Cafe Review: The Lazy Roo, Daylesford

In my previous post I mentioned that I stopped in Daylesford on the drive back to Tatura.  The place I settled on to get a coffee was the Lazy Roo Cafe and I wanted to take a minute to recommend it.

The Lazy Roo Cafe is located at Shop 16, Rex Arcade, 47-53 Vincent Street, Daylesford.  "Rex" is an old style arcade with a cinema at one end.  This is a good thing, because it means it's a little removed from the busy-ness of the town's main strip.

The strongest impression when you go in is that this is a place that aims more than anything to be welcoming but not unchallenging.  By way of example, the chairs and tables are mostly attractively rustic and distressed timber, but this is combined with a concrete floor.  I'm probably overthinking the decor but it seemed to be saying "be comfortable but don't turn your brain off".

I wasn't in the mood for food especially and so I can't comment on the meals, but going from the menu plus what I saw brought out, I got the impression their preference is to do a limited number of things really well, rather than a large number of things okay.  I wanted warming up and ordered chai latte and one of their chocolate chip biscuits.  The biscuit was large and crumbly and good but without the feeling that it was doing epic calorific damage to me.  The coffee was first class - certainly in the top three chai lattes I've ever had and so good I ordered another one.  Total cost of two coffees and a biscuit was about $10.00

Service was friendly and quick. The music in the background was jazz that was loud enough to listen to and soft enough to ignore (depending on one's preference) and copies of the local Hepburn Advocate were available for browsing.  I can certainly recommend this as a first class stopping point if you're on that stretch of the Midland Highway.

On the Midland Highway

As I was saying in the last entry, I left Ballarat for Shepparton about 12:30pm.  The Midland Highway, conveniently, runs straight as an arrow (well, not literally, but you get the idea) over the 300 kms between Ballarat and Shepparton and so I found it and got going.  I was kind of glad to be leaving Ballarat.  It's hard to explain, but that place troubles me.  One of the very nastiest sexual assault cases I ever handled came out of that city, and the city itself has a history of child abuse that seems near diabolical (I use the word deliberately: it seems like a product of wickedness that goes beyond the merely human).  The abuse of children at St Alipius' school comes to mind, for example.  And even though tales of children being unlawfully buried at the Ballarat Orphanage smell of urban myth, they were still credible enough for police to conduct an excavation recently.

I stopped in Daylesford for a coffee and to stretch my legs.  I'd had a hankering to go to Daylesford for a while now, although I'd have a hard time saying quite why.  It's kind of a Mecca for the hippy and the hipster - the sort of place where every second store seems to sell organic food or crystals or the like, and the first thing that hits your nose when you get out of the car is aromatherapy oil (I'm not making this up).  I'd been there once before - years ago with the ex for a weekend.  The memories were there as I wandered about, although I can't say I felt anything much one way or another about them.  I found a place that did awesome coffee (and which I'll review in the next post), read the paper and then got back on the road.

The balance of the drive was a laundry list of the towns as far as Tatura.  I was a little suprised to find I felt happier as the rocky terrain of the Goldfields region gave way to the broadacres of the Goulburn Valley.  I got back to Tatura about 5pm and returned the car to the SES building and collected my car.  On something that was a little more than a whim I decided to go to late Mass at Christ the King in Shepparton (see the previous entry about rekindling my faith).  It took a little longer than planned for me to get away from Tatura and ultimately I arrived in the middle of Communion.  So, I prayed for a bit and tried to get a sense of the congregation.  My impression is that this is a church I could feel at home in.

Back out to the farm after church.  No big news to hear apart from two new calves.  COld tonight but I think I'll sleep well.  Skypedate and Blood Bank tomorrow!

Race Day!

The big day got here!  I was on my feet at my sister's place just after 6:00am and had a coffee with her and JP.  It'd been raining on and off all night and the rain kept falling enthusiastically when I got on the road.  I have to say that I was looking out at the windscreen wipers and thinking "this is gonna be a loooooooong morning!".

