Checksum Arcanius

Well, I am back from my trip to Australia and New Zealand. First, I need to thank my parents, who made this trip possible for me. For many years, I have wanted to visit Australia, and as that dream moves towards reality this year, I realized that New Zealand is also a very worthwhile destination. Based on the writings of others, I decided that two weeks in Australia and three weeks in New Zealand would be the right mixture of time for this trip. The only part where I was wrong is that both countries could really use a lot more time.

Australia is an enormous country. It is the modern version of the US West during settlement times — everything is so spread out, and there is plenty of space to spread out in. We spent our two weeks (actually 11 days due to the flight time and the international date line) in three areas: Canberra, the Australian federal capital city, Sydney, the largest and best-known city in Australia, and Port Douglas, the town closest to the Great Barrier Reef, just north of Cairns (pronounced “Canes” or “Cans”). The sporadic twitter messages I was able to send throughout the trip are a pretty good timeline of the trip, but I will probably post a more detailed itinerary in the next few days.

Also forthcoming will be a selection of the best pictures from the trip. Preparing these will be quite the task, as I have over 30 GB of pictures from my two camera from my summer travels (both Peru and Australia/New Zealand). I’m not sure if I’ll finish this before I leave for California, but I should certainly be able to finish before I start at Facebook on the 14th.

Regardless of the details, this summer was the best vacation I have ever had, and this trip was the crown jewel of the summer. Both Australia and New Zealand are countries that I want to visit again. Among many other things, New Zealand looks to offer excellent summer skiing (from our northern perspective) and a large variety of high adrenalin activities, while Australia is a country still full of places and mysteries that I would like to discover.

Can anything really be this awesome?

The Sydney Opera House is visible under the Sydney Harbour Bridge in the early morning

The Sydney Opera House at night… from my hotel room!

Below are side-by-side results from this year and last year. Without the same amount of training or the wetsuit, I didn’t do very well on the swim this year — definitely this is the first place for me to improve in the future. However, I did better everywhere else, even with a bike computer that wasn’t working.

The lower bike transition time is due to no wetsuit, but the swim was still clearly a net loss this year by about a minute and a half. I had a few lapses of concentration on the bike, but none too long. Overall I kept my pace up pretty well, passing often, despite not knowing how fast I was going. This year my average speed on the bike was 19.08 mph, compared to 18.40 last year.

The biggest win for me, however, was on the run. I guess the altitude training of Peru paid off, as well as a slightly different strategy. This year, I was able to push through the initial pain better because I knew it would subside. I also walked on the steepest part of the hill (last year I told myself I would not walk, so I continued to run up the hill even though people who were walking were going the same speed as me). This gave myself a little bit of time to recharge while not wasting the spring of my step on the steep part of the hill. I think the strategy paid off overall — the time certainly indicates this.

Overall, I am quite happy with this result. My goal was to beat my old time, which I was able to do, and with some more pool time leading up to next year’s Triathlon, I should be able to improve on this year’s result next year as well.

My friend Theo recently got a ticket for riding his bike in Seattle without a helmet. Another friend, Christine, recently wondered if she could ride her bike around Greenlake without a helmet. I knew that legally, the answer was no, but I didn’t really know exactly how it was illegal — ie, which level of our government is screwing us over in this case, and how it came to be. So I did some research. It ended up being a lot more difficult than it should have been to figure out,but here’s how it became illegal to ride a bike without a helmet:

Part 1: The King County Board of Health enacts Title 9, regarding Bicycle Helmets. The text of title 9 can be found on the Board of Health’s regulations page.

Part 2: The City of Seattle Council votes 9-0 to extend Title 9 to cover Seattle

So, despite the fact that I’ve been passed by numerous Seattle cops while riding without a helmet, ticketed by a UW cop for “running a stop sign” while not wearing a helmet (and he didn’t even mention the fact), and even told by a Seattle Police Officer that “the helmet law is not enforced in Seattle,” it apparently sometimes is, when it suits the officer’s whim, just like the rest of the laws that can be used to arbitrarily screw over anyone at anytime, if you dare cross the gargantuan police state government.

Recently read:

IGN: Will we see any new material from Fort Minor?

Shinoda: I’m putting all my Fort Minor energy into the new Linkin Park album. You never know which tracks will make the final cut, but hopefully there will be more rapping, and some big beats on the new LP record!

Thank goodness — no more of this bland Minutes to Midnight nonsense!

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We hope you have a wonderful stay in Australia.

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