GALFROMDOWNUNDER UPOVER

I'm just back from doing the Bike Friday Arizona Desert Camp (click link to read the full montymedia). The last evening was an interesting exercise in the danger of elevating your expectations. It had been a long, hot week of riding and spirited carousing with 60 customers. A great time, really. On the last evening I postponed dinner to put together and show the group footage of the week as a swansong, as well as sit through the nth screening of my movie Route 66 By Bicycle , where n is a large number. By 9pm I was ravenous. Three of us nite owls - including a NYer of course - convened with great expectations of a relatively extravagant, sit down dinner in the relatively sumptuous (relative to Appleby's) restaurant next door. A chance to decompress and pat ourselves on the back for a time well had. The restaurant next door decided to close early due to short staffing. But no matter - the hotel shuttle would take us to a local steak house. 'I don't feel like a steak hou...

The Foetal: As performed by the expert Tamara. One mis-timed knee placement leads to a nice black bruise ... PHOTO GALLERY: All 6 lessons - yes, the whole pole! MOVIE CLIPS: Lesson 4: our progress thus far Lesson 6: the Final Exam! YEOOOWWW. I've got a large black bruise on my left knee from a poorly timed leg-over during the 'Extended Foetal' move (see photo, minus me and bruise). Not to mentioned a giant nimbostratus on my right inner thigh from attempting 'Upside Down' no-hands ... Our 6 week Beginner Poledancing course is all over bar the fat lady swinging - with legs in flying V formation of course (the 'Reach for the Stars' move). I honestly thought I'd be blogging our progress each week, but when not gripping the drop bars on my Bike Friday, my keyboard fingers have been busy clutching our 50 cm diameter, demountable chrome dance pole, now lovingly installed smack in the middle of our teensy living room. We learned well over 20 moves plus a pile o...

The pole has arrived - and my mother swings into action Pre-reading:  Poledancing 101: A Mother and Daughter experience The Pole has arrived!  Or rather, my mother drove to the warehouse and collected it. I had noble plans to set up the bike trailer, cajole the Bike Friday Club of Sydney to chaperone me through the semi-industrial badlands