Pics for John. Pt1

Goodbye blogspot, hello tydomin.com.

Thanks for all your support over the years. I've ventured abroad and found a new provider as my post have become more and more photo related and blogspot truly wasn't designed for my kind of blogging.

You can now find me at the imaginatively named tydomin.com

Go well.

Ty.

MTB World Championships - Stromlo, Canberra.

As you may or may not know, the UCI MTB and Trials World Championship were held in Canberra over the weekend. I was lucky enough to score the full three days worth of tickets free from Liam so I made the most of the event and headed out after work on the Friday night to enjoy the 4X.



The atmosphere was fantastic as the trailside filled with people and the lights came into action.

Before you knew it, the riders erupted from the gates.






Australia was lucky enough to score gold in both mens and womens!!! (Graves and Buchannan).

The next day was the x-country. Two hours of pain for the riders on what was a very technical and challenging trail. We fueled up on beer to get us through the ordeal of walking round the mountain.




France (Absolom) and Switzerland (Schurter) fought each other for the entire race, with Swizerland taking the win.









Sunday was the downhill, or judging by the fact that Commodores outnumbered Subarus in the car park for once, the 'day of the bogan'. Another great spectacle and a great opportunity to get the flash out and take some nice actions shots.












Steve Peat finally managed to take the champion jersey after so much effort. Even though he's a pom everyone was stoked.

Tim convinced me to head down to the trials to see some of the freakery. It was astonishing as usual.







Not likely that Australia will get the worlds again in the next decade so it was great to be able to see it. I feel the competitive motivation coming back........

Coffeeeeeee!!!

A few weeks back my automatic espresso machine malfunctioned and a light of doom came on. Instead of fetching the instructions to remedy the problem I threw the machine out. It always made less that acceptable coffee and the light was a perfect excuse to spend up big on a new Rancilio Silvia V3 with matching Rancilio Rocky doser grinder.

Ordered on the Friday and I picked it up from the PO on the Monday. I knew it was good quality when the post office ladies wheeled it out on a trolley because it was too heavy to lift.


The deal I found at Cafe A Roma (the Aussie importer for Rancilio) left me with everything I needed to brew my first espresso. I didn't really know what half the things were but it wasn't long till I was making coffee, albeit terrible coffee.


After a few weeks of experimentation and practice I'm over the moon with the quality of espresso I can get out of the machine and will never go back to an automatic. The process is a little longer but very therapeutic.

I've purchased a timer that switches it on automatically every morning so that by the time I rise it's nice and hot, ready for me to do my magic. Enjoy.

Rach's Canberra Visit.

Rach came to visit for a few days this week. We didn't venture too far as I still had to work for the week but there was a great deal of cafes, pubs, lounge bars, restaurants, country roads, markets and random goings on.

Coffee at Spill the Beans.


Lunch time beers at The Phoenix.


Gelati by the lake.



Cocktails and live funk at Trinity Bar.


Markets and a country bakery lunch at Braidwood.


Perfect weather for a drive to the coast.




The National Botanical Gardens were flowering.





We eventually needed a quiet night in to catch up on Scrubs.


Elroy came with us for a hike to the top of Mt Majura.





Tea at Cafe Essen.


Lunch in front of the fire at the pub we discovered on a drive out through Collector.




Wine and dinner with Trent and Steve at Tilley's.




A quiet afternoon tea at Yaralumla Nursery where the cherry blossoms were in bloom.





It seemed like longer than a week which is always a good sign, gotta love how much there is to do in Canberra, despite what people say.