6 months

Hi Everyone,

Not a lot to report on this week, but amazingly, it's 6 months already since we arrived in Oz! My! How the time has flown and how much have we done!

I have kept up with my fitness regime this week, even though the Tri is over, starting a cycling club on Tuesday and tennis at a new club on Thursday. Friday, I felt like I'd been kicked in the kidneys and ached all over, having played 3.5 hours of tennis non-stop the day before!

Chris, Natalie, Jason and myself had "Take 2" of the Colonial Tramcar Restaurant experience, and although storms were forecast, we managed to see out the night with a feeling of "deja vu". Having stopped off at a bar on the way there, it didn't take us long to relax into the atmosphere

The food was great, as was the company and the whole experience - would definitely recommend it :) Photos, as always, on Flickr.

My First Triathlon!

Well, the day I had been training a mere 3 weeks for had arrived! Needless to say - I had a very bad nights sleep. When I went to bed, my heart was going mad - the adrenalin was pumping round so fast! Sleep was very fitful and when Sarah Hamlet sent me a text sending me "Good Luck Wishes" at 5a.m, I decided to get up and have a cup of tea! How English is that!!

Nat and I cycled down to the beach, only to be told that the swim had actually been cancelled due to the poor water quality since the flood a week earlier. I was actually a bit disappointed, because although this was the part I was dreading, I had actually been training every day in the sea that they said wasn't safe enough ...oops!

Instead, it had been replaced with a 500m run, bare-foot, along the beach - still wearing the swim cap - what was that all about?!!! This was actually to my benefit, although it is hard running on sand that has been indented with hundreds of other people's footprints!

That run was then followed by a 8k bike ride and then a 2k run. None of it sounds very far on paper, but believe me, the final run was a killer after the bike ride because your legs feel completely dead. What I would normally run very easily seemed a real struggle. BUT... I finished!!! And lived to tell the tale! And will probably do another one very soon so that I can experience the swim part.

Overall, I came 77th/230 and in my age category 17th/38, so I was quite pleased :)

The Morgans and the Pribils then returned to ours for a well deserved BBQ breakfast cooked by Chris :) I would like to thank Chris, Sam and Will for turning out at the crack of dawn (literally) to support me - they were fab! Sam and Will had written on their chests "Go Mum!" which was sooo lovely. Will did a great job videoing the event and Chris and Sam on the fotos. THANK YOU my lovely Boys - U R gr8!!!

There is a little video below (thanks to Will the camera man) and more pictures on our Flickr site (or take a look to the right..)

Floods in Mordialloc!!

Well, we had a bit of a surprise last night when it started to rain. Will came home from school warning us that a storm was on the way.....did we listen...?

Within 10 minutes the rain was lashing and the water levels started to rise. The drains from our house are quite slow normally so suddenly there was no way they could cope with the mass of water. The road out the front of our house was about a foot deep and the garage was getting flooded as the drains overflowed!

I (Chris) was at work when all this was going on and Caroline was giving me updates. We were meeting up in the centre of Melbourne in the evening with Jason and Natalie for a meal on a tram that takes you around the city! So Caroline left Will and Sam baling out water from the garage and headed to the station with Natalie! The trains were running fine and I had helpfully reported that there was no rain in the city :-)

However, with perfect timing the rain started lashing again in the city just as Caroline and Natalie stepped off the train. Unfortunately they got absolutely soaked walking to the bar where Jason and I were waiting...

After a swift glass of champagne (as you do) we headed off to the tram restaurant, but now the rain was really heavy. The roads were all flooded in a foot deep of water and I decided to take my shoes off and roll up my trousers - a good look! We crossed the road with water up to our knees but soon realised that there was no way the tram was coming so we headed off to another restaurant.

Once again the Morgan rain dance hits again - it's the middle of summer in Melbourne.....and there are floods...hmmmm...

In reality I think we got the tail end of the Queensland cyclone so should think ourselves very lucky.

By this morning some of the water had subsided but many roads are still blocked. Take a look at our Flickr site for lots of photos....like the one below: