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| Birthday dinner for Aidie with the Coxs - sadly Dil and CC back in London Ange and Tracy the eyes-closed queens |
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| The four of us |
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| And then the next morning at 6.20am - doing the Ev station for school run for the last time ever. Three more days of class - Ange doing the other two. |
I think we are all somewhat entranced by the growing success of Bambalam - such a cool expression of Jordan's arty entrepreneurialism and energy. Action in the parking lot outside 89. Also cool because they are the last pics I took of Aiden as a teenager.
I think I'm past my sevens best, man ... the toll ... so I go for a well behaved Saturday and leave the Friday and Sunday to the party people, who in this instance include the nextgen.
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| Evan going for the Top-Gun thing, loved the smile and dodgy salute. |
The pic below needs some explaining. At some point upon arriving at the stadium, Aiden discovered, and then declared that his Jail Bird outfit had an unfortunate camel-toe appearance - and particularly risque for correctional services inhabitants. So he announces this as I've corralled them into a lineup (perpwalk?), Jordan bends forward to inspect, Mikey Schats takes his word for it, and Ev has a glance... and then the lovely laughter meltdown pic below. I think they all had a massive jol.
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| The old bullets in the box... lordy |
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| Jordan kicking back in Bambalam denim. |
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| On the way home, Jordan rescued (clearly all of us rescued) by a quick reacting retrieval of a watertight plastic bag from my rucksack (for wet cozzies)... taxi voms... pretty standard Sevens fare. |
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| Quality taxi driver, stopped at the bins for the offending package to be disposed of. |
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| The aftermath... couch-time. Evan got home 30 minutes before us, and went straight to bed. Aiden had missed the night before, entirely, and was trying to disentangle an escape. Lordy once a year is plenty. |
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| What an absolute delight - a week of people, close and missed... |
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| It was Simon's sixtieth, and part of the delightful surprise for him was having all of the Cox darlings home - the soon to be entirely UK crew returned. |
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| ... Courtney too, missing from the above |
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| And then the days that followed, launching into Thai at May's in Sai Kung |
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| Dil and Jordan with Daisy - now 91 in human years Jordan tells me. |
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| Mist blowing morning followed by a week of the same, fortunately coinciding with one of those 6am to 10pm weeks - now blow away! |
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| (This a quick update - turns out the fiddling wasn't over, took the decals off) On the 28th of Jan all the fiddling was over. It's so utterly cool, and DELIGHTFUL to ride, BlueToo. Completely analogue, zero internal routing, zero hydraulics, zero electronics; all cable mechanical, a touring weapon that can be maintained and repaired anywhere with two Allen keys and a spare cable, but which can still hold its own on dirt roads with gravel bikes, and on tar with road bikes for a weekday run. Aside from the obvious, it is all carbon, titanium, and a smattering of stainless steel, running high volume tubeless. It's completely bike-porn. Stadium level cheering. |
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| Ev helped me wrap the bars and then hopped on to check out his handiwork. |
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| I'm hoping for a circumnavigation of Taiwan in September or October, and I'm hoping he'll come along. |
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| More of the good stuff to kick the year off, morning walk with Ange in the hills... |
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| My school-mate Brendon Gass came to visit - so wonderful to see him - the god of seeing the beauty and loving life... philosopher |
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| Brendon and Aiden walking through old Sai Kung, perfect evening |
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| ...and with Aiden and Mikey Schats on the sunsetting golf course |
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| The cat got extra long, for extra pats |
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| Ange and I went to the East Capital Christmas-in-January, courtesy of Michael Hanson-Lawson; you carry your clothes, walk 10kms in, and then a hot shower overlooking Shek O golf course (where the Japanese executed prisoners during the second world war - seems inconceivable) |
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| Even the old housing estates looked proportionally more cheerful. |
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| The cat stopped by for its morning tummy rub. As Simon Oz says, it has no shame. |
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| ...and more struggles with the bike-build. This time the wheel dishing not right for the 11speed cluster; running a good centimeter left of frame centre. If you look at the top of the wheel relative to the frame stud you can see it immediately. Out with the spoke spanners, not frequently traversed waters, and no wheel building stand...deep breath. |
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| Wheel dishing sorted, but then issues with the steering tube expander bolt and over-long cable housing. Wait for a 4 inch expander bolt from Taiwan... order compressionless cable housing... wait more... next weekend. |
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| We went out for dinner to celebrate Ange's birthday at her favourite Alto in Wan Chai. |
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| Aiden and Ev together (though poor Ev had been calendar-punked by having to study for his mock exams over this whole delightful period; his first exam had been on the 8th of Jan :-/ |
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| Wonderful neighbour Paul got a new gravel bike, super-hightech and just ... well wonderful... check out the carbon leaf-spring suspension fork, lightweight and maintenance free. Carbon really is the most wonderful stuff in the bicycle zone. This one built by an Icelandic bike company called Lauf. |
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| We got a dart-board from the Priors, made a dartboard bracket (I had no idea there were such things) by taking the angle-grinder to an old electric motor mount, and had weekend days of darts in the interstices. |
