The best laid (snicker) plans...

... can certainly go awry.

No, that doesn't mean the trip sucked. In fact, it was AWESOME! We found quite a few places down on the Fleurieu we didn't know existed, and saw some we knew existed butt hadn't been to yet.

Here's a teaser pic of Around The Fleurieu (ATF) --multipart blog post series thingy coming soon to a blog near yew.


Please click on it to see it full size, you'll love it! The pic is a closeup of the sunset over Gulf St. Vincent as seen from Normanville, South Oz. The only thing I did to the pic was to resize it (that means shrink it down a ways). Absolutely ZERO computer enhancements were done.

Yes, it was Yours Truly (don't swoon ladies, I'm human) who tooked this photo. The camera helped a wee bit of course.





And for those of you who'd prefer the flickr pic...


If you can't see all of the flickr pic, just click on it and it'll take you to it's flickr page where you can view it at any size you'd like, no worries.

Much more soon so stay tuned campers!

♫Plannin Out a Route We're Gonna Take Real Soon♫

How soon? In two hours from now! How's that for soon?

It's the 12th Wedding Anniversary betwixt Yours Truly and Wifey-Poo. I must say, it still only seems like yesterday... *happy sigh*

Anyways, we're heading down to the Fleurieu Peninsula for 3 days. It's been a few years since we've been down that way even though it's practically the backyard for us.

I'll type in our quite changeable itinerary which is subject to change without notice. Except for where we are staying each night.

Heading out of here at 10 AM Sat. Which means closer to 11, of course. Stop off at Clarendon Oval for a nice cuppa and start to relax. Probably pick up a pastry at the wonderful, vintage, been-there-forever, Clarendon Bakery. Yes, I know it's only 23 minutes along the road through the hills (and I can get there in 49 minutes on the bicycle, but it's a good place to relax.

We'll then leisurely drive through Blewitt Springs on the way to the Maglieri winery in McLaren Vale. Pick up a bottle of Shiraz to go with the lasagna I've already made for dinner Saturday night. Also lots of pics will be taken of Maglieri. I plan on doing a photo tour of it for you, especially for http://twitter.com/#!/WarpdElfAtYrSvc since I'm the one who turned her onto the Maglieri wines and she has to special order them as she's in the US.

Then into the heart of McLaren Vale to pick up some goodies for lunch (at the Myponga reservoir lookout) at The Almond and Olive Train

Across to the coast for Aldinga then south to Sellick's Beach. Stopping for pics anywhere along the way we want to!

Down to Myponga Reservoir for lunch, a drive over the damn, then down to Carrickalinga and then a quick jaunt to Normanville. Should be around 4 PM at this point. We're staying at the Jetty Caravan Park right on the beach in one of their cabins. Drop stuff off then head down past Rapid Bay and Cape Jervis. Never been all the way down to the Cape. Not much there but it's the ferry terminal for Kangaroo Island (next trip). Back up to Normanville, wine, dinner on the beach, hopefully get some great sunset pics.

I'll skip the evening entertainment and leave that to your fertile imaginations.

Brekkie of sausage and eggs Sun morn. Outta Normanville by 9 or so. Head to Victor Harbour via Inman Valley (get some fresh apples there -- it's all orchard country). We've done Victor Harbour enough times that we won't stay long there, but I'll get some pics of the horse drawn tram that goes to Granite Island for ya. Head to Goolwa and Hindmarsh island, gonna see how many of the barrages that link the inner islands together are open. Hopefully good pics. Looking out for water birds in the wetlands. Head up to Milang via Currency Creek and pick up a bottle at the winery there for after dinner at Milang. Get to Milang around 2 PM.

Milang is a wonderful, sleepy, quiet little town on Lake Alexandrina. We've stayed there before. Once we check in we'll have the rest of the arvo to wander through the wetlands and get some awesomely great pics for you. And we'll hit The Railway Cafe. They are only open on the weekends and they serve a wonderful Devonshire Cream Tea.

Dinner at the Pier Hotel in Milang. It's supposed to be a hidden gem of a restaurant on the Fleurieu. If the night is clear we'll be star-gazing (ZERO light pollution down there!). And since it faces East over the Lake we'll get sunrise pics the next morning.

Monday brekkie is eggs and sausage again, no huge hurry to leave but probably heading out of Milang around 10 or 11 AM.

