jayneandmarty.com

I’ve just got back from a frustrating early morning surf down at Ocean Grove with Damian and Jon. Bugger bugger bugger.

The waves were 3-4ft and glassy, but a bit inconsistent (10 minute lulls, then 10 waves in a row), but the reason for my "buggers" is that I should have been carving it up today and I wasn’t.

Some history. I took up surfing when I moved to Australia in 1991, and got to a reasonable standard within a year or so by regularly surfing at Anglesea, Torquay and Jan Juc with friends. (By reasonable standard I mean able to stand and ride the wave for a distance.)

Today I realised that now, almost 15 years later, I am pretty much still at that level. It’s just not good enough and is starting to affect my enjoyment of it. So today I’ve decided to do something about it.

I have a good board, I live less than 20 minutes from more than five decent breaks, I’m healthy, I have time to surf at least two days a week (more in summer when daylight savings kicks in), and quite often Jayne comes with me and walks Max. Basically, there are no excuses for being as crap as I am.

Here’s what I think the problems are:

• I always surf at Ocean Grove. The beachbreak there is gentle, there’s a great cafe overlooking the beach, Jayne can walk Max there and it’s rarely crowded. Sounds great. The problem is that the wave often closes out, which makes it difficult to ride for any distance and can also make it tough to get back out, primarily because …
• … I can’t duckdive for shit. Any progress I make on my way back out after a wave is lost when a decent wave washes me back towards shore.
• I’m not surf fit. Today Damian and I were lucky enough to catch a lull and get out the back without even getting our hair wet, but I was knackered after our paddle of only 60m. I needed a 10 minute rest break before I picked off a wave, and even then I was too tired to attack it properly.
• Three or four surfs a month is not enough to build experience.

So here’s what I’m going to do.

1. Get surf fit. As soon as I post this I’m yahoogling "surf fitness". I’m determined to get fitter in my upper body and increase my aerobic capacity.
2. Learn how to duck dive properly. I might even take a lesson or two if I can’t find anything about technique on the web.
3. Surf more. I can easily get out six times a month, probably eight if I’m dedicated (which I am). Time in the water in all conditions can only improve my experience, not reduce it.
4. Surf five times out of eight at Ocean Grove, with the other three at 13th Beach or Jan Juc.
5. Watch the tides and swells and surf at the right time. Ocean Grove seems to work best at low tide when the swell’s small and at high tide when it’s bigger.

C’mmoooooonnnnnnn!

So. It’s two days before we leave for our week at Mt Hotham. Usually by the last week in July you can expect a decent snow base, which is why we booked for now.

However. Here’s today’s snow report:
- Good skiing on groomed runs: Summit Trainer, Big D, Basin, Sun Run and Slalom Gully. Fair to good cover of firm snow in all open areas.
- Primary surface: firm packed.
- Skiable cover: limited.
- Average natural snowdepth: 20cm. Average man-made: 50cm.
- Lifts open: Big D Express, The Village, Upper Playground, Trainer, The Summit, Road Runner.

Not too bad if you’re a beginner, but very ordinary if you’re high intermediate or expert (i.e. us).

We’re seriously considering cancelling and losing the $1,000 we’ve paid for our accommodation. Here’s the forecast for the week:
- Sunday: 50% chance of 2-5cm of snow down to 1400m with light winds.
- Monday: 40% chance of less than 2cm of snow to 1600m with light winds.
- Tuesday: 40% chance of less than 2cm of snow to 1700m with light winds.
- Wednesday: 80% chance of 5-10cm of snow to 1900m with strong winds.

At least there appears to be some chance of snow, but Tuesday and Wednesday look like rain events if you ask me.

Our dilemma is that we’re prepared to pay top dollar for accommodation and top dollar for lift tickets when the whole resort’s open, but not when it’s not.

From the reports it looks like 80% of beginner runs are open, but less than 20% of the intermediates, and 0% expert.

I don’t think we can justify $500 of lift tickets, $200 petrol, $250 food and drink, $150 chain hire and parking and $100 dog kennel for a few runs down half of Summit, Sun Run and Slalom Gully, but we’ll think about it tonight and tomorrow, keeping one eye on the weather.

Fingers crossed that Huey the Snow God delivers. Like it did three years ago at Falls….

I’m cheating here a bit. We had a lazy weekend with some friends and although that was lovely, writing about it isn’t going to benefit anyone else. Nor is writing about my average surfing down at Ocean Grove this morning despite the clean 5ft conditions (I was hungover and running on 5hrs sleep thanks to my inability to switch off Tiger Woods PGA Tour 06, but the real reason for my averageness is lack of fitness. We’ll just leave that there for now.)

