Cyclocross, what I hear you say is that?  Well it is a cross between a mountain bike and a road bike but looks like a road bike.  It is a road bike frame with disc brakes (like a mountain bike) and fatter tyres.

I am lucky enough to have a bamboo bike that was made by my good friend, James Wolf in Vietnam.  Their company grows the bamboo there and he makes the frames.  Niels was my bike mechanic and kitted it out for me.  Now, what would a bike be without a name, introducing Bam Bam:).Here is their website and the Fat bikes are awesome.  http://boobicycles.com/

It was Bike Week in Brisbane last week and they had some events and one of them was a come and try cyclocross, so off I went.

It was held in the middle of the old velodrome and was like an obstacle course with logs, ramps and small fences that you had to get off your bike and lift it over.  I had my own personal photograph who captured the event.

It was also a fancy dress and Batman made an appearance. 

The highlight of the night was watch Robbie McEwen competing who is a triple winner of the Points classification, Green Jersey, in the Tour de France was arguably the fastest sprinter in the world. He is on the far left of the photo below.  

I had a great time out there and it is harder than it looks, not only the skill required but all the fitness as you are accelerating and braking all the time.

The Ippy or as it is formally known, Ipswich, is my place of work.  It is about 40km West of Brisbane and with the motorway upgrade that happened about 9 years ago, it is about a 40 minute drive.  No traffic jams, going against traffic and I normally listen to podcasts, so all good.

Ipswich began in the 1820s as a mining settlement and was originally intended to be the Queensland capital but Brisbane was instead chosen because of its geographical accessibility for ships.  It has a population of about 200,000 and I work in the centre, in the tallest modern building on the top floor, the 9th.

It is a very historic city and has some wonderful architecture. This is all right about side my work place and I have wonderful views of it all and can see the tall buildings of Brisbane from our office windows.

This is outside my building, I call it the disco ball

So it is show week in Ipswich at the moment so there are many displays and art exhibitions on and here is a sample of some around my work.

There is a diverse population and in close proximity to work; we have a Methadone Clinic, the local district court and the transport hub so it makes for an interesting array of people.  Stayed tuned to see photos of the view that I have in an instalment coming soon.

After our trip to New Zealand for my Grandmother’s funeral, I arrived home with the Hamilton Family Bible.  Dorothy as the oldest of the Hamiltons’ and my Grandfather’s sister had the bible and she left it to my father, so I now have the honour of keeping it safe.

With anything old, it needed a few repairs.  So I took it to a book restorer and was impressed with the results.

They had to replace the spine of the book so they made it into a bookmark.  

During my conversations with the book restorer I found out that around the time of this bible, families would pre order and also pay off their bible as they go and they would receive the parts of the bible they had paid for only.  Nowadays we would put it on the credit card and then complain about having too much debt.

I am not a religious person, but I understand how important it is to people and to have a faith and I use this often in life.

Matthew 7:12

“In everything, then, do to others as you would have them do to you.  For this is the essence of the Law and the prophets.”

The Bible I have inherited contains the notices from the paper on deaths and births so I will be continuing this tradition.