RAIN RAIN RAIN RAIN RAIN RAIN RAIN!

RAIN RAIN
RAIN!!!

Joy, joy, joy.

Tanks overflowing. I'm the mad bugger out there moving the hoses around the garden in the dark to put the overflow somewhere useful. And grinning the whole time.

Curmudgeon and I just got back from a wee bicycle jaunt through the countryside (Lilydale to Warburton rail trail) to celebrate our fourth anniversary.

Plusses:

1. Constant hilarity, typical example:

2. Woori Wheels at Woori Yallock.
These are the local bakery's FAR SUPERIOR version of your bog standard, fairly ordinary Wagon Wheel. They were a cult snack item at Curmudgeon's work during the fire season since colleagues visiting the Woori Yallock CFA office always returned with tales of Woori Wheels so large and rich and fabulous that you couldn't finish one by yourself. We did research. We concluded that they are difficult to finish all by yourself because your companion keeps stealing bites.

3. Tree ferns, stringybark trees, rolling hills, whispering grass meadows etc etc.

4. Peacocks and donkeys at our B&B.

5. Curmudgeon and I still are rather fond of one another after four flippin' years.


Minuses:

1. B&B was 8km uphell, oops, uphill from Warburton along a howling main road.

2. On the return train trip, the rotters at Connex decided to do maintainence and run a bus between Ringwood and Blackburn. Bikes aren't allowed on buses. So we rode it - in the hot sun, up and down hills, along Whitehorse Road megatraffic and the sick, twisted people in 4WDs who spend their weekends at Early Settler, Baby Bunting, Bed Shed and other nightmarish consumer warehouses.

3. Squid's dogsitter said she was "a handful".


GINGERNUTS - tidying up the last few crumbs.
Tasters who did not taste immediately discovered something curious - the NSW ones, which are teeth-crackingly hard straight out of the pack, rapidly soften up and go chewy. Clearly they are the most hygroscopic gingernut. I wonder why?

Un-yew-sual things have happened around here.

One is that we took the bi-yatch to the bea-yatch. Squid bounding through salt and sea and sand. Her natural habitat. And a night away where there were shallows to be splashed in and sunscreen to be smeared was rather good for us bipeds, too. We were never a beachy family growing up so anytime I get away, it feels like a special treat, like when I managed to sponge a weekend away with rich schoolfriends who had family houses at Lorne and Barwon Heads and Point Lonsdale and so forth.

The other is that we stopped at a cavernous storehouse of glorious old junk on the way back and I didn't buy a thing.

Sunstroke, perhaps?

 

Verdict's in, y'all. Testing was scientific, comprehensive, and controlled with the use of an American who had never tasted gingernuts of any kind.

	NSW / ACT	QLD	VIC / TAS	SA
Diameter	5.1cm	5.5cm	5.2cm	5.3cm
Height	0.8cm	0.6cm	0.7cm	0.8cm
Colour	Light	Dark	Medium	Medium
Sheen		Sparkly with sugar granules	Smooth, oily sheen
Texture	Dense and hard like glass. Cannot bite with incisors; a molar biscuit.	Dry, snaps easily, crumbly.	Tough	Tough
Smell	Tree: “like a vanilla wafer”	Earthy	Mild, gingery	Curgmudge: “like gingerbread”
Taste	Nice flavour, the most ‘cake-like’ of the four. Tastes of fresh ginger rather than dry.	“Like Dettol or disinfectant.”   “What it lacks in hardness it makes up in aggression.”   Strong aftertaste.	Pleasantly sharp start and buttery finish.	Mild ginger flavour, almost a minty, fresh taste. Rich, well-rounded finish.
Summary	“Playful, like a baby polar bear.”   “Should carry a warning tod ip in milk before eating.”	Odd.   A bit like Swedish ginger thins but not as good. Or as thin.	“Good second fiddle.”	“What you’d expect from a state of free settlers with a Barossa pedigree that haven’t been through the hardships,
Ranking	Third	LOSER – “a shitty biscuit”	Close second	WINNER

