Dolphin Puzzle

 No not actual dolphins although we do get plenty of them going passed our door. Maybe there is a dolphin season as we only seem to spy them in the warmer parts of the year. More likely we are indoors while they are outdoors during Winter. I have not done to many puzzles this time around. I did finish this one recently and picked it for the dolphins being the stars of the scene. These 1000 piece efforts are ideal for the folding table that can disappear when the clouds have gone. I have just cleaned this one away and brought out another which is topical from a year ago, being balloon rides.

Pan Pacs

 It was 24 yar ago that a few of us entered the World Masters Games mainly because the games had come to Melbourne, so let's give it a go we said. In about two months time I will be in Brisbane and an hour down the road they are running the Pan Pacific Masters Games. Last time we picked an event (8km cross country) at the time of entry and tried to prepare as best as possible in the eight weeks that were left.  It seems much the same this time around as I now have 9 weeks left having just spent my money on the entry fees.  I think it will workout at $65 per throw but it does take a lot of cash to organise these things.  I did a throws session this morning. It was across the road. However I found a more stable grassy patch which I could practice launching into a sandy patch. Not ideal conditions. On the way back I cleared up a mess from some party people who left empty packets and empty bottles at our favourite rock seat.

Two results to note. The womens list wasn't online so Debbie should have her time recorded somewhere. I note the men's shot category had seven competitors back then.

for someone else to pickup

Wattle City

 First day of September and we have the blooming blossoms right on cue. We thought the canola was appearing but one paddock was pushing up daisies by the thousands. I am trying to ramp up some exercise yet again so we took to the bikes this morning and went for a slightly larger loop around the bypass road. The flowers are out and as well we kept a wary eye on the sky for those pesky dive bombers which are also diving into Spring.  Maybe they backed off due to the dogs being walked including our beach friend Jill who we spied along the Griggs path. The North breeze is up which is giving us our first 20+ temperature today.

Views Not

 From now on I am not paying any attention to the stats page that is compiled by the Google network monitoring which is supposed to report on all blog activity. I have read an article which says the Google counters are notorius for including every kind of  webcrawler, search bot and AI search algorithm. These must have all made a concerted effort lately as I have seen an explosion in stats, in the hundreds of thousands, in just the last few months. I am meant to be able to turn on some better counting where spurious stuff is excluded but so far my settings are showing these options as greyed out.  

consistent at 15,000 per day but not real

Valencia

 The tour of Spain has reached Valencia overnight and we did our fair share of navel gazing when we were there.  We also did some bike riding as well.  It is handy when hotels have bicycles right there for you to use or hire.  The locals suffered repeated flooding from their River Turia and the biggest and final straw, in 1957 caused them to reroute the river away from town. This left a huge urban expanse now called Turia Park, which they have filled with gardens, recreation and exhibition space. I remember catching a pedal on a gutter right in front of a police car and going down. They asked if I was ok but did not bother getting out of the car.  We were soon on our way to the Superdomes.

Beach Clearance

 I went back for another beach comb as my back is straightening out again after I bulged it a bit last week. I was mainly after the laminated board I left there last time. I noticed that the diversion structures are working well lately with a deeply scored channel running parallel to the groyne wall. The board was still in place so I walked the length of the beach again for another pickup run. Got an empty Jamieson bottle, a can and many plastics and rope pieces. Straws were the hot item this time including one straw in two halves that had washed up about 20 metres apart. Is that a science experiment telling us something? On the way back I found the big ticket item, being a medium sized tyre. Once I got the sand and seaweed out of it I could get it as far as the base of the ramp whilst juggling the full rubbish bag in the other hand. Good thing I have restarted my weight training.  However I still had the heavy board there so now the tyre has been left and the board taken to the bin. Beach combing never ends.

Small Details

 I found a stamp that the designer and engraver had altered slightly to add his own personal touch, a six point star of David symbol hidden in the detail of the stamp. It reminded me of the time when I was working to produce maps way back last century. On this occasion I added an extra town name to the general layout of the map. It was in small print and had to get passed several checks without being spotted as a fake town. This map was part of a booklet and on final production there it was, Brownlowville a new place you could not visit in Gippsland. I thought I had a copy of the sheet at least but could not find it. I have attached some of my other earlier work as a student and also from the MMBW days. These show some of the printing steps where you may be able to slip in something extra but highly unauthorised. There was another guy on the team who was forever putting "pubic space" on the water plans rather than "public space".

a colour proof to check alignment of plates

Moonee Ponds catchment

star circled