• Daily Life - Strine Sports

    Calamity Free Ride!

    January 30, 2023

    After several days featuring a series of stumbles, fumbles, bumps and bruises, it was fantastic to finally have an early morning ride that went without a calamity. Sort of. Riding La Cangura much slower and more cautiously than usual, the morning ride went without a hitch. There were many fears that the guy I crashed into on Friday would hit me up for damages caused in the crash. I think our paths crossed, but no words were exchanged (and no trouble occurred). Of course, it’s still early in the day, so there’s plenty of time left over for it to…

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    Costly Bloody Crash!

    January 29, 2023

    Kangaeroo’s accident this week continued to have reverberations. Although both Kangaeroo and the bloke he collided with rode away apparently unharmed from their predawn collision, costs have since mounted. The crash gave greater urgency to updating the chain and gear sprocket on La Cangura, which had been showing signs of wear for a while, and there was also a sneaking suspicion that the gear wire could probably do with replacing. That proved to be precisely the case with a visit to the Y’s Road bike store later in the day. The good news was the sprocket and cassette are still…

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    Ouch! Taking a Tamagawa Tumble

    January 27, 2023

    「Ouch!」 「バカヤロー!」 「ごめんなさい。」 「日本は左通行だよ。バカヤロー！何考えてんかよ？バカヤロー！」 Kangaeroo took a Tama River tumble today and it was entirely his fault. Taking his normal pre-dawn ride along the Tama River Cycling Road, Kangaeroo caught a glimpse of an oncoming runner just late enough to be able to swerve away from her and avoid striking her…. ….only to slam straight into another cyclist coming from the opposite direction. The immediate aftermath was the aforementioned conversation. It seemed like the other bloke and his bike were OK. We rode off in opposite directions. La Cangura is scratched and her wheels wobbly. The Wahoo mount destroyed beyond…

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    It’s All Happening Here!

    January 25, 2023

    Pushed for time and all other sorts of resources, Kangaeroo was surprised to note this morning that it had been almost 10 days since the last post on the site. So much has been going on, some of it pretty crucial, that time slipped away. To borrow a turn of phrase made popular by one-time Australian cricket captain and commentator (and fellow Victorian) Bill Lawry, it’s all happening here. I guess it’s best to go forward by category. Among Kangaeroo’s interests over the past year has been the Aussie garden. A crucial part of that garden is the lawn, traditionally…

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    Cold, Wet and Dark

    January 16, 2023

    Doesn’t get any more archetypically Monday than today….cold, wet, dark and bleak. Kangaeroo wasn’t too keen on getting out on the bike with a huge day ahead. But it was precisely because the day promises to be demanding that dragged him out in the end. Rain had been forecast, but the prediction was that it would be intermittent and not heavy. That was exactly what happened. Rather than hit the dark bike path where many people dress in black and are hard to see at the clearest of times, Kangaeroo decided to stay on the main roads, which were hard…

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    Grass is Greener….Here, And Not On the Other Side!

    January 15, 2023

    Kangaeroo Corner’s garden is about to enter its second spring, and is currently going through its first winter. And its grass is greener than could ever be imagined…literally! Although Kangaeroo comes from a family of avid gardeners, he had never really had a chance to do much gardening. Only an unfortunate attempt at a balcony garden during penthouse living at the turn of the century had afforded itself, with less than promising results that were later to dwindle away to nothing. Until Kangaeroo Corner came into being, and with it a garden. It was an ounce of luck, actually, as…

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    Getting Off to a Good Start

    January 9, 2023

    So far, the winter of 2022-3 has been fairly kind to Tokyo. Unlike 2022, when the early days of January saw snow and generally gloomy weather, this year has been warm and sunny on the whole. Kangaeroo got on the bike early today and headed downtown to meet some mates near Tokyo Tower. It’s Coming of Age Day in Japan, a national holiday, and the first when legal adulthood in Japan is designated as 18 years of age instead of 20, as it had been up until this year. The holiday is also one of those made flexible a few…

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    Koala-ified for Anything

    January 8, 2023

    Tokyo is a city full of surprises. And that is the least surprising aspect of the world’s largest city. Kangaeroo got a pleasant surprise yesterday while pottering through the backstreets of Shinjuku, one of the Japanese capital’s many sub-capitals. For some reason, Lord alone knows why, there was a statue of a koala and her joey in a pocket-stamp sized park in Shinjuku. Japan had something of a mini-love affair with koalas in the mid-1980s when Australia successfully sold itself as a tourist destination to more gullible markets and then got greedy with price gouging to compliment the traditionally abysmal…

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    Nature’s Double Delight and Not a Skerrick of Proof

    January 6, 2023

    Nature turned on a absolutely glorious morning – albeit a freezing one. There was a huge moonset in one direction and a delightful sunrise simultaneously in the opposite direction. Unfortunately, the only camera Kangaeroo was carrying was on a smartphone. This rarely takes decent pics at the best of times, let alone trying to get a lunar shot, which is challenging at the best of times with the most sophisticated equipment. Then, blessed with a delightfully colorful sunrise and otherworldly cloud pattern on the return journey, positioning and timing rendered photographic evidence impossible. Kangaeroo was not in a good spot…

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