 

 

But we weren't the only ones. We packaged up gingernuts and sent them to three sets of other testers. Here's some additional data:

 

	Qld	Vic	SA	NSW
Color and Shape	Too thin	Pale but good shape	Perfect	Pasty
Size	Good for ginger ripplie cakes, larger and thinner	Good	Good	Fat, bad vibes
Texture	Too dry and powdery	Crunchy	Little crunchier than Vic but still good	No ginger
Smell	Good	Good	Good	Shit smell, uncooked
Hardness	Too brittle	Good	Good	Very hard but good for bush walking
Taste	Foul burnt shit	Very good	Very good	Too hard, uncooked and no ginger

 

 

Lesson One:

Always wear your bike helmet when cycling. This hole and crack would be in my skull if this protective polystyrene hadn't intercepted.

 

Lesson Two:

When you leave a visiting Californian hippy farmer to make a salad, it's more than likely he will create a peace sign from vegies harvested entirely from your garden.

Tree left yesterday. I think a jolly nice time was had by all during his visit. It's fun playing tour guide in a city you think is splendid.

 

Four years ago I was hanging out in Rio with Tree. Now he's sitting on an armchair in my living room. International visitor! Hurrah! Although as he pointed out, "I'm sitting watching the Simpsons and reading magazines. It's like I'm still in Davis, CA."

He says that Australian liquorice is the trendy confectionary of choice in the States. Odd.

Bike accident injuries recovering nicely. They are not painful but still impressive enough to engender sympathy and/or mild horror from colleagues.

ALL FOUR TYPES OF GINGERNUT ARE NOW IN MY POSESSION.

Full report any day now. I bet your cup of tea is quivering in anticipation.

 

Hey, Ma! Don't read this post! Go over there at the shiny, brightly coloured moving thing! Ooooh, see how it attracts and entrances, drawing you away from the post that will make you call me and demand I never cycle again!

I just got hit by a car. On Canning Street. CANNING STREET. Also known as the Bicycle Superhighway of Melbourne, where pushies rule and cars cower in fear at our spokey, sleek splendour.

Car turned into Canning Street without looking. I was in front of car at the time. There were two witnesses and two people who live nearby who heard, in this order, in quick succession:

a) me yell "F#@$@#$@#@#$@#$CKKKK!"
b) screeching brakes
c) a thud
d) me yell more of the above

I saw white car bonnet, then I saw road, then I saw sky. My right elbow hit tarmac and came away skin-free. I would like to thank my helmet from the bottom of my heart because as the back of my head met the ground, it shattered. My skull didn't. A state funeral for that helmet that gave its life in the line of duty.

One of the witnesses asked "are you OK?" and I yelled "NO! I'm REALLY ANGRY!" before getting up and off the road. I'm fine, really. My arm will bruise up and I'll learn how much it all hurts when the shock wears off. The ambos were gentle and lovely, people brought me water and disinfectant, the witnesses all comiserated and tried to fix my bike, the cop was kind and took me home. The driver said he was sorry but the cop told me that in his statement, he claimed I sped up out of nowhere and it wasn't his fault.

My poor old bike.

And all this because I worked so many extra hours this week that I left work early for a little op-shopping reward. Booo.

Friday night at Birrarung Marr watching Strange Fruit play the Federation Bells:

It's true!

Remember the experiment I proposed back in August? It's taken a while to get off the ground but lo, it's underway, and preliminary results are in.

The top packet is from Canberra courtesy of dedicated biscuit researcher Moggy. The bottom packet was posted from Queensland by Curmudgeon Snr.

While the QLD packet is longer and wider than the NSW/ACT version, they are the same weight. That, my science-loving friends, points to a southern propensity for greater density. There's so much more to discuss here. We haven't even considered the other two states' version, let alone opened any packets. Thrilling.

I bought Here Comes Science yesterday. Yes, They Might Be Giants, Science is Real. The Great Gingernut Experiment is just the beginning...