Clothes Labelling

Much to Hannah's amusement/bafflement, I decided to label my clothes before we head off. My reasoning is that given we'll be washing & drying them along with a dozen other people with similar hiking clothes, it'll probably help avoid someone accidentally grabbing some of mine.

I've learned a good lesson in the process:

Never label your clothes at night while watching a movie after a glass or two of wine.

It leads to labelling your name on the outside of some of your clothes.

And where are you from?

I bought us some passport holders that could be described as kitsch Australiana, but not quite Ken Done. They were $18 each from a shop in Port Melbourne and they made me smile. My eyes went glazy upon sight of them, as I floated off into an imagined future where I was a ghostly form passing through international airports, clutching my red kangaroo.

P.S. Please don't use my passport details for evil.

Bushfire Season (cont)

I don't think there's anyone in Australia that doesn't know what's happened over the last few days. But for the non-Aussies, we've just had the worst bushfires in Australian history. There's no need for me to describe it any further: Google has thousands of articles here, here's the Wikipedia page, and here's a collection of photos.

We're not directly affected by the bushfires, but here's a few ways that make me realise that it's a small world:

• Two weekends ago we were hiking in Bunyip State Park (see here). In the next weekend or two we were planning on hiking around Marysville. Obviously we won't be heading out that way again anytime soon.
• My sister's fiancee is working with emergency services out there, and he said the media are only seeing the tip of the iceberg. The reality in these towns is horrific.
• We live 300 meters from the Alfred Hospital where they're bringing most of the burns patients, and we've heard a few of the helicopters bringing new patients in over the last few days.
• My Dad and his mates often ride their motorbikes through some of the areas that have now been burnt out.

In terms of how people can help, here's a few possible ways:

• Red Cross's Victorian Bushfire Appeal 2009
• Red Cross Blood Donation
• The Salvation Army’s Victorian Bushfire Appeal
  
• Wildlife Victoria Bushfire Appeal
• RSPCA Victoria Bushfire Appeal
• Coles to donate Friday 13th Feb's profits to Victorian Bushfire Appeal Fund

Bushfire season

It's bushfire season in Victoria. A week or two back the forecast was for the hottest week in 100 years, and we've just had our second driest January on record.

It was only a fortnight ago that we went hiking in Bunyip State Park, and this park is currently on fire. Articles here and here. It's a beautiful part of the world, so I hope it recovers quickly.

Park rangers are recommending that people stay out of the state/national parks at the moment, so we'll switch to doing our longer walks around local parks & rivers in the 'burbs.

Offtopic: I always imagine park rangers as looking like Aragorn, carrying a sword, wearing a hooded cloak and having a fashionable amount of stubble, but I've always been proven wrong when I see them.

Wee and me

So. Let's get it out there straight away. Urination. This post is about urination. Not in general and not conceptually - me, very personally, and my urination. Look away if you'd like to. I'll try to make my next post low on squeamishness.

When it comes to wee, boys have a level of physical freedom that us girls have simply had to come to terms with. It's not that we want to be boys; it's just a natural yearning to be unencumbered, devil-may-care; to roam long and far in any earthly direction without having that little bean of an idea tucked away in the back of your mind. You know the one. It's thinking, "I'm going to have to go to the bathroom at some point...and that means my pants at my ankles and my bare bot a few centimeters from a melee of animals, rotting plants and dung.

A couple weeks ago I became reacquainted with a thing called the WhizBiz. I'd heard of this some years ago, pre-Camino, when it was being marketed as a solution to really long toilet queues at music festivals. It's a ladies' wee aid, a device that allows a woman to wee whilst standing. It looks kind of like a specially adapted funnel:


It's hydrophobic, meaning liquid does not like being on it. It's antibacterial, meaning it is not an inviting place for bacteria to stay and breed. It's good to give it a rinse after use, but it's not necessary after every use. Just give it a flick and pop it in a ziploc bag.

This morning, I took my first real wee standing up. It didn't run down my legs. The lily (the wide mouth) didn't overflow. It felt perfectly comfortable. And the thought of free peeing was deeply, inexplicably exhilirating.

The Way: Camino De Santiago

There's a documentary video we've found really handy over the last few months called The Way: Camino Do Santiago. It's by a Victorian guy called Mark Shea, and it's a great insight into what to expect. He did it by himself, so it's a much more realistic insight than some of the travel documentaries where you know the presenter had a full support crew to carry their gear and bail them out of trouble.

There's a few reasons I found it so handy.

I think the Camino is a difficult thing to explain to people verbally. Saying "We're walking 800kms in about 5 weeks across Spain" just doesn't seem to do it justice. Showing Mark's video to family & friends has given everyone a better understanding of what we're undertaking and the physical & mental scale of it. It's interesting watching the evolution of the documentary as time goes by, especially seeing him become more comfortable in front of the camera.

From the point of view of someone about to walk the Camino, it was also handy from a practical point of view. Seeing what happens to someone's knees & ankles when they realise they've brought way too much gear has made us very weight concious (Mark had a 10kg pack plus 8kg of camera gear... the recommended total weight is 10kg). It also gave us an idea of what to expect in terms of people, walking terrain and sleeping accommodation.

I'll stop here incase this starts sounding like an advert. :-)

Here's the link to the video with a few short preview clips:

http://www.overlander.tv/camino/

And an interview with the filmmaker is here.

Rocket Man

Well, it's official. We now look like rocketmen.

During the last trip we discovered that we couldn't attach the walking poles to the backpacks without needing to assist each other -- the attachment points were right in the middle of the back. The guys at Backpacking Light (the place we've bought 90% of our gear) told us about quivers that could be attached to either side of our packs. With the poles stashed away, we both now look like Rocketman (or Rocketpeople to be PC).

We headed out to Bunyip State Park on Saturday, carrying the full packs (~10kg each). Here's the approximate route we walked. Once again we had a few map issues. We took the map from Parks Victoria, but found that it was no longer accurate (some trails closed long ago for revegetation, some tracks renamed, etc). The Parks Victoria map bears little resemblance to the GoogleMaps equivalent. Meh, it's all part of the adventure. :-)

A few highlights: meeting Enid Echidna; climbing over a massive fallen tree; walking for hours without seeing anyone (seems to be a common theme on the tracks we're taking); guessing how out of date & inaccurate the map was; waking at 4am to rub Tigerbalm into our knees.

Yesterday we headed out for a few hours of relaxed riding with Hong & Vy. It was good to get back on the bikes again, especially since we spent more time eating icecream than we did peddling.