Nasty combinations

One. A lingering cough with a bruised rib after skidding off my bike at the weekend (on the bike path, just changing direction too quickly over wet leaves). Everytime I sneeze I yelp in surprise; everytime I cough I groan.

Two. Renato the dentist's scrupulous cleaning of my teeth with a windy day and a blocked nose. Riding the streets of Melbourne with the wind whistling through my scraped gums a mild kind of agony.

Three. The University's impossible demands of our essay marking: a tightly regulated bell curve of grade distribution, an inflexible average, a finely tuned characterisation of the standards of each grade, combined with an insistence on including in the averages those students who never turned up to class and never bothered to withdraw. Statistical hell for my two wonderful tutors who valiantly battled to do right by the students and the system today.

In praise of lycra

It's Ride to Work day today, and if I were heading anywhere other than to the revisions of my preface and first chapter in my home study today (thanks to the careful responses of my [blog] readers), I would probably be taking in free coffee and muffins at Bike Hub on the way to work.

There has been a bit of argy-bargy on television and in the press lately about the perennial struggle between cyclists and motorists. I am both, and can be equally irritated by both, at different times. But what I don't quite understand is the vitriol directed towards lycra.

It's true that it often comes in unattractive (though road-safe) colours such as lime and orange; and it's also true that for many years I've refused to wear it when riding.

However. Before we headed on our cycling holiday, I took the advice of the bike-tour company and went out to buy some padded shorts. I ended up buying some below-the-knee pants in discreet grey, with seams that sort of curve around the leg. They have minimal padding (enough to feel comfortable; not so much as to be obvious to the observer), and they were wonderful on the road. They were warm when it was cold; weren't hot when it was hot; dried quickly when wet; and even seemed to repel the water when it rained. I felt a bit like a seal when it was wet. Moreover, they turned out to be like a sporty foundation garment. So instead of feeling the weakness of the flesh was exposed, as I had feared, that weakness was, shall we say, contained. Let's be frank about this: these pants are downright flattering. If you ever see me on a red carpet of any description wearing a long sleek dress, you'll know what I'm wearing underneath...

Jet-lag is weird. Italy is magical.

Well, no surprises there. You could hardly expect to sit in three planes over twenty-four hours, cross the equator and who knows how many time zones and not feel weird.

It's just that a holiday is supposed to make you feel rested, and yet here I am feeling not much different than the exhaustion after a work trip.

On the other hand, I have not thought about my work at all for three weeks, and have filled my eyes and ears and, I'm sorry to say, my mouth, too, with sights and sounds and tastes a-plenty.

We did this trip on frequent-flyer points, and with my several weeks' pretty careful planning on the web; and I'm pleased to report all went smoothly. No flight delays; no lost luggage; no dreadful hotels. We stayed in ** or *** pensions and hotels, and while the rooms were always small, they were all clean and quiet, with smooth cotton sheets. The centrepiece of this trip was an eight-day cyling circuit in Italy. We picked up our bikes in Treviso, and every day we'd leave our cases in the hotel lobby and navigate our way to the next town, where the cases would invariably be waiting for us. This was a circuit from Treviso to Venice to Chioggia to Padova to Vincenza to Bassano del Grappa and back to Treviso. J and P did the navigating, and I brought up the rear, day-dreaming my way around the countryside and back lanes of the route. We also gave ourselves a couple of days in Pisa and Florence, a second bite at Venice, an overnight in Milan, and a couple of days in Paris, with visits to family in London at either end.

P took great photos, J sketched in his book and I took a couple of desultory snaps and did some more day-dreaming.

Two highlights.

The first day of our cycling tour was one of the longest: Treviso to Venice. We struggled a bit with the road maps and instructions, and also got a bit lost before heading through the industrial zone of Venice before riding along that long strip of land to the main island. When we got there, we had to find our way through to the Casa San Andrea, on a small lagoon near the Piazzale Roma. When we arrived, we were exhausted and collapsed onto the beds, too tired to get up but wondering if this was going to be such a great idea, if we were going to be too exhausted to see anything of the beautiful places on our itinerary. After a while we regrouped, though, and struggled out to buy vaporetto tickets in time to do the most magical trip down the Grand Canal as the sun began to set. I had not been to Venice for 35 years, and it was P and J's first time. Global traveller that he is, P was still not prepared for the magic of Venice, and it was extremely gratifying to see his amazement. (I can't get the little camera to start at the moment: I'll try again when I'm less tired.) So much water! So many beautiful buildings! I bought myself a creamy guipure lace fan (even the tourist souvenirs are elegant) and for dinner had fresh sea bass with what the waiter called a "sausage": she served my fillets onto a separate plate then mashed up much of the head and other parts with more oil, then strained this extra-flavoured oil over the white flesh. Delicate and delicious.

