Friday, 24 October 2014

I didn't realise how jam packed today was until we sat down at dinner time and recounted what we'd done today.

I started the day pretty early, because Anshu had to be up for an early flight. I pottered around at home cleaning up a bit until Sarah dropped Zoe off.

After Zoe had watched a bit of TV, I thought we'd try some bottle rocket launching for Science Friday. I'd impulse purchased an AquaPod at Jaycar last year, and haven't gotten around to using it yet.

We wandered down to Hawthorne Park with the AquaPod, an empty 2 litre Sprite bottle, the bicycle pump and a funnel.

My one complaint with the AquaPod would have to be that the feet are too smooth. If you don't tug the string strongly enough you end up just dragging the whole thing across the ground, which isn't really what you want to be doing. Once Zoe figured out how to yank the string the right way, we were all good.

We launched the bottle a few times, but I didn't want to waste a huge amount of water, so we stopped after about half a dozen launches. Zoe wanted to have a play in the playground, so we wandered over to that side of the park for a bit.

It was getting close to time for TumbleTastics, and we needed to go via home to get changed, so we started the longish walk back home. It was slow going in the mid-morning heat and no scooter, but we got there eventually. We had another mad rush to get to TumbleTastics on time, and miraculously managed to make it there just as they were calling her name.

Lachlan wasn't there today, and I was feeling lazy, and Zoe was keen for a milkshake, so we dropped into Ooniverse on the way home. Zoe had a great old time playing with everything there.

After we got home again, we biked down to the Bulimba post office to collect some mail, and then biked over for a haircut.

After our haircuts, Zoe wanted to play in Hardcastle Park, so we biked over there for a bit. I'd been wanting to go and check out the newly opened Riverwalk and try taking the bike and trailer on a CityCat. A CityCat just happened to be arriving when we got to the park, but Zoe wasn't initially up for it. As luck would have it, she changed her mind as the CityCat docked, but it was too late to try and get on that one. We got on the next one instead.

I wasn't sure how the bike and the trailer were going to work out on the CityCat, but it worked out pretty well going from Hawthorne to New Farm Park. We boarded at Hawthorne from the front left hand side, and disembarked at New Farm Park from the front right hand side, so I basically just rolled the bike on and off again, without needing to worry about turning it around. It was a bit tight cornering from the pontoon to the gangway, but the deckhand helped me manoeuvre the trailer.

It was quite a nice little ride through the back streets of New Farm to get to the start of the Riverwalk, and we had a nice quick ride into the city. We biked all the way along the riverside through to the Old Botanic Gardens. We stopped for a little play in the playground that Zoe had played in the other weekend when we were wandering around for Brisbane Open House, and then continued through the gardens, over the Goodwill Bridge, and the bottom of the Kangaroo Point cliffs.

We wound our way back home through Dockside, and Mowbray Park and along the bikeway alongside Wynnum Road. It was a pretty huge ride, and I'm excited that it's opened up an easy way to access Southbank by bicycle. I'm looking forward to some bigger forays in the near future.