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Where we went (and an aside: Google Maps sux)

So this is where we went last month (this month). Don't mind that little gap between Renmark and Balranalad, my external battery ran out and took out the GPS with it. Stu has promised to send me the track from his radio at some point.

Moving on.

Day one was Canberra to Melbourne, just a driving day. Had the weekend in Melbourne and went out to Cape Schanck.

Then to Warrnambool for a couple of nights.

Then to Mount Gambier for four nights.

Then to Victor Harbour for two nights

Then to Kangaroo Island!! That little bottleneck of Hog Bay Road we did up and down 12 times! (six each way)

Back to the mainland, we stayed in Goolwa for two nights to explore Lake Alexandrina and surrounds

Then onto Adelaide for a week

This is all of South Australia

On the way out of Adelaide Google Maps had a brain hemorrage and sent us all around Adelaide but not out of it. We started in Glenelg and *should* have just gone up the Anzac Highway and then north. But instead it sent us around the airport (ok) but then SOUTH when we wanted to go north. It was only when we stopped for petrol near Edwardstown that it finally got the hint and realised we wanted to go north.

So this is the route we took (starting in Glenelg)

Let's not even mention how it told us to turn RIGHT (south) here in peak hour.. it took us like five minutes to do this..

Apple Maps would have sent us up the Anzac Highway and then north. No idea why Google couldn't figure this out..

But we made it.. hurrah!!

Where did we go, with stats

This should cover most of the GPS logs for our Tassie trip...

Kilometres (odometer): 5675
Kilometres (GPS): 7055.7
Steps (pedometer): 336228
Photos (Canon): 5041
Photos (G5X): 1131
Photos (iPhone): 3955
Photos (Stu's phone): dunno
Photos (Stu's camera): dunno
MOVs (G5X): 10
MOVs (iPhone): 59
PNGs (iPhone): 70
Photos (total Kaz count): 10127
Photos (total Kaz GB): 57

Been North

We've been to Queensland since my last blog entry. I'll get some posts up soon. I was going to do it tonight, but spent the *entire* evening sorting out photos (from the trip and beforehand). I couldn't geotag stuff though because Geosetter just freezes up whenever I try to do anything with it. Super frustrating.

You'd think that direct flights from Canberra to Brisbane and back would more or less be along the same line. You'd be wrong.

And I don't think I ever blogged this .. this was a holding pattern we got put in on our trip in 2012.

Truckin' Along

The other week when I came home from Sydney, I joined the Hume Highway off Picton Road and merged in behind a truck. So I sat and followed it. I wasn't in any particular hurry so just sat behind it the whole way. Well, until it pulled off to the heavy vehicle checking station at Marulan that is, then I was on my own and did a lot closer to the speed limit.

Tonight I downloaded the GPS track from that trip, and at first I was puzzled at the change of speed I did along the Hume. Until I remembered the truck.

Skiing August - Take II

During the week a cold front swept over southern Australia, bringing with it a massive dumping of snow at Perisher. So Peter decided to stay an extra day, and we headed down again yesterday.

Unfortunately the rest of Canberra decided to do the same thing.

Traffic through Jindabyne was a nightmare, and we didn't get on snow til 9:50am :(

But there was indeed a *heap* of fresh snow. In fact more than I've ever dealt with before, so I actually found it a bit tricky! Nothing like Australian snowy mountains to have completely different conditions every time I go skiing!!

I stuck with my mission to continue to try new runs and lifts for the GPS track. I did Mount P for a good chunk of the morning (too much powdery snow - hard!). Did Guthega and Bluecow in the afternoon, heading back to finish up at Smiggins - staying til last lifts on Burke at 5pm.

We stopped for pies in Jindy (it's tradition!), dumped out stuff at Cooma, and made it home around 8:30pm.

Was surprised to see the mountains coming into Jindabyne - was actually expecting clouds to be covering them

So much snow! Dainer's Gap

The crowds! Perisher was full when this was taken at 9:14am. Good thing we were planning on stopping at Smiggins anyway!