The rain had stopped by the time I got to Lake Wendouree at Ballarat, although there was still a pretty steady wind blowing.  I went over to the marshalling point at one of the boat-sheds, collected my number and timing device and sized up the 45 or so other runners.  Mostly they were in their 30s and 40s, and mostly seemed to be Victoria Police officers, although I saw a few people with shirts or caps from the Prison Service, the Ambulance Service, the Country Fire Authority and the Federal Police.  I think I was the only SES member.

 

We shivered our way out to the starting line and off we went.  There was an initial short 3 km loop, followed by 3 laps of the 6 km track around the lake.  I'd been giving a bit of thought to how I'd go out on the way up and decided to go hard for the first 4 kms or so, then settle to a steady pace.  I managed this and found that the steady pace I landed on was quite speedy and put me about the middle of the pack.  To my surprise, I found that I was able to more-or-less hold that pace until the 11 kilometre mark, which was the first point I'd set to check my speed and time etc on Runkeeper.  It was a little after this point that I actually managed to catch someone: I'd been passed by a runner from the Fire Authority about the 5 km mark, and I couldn't let that go unanswered - I kept her in view until a bit after 11 kms, and then increased speed just enough to overtake her - although I then spent the rest of the race waiting for her to turn the tables on me and overtake me again.  Trying to outrun her kept my pace up!

I kept the pace up until the 16 km mark and saw that I was still averaging just under 5 minutes per kilometre, which I'd never have believed I could do.  I increased the pace a little bit from that point to the 19 km mark, and then increased it again and lengthened my stride a bit - I couldn't believe I was managing it!  With 500 metres to go I started to sprint and crossed the line with an average pace of 4:59 mins/km, which is a definite PB for me, and a Runkeeper time of 1:47:29 (since confirmed by the official timekeeper).  I was 20th out of 40 runners, and 14th of the 23 men.  I was absolutely thrilled, and if you'd asked me I would have sworn that it was impossible for me to do it.

The final part of the event was presentation of medals to the first, second and third in each age group (alas, I didn't quite make the cut!) - the medals were presented by none other than Steve Moneghetti, who is one of the gods of Australian long distance running.  It was an honour just to be in the same room as him!

I set off back to the Goulburn Valley about 12:30pm.  For the sake of not having over-long posts, I'll cover the balance of the day in the next post.

Pre-Games

Falling asleep but a quick post while I can.

I drove down to Melbourne today in a Nissan Patrol that SES has loaned me. Powerful and a pleasure to drive I have to say!

I'm staying at my sister's place. I'll drive up to Ballarat tomorrow for the race.

As I was going by, I stopped in at the Melbourne Sports and Aquatic Centre to swim a few laps to loosen up my legs for tomorrow. Managed 1.2km in 45 mins. Pleased by that!

Dinner with sister and brother in law.  Getting tired so will sleep now. Big day tomorrow!

Hedges and Me

Hi everyone,

So it's been a big day today!  You remember I said the other day that one of my friends at SES asked if I was interested in some work hedge-trimming with him?  Today was the day we headed over to tackle the job.

The house turned out to be in the relatively newly-built part of Shepparton. The husband of the client is apparently sick in hospital and she wants to surprise him by having the hedge done by the time he's discharged.

Darryl was more than happy to share the work with me, and I found I did far better than I thought I would.  It may sound silly to say it, but I found myself confidently wielding chainsaw and hedge trimmer, and powering along despite the rain with the pruners and saw, feeling confident and strong in a way that, mostly, I don't.  It's an odd thing but there you go.

It turned out to be a pretty good job, essentially talking the hedge back to sticks so it'll grow dense and bushy when spring comes again.

This was what we met when we arrived: 

This was what we left behind -

The client was happy with it, and Darryl says he's happy to split similar jobs with me with pay for the work 50/50 between us (which today put $70 in my pocket, at which I am not sneering!). Feel rather proud of it all. Whatever my faults, nobody can say I'm work-shy.