The restaurant was just around the corner from the piazza San Marco; just near it was the entrance to one of the narrow calles that lead you into the shops and alleys and laneways. People would mysteriously enter or leave in single-file; so as we were sitting and watching we had this tremendous sense of potential: the city both opened up to us, like the fish served before me, along the Grand Canal; but also holding its secrets in reserve.

When we returned a week later, it was to a different hotel, and with a date. I'd found a website selling tickets to a performance of the Barber of Seville in a palace, and had booked, but failed to print off a map. We had a day touring and wandering around, and had planned to go back to the hotel, change, and get directions. Instead we decided just to find our way there. Turns out there is not just one Palazzo Barbarigo on the map, though. We wandered and wandered, and eventually found our way to La Fenice, thinking the main opera house would know where it was (I knew our palace was not far from there). But the box office had closed (they'd had an afternoon performance) and the cloakroom staff had never heard of it. I was starting to think I'd been the victim of a scam. I started desperately asking strangers, as I had enough Italian to ask politely for directions (though my comprehension of the spoken word is only rudimentary). Most people had never heard of it; but one man gave me detailed instructions I couldn't follow... Eventually I strolled boldly into a posh hotel and asked the concierge, who gave me several maps, the brochure from the company and set me straight, also running out after me when I left the reservation behind.

Eventually we did find the entrance, down the darkest of narrow dark alleyways, with a locked gate and a sign with a hand pointing mysteriously around the corner, which seemed to lead only to an apartment entrance. Then we found the button you pressed; and a voice said they would open the door at 8.00. So we went off to eat, and came back in plenty of time. It was a chamber performance — four or five singers; a piano, a cello and two violins — performed in several different rooms in the Barbarigo-Minotto palace; and it was utterly magical. The rooms could accommodate only about 50 people, and the singers were wonderfully engaging, moving amongst the audience with charm and grace. Beautiful strong voices and accomplished acting all round. No sur-titres, no sets apart from the palace itself, but it was perfect for this drawing-room opera to be staged in drawing-rooms with Tiepolo paintings and a palatial bedroom. When Figaro shaves Dr Bartolo, we were close enough to smell the shaving foam. After the first act, we were ushered into a different room, but invited to take in the view of the grand canal from the balcony. When you're in Venice as a tourist, you get glimpses of much wealthier travellers and residents in private courtyards and balconies. For a brief moment, we had our own balcony from which to look out at the water traffic below. Pretty much a perfect musical experience, I would say.

Other wonderful things on this trip: a Chopin concert in a C13 church in Paris; As You Like It at the Globe in London; the artichoke tart served with gorgonzola cappucino followed by potato ravioli with truffles and truffle oil at an unassuming little restaurant halfway between Bassano and Treviso; mint liquorice and morello cherry gelati eaten on the enormous chessboard in the square at Marostica; Giotto's Scrovegni chapel in Padua; being given two huge bunches of grapes by a lovely family as we rode from Vincenza to Bassano; reading A Room with a View in Florence; supper at the Mozzarella Bar, also in Florence; buying a coral and glass necklace in Venice; sneaking into my nephew's choral rehearsal in the Temple church in London; two pilgrimages in Paris: first, to climb the towers of Notre Dame after an hour queuing in the sun to see the chimeres and gargoyles up close; and another to take J to see the Mona Lisa in the Louvre; and a day in London with our dearest, much-missed family friends currently taking a sabbatical in Oxford.

Oh. And in case you're thinking this all sounds too perfect, factor in the horror of waking up in the middle of the night in Bassano, and realising you have developed a case of raging conjunctivitis. Spend several hours lying awake rehearsing conversations in your elementary Italian about locating and talking to pharmacists and doctors. But then when you tell your partner, he reaches into his first-aid kit and pulls out the broad spectrum anti-biotic drops for ears and eyes... Oh. What can I say? It was perfect after all.

Holiday photos

We took heaps of photos on the Great North-East Victorian Bike Ride: these will give an idea of the celestial blue skies; the sumptuous meals; and the historical immersion into the 1870s we accomplished in five days.

