March (keeping up...)

Now that we've officially decided to postpone the trek, I'll have to be really careful the little training I was doing doesn't fall by the wayside. I know me - give me an excuse (doesn't have to be a good one - any excuse will do), and I'll use it and abuse it until the cows come home (and not having cows myself, nor ever intending such bovine ownership, this means forever).

So I am determined to keep up the Sunday treks at least. Mostly we do the 1000 steps (with the fire-track thrown in every now and again), and I'm actually starting to recognise people who are also there at the same time each week. There's the posse of good-looking young guys who talk rather loudly and take up more space than they should, and the ultra-fit middle-aged woman who can run up the steps without breaking stride, and the youngish bloke with the rotund belly who breathes so heavily that your skin sort of crawls when he comes up behind, and the 82-year old who, with her grand-daughter, slowly but surely climbs the steps each week. She, in particular, gives me inspiration. Because I'll be buggered if I let an octogenarian show me up. Not just yet anyway.

March (Breaking news!)

It's official! Kokoda 2009, formerly known as Kokoda 2010, is now to be known (once again) as Kokoda 2010! That's right, we have unanimously (well, almost) decided to postpone the trek until mid next year, probably July-ish. It seems I wasn't the only one with issues - Lyn also needs an operation and would have been running it pretty close, while Maria was having second thoughts about the whole leaving a baby-under-one-year thing (even apart from the logistics of long-distance breast-feeding), and Cathri was rather pleased to gain an extra ten months training time. Unfortunately Lorraine was pretty devastated - but that's mainly because she was actually training with another Kokoda-bound group a few years ago and they all ended up pulling out. So I'm guessing she's concerned it's going to happen again. But it's not! We are Kokoda 2010 and, in exactly sixteen months, we will be wading through mud and fording rivers and scaling cliffs while sweating through horrendous humidity and wearing the same clothes for days on end. Can't wait!

March (decisions)

Well, I've been mulling things over since the last post (while waiting for a miracle, like the sudden onset of advanced healing powers or something), and have finally decided to email all my fellow trekkers and lay the injury/operation situation before them. The way I see it, we have several options:

1. They go without me.

2. We postpone the whole thing till next year, or

3. We continue with preparations, pay our deposits etc - and just hope for the best (like the sudden onset of advanced healing powers or something).

So as soon as I finish here I shall compose a suitably abject yet stoic email and sit back to wait for the response. Although I use the term 'sit back' rather euphemistically, because the act of sitting, especially back, is one of those little luxuries that I used to take for granted but no longer have time for. On top of everything else, I've got my youngest daughter's 14th birthday party this Saturday - and it'll be her first 'proper' mixed party since she became a teenager (i.e. last year). And apparently the pressure is on her (i.e. me) to ensure everything is absolutely perfect, the food is plentiful, everyone has a riproaring time, and not a single child looks even momentarily bored. Unfortunately the forecast is for non-stop torrential rain all weekend - and apparently also, somehow that's my fault.

March (a minor setback)

Being the stoic type, I haven't much mentioned my ongoing injury (torn cartilege) and how that's been affecting training etc. One of the reasons for this is, to be honest, that the effect has been minimal. Just a slight twinge every so often and the handy ability to use the injury as an excellent excuse whenever anybody (usually fitter than I) suggests doing that little bit extra. But now it seems the whole cartilege thing is about to rear its ugly head (how's that for an unattractive image?).

See, the problem is that I was pinning my hopes on the specialist I saw back in January being able to get me an appointment with a surgeon within a specific timeframe. Silly me. What I've ended up with are two appointments (with two different surgeons and at two different hospitals - confused? Me too), neither of which are going to give me enough time to undergo surgery and then recover. Not enough anyway for a somewhat gruelling September hike that involves hills and dales and the occasional cliff face. Bugger.

March (fitness creeps up...)

