Our friend Aaron is attempting to raise $10,000 for his Ride to Conquor Cancer. As a fundraiser, and somewhat of a publicity stunt, he organised a 10km ride around Brisbane’s city cycle paths – and all on citycycles – this morning, so we trolleyed along for support.

(Note: this is Aaron’s brother, Dan. Don’t get confused – especially you, Julian.)

It was fantastic! We were blessed with perfect weather – not a cloud in the sky, and a slight chill in the air. I’ve never utilised the cycle paths in the city – neither have I ever used one of the city cycles – so there was lots of new experiences in there. Here’s the view we were rewarded with as we crossed the Story Bridge:

Our time of 50 minutes for 11.37km certainly isn’t going to win us any awards for pace, but lets be honest – this was a ride that was all about the scenery! In fact, I thought it did such a good job of showcasing just how beautiful the city is, that we’ll be adding it to our bag of tricks for the next time that we have visitors from abroad.

A big thanks to Aaron for organising, and for the brilliant BBQ breakfast afterwards!

If you have some spare cash lying around, go ahead and donate it to Aaron’s ride, and support this worthy cause!

This was a pretty non-weekend. Ben, Rob, Piet and I voluntarily attended a training course for almost the whole of Saturday. Sadly, the best part of the course was by far the massive stash of free pens that Ben found hidden in the corner of the lecture theatre. Some of the presentations were so bad that it made me think that perhaps I should go into presenting – I don’t think I’d be anything outstanding, but I figure that so long as you let your audience know what they should expect from your presentation, and then deliver it in a clear and concise mannor, you’d be well on the way to making people happy.

Also, I’ve decided that I’m getting old. For two reasons: firstly, I no longer require the most up-to-date games. On the contrary, the next game on my “must play” list is Mass Effect, which came out in 2008! Did they even have computers then?! One might argue that this makes me thrifty, not old – however, combine that fact with this one: my favourite piece of clothing at the moment is my windproof vest, from Kathmandu. I know that it’s not a fashion statement; or at least, if it is, then it’s not one that I’d ordinarily choose to make. But it’s so warm! And it layers so well, especially under my motorbike jacket! Again, one might argue that I’m not old, I’m simply “ahead of my time” – vests are coming back, you know! – but I think I’m really pushing the proverbial uphill with these two powerful facts combined. Also, I couldn’t find the button to turn video mode on on Skype the other day – though that one I choose to blame on poor interface design.

Now, here’s a photo of Ian and Oscar, which was quite blurry, however I think I’ve saved it by combining a soft focus filter with the all forgiving sepia brush.

Finally – I’m heading to Sydney this week for the WebDU conference, which I’m very much looking forward to. Kristy and Oscar are flying down on Friday and we’re going to make a long weekend of it. Take that, Labour Day!

On Wednesday, we decided that we should take Oscar to a big playground for an ANZAC day adventure. Originally, we had Kidspace at Chermside in our sights, but it turns out we were not the only ones to have this idea. It was packed! So much so, we couldn’t even find a park! By this point, Oscar was screaming “wwwiiiiiiiinnnnggggg!” as he had set his sights firmly on the swing set that he could see from his car-seat. So, we needed to park and get him on a swing set, STAT!

Randomly, Dad had sent me an e-mail about another park not too far away called Hidden Worlds at Fitzgibbon, so we decided to try our luck. It too was quite busy, but parking was ample, so we quickly unclipped the boy and unleashed him on the the park. And what a park!

It’s huge! And colourful! And there’s heaps of activities for kids of all ages to enjoy – truth be told, I saw a few of the (*ahem*) “older” kids enjoying themselves on the slides, too. Though, I’m pretty sure this was only to encourage their kids to have a go – not that I was eavesdropping on their conversations or anything, but when they’re sitting at the top of the slide, trying to coerce their kids into riding down with them, they probably don’t realise that the slide itself also doubles as a gigantic megaphone. Whoops!