Peter and me riding Link T-bar. Probably the only lift we rode together all day!

So much snow! On Link T-bar

Pretty Valley chair

I made it back to Mount P after a several year absence

You can't really see it, but the cars are parked all the way back along the road!

Lunch - pizza pie!! and a vanilla malt milk

I love this view from Bluecow terminal

Heading over to Guthega I was following these borders, and passed a sign that said skiiers/borders left, snow vehicles right. I was following the borders to the right. Whoops. I think this was the "middle traverse" which I'd gotten onto by mistake in 2007. So when the borders headed left off the track down to the lower trail I followed them. And nearly died! Those two feet of fresh snow? They were right there. Untouched. Soft and waiting to be fallen into. Fortunately I managed to stop myself without stacking it before regaining control and just going straight ahead to the lower trail.

My pole sunk a good foot into the soft snow, and when I pulled it out it had a core sample attached

I never get tired of this view of the main ranges from Guthega

I followed the home trail at Guthega, and got to go up another lift I'd never been on - the carpark lift

Another view from the carpark lift at Guthega

It was starting to cloud over in the afternoon, so couldn't see Kosciuszko

Border jumping at Pleasant Valley

Empty - it was after 5pm after all!

And here's my GPS track of the day.

Made it to all sections of the resort this time.

25 lift/t-bar/carpet rides. Didn't bother to count the blue vs green - since a couple of the runs turned into each other. But did go to a few new places and runs that I'd never done before. The only repeats were the t-bar at Guthega, Pleasant Valley Quad, and Cook J-bar and Burke T-bar at Smiggins at the end of the day. Otherwise I basically didn't repeat anything! Gotta love that about Perisher! :)

So a pretty awesome day really :):)

Skiing July

During our team meeting on Thursday I was complaining about people who didn't respond to emails or meeting invites. Since one of the meetings was for Friday, but I still didn't have response for it, Steve said "come to the snow". So I did! Postponed the meeting til Monday (in which case I'll *still* probably have to call the guy and say "do you want any help with this project or not?").

So up at stoopid o'clock (just before 5am). Dozed in the car but didn't really sleep. Picked up gear at Cooma and had Scottish Restaurant for breakfast.

We parked at Smiggins, but still had a hike to the ticket office. Got myself sorted and was on the snow at 9am.

It was an awesome day for it. Good snow (although a little thin in places) and glorious sunny skies. In fact I had to take my beanie and eventually gloves off because it was just too hot. Queues weren't too bad in most places - only a couple that I had to wait more than a couple of minutes for (Ridge Quad and Happy Valley T).

Lunch was at Blue Cow at 12pm, and was surprisingly uncrowded (probably because most people were outside enjoying the sunshine). Left a bit after 4:30pm.

Blue Cow Terminal from Side Saddle

Main Ranges from Guthega Peak

The last time I did Norwegian Trail at Guthega was in 1999 and I didn't see the dam, presumably because of trees in the way. So was quite surprised when I saw it this time.

Riding a T-Bar in Guthega

Blue Cow Terminal from Blue Cow High Traverse

Last time I was at the snow I had the GPS with me, and recorded a pretty cool track for the day. This year I decided to cover as much of the resort as possible, and go on as many different lifts and runs as I could. I did pretty well, not repeating too much, but didn't get to Mount P. Oh well - next time!

Twenty eight lift/t-bar rides, twenty green runs, nine blue runs (although some of them were mixed up a bit). 44.6 kilometres covered on skis (includes lifts). And I didn't fall over at all. Awesome day :):)

Much better day today

Today was a much better day. Aided by the fact that I got to spend most of it documenting. We have a particularly complex application that had broken yesterday and I had no idea how it worked, so we spent a couple of hours trying to figure it out. There's documentation, but it's practically unreadable. So today I decided to learn how the application fits together by starting from scratch and redocumenting the entire dev environment. Not sure how the person who documented it originally will feel about that, but can't be helped I think. Heck even if noone else uses my doco at least now I have a much better understanding of how it works. Even if we found so many problems that we need to do a *massive* tidy up!