The bike paths are built over disused train lines. Occasionally, they have built bike-oriented rest stops in the shape of old trains.


Mostly the paths are through open country, but sometimes the bush has closed over the tracks, and this is when it was most beautiful.



Sometimes the path went alongside farmlands, and we stopped once to feed long juicy grass to horses. All you St Louisians will recognise my St Louis Cardinals World Series Champions 2006 t-shirt. Go Cards!


We saw other animals, too, though they were often too quick to be photographed: a little lizard; an Aesopian crow flying off with a big wedge of cheese in its mouth; and two snakes. One was black with a red belly, slithering serenely across the path; another mottled one that Joel rode over, and that then reared up as we passed by, shuddering.

As we came into Bright, we saw this irresistible sign:


And at Beechworth, the buildings are made of silver white granite that goes golden as it ages.

Here is Ned Kelly's death mask in the Burke Museum at Beechworth:


And from the sublime to the ridiculous:


And here is the magnificent breakfast Joel ate at the old Butter factory at Myrtleford at the beginning of our last day's riding.


You would think it would keep him going; and so it did: all the way to Everton, where he had a meat pie for morning tea.

Recipe for holiday happiness

Three people. Three bikes. Six panniers.

A three hour train trip to Wangaratta, then a rush of instant happiness as we collected our bikes and rode away from the station, with no accommodation booked, and no sense of how far we'd be able to ride. I think this was the freest I've ever felt on a holiday. I love my creature comforts as much as (if not more than) the next woman, but I've just unpacked my panniers and realised how much I liked living out of them. Next time, I'm going to take even fewer clothes.

We did just under 250 kilometres in five and a half days, mostly along the Rail Trails east of Wangaratta. The disused train lines have been ripped up and replaced with bitumen bike paths through King Valley and the Ovens River, around the wine and food paradise of Milawa, the historic goldfields town of Beechworth, and as far as Bright, base camp for Alpine skiing. Because these were train lines built by hand and horse, slopes were only mild, though I struggled very slowly up the long slow gradual climb to Beechworth on the second day, and sometimes riding west into the wind was tough, too, especially the 60 kilometres we rode yesterday from Myrtleford to Wangaratta. Joel found the wind tough, too, but he rode like a warrior-poet (sorry: please excuse Braveheart reference) the whole way.

We spent one night in an ordinary motel, a night in the family chapel of the old priory at Beechworth, two nights in an enormous and very run-down family apartment above the bar of a pub in Myrtleford, then a night in a grand "town-house" of a motel in Wangaratta.

We slept in, ate enormous breakfasts, and bought muffins, fruit, cheese and focaccias to eat on the road, and would typically arrive at the next town mid-afternoon, and sleep or read till it was time to go out for dinner. A local pub; a fancy restaurant in the old bank at Beechworth; a typical goldfields-town Chinese meal; an Italian pizza place; a motel restaurant with home-made gnocchi.

My head was filled, most of the trip, with thoughts and stories of Ned Kelly. We didn't get to Glenrowan, site of the famous last siege: I'm saving that up for a separate trip. But I did a Kelly walking tour of Beechworth, and collected lots of stories that wove in and out of my reading of Peter Carey's True History of the Kelly Gang. This was the second time I had read it, and I found it totally compelling this time.

This is my favourite Kelly story at the moment: on his voyage back from Glenrowan to Beechworth for the initial hearing before he was sent to Melbourne to be tried and hanged, he had been wounded many times in the arms and legs, and could not walk, so he was lain on a pallet and brought back by train. My walking tour paused at the corner where he would have been brought up from the station and turned past the Imperial Hotel where Aaron Sherritt's wife stood watching (Kelly, lying on his pallet, is said to have doffed his hat to the widow of the gang member-turned police informant he had killed). Apparently the dray was followed by lots of kids running and pretending to shoot at Kelly with their hands pointed like guns. And he returned fire, in similar fashion. So there are scores of people now who report their grandparents were shot at by Kelly. This seems to me such a wonderful moment of self-consciousness: Kelly performing his own theatrical last return.

More to come, and much more to read on Kelly; some photos to post, too. But for now, time to prepare for my trip to Wollongong tomorrow for a postgraduate seminar: "Early Europe in Contemporary Media: Theoretical and Methodological Approaches to Film, Television, Computer Games and Internet Studies". I'll be up at dawn for an 8.00 flight. Brr..