Most importantly (to Oscar at least), the park also has a swing, right down at the very back. Since only one of them is little-kid friendly though, it took a fair amount of “patient” waiting until he got to have his turn! But eventually he did, and sure enough – all was once again right with the world.

Team BaM have been sans-BBQ ever since their old one – henceforth known as “The Original” – was singed to pieces on New Year’s Eve. But no more! They’ve now invested in BBQ #2: a brand-spanker which henceforth shall be known as “The Successor”. As such, it only seemed right that they regather as many witnesses of The Original’s demise, to be astounded by the glory of The Successor.

Of course, the most impressive part of the evening was the ridiculously good looking tong masters that he’d hired.

I’m pleased to report that the BBQ was a complete success – after all, you can’t spell “successor” without “success”! I have to admit though that those tongs almost defeated me – they’re so powerful it’s like trying to clamp shut the jaws of life in order to grab the chicken!

Anyway – BBQ good. Meat good. Beer good. Explosions absent. Long live The Successor!

I’ve been rather neglectful of the blog since my PC has been away, but the good news is that it’s back now – yay! It turns out that the motherboard was dead (which was my suspicion all along). And so, with any luck, updates will be more frequent again from now on; but here’s a casual handful of things that should catch you up on the last few weeks:

• More flat tires: My run of poor luck with flat tires on my bicycle hit a peak at the beginning of April, when I suffered a flat going in, and then another one coming home. I took the wheel back to Goldcross and told them that something had to be done, so they sold me a pair of Continental Grand Prix 4000 S tires at a very heavy discount (though I notice Wiggle is still slightly cheaper). With all the rain we’ve been having, I’ve only had three rides on them, but so far so good!
• Mel and Ben: Ian and Un hosted a phenomenal dinner in honour of Mel and Ben, so we could finally hand over their long overdue wedding gift. All I can say is: Un is an amazing cook. Amazing.
• Coffee: Oscar has learnt to tamp coffee – a trick which he can now do without even looking.

• PS3: I finished Bioshock and Bioshock 2, both of which were borrowed from Shane many months ago. They’re awesome – I particularly liked Bioshock 2!
• Drinks with the boys: Ben, Rob, Piet and I hit the valley for drinks after work on Friday, including a sensational meal at The Valley Corner Chinese Restaurant. The crispy skin chicken is highly recommend.
• Soccer lessons: Oscar and his little friend Lily scored some free passes to tryout soccer lessons. The consensus was that they’re both a little bit too young still, but it’s pretty clear that Oscar was made to be a soccer superstar.

We spent Easter Monday morning at Alma Park Zoo with The Threebies, thanks largely to a huge discount voucher that Chellsie’s parents had purchased and passed on to us. Thanks, Ray and Maree!

For the record, I believe it’s nearly impossible to take good photos at a zoo; unless of course, you’re specifically after lots of photos of animals. And again, for the record – nobody wants to see your photos of the animals at the zoo.

Alma Park has some saving graces on this front though, because they have lots of places where you can actually interact with the animals. Like above, where Kristy and Oscar got to feed a “baa baa” (as Oscar would call it). Or, perhaps this:

Yes, to the casual observer, this may look like Ted and Ben are snubbing the emus; what you may not realise is that it’s actually a photo of Ben teaching Ted to say, “Get Down!”, just like in Terminator 2. The emus just happened to be there, milling about like a bunch of Angry Birds.

And so, would I recommend Alma Park Zoo? Yes! Especially if you happen to own an iPhone, and you wish for the camera to be cleaned by a cow.

A few more photos in the Alma Park Zoo photo album. I promise I’ve kept the animal shots to a minimum.

I can’t say I remember doing any Easter Egg hunts when I was but a lad. This is something I’m going to have to take up with my parents; I’ll add it to the ever growing list of things they clearly did wrong in raising their children. Sure, it’s possible that our childhood Easter holidays were simply loaded with Easter Egg hunts, but what are the chances that I’d forget that? Pretty slim, I reckon.

