ThoughI’d probably much prefer to be getting ready to follow the Tour Down Under, it would seem rather a waste of precious electricity to download the iPhone app and spend time checking if Tyler Farrar has gotten off the plane yet. I’m reserving my precious “power bars” for checking the Energex website to see if I have electricity back on in Brisbane yet.
Not that I’m doing it tough. After the power went off for a few days and then did my neighbours, I decided it was best to get the hell out of dodge for a day or two. Not that the people standing about looking at the awesome power of the water weren’t helping, but potentially one less lollygagger the better. Assessing my options, and considering I don’t really know anyone in Brisbane well enough that I could lob on their doorstop for several days bemoaning that my cookies and cream ice cream had melted, I headed to Byron Bay, where I do have people who allow this sort of wasteful lamenting and are Catholic enough to appreciate survivor guilt. We made some donations, supported a few friend’s efforts, and I even tried to think of something uplifting and non-doom related to contribute as a complement to Mel (from Sunrise) and her terrible earnest conviction that we would all pull together in this hour of need.
But now it’s back to it. My office is working on interim arrangements and, although the beloved bike path I would ride to work was totally submerged, there’s hope that things might right themselves in some interim fashion in some interim amount of time. In the mean time, it seems half of the country is preparing for similar and it’s all going to be rather difficult as nature asserts its genuine dominance over its inhabitants. I’ve got orders for fresh food from several and gumboots from couple more and, after I’ve toured the Gold Coast’s available hardware stores, I’ll spend some time delivering them to various co-workers.
It’s hardly hard yakka.
So I won’t crap about it like it is, just say, thanks to all who are out there contributing in whatever way they can.
To some extents, I guess it’s also been a time for clearing the emotional decks as everyone reassesses a little what is important when confronted with something imminently more so.
I won’t harp on about that here, either. Suffice to say, there were times for me when mud was a more pleasant affair. Like at Cyclocross. Though some pretty folks liked to keep well out of it. I lauded their commitment to clean then, and laud it again now.
Here’s hoping it’s not long until Brisbane’s cycling paths are feeling clean again too. In the long list of damaged infrastructure, I’m pretty sure there’ll be some rather depressing updates about the River Loop. Bugger.
eleanor j jackson 