Head north to Strath via Langhorne. A stop in Strathalbyn at the main park for tea. Hopefully many great parrot pics from there. Little Corellas nest there by the thousands.

Continue north to Mt Barker (it's getting too big, no reason to stop) and to Hahndorf as I need a new hat from a special leather/hat store, only found in Hahndorf. Grab some fresh produce at the market there, then back to Sturt via Stirling and Upper Sturt.

Hopefully back at the ole homestead in Sturt around 5 pm Monday. Chinese takeout plus fresh veggies for dinner.

How's that sound for a trip?

And the car just got serviced, plus a bunch of work done. We're SET!

Outta here in 1 hour and 40 mins.

The Butt of All Jokes

I really did mean to get these monarch butterfly pics up for you, butt recent circumstances did knot allow me to.

Butt I'll explain that later. And you get another story of Unkie Dave hurting himself. Butt this is NOT from his youth, this is a story from his oldeth instead.

Butt first, how's abouts some monarch butterfly pics?

The Adelaide Hills has a very stable population of monarch butterflies, and when they are migrating through the Hills you can see loads of them. A few weeks ago this just happened to be one of those days. And Wifey-Poo had her new camera! Her new one is a FujiFine Pix HS10. It has a 30 to 1 OPTICAL zoom! And twice the dpi as our ole S6500fd (which I was using)

Needless to say, we both got some pretty darned good butterfly pics that day!

Here are some of mine first. Enjoy!

This pair had just landed and were folding up their wings to get ready to feast on pollen.




Same pair, slurping away with wings folded.




Same pair. Most of them folded their wings up whilst slurping nectar.




I finally found one bloke (yes, this one is a male) that left his wings open whilst feeding!




And then there's the best pic I was able to get of him!




You are now about to see the difference when you double the dpi and triple the zoom. BTW, Wifey-Poo's new camera goes from taking supermacro to taking 720 mm zoom shots without changing lenses.

She was still learning the colour balance and all the nifty controls, but the detail is just amazing!









We both took pics of the bloke who left his wings out whilst feeding. Just compare the detail!




This one is cool since you can see his tongue!




Butt that's enough of butterflies!

Let's move on to the next subject, ME!

Story time! Yes, I know it's been a long time since you've heard a story about your Unkie Dave hurting himself, butt let's just end that right now! I'm sure you all recall the time I left my face on the pavement (6 yrs old), broke leg in scissors swing thingy (5 yrs old), broke arm 10 yrs old, left 10 foot long bloody skidmark on pavement from summer roller-skiing accident at 15 yrs old, did a faceplant... oh, HECK! I'm sure you get the idea! I had a fun childhood.

Growing up wild? Yeah, that sounds about right. Nearly smashing my eyesocket with the back of my hatchet? Yup, that'd be me mate. I should write a book titled Growing Up Wild.

Anyways, I tell you this cuz not only are all those stories in my blog archives *cough cough*, butt also to tell you I know a wee little bit about pain.

As in the pain difference betwixt a sprained ankle and a broken ankle. The pain of multiple broken bones as opposed to a cracked rib or three.

I tells ya mates, when my skeleton is dug up and examined by future archaeologists they are gonna think I was tortured from 4 yrs old to 45 yrs old. Nope, I just had fun.

Butt two and a half weeks ago I was not having fun.

Oh sure, I was cleaning the pool (which is always fun as it means I'll be jumping in) butt it wasn't exactly what you call "fun" as in the "fun" of creek climbing. BTW, the creek climbing story is in the archives, just have a squizz through some of my early posts.

I was standing on the edge of the pool. The edges of the pool are very hard tiles over concrete. The edges are also a crisp, clean, 90 degree edge.

As I was finishing vacuuming the shallow end of the pool, the end of the pole became slightly tangled in the vines that grow over, through, and around the fence.

Here's a pic of the offending vines:




Here, lemme just scribble all over the pic so it'll make scents to y'allns!




I'm totally sure that explains everything!

Back to the story. When the top end of the vacuuming pole caught in the vines, my first, and natural, reaction was to pivot to my right, reach out with my right arm and free the pole.

Sounds simple, right?

Ha!

You have to remember that I although I am rather strong (smelling) I do have to take care of how I move and lift due to my back. Don't ask, long story mate.

So as I pivoted on my right foot whilst reaching to the right with my right hand and holding onto the pole with my left hand, my left foot decided that if it pivoted whilst remaining stationary that my back would be not very happy.

Hence, at that point, my left foot decided to step forward in order not to piss off my lower back too much. There was, needless to say, a slight problem with that particular maneuver: a step forward was a step into the pool.

Don't get me wrong here, I'm NOT a klutz. Besides, if my batteries would've been fully charged then I'dve just walked across the water. Alas, I neglected to plug myself in the previous week as I did not anticipate any walking on water in my near future.

So my foot started to sink rather rapidly.

You know how when you are falling there is always the quite natural, instinctual reaction to try to arrest the fall? As in, you try to bloody-well catch yourself mate! Butt if I had been thinking (HA!) then I'm sure I would've just gone with the fall and went splat into the pool. Well, DUH!

Butt no, instincts took over and my body tried to arrest the fall well before my brain had a chance to engage (it was in idle, so it's excused).

What happened is that I tried to grab onto the pole with my right hand, my right foot slipped to the right (I'm glad I'm flexible as I did the "splits" without warming up) as my left butt cheek landed directly on the REALLY FUCKING HARD edge of the pool. Oh, and somewhere my left hand tried to cushion the fall and jammed it's own wrist -stupid left hand.

After my left butt cheek landed SOLIDLY on the edge, the rest of my body slowly slithered into the pool. The whole operation took about 0.001 seconds, butt it felt like an eternity.

My first thought was "Well, didn't need that tailbone anyways." Butt then the shaking set in. Then the nausea set in. Then my legs didn't really feel like working.

Yeah, I kinda knew something was wrong. Perhaps the nausea inducing pain from my left glute MAY have had something to do with it. Maybe.

About ten minutes later I was able to gather the strength to extricate myself from the shallow end of the pool which happens to a whole whopping 2 feet deep. I slowly made my way up the two steps to the pool door and whimpered my way into the kitchen to puke into the sink.

Since Wifey-Poo and BIL were in the kitchen at the time I do believe they figured out rather quickly that something was, shall we say, wrong. I threw up in the sink, then told then what happened.

I gotta tell y'all something. If you want some serious sympathy then you may want to consider cracking your pelvis and getting your glute muscle torn and separated from the bone. Oh sure, you'll be in a lot of pain, eating ibuprofen by the handful, icing your butt with multiple ice packs, and generally being miserable. Butt dang I tells ya mates: Serious Sympathy!

Of course after you've been laying on one side all day which causes your previously compressed lower back disks to go wonky you may not be too happy. That's why I recommend sending your BIL to the bottle shop for a case or four of tequila. And keep it in your bedroom!

As many of you have been following this blog for yonks now, you may have come to realize that I have left my scents of embarrassment long behind me. Therefore it really shouldn't surprise you that I have taken daily pictures of My Butt Bruise!

And I'm sure you're all just dying to see them! Ha. No, I didn't take them in ultra-high fidelity like the BUTTerfly pics. In facts, these were all taken in low light in a mirror. And I shrunk them waaaaaaay down.

And since they were taken by Yours Truly (don't swoon ladies, I'm human) in a mirror you'll notice the pictures are "mirrored". Trust me when I say that it's my LEFT butt cheek that has the bruise and broken parts.

I therefore do not think there is any reason why you all won't just LOVE to see this really awesomely cool bruise throughout a 12 day period. It kinda looks like I chased a rainbow butt the rainbow smacked me on the ass. Either that or the leprechaun has a really warped scents of humour.

Butt if you are easily offended (yeah, like any of my readers are!) then you may knot want to scroll down any farther. Oh, I've already shared these pics on twitter. One person said they've never seen a bruise like that outside of an emergency room! So weather or knot you view these pictures, please keep in mind that my bruised, naked, butt is already world famoose.

Without any further ado...

Here is the Butt Bruise Pic Day 1!





What comes after Day 1? Why, day 2 of course!:




Day 3 usually follows day 2:




Day 4:




Day 5 follows day 4:




I neglected to take a day 6 pic. I think the codeine didn't let me wake up. So here's Day 7:




Let's zip to Day 9! The dark line is from the impact (it hurts a bit):




Getting some really cool rainbow colors now!




Butt some things always fade away... Day 12:




Lastly, since you've read this far, I feel safe in telling you that I'm so very glad I'm right handed because I couldn't even begin to imagine the agony if I tried to wipe with my left hand!