And so, to make up for this clear lack of parenting and care that I had to suffer through, we’re over-compensating for little Moo, who has now participated in four Easter Egg hunts this year! Kristy The Easter Bunny spent a few minutes hiding some eggs in our backyard this morning while Oscar and I were cleaning the BBQ. He also left a little basket hanging on the clothes line to collect the eggs in – what a thoughtful Easter Bunny!

All in all, Oscar managed to claim 15 finds, even though only 12 eggs were hidden to begin with – what are the chances?!

More photos in the Hunting for Easter Eggs album.

The Kedron Brook bike path (or whatever its actual name is) has fast become one of my favourite features about living where we do. Not only is it a fantastic, off-road way for me to commute to work (or most of the way, at least) – but it’s also a great place for a stroll on a public holiday Friday!

Yes, Kristy really is getting great use out of her bag of crap t-shirt. Who’d have thought?

Oscar is a big fan of music, so it only seems fitting that we try to introduce him to musical instruments as early in his life as we can. So far, he has mastered his toy dog-cum-xylophone, and pretty much any flat surface now gets treated as a set of drums. Kristy had the bright idea that perhaps we I should try playing guitar for Oscar, so that’s exactly what I did.

He was a big fan of strumming (or at least, playing with each of the strings), but he wasn’t so interested in the actual playing of the guitar. There’s a good chance that’s because it was being played badly, though; I suspect a bit more practice is required on my part.

We wanted to make sure we got to the coast as much as possible in 2012, and so far we’re doing OK. I’d like our number of visits to be higher, but all the rain about puts quite a dampener on things! Not that I mind being at the beach in the rain – on the contrary, it’s awesome being in the surf during a light shower – but I can’t imagine Oscar or Kristy would feel the same way about playing on the beach at the same time.

Anyway – we added one more visit to the tally this weekend. I took Friday off work (time in lieu after working on Australia Day), and we headed up to Caloundra after lunch. Since the car ride was going to be Oscar’s only chance of a nap for the day, we took the “long way” via Steve Irwin way, out to Peachester, then down through Maleny. Or at least that’s what we had intended – the road from Peachester to Maleny was closed due to land slip, so we had to double back and go via Landsborough instead. Never mind – it was a nice drive, and Oscar slept for most of it!

As soon as we arrived in Caloundra, we took a walk along the boardwalk to stretch our legs.

Sadly, that was the only decent weather that we experienced for the whole weekend! By the time Mom and Dad joined us in the evening, the rain had set in – though sporadic, it was enough to put a total dampener on going to the beach!

Worse still, Oscar had a terrible night’s sleep on Friday night. He just wouldn’t settle! Eventually, we brought him into our own bed, which we never, ever do. But we had no choice – it was either try him in our bed, or let him scream it out in his own, so we went with the former. All I can say is that now, the diagrams make sense. Especially this one.

The rest of the weekend was a bit of a blur after that, though it did make us appreciate just how lucky we are that (generally) Oscar is (now) a good sleeper. We still managed to take a day-trip to Gympie on Saturday to visit one of Mom’s oldest friends (they met on the plane when she migrated to Australia!); but otherwise, the weekend basically turned into a festival of food! Here’s the list of places we hit up:

• Jow Noodles – An awesome noodle bar on the main drag at Caloundra. It’s the traditional evening meal whenever Mom and Day stay up the coast. The seafood Nasi Goreng is fantastic!
• Cafe 21 on Bulcock – One of the only places that was open for breakfast on Saturday morning in Caloundra. Their big breakfast was big.

• Cafe Envy – Just off the main strip at Mooloolaba, they served one of the biggest and best value breakfast burgers that I’ve ever had!

I suppose that a weekend of eating is nothing to be sneezed at, but it’s still a pity that the weather wasn’t more encouraging of outdoor activities. I guess that’s a good excuse to go up again before it becomes too cold to swim!