Tonight the sweetie cooked dinner, and then I geotagged Europe photos. I particularly liked my day in Amsterdam which included two canal rides and a bus ride (pinpoints don't include Random Camera photos).

Skiing July

24th July saw me getting up at stoopid o'clock to head down to the snow with Steve and Alan W.

It snowed pretty much the whole day, which meant for super awesome snow all day, but not great visibility, made worse by goggles that kept steaming up and had heaps of blind spots around the edges. So a little frustrating and it meant I went a lot slower than my normally slow speed.

Heading up the Interceptor Quad

Another shot from the Interceptor Quad

Snowflakes!!

Heading up the very pretty Ridge Quad. Unfortunately as I was taking these photos, I dropped a glove :( This was above Excelerator. I really didn't want to do Excelerator as it's very steep, but alas I had to retrieve it. Steve and Alan got there first and got it for me, but it was in a non-groomed bit so it was very icy and I stacked while trying to stop with them. Got a big bruise on my leg to show for it.

The ice on the trees was pretty cool. And this isn't even a lot - many other trees had heaps more ice.

From Side Saddle looking across to Blue Cow terminal. I had my other stack of the day down the bottom nearish the lift.

Looking from Blue Cow terminal across to Summit. Had lunch of a few snacks and just sat down for half an hour to recover from my morning.

More pretty snow on the trees

Looking down to Perisher resort

I don't think I've ever seen Lake Jindabyne so full!

Yesterday I had a play with the GPS track I took of the day. It was super cool! I took 17 lift rides (actually that reminds me, I need to create an account so I can look at the MyRide stats - ski passes are now all RFID and you swipe past them as you get on the lift, so you can see all your stats). I did 15 green runs (although a decent chunk of those were the very easy Pleasant Valley) and 3 blue runs. Next time I go I'm going to make much more of an effort to go on different runs and lifts all over the resort to make the GPS track look even better :)

Majura to Ainslie walk

In yet another attempt to get our step count up, and to do a walk I've wanted to do for several years, today did the Mount Majura to Mount Ainslie walk. Not that there's actually a defined trail. In fact between the mountains there's tracks criss-crossing all over the place. Definitely a two-car job (unless you really want to walk all the way back again as well!)

You can't drive very far up Majura Road before the road is blocked

Gate blocking the road up to the top of Mt Majura

They didn't have enough chains so used lots of padlocks instead

Pretty cool view of the airport, but not many planes, it being a Sunday and all

Looking toward Dickson and Black Mountain

Looking toward Belconnen

Aircraft radar at the top of Mount Majura

Obligatory spider shot for Tony ;)

It was quite crowded around Mount Majura, lots of walkers out and about

We just need to go straight over there - no need to go down first, right?

Spikey flowers

Virgin Blue 737 taking off

Now here's something you don't see every day (anymore)! There were a whole heap of them near the top of the trail on Mount Ainslie

Made it!!

Aircraft beacon on Mount Ainslie

Canberra airport from Mount Ainslie

Obligatory Black Mountain Tower photo

Canberra

Houses of Parliament, so to speak

The fountain was fountaining

Canberra Centre and part of Civic

Magpie portraits

So this was the whole trip around the mountains, showing where you have to park on the north side of Mount Majura as the red waypoint at the top.

Here's a close up of the walking part itself from the top of Mount Majura (top) and Mount Ainslie (bottom)

The GPS track of the walk itself is here if you want to look at it any closer.

8.4km, ~13000 steps, nearly three hours of walking (with lots of stops for photos).

Bendora Dam trip GPS track

I took my photoMate 887 (lite) GPS tracker along on Saturday and recorded the whole trip. Yesterday I downloaded the track and tied it to all the photos I took. It actually worked really well. I used the GPS Photo Tagger that came with the tracker (well sort of - I had to download it). It seemed to save all the GPS data, as verified by GeoSetter. Although for some reason this data didn't show up on all the pics that went up on the RiotACT today (it's there in the full details page on the Picasa album, but not on the regular photo information bar).

Results tagged “GPS”