oh catching up again!

So a fair bit has been happening here. We've done a weekend away in the Southern Highlands and stayed at the 'Artists House' in Bundanoon. Had another weekend up the coast in Somersby at Laura's farm for her bday. Giles came down to Sydney and we enjoyed a fantastic music festival (in the rain, yay for ponchos, although we were still covered in mud!) And to finish it all up, Owen and I paddled in the Hawkesbury Canoe Classic. Unfortunately we finished early due to the end of the race being cancelled due to bad weather, but it was still just under 100k. We realized a bit late that we were def in the wrong handicap catagory and that we should have started about an hour earlier! Oh well... something to remember for next time. There were some parts of the paddle that were gorgeous, still water with beautiful reflections. And then near the end... and all the rain... and wind... and high tides, ugh...! But we enjoyed it.

Canoe classic pics:

Walking down to middle harbour where Owen teaches sailing, you can't even imagine that the predictions are all for rain and storms!Our lovely boat and before the start:

Our start group, if you can see, note we are the only ones in a plastic kayak! oops! At our finishing point, lots of mud behind us!

Parklife:

Laura's Birthday:

Bunadnoon:

Biennale of Sydney and more...

As usual we haven't been taking too many pics! So here are a few from the Biennale of Sydney, a biannual international art exhibition that is located in 7 venues across Sydney. Most of you know I have been volunteering for this for the last few months, there are only two more weeks to go. Owen and I went one Friday and I took some pics, unfortunately we are not high tec because some of my favorite works are video works and I have yet to go the MCA (well inside) but plan to do so next week. So here are a few glimpses...

Kader Attia (not the best pic unfortunately! our camera doesn't like dim places- but this is a shanty town that you can walk across)

Serge Spitzer

Cai Guo-Qiang

Choi Jeong Hwa

Kate McMillan

Roxy Paine (this is outside of the MCA)

After we went Owen and I went to high tea. We took maybe 10 pics and this was the only one that wasn't fuzzy! But it was delicious, so much food (you can't see the scones and spinach puffs that we also had!

Most of the pics we have taken are from Cockatoo Island which has a unique history (convict prison, boys reformatory, navy shipyard) so here are a few glimpses of the nature of the island.

Went for a wander on our lazy Friday down to Middle Head and found some interesting ceramic tile benchs.

Also, as a part of the Biennale, they have a performance space called 'Super Deluxe' which has events every Thurs, Fri and Sat night. We went to the first one last Friday (we should have been going to many more and think we'll go again this coming week). We saw some Japanese performance artists called Contact GONZO, pretty good. Before we went Yuriko, Kyoko, Lois, Carlin, Owen and I went out for dinner.

Fall 2010

Hey there so here are another group of belated pics. We haven't been up to too much this fall and we've been even worse at taking pictures of anything! So I think I'll go backwards here... our biggest achievement this May was to complete the North Face 100k (they do this race around the world but apparently the blue mountains course is one of the hardest) and tough it was! But we were lucky to have gorgeous weather to do it in and it took Owen and I 11 hours each to complete our legs of the race.

Owen and I the night before the race with the course map (unfortunate for the reflection)

Me as the race is just about to start (very casual start and I made sure I was near the end!)

Owen and I at the finish line... almost 24 hours after we got started...

A few weeks before this we went up to visit Giles and Jill in Brisbane. We went to the Caxton Seafood and Wine Festival (it was really just a street party...) and got to hear two bands, this is Urthboy (Aussie hip hop)

Then the next day we went to the Creamfields music festival which was good fun

Summer months catch up

Seeing as how it's already the second month of fall I should probably put up some pics of the summer! We haven't taken a ton of pics this year but here are a few...

Australia Day celebrations down at the Spit- It was a gorgeous day, went swimming, had a ton of food, and then of course ended up at northside office (the sailing club that our mate tim owns). Early on in the day Jen and Abby were skillfully cutting our aussie water tattoos with a bread knife.

Laura and I

Owen enjoying a VB

Houseboating weekend with the sailing boys, we had a ton of rain and had a nice afternoon swimming in it!

Got to have a new picture of Owen's parents westie, Bruce- he is def the runt of the group and his ears don't stay up as they should but he is a cutie.

Had a mini practice in the Blue Mountains the other day for our 100k (for anyone who doesn't know Owen and I crazily signed up for a 100k trail run in May- we are however, smart enough at least to do it as a team so about 50k each....) We had rain all this hike as well but got a few pictures out of it- The lovely green one is from down in Leura forest and seeing as how I've been there loads of times but haven't actually taken any pics, I took the touristy pics of the Three Sisters.