Wipeout +7, back on the wheels ... and Spring has Sprung

A week after Dave wiped out on the road and it was blood, busted shoes and bent bits on the bike, he's back on two wheels and out for a looong ride in the McLaren Vale area with the local group of Cyloholocs. He must have inherited some gene for indestructibility ... he's found a way to bounce. Maybe he has a trick of turning off 90% of gravity in the split second after the back wheel drifts away and before the kneecaps impact the asphalt ... hmph. He could at least have the common decency to be creaky for a few weeks! But noooo...

Dave's Garmin Tracker app, running in real-time. Yup. He's back on the bike

...there's livin' proof of this particular pudd'n: the Garmin tracker app, running in realtime on my phone. Phablet. Whatchamacallit. (Difficult to call it a 'phone,' because virtually the only thing it never does is make a telephone phone call. Ahhh. Anybody remember what a telephone was...?)

Meanwhile, Spring has sprung with a vengeance:

Yup. Spring is here ... kerchoo! Pear blossom and silver rain -- front garden yesterday.

Truth is, it's been spring for about three weeks now, which also means we can expect summer to come in early and fast. In the last couple of years we've seen our first hot weather in October and the first very hot weather in November -- hundred degrees in "the old money." Sigh. Means we can expect to see the really hot weather in December, and the catastrophically hot weather in January and February. Now ... will the autumn/fall come in early too? With summer starting early, we'll be very, very ready for autumn by February!

Spring! Enjoy it while it lasts --

Waterfall Creek on the Coastal Trail, at Hallett Cove

It was so lovely yesterday we couldn't stay inside while we had the chance to get out. Leaving Mike to hold down the fort (since he has bronchitis, Mom has bronchitis, and they're having coughing contests; Mom is winning, hands down), we went over to Hallett Cove and hiked the boardwalk from the Hallett Cove Conservation Park to Marino. It really was beautiful.

Above is Waterfall Creek at the bottom of its gully ... yellow soursobs in the foreground tell you exactly what time of year this is; and if you notice the stairs/guardrail at top-right of this shot, you'll see how you climb down into the gully and back out again. There's no disabled access, but if you still have your feet under you, it's great. (If you'd like to see more of Hallett Cove -- and the Conservation Park -- I posted a photo essay to Meander to the Max ... find it here.) It's also a photographer's paradise: ocean, clifftop views, windy skies, the works. Don't forget the cameras.

Right now I have my fingers crossed. I tried Chinese massage for the head-neck-shoulders on Thursday ... looking for a way to get out from under the headache that's been bugging me every single day since December 4. For a while the GP has been saying he thinks the pain is very likely coming from the neck, and ... last week I actually heard/felt something go twang!!! in the neck a few seconds before migraine broadsided me. So ... remedial massage? Got a local one? Any chance of getting acupressure massage? Turns out yes. There's a place at Colonnades which, in traditional Chinese fashion doesn't advertise. They live and thrive on word of mouth. Right.

Well, it's coming up to 48 hours since I had the neck/head/shoulder massage, and so far I've had either no pain at all, or only the most slender tendrils which don't develop into full-blown headaches. Have no idea how long the effects will last, but if they were to wear off over a couple of weeks ... it's actually rather a pleasant way to spend 30 minutes. I can do that again. Fingers crossed.

The earlybird catches the best pictures

Dawn on July 19, 2016, photographed over the Old Reynella skyline from
the backyard...with the phone. Ain't technology grand?

One good thing about having an alarm set for 6:30am or so: you get to see the sun rise, and some days it's spectacular. I have to be up early because Mom is so frail now, she needs help early. If there's going to be a crisis, I deal with it better if I'm wide awake and have had a cup of tea before it happens. Best way to make sure I'm firing on at least six out of eight cylinders is to wake earlier ... and then enjoy some of the perks of being an earlybird.

Sunrise in Old Reynella, over the neighbors' roof. We have a little altitude
here, and the building line is only single level, so our skies look large. 
Phone photo, by the new Sumi Rome "phablet."

Living in Old Reynella is almost like being in a village. After five and a half years down in Sturt -- one of Adelaide's southern suburbs -- it's a welcome change; and even after getting-on-for-four years here the novelty hasn't yet worn off.

As per the "camera" ... well, these are phone pictures. I'd forgotten I'd taken the smart card out of my Fuji HS50, so I just grabbed the handiest imaging gadget. We love our gadgets, and I'm very impressed with the pictures from the new Sumi Rome "phablet" (so called because it has a 5.5" screen and a very fast processor. Right now, the phone is behaving like a tablet -- far faster than any computer I possess. Meanwhile, the laptop upon which I'm writing this has become sloooower than the netbook; and we won't even talk about the tablets, which are so slow ... yawn. We all tend to get creaky in our old age. Tell me about it).

The only downside to phone pictures is getting an enormous cache of them OFF the phone's smartcard and into the computer. Turns out, you can't just plug this phone into the computer and have the PC read the card, because the "Camera" folder is utterly invisible, no matter how clever you get with your Windows "show hidden folders" settings. Means you have to physically take the card out of the phone and put it in a card reader ... whereupon, shazam! The computer reads it perfectly.

And as for grabbing  pictures in challenging lighting conditions --

Vines on Rifle Range Road, McLaren Vale

Above is a white-sky afternoon at McLaren Vale ... gnarly, ancient vines, looking like something from Fangorn Forest. They're really in a nice, civilized vineyard off one side of Rifle Range Road. Dave and I took two hours and went for a walk -- just to get out of the house, get some fresh air and exercise. 

Being a full-time, 24/7/365 care-giver can and will eventually take a heavy toll. You need to grab "me time" whenever you can get the chance. If it's safe to get out and walk, breathe, see something different for an hour or two, grab your opportunity and run for it. We're lucky in that we live in the wine country, literally cuddled up against the Accolade Vineyards, while in the other direction is the sea --

A storm breaks over the mouth of the Onkaparinga River

Very low light conditions on a cold, stormy afternoon, last Sunday. Mom was in the hospital and Dave, Mike and I needed to get OUT for a couple of hours. Dave took us on a spin down the coast to the outfall of the Onkaparinga River, which you see here under a rain-heavy sky; then we went over to the town of McLaren Vale for coffee at a favorite cafe, the Vintage Bean.

Again, I'm quite impressed by what the Sumi Rome phablet can do. Very nice pictures indeed.

And as for Mom ... well, ten days after the emergency she's just beginning to recover from the pneumonia, and the major problem at the moment is -- swallowing problems. She has to take something northwards of 20 pills a day (!) and is choking on one in three of them ... which means she's almost certain to inhale particles of [whatever] into her lungs and get pneumonia again. It's a miserable way to live, and there is zip, zero, nada, a care-giver can do, save offer sympathy and a warm drink. *sigh*