No. I’ve decided to offer up a brief review of a meal Jayne and I had at Guiseppe’s Cafe on Pakington Street. It’s cheating because we had it *last* Friday, i.e. 9 days ago. Not exactly as-it-happens blogging, but whatever.

We’d intended to eat somewhere completely different: at the restaurant above the Bakers Delight in Highton Village, simply because it was the closest to our home. We walked there so that we could enjoy a bottle of wine but when we got there it was closed. It was 7.30pm on a Friday night so presumably it is never open.

So. Plan B. The Cremorne in Newtown. That’s too far to walk from Highton so we got a taxi. We arrived, wandered up to the bar noting all the empty tables, were told by the bar staff that they were booked out, and by the way the place is almost always booked out on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights, took a closer look at the empty tables and noticed the discreet reserved signs, and made a note to book and come back one day.

Plan C. Walked across the road and into a cafe called Sticks or something but it was tapas only. Hmmm.

Plan D. Walked for another 15 minutes up Pakington St to Geelong West. Hooray - plenty of eating options here. Chose Guiseppe’s Cafe, a cosy-looking Italian place. Sat down, exhausted.

The first thing that struck us was the wine list. There were only four beers available, all Italian. Plenty of wine options, though, and again most of them were Italian. Good, we thought, an Italian restaurant that’s not afraid to be Italian.

So we ordered a Moretti Pilsner ($6.50) and a Messina Birra di Sicilia ($6.50) and perused the menu before settling on Saltimbocca alla Romana (veal panfried with prosciutto, sage, white wine sauce and rocket mash, $23) and Pollo alla Affinocchiato (panfried breast of chicken with prosciutto, almonds, fennel, onions, white wine sauce and green beans, $22), washing it all down with a bottle of 2004 Guicciardini Strozzi San Biagio Vernaccia ($35), and finishing things off with a slice of almond cake.

Jayne wasn’t sure about the fennel (it wasn’t unpleasant, she just wasn’t sure about it), but otherwise it was a truly superb meal. My veal was just delicious, the prosciutto, the sauce and the mash all worked beautifully together, and the almond cake was worth going back for on its own. The whole ambience of the place was low-key, relaxed and calm - it’d be a great place to have a quiet meal with a couple of friends.

As our first meal out in Geelong it sets a high standard, and yes, it was definitely worth the walk. We’ll be back, although we’ll get a taxi next time.

(P.S. I tried to find some links for this post but couldn’t. I wanted good links for Ocean Grove, Guiseppe’s Cafe, Pakington Street, Highton Village, The Cremorne but couldn’t find any. What are these businesses and local councils thinking?)

Well here we are.

Three weeks ago we moved from our first home, a warehouse-style townhouse in Caroline Springs, to our second - a big four bedroom + study home on 1000sqm in Wandana Heights, Geelong.

We thought the move would be a good excuse to start blogging about our life, the move, the house, the city and so on. It’s slightly ominous that we moved in three weeks ago and we’ve only just found the time to write our first post, but there you go. I expect that’s because the whole internet connection thing has been a hassle - take a look at the picture. That’s me, right now.

Yes, despite owning a spiffy new 13.3" MacBook, an ADSL modem, a wireless router, this being the 21st century, and Wandana Heights not exactly being the Back of Bourke, I am typing these words prone on my 2001 iMac DV+ running OS9 on 52kbps dial-up, thanks to Telstra - the world’s worst company.

At some point in the near to mid-distant future, Telstra might get around to rimming some ports at our local exchange, or something. Then our chosen ADSL provider WestNet can hook up our broadband. Until then, we’re on 1996 dial-up. Thanks Ziggy. Or Woogy. Or whoever the Telstra CEO is these days.

Anyway …

I’m sure we’ll have plenty to write about. For starters we have an opportunity to discover a whole new city. Then I’m sure we’ll have lots to say about the numerous touch-ups we’re going to have to make to our new house. I expect at some point I’ll have a whinge about travelling to Melbourne for work four days a week (lucky me gets to work one day a week at home). And how about being part of the local community. Or how good the local shops are. And how much we’re enjoying Bay FM being piped through the house on our 1988 intercom system. There might even be some kids to talk about at some point. The surf’s only 15 minutes away, not to mention almost ten first-class golf courses. I’m sure we’ll have plenty of visits from friends and family, and then there’s the garden.

Phew.

Well, it’s time for me to move. I’m cramping up.