I wanted to have a fun ride this morning, but didn’t want to do anything too hardcore because I like my friends, and don’t want to scare them off. After some poring over Google Maps (I do that a lot), I came up with a compromise that was mostly off-road, had a couple of good hills, and got us back home within two hours.

And we all survived to ride again!

I’m amazed at Glen’s quick eyes. We’d only just got off the bikes at this river crossing and he spotted a 30cm (1 foot) catfish swimming around in the mirky water.

It had a few skin marks which Glen reckons might have been from being swept over the dam wall in recent flooding.

Well spotted!

This causeway had a nasty 50cm drop at one end, which is ok for hardcore riders, but not much for everyone else.

We found a few stray rocks and put them near the drop to make it easier to traverse.

I think Harrison was a bit skeptical at my handiwork. Although you can’t see it, he did finally manage to ride over it.

All up 22km in 1 hour 45 minutes, 300m total climbing, 1500 calories.

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First we rode along Browns Creek Road where my bike sunk in muddy water up to my axels and my feet got soaked. I’ve got into the habit of taking spare socks with me now, so the water isn’t so much of a hassle.

We came back along Smith’s Road and decided to detour down Dunlop Lane which appears to run through a horse riding ranch.

And finally we crossed the main road and ventured along some SEQ Water tracks near Lake Samsonvale, coming out at the McGavin View picnic area.

All up about 55km of MTB goodness, most of it off-road.

Young eucalypts close to the shoreline of Lake Samsonvale have been flooded by recent welcome rain….

An angry looking Brahman Bull looks at us as he protects his “girls”….

Me, my bike, and the Glasshouse Mountains….

Simon and his new bike….

Look carefully and you can see Moreton Island in the distance….

If you look carefully you can see some sailboats on the lake….

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Twenty-nine years ago this month I finished year twelve at Oxley State High School.

The photos above are like book-ends for that year. The one on the left is at senior camp, end of year eleven, just before we embarked on our final year. The photo on the right is after the last day of school when one of our mates, William, was very sad to be leaving town to fly to Adelaide, so we all went to the airport to say goodbye.

The last few weeks of that year are a blur – exams, parties, excitement, thinking about uni, and planning to always keep in touch with my school mates. Collectively we thought we were the best bunch that had ever come through Oxley State High, and we were going to make sure we didn’t forget each other.

I had a calendar on the wall where I used to cross off the days until it was over. To my surprise, the last day came much quicker than I anticipated, and now, almost thirty years later I realize that the time has flown and now my own kids are doing what I did.

If my Dad had given me advice then, I wouldn’t have listened to it. So I’m not going to offer you any advice now. But I do hope you remember how brutally fast our life can fly by. We get caught up in so many things, and before we know it, the magical times of our late teens and early twenties are gone. And I also hope you remember good friends.

There are two good friends from 1978 that mean a lot to me. Greg, who is with me in both these photos. is still my friend. He still has the love for life and the easy laid-back attitude that he did in his late teens. He’s a great guy to spend time with.

And then there’s my best friend from 1978, who I’m married to now. In year twelve I couldn’t beleive how lucky I was to be with Liz. And today, I still can’t beleive how lucky I am.

Enjoy this special time, Jonathan.

I hope the time passes slowly enough for you to savour it.

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A postcard from friend Rachel who’s currently touring around Australia.

Rachel says at this time of year south-western Australia is warm during the day but still nice and cool at night. Ideal spring weather.

The Margaret River region of WA is one of Australia’s premier wine-making districts. It also has some fantastic beaches, and some significant sites of Early European settlement.

It is thought that Margaret River is named after Margaret Wyche, who was a cousin of the founder of nearby Busselton, John Garrett Bussel.

A postcard from friend Rachel who’s currently touring around Australia.

This has to be one of the longest wooden jetties in the world. In fact it IS the longest wooden jetty in the Southern Hemisphere – so long that you need to catch a train to get to the end of it.

Busselton is a town in the south west region of Western Australia with a population of about 20,000.

A postcard from friend Rachel who’s currently touring around Australia.

She’s currently worried about a leak in the van she’s driving, and doesn’t know where to look to fix it.

Pay someone else, Rach!

The French Vessel Naturaliste visited this cape in 1801. It was visited earlier by the Dutch vessel Leeuwin in 1627, but there are no records which remain today.

La Naturaliste, the ship, under Captain Hamelin was part of a French expedition led by Nicholas Baudin which explored Australian waters around 1801. She was a bomb-corvette which Baudin sent back to France in 1801 with numerous Australian natural specimens.

The headland itself is at the western edge of Geographe Bay, in the south-western region of Western Australia.

She has promised to send us postcards of her journey, and I’ve promised to scan them and put them on a map for her so she has a record of where she has been.

Here’s the first few postcards which arrived recently, as well as a map showing where they’re from.

Safe journey, Rach!

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Pauli, a tall dark strange englishman in a military kilt, helped us celebrate Australia Day today.

We met this joyous riot of a man while we were having a few Coronas and a light meal at Scarborough.

In a few weeks, we might forget what we ate, but we won’t ever forget our serendipitous meeting Paul and the laughter he shared with us.

Thanks for the fun, Paul. You make the world a better place.

I finally managed to track Bob down the other day.

He was surprised to hear from me after such a long time, and came round for a while on Saturday afternoon.

It was strange looking at him for the first time in 33 years. Age has changed us both, but I could tell it was still the same old Bob I knew in the 70’s.

We reminisced about our school days. I’d completely forgotten that we both went to our first rock & roll concert together in 1975: Skyhooks at Festival Hall in Brisbane. He also came to my 13th birthday party that year and still remembers kissing Leslie Hillhouse when we played spin the bottle.

I got onto Google Maps and showed Bob some of the streets in the town where he lived before his family migrated to Australia. I’m hoping he’ll bite the bullet and go back there one day soon. When we were kids, he always said he’d do it, but he never did.

Bob has taught me that friends can change your life. Not through heroics. Just by being friends.

So when you look at it like that, friends are very important.