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

Children of the Revolution

 One thing about trying to ease up when you have a sore back is that there is more reading time. Sometimes you get a book that is a bit of a chore to get to the end. This was a whodunit where a body was found on page one and then the rest was a patient investigation which took to page 350 plus to name a killer. A little to patient for me. This is the interview style of thing. You start with someone nearby who mentions a name then you find that person who mentions another name. Before you know it we have gone back 40 yar and talked the talk to the same characters three times over. There were no butlers in this story but there was an accountant. They are always swifty to pull a shifty.

Beach Clean No 299

 The very last thing before leaving our hotel room last week was to weigh the bags. Using a hand held device to awkwardly lift a 20kg bag so it floats free is a tricky thing. After 10 days of activity I did not do it so well and gave my back a tweak that hurt. I have spent three days nursing it and to add to the mess my teeth started spiking up thru my head. This lasted 24 hours and the dentist said a nerve has died and that was the death throes you were feeling. He says he can try saving the tooth by taking the nerve out. In the meantime I have tested my back by picking up some beach junk.  The first item was a large frayed rope coil that half filled my bag.  There was another kindred bag man down there with two bags that he filled. This was good as I did not want to do that much bending. There was also a slab of pressed cabinet board but I left it there for another day.