Well, I'm pleased (in fact, borderline ecstatic) to announce that I'm finally starting to get somewhat fit! I did the 1000 steps this morning and only had to pause five times on the way up, which is a considerable improvement on my standard ten or so. Another way to test our collective rise in fitness levels has been Cathri's face which, a few months ago, used to become a rather alarming fleshy-puce colour but now merely gains a pinkish hue no matter what. Even when she slipped down some rocks last week and landed smack on one particularly jagged protuberance, the colour of her face remained simply flushed (probably for good reason), rather than luridly liverish. This is good not only for Cathri personally (more attractive for starters), but for the rest of us who can now wear red or burgundy etc without fear of violent colour clashing.
However the most amusing thing to happen on that particular hike (up the dreaded firetrack), was when Leanne looked back down at our almost perpendicular ascent and declared herself as having an attack of libido (she meant vertigo). This quite understandably left the rest of us momentarily speechless. I mean, should anybody enjoy rock climbing that much? And, if so, what the hell would they be like on the rugged terrain of Kokoda? Hmm...

February (fires)

We are in shock. The devastation and loss of life is just overwhelming. Yesterday I stood outside work and watched a convoy of little fire-trucks, one after another - heaps of them - heading up the highway towards Yarra Glen under police escort. I didn't know whether to clap or cry.

Saturday was the hottest day we've ever had in Victoria - 46.4 degrees. The heat was so dense it took your breath away, and it felt aggressive, malevolent. As if it was just biding its time, waiting for a sign. Then in the afternoon it flared - fires dotted around the state, some natural, some the work of arsonists whose motivation is beyond me. The fire here at Ferntree Gully was relatively minor, just enough to give us all a scare and turn the sky putrid for the evening. But Gippsland and Beechworth and Horsham and Marysville and Wandong and poor bloody Kinglake, who, after the wind change, had the inferno scream up the hill in two minutes flat - they burnt, and burnt. Streets where every single person who stayed to fight was killed. Burnt out cars that were now coffins, run off the road as people tried to escape. Acre after acre of skeletal trees and roasted earth. Tractors that have literally melted into molten rivulets embedded within the dirt. Lonely chimneys standing guard over twisted roofing and crumbled brick. Entire towns wiped off the map.

The death toll rises all the time. We gasped when it was 14, but now, as it climbs past 180, we're simply numb. Too many to contemplate. Until you see the faces in the newspaper. Whole families, smiling couples, children grinning shyly at the lens, teenagers with skin like milk, men of 80 who have been through many fires but nothing like this. And now, never again.

I've given blood, and books for care packages (well done Yvette), and donated to the appeal - but it's still frustrating because it's hard to know what else to do. Except send my heartfelt thoughts to everyone affected by these dreadful fires and let you all know that the rest of us mightn't be there, because we know we'd just get in the way, but nevertheless we're still with you. You're not alone.

February (already!)

I can't believe it's already February. I mean, I still have our Christmas lights up around the decking! But I think I might leave them there this year and just change their name to 'decking lights', then it becomes a matter of ambience/decor and not indolence/sloth. Not that there's been a whole lot of the latter lately (certainly not as much as I prefer), because what with recovery from the heatwave, as well as last minute school requirements and my new job etc plus the fact that my latest book just hit the shelves (which requires an investment of time publicity-wise), there hasn't even been time to scratch. Which, incidentally, was somewhat necessary last week because the dog had fleas.

We did, however, find the time to go for our first training hike with our trekking company (this is the training we've been training for!). Now, to be honest, I was really worried about this hike, and I know Cathri was too, because it sounded pretty full-on. But here's where the heatwave came in handy - they changed it from a seven hour up-and-down-dale marathon to a two hour up the side of a mountain one. In comparison the latter seemed a pretty good trade, even with a 6.30am start time. And I figured if it all got too much, I could just jump. But much to my surprise (seriously, I was stunned), I had an absolute ball. I don't think I've clambered since I was a kid, and that's exactly what we had to do. Up the fire-track on the side of Mount Dandenong, climbing over rocks and hanging on to trees to keep balance. And the view from the top was stupendous! A panarama of Melbourne in the morning. Can't wait to do it again.