After knocking off I stopped at Victoria Park lake to use the facilities - it looked oddly pretty in the rain:

Went on to Aldi to get some dinner for the dog and me.

This will be a big weekend: to Melbourbd tomorrow to say at my sister's place overnight (if I have time and the weather holds I think I'll hire a bike and cycle St KildaEsplanade). Then to Ballarat bright and early for the Half Marathon. I'm i. A world-beating frame of mind just now!

Have a great Friday everyone! 

Polishing silver

This one will be drafted on two or more bits.  Let's see how it goes...

2:00pm Another "where'd the morning go?" day so far.

I spent part of the morning channeling my inner Martha Stewart.  Yes, somewhat at odds with my Y-chromosome.  I don't care what you think ...

Anyway, what prompted this impulse of domesticity was looking in my sock drawer this morning for a pair with fewer holes than the norm. While I was doing this I found a saints medal that was a gift from my former mother-in-law, in connection with my becoming a Catholic just before I married the ex.  I was and remain very fond of my former in-laws and I'm happy to say they seem to view me fondly as well. This was the birthday card they sent me this year:

 

Some of you may know that my devotion to religion has been pretty lacklustre, really since things went so badly kaput in 2013, and since then I've oscillated through misotheism, pantheism, materialism and (briefly) Atenism.  Anyway, I was kind of struck by how tarnished that little saint's medal had become. Thinking about it now, perhaps I should have taken that as an analogy -

It seemed a shame to leave it looking nearly black with wear, so I googled up how to clean silver, which in turn brought me to Martha Stewart's instructions about putting it in an aluminium bowl under water and baking soda.

That didn't do much for the bits of the medal with the Saint on them or the lettering, so I used the wet soda as a paste and using cotton balls, scrubbed it hard for a bit.  That brought it up to a gorgeous shine; I'm proud to call it a success!

It struck me about the time I was polishing that I'd strayed rather badly from being the sort of man my sometime parents-in-law could regard well, or my daughters could look up to.  So, I'm going to try and do better in the religious front.  Like actually praying for starters, and going to Mass when I'm able.  I can't say that there seems much merit in having a sharp mind and a strong body if your soul is allowed to decay.

In other news today, I'm afraid I didn't get the job at Strathmerton, so that's a dead end:

It looks like I'll be able to pick up a few hours labouring tomorrow at least.  Something will come up for sure but: damn.

12:20am: Back again.  The day has been an interesting set of things since the last half of the entry.  After I finished that bit, I got a text message from a contact at SES asking if I'd be interested in a few hours garden labouring tomorrow.  I surely would, so that's a plus.  Spent the balance of the afternoon out with the dog cutting burr and then came back and wrote a short letter to a newspaper regarding done changes to the law affects bicycle riders - we'll see how that goes.

SES training in the evening - a night on land search skills. As you know I love lobbing up at SES and this was a good night to gain some new skills.  Late finish - wasn't home till nearly 11:30pm.  Glad to do it though.

No more for now. Hope all is well with you.

More later.

A rainy morning - hooray!

Hi everyone,

There are meant to be pictures with this post, but my blogger app seems to have eaten them. Unfortunately I have only one bar of reception so I can't really re-upload them just now. So, forgive me for offering just words.

It's been a good day all up.  Rain from a couple of heavy showers in the morning. There was thunder and lightening but not really a storm. A total of a bit over 5mm rain for today. It all helps

The rain meant I spent a chunk of the day wading though backlogged emails and typing a few things.  The rain had cleared by afternoon so we fed out a couple of large square bales of hay -

and set up the gates to give the newly calved cows as much grazing space as possible.

I was able to get a tapering run in in the late afternoon.  Felt good and strong although I started out feeling a bit stiff and underpowered

The sun was below the horizon when I was on my return journey.  The sunset painted things a gorgeous set of pastel colours but didn't include much red.  This gives hopes for the chances of rain to come.  Fingers crossed!

Hope your week is going well!