Goodbye Bugs - Agnes Julia Wale 27/03/1923 - 26/07/2009

Breast cancer affects about one in eight women in Australia. I treat patients every day with the disease, and always have hope that together we will win the battle, and life will continue as close to normal as possible.

It has been hard for all of us to watch someone you love suffer from this disease, bravely struggle through the treatment options available but slowly succumb. The inevitable occurred today, but it does not make her passing any less painful. We will miss the adventurer who travelled overseas less than 3 years ago. We will miss our walks to Tallebudgera creek and back again, visits which usually involved a plate of pikies, friands and trying to stop Grayson destroying her Wedgewood collection. Mostly, we will miss her unconditional love.

It is with a heavy heart that we write this. We are glad you are out of pain now Bugs, Mama Pikies, Agnes - but we are going to miss you. We cannot live forever, but you will always be in our hearts.

Love always
Ben, Melinda and Grayson

Long time no blog - so here is a man in a funny hat...

"Things that mummy, daddy and Grayson have done this year" by Grayson A Cook (2years and 10 months - give or take a day)

Stalked Lance Armstrong and got his autograph
Watched Wendy get married (well, mummy and daddy did)
Go to a fancy champagne dinner and stupidly agree to photo being taken which ends up in a rather prominent place in the social pages of the Courier Fail, whoops Mail. And also ends up in prominent places where mummy and daddy work...
See Coldplay and have them play less than 2 metres away from where we were sitting, even though we were well towards the back of Boondall.
Say hello to baby Clara.
Try and eat as much chocolate cake at a party as possible before being thwarted by the parental units.
Get swine flu - well, it was probably swine flu... (responded to Tamiflu)
Recover from swine flu
Watch Daddy get dressed up in a silly hat and gown, go up on stage and then come back down again. At least there were cake options available afterwards (and the blue of the Masters matched Daddy's and my eyes rather nicely).
Get up early every morning for the past few weeks to watch Tour de France highlights on the SBS website - and start planning another trip to France next year (BIG maybe)

To be continued

Waiheke Island

Waiheke Island
Originally uploaded by b boy.

Waiting in the Qantas Club lounge to fly back to Aus from NZ. For those that don't know we came over (without G) for 2 nights so we could attend Wendy's wedding. We stayed on Waiheke Island which was very nice if not hotter than we expected. Felt guilty about leaving G at home so bought him the usual guilt presents to take home. Not long now and we will be back in familiar surroundings. Oh and from photos that Paul emailed from London, it definitely looks colder we he is compared to where we are now. I thought NZ was supposed to cooler than Qld!!

Final day of the TDU

Well we have made it to the final day of the TDU. We won't be watching the action today as we will be heading to the airport. But I will be getting updates on the iPhone :)
So it looks like Alan Davis will be the winner of this years race (barring any disasters). Lance of course has been doing his bit to keep the fans happy.
So what other things have happened this week? Highlights, or lowlights depending on your point of view include:
The PM gatecrashing the Hilton wearing lycra (just kidding ...... About the lycra)
Running into Stuart O'Grady's family in the lobby and his boy telling us his daddy's name is Stuie!
Grayson feeling up Mattie White's butt in the lift
Running into Phil Ligget and having a chat ....... well it was more like "Hi Phil!" to which he said "Hi, how you going?". I think that qualifies as a chat!
Getting one of the Astana team water bottles from one of the mechanics. As far as I know it could have been Lances ...... No, it must have been Lances!!!!!
Stalking Johan Bruyneel and taking his photo at every opportunity .......... I think I started to freak him out :)
And various other cycling related adventures.

I am blogging from the tram from Glenelg and when we get back will head out to the airport.
See you all back is Brisbane.

What a week!

IMG_0495
Originally uploaded by b boy.

Hello again, Grayson doing blog duty this time.
Things I have learned this week
- How to say the word "peloton"
- Ditto "Go Lance!"
- How to wack mummy/daddy/innocent bystanders with blue inflatable sticks that are just given to people standing by the road (provided bikes are coming soon after)
- One gets a much better view of things if one is seated on top of the father unit's shoulders
- I like motorbikes! (mummy edit - meep)
- When mummy and daddy go down to the bar in the evening for a glass or two of champagne, I like to keep them on their toes by running around the Hilton foyer, and up the stairs, and around the first level, narrowly missing (famous) cyclists and their entourages
Tonight I excelled myself by going to the bar's pool of water, splashing all the people around the pool with some water (well, it has been hot) and then repeating what daddy said upon picking me up and taking me away from previously noted soggy mess (freak, freak, freak)
It has been a lot of fun in Adelaide this week.
Back to Brisvegas tomorrow!

Detour to the Barossa Valley

Day 5 of Lance watch and we decided to take a different approach today. We hired a car and drove to the Barossa Valley leaving behind our tour buddies on the bus. Today was also the challenge race which means 7500 amateur cyclists hit the road to ride the tour route ahead of the pros. Let me tell you .... there is a reason some of these guys are not riding professionally!!!! I was surprised there was only reports of 4 people being taken to hospital by ambulance. Anyway after narrowly avoiding running down a few superfluous riders we made it to our first stop, Menglers Hill lookout. This is where the king of the mountain points would be won today (we weren't hanging around for that one as it was 3 hours away and we wanted to go to Maggie Beer's for lunch).
We then made our way past what was left of the challenge riders and found ourselves at Pheasant Farm for lunch.
It is very relaxing eating farm house food for the gourmand with such a pleasant view out over the pond. Grayson got to feed the resident turtles and ducks before running amuck in the gardens.
From here we visited a few wineries and found time to catch the professional peleton race by on their way into Angaston. Very convenient route they had planned ........ right past all the cellar doors we had anticipated visiting :)
And yes, we did spot Lance in the group. I mean it wouldn't be a very good "Lance watch" without seeing Lance.
Well the Aussie boys seem to be doing themselves proud so far but everyone is expecting Lance to do something impressive on the Willunga Hill climbs tomorrow so we are back on the bus for more TDU fun in the morning!

TDU 2009

Day 4 of Lance watch......
Today we took a more leisurely approach after our rather successful day yesterday. We sat back, drank coffee and acted like we had all seen it before :)
Of course there were a few opportunities to snap a few of the big name riders along the way.
The bus couldn't get to the KOM in time so we diverted to the sprint point instead. But after the sprint our bus driver snuck in behind the back of the peleton and we felt like part of the action ....... until a cop came and made us pull over :( Oh well if was fun while it lasted.
As you can see Grayson found a good vantage point and got a decent view at the start line.
Tomorrow we take a day off and head to the Barossa for a sensible lunch at Maggie Beers. Of course by some coincidence the TDU seems to ride past her farm so I guess we will get to see some of the race after all!