mytrilife

How ya goin' mate?

I FINALLY got connected to a decent internet connection two days ago. I signed up for mobile broadband with Vodafone (largest mobile provider in the world.... but they aren't in North America). It's a PCMCIA card modem/phone and I can connect anywhere there is cellular coverage. I figured it would be pretty handy for moving around the country. I can even roam in NZ, Europe, and other places with Vodafone coverage if I wish. Connection speed is only 1.8Mbs and my data plan is 1Gb/month for $99AUD. OUCH!

The same day that was setup, the University here finally set me up with an account to use thier internet. I've never been to such a technology backward university... students get 1Gb PER SCHOOL YEAR on thier account... or they have to pay for more. They figure this is enough to do thier studies! HA!

All in all, it's been a bit of shock, coming from North America, where I can open my computer and pick and choose from 5 free wireless connections at most times. My roommate in Calgary took his wireless router when he left, and for the last two months I was using our neighbours internet! Anyways... with internet connected, I have been madly catching up on work, so no time to update this blog.

For those of you who read my training logs... well... I just didn't have the connection to update them. I probably won't be updating them til I get back into training in December. I've been putting in a bit of volume here in the last week to get my body tuned up for the race. This weekend I plan to run a 6k fun race, since it starts only 2k from here, and is perfect for my usual 8-day-out hard run session I do for major races.

Heather and I are settled into the University now. The partiers get less each day as students leave for summer break. It's great having a kitchen to cook, as eating out in Australia is very expensive compared to Canada. Heather has been applying for jobs all over south Australia, but no bites yet. If she does not find a job by race day then our plan, at the moment, is to leave for Adelaide on Tuesday, November 21, and set up our permanent base there.

I should mention more about the training in Canberra. It is outstanding. There are more 50m pools in this town than all of Alberta, with one only a 5min walk from our dorm rooms. I'm off to do another swim right away, in fact. The riding... the roads are very smooth chip-seal for the most part, and there are TONS of routes to choose from, and bike lanes all through town. However, since we're in a desert-like region, we've encountered more than our fair share of thorns. We've had to replace some worn out tires that were ok to ride in Canada, but not robust enough to repel the nasty thorns here. Canberra is a runners paradise, more x-country tracks than you can imagine. Oddly, we see plenty of cyclists and swimmers, but very few runners here... it must be because they are so spread out on the massive trail network!

One more thing to mention... the wildlife. I've never seen so many off birds and animals as here!
The most common and annoying is the Australian Raven (I googled it), it has the most distinctive call that sounds almost like a human voice. There are loads of them around our dorm. We also saw a couple of dozen kangaroos on our run two nights ago... first time i've seen a kangaroo in person. There are road signs everywhere here warning of kangaroo's crossing the road. A lot of cars here have the bars over the front grill... I can see why!

Sorry, no photos of ANYTHING at this time. I keep forgetting to take my camera out. I'm sure you can all google pics of Canberra to get an idea...

Anyways... time for a swim.... hmm... maybe a coffee first. :-)

posted by Greg @ 11/08/2006