But it was that second km where I just felt that I couldn't be bothered hurting and pushing myself, so I just let them go - and I settled in about 25 - 30m behind the group I should have been running with. Anyway, with 150m to go, I thought, "gee, I'm not too far behind", so I kicked, and finished on the tail of my training partner in a time of 10min18.22s, less than 2s outside my personal best. It was that really weird - I put very little effort in and got remarkably close to a pb (10min16.5s). So I was pretty happy with that as it suggests that I'm starting to recover from the Christmas gorgement.

Sunday also saw me head to the cricket for the Australia v SAfrica blockbuster. It looked like it was going to end in tears when Australia only ended up with 249, but our Hilfy bowled us to a win in a rather nerve-racking final over.

The crowd was about 16000 people, so the traffic was mayhem, and I did not want to be a part of it. So, I did the old switcheroo into my running gear and ran for 95mins (about 20km) at a lovely pace. It further added to my running confidence as I felt like I could have easily continued for some time, despite some shin issues - which is the reason why I have been hitting the beach of late (in a wetsuitless capacity).

On the way back from the cricket, the traffic was all gone. I had just gotten back over the bridge, still well into the 70km/h zone. There was a white mini-bus puttng along at 60km/h. I'm getting a bit hot under the collar. I mean, why so slow? Anyway, I come racing up next to it (at 70km/h) ready to give a bit of an "unimpressed glance", I look up, to see Ricky Ponting sitting at one of the window seats. So I smiled and waved. And he looked back at me... with that "Who the hell are you???" look.

Anyway, off to the tennis now for Thursday, Friday and Saturday.

Run run run... I'm building up the kms, I'm getting into some strength work. Not quite where I want to be... but I'm heading in the right direction, I think...

Monday and Thursday night sessions are involving a lot of rep work - upwards of 5.5km, which, in the context of typically doing less than 4km, it's a bit of a shock to the system. However, with an increase in rep work is an increase in length of each rep, and thus a decrease in speed. So, we're doing a lot of 800 - 1000m reps. The first catch is that the recovery between reps is rather small - normally around 200m jog. The second catch is the short reps that are thrown in amongst the longer ones or after the longer ones.

For example, tonight, we ran a 1km rep, 200m recovery, 400m rep, 200m recover, repeated 4 times. Doing it on grass, and not being 100% sure of the length of the laps, but assuming they are roughly 400m laps, it all works out more or less. So the 1km reps were all about 3min20 (3min20, 3min10 - pull up a bit short, prob corresponds to 3min15, 3min25, 3min23) and the 400s were in 69, 70, 69, 69. The idea was to run the first and third 100m as a sprint, and the second and fourth 100m as a stride. So I was a bit disappointed that the km reps were inconsistent and a little slow, but was happy with the 400m reps - both consistency and speed.

Anyway, I was feeling a bit sleepy, so maybe I could have been a bit quicker. Another solid session tomorrow with Pete... gonna be another hard week.

Cadbury Half Marathon

Sunday, 4th January, saw me run the Cadbury half, a 21km course from the Chocolate factory, out to St Virgils, back to the Derwent Entertainment Centre, and back to Cadbury's.

I've done quite a reasonable amount of running, though it's all been in the form of rep work. The problem however, is that I simply have not done enough kms in the form of long runs. I should have at least been doing one 15-20km run a week and I haven't done anything near that since before Burnie 10 in October. As a result, I got to the 16 or 17km mark and suddenly blew up. I went from running 4min kms to 5min kms. In the end I ran 1h28m25s in 33rd (the paper had me at 1h28m45s, but I think they got the times out by one place.) So, there's plenty of room for improvement.

At the end of it, apart from being exhausted, I had developed some sizeable blisters on the underside of my feet. Three days later, and I'm starting to get over them. But my legs are sore: calves and quads in particular. But, I suppose I've gotten through two training sessions and a game of touch footy so far, so I can't be doing too bad.

New Years

Well, wasn't New Years fun!

I endured a significant amount of indecision in the lead up, but eventually things happened.

I had the grand plan of rocking from party to party with a carton of ginger beer. A fantastic idea. I had Captain Darling on board with the idea. My first party that I was to tackle alone was a catch up with a friend from uni, her partner, their bub and Tex, who they work(ed) with at the Republic. I thought the party was meant to start at 7, but 7 was just the street number. It had kicked off at 5. Oops. Anyway, they had plenty of prawns left, and salads and a meaty kebab, so I indulged.

Tex is an interesting guy. He was elected to Sorell council because of a dare that occurred at a dinner party. He was on the dole, with long hair and living in a fybro shack when he filled in his forms. He was subsequently elected unopposed. He gleefully told us about the accusations of corruptions levelled at Sorell council. The story went that the head of the Tasmanian fraud squad investigated it, and when he found everything was above board, the Sorell Council published the police report, which made the person who levelled those accusations appear rather foolish. (The greens hadn't tabled the accusation, but were convinced that there were indeed dodgy dealings, and were also shattered to hear of the full investigation yielding no results.) The individual, according to Tex, then tried to sue the Sorell council for publishing the police report. Anyway, much could be written about that unidentified individual, but that can wait for another post...

Then I played Twister and did some Yoga moves back in Kingston. All started to get out of hand when people wanted me to take my clothes off... So I quit while I was ahead. Too much sugar in the ginger beer. It was awesome.

Then into town for the fire works. Ah, fireworks! They were pretty.

And then randomly running into people I knew in town. Good times all round.

And then knocked back another two ginger beers at the party in Kingston after town before heading home.

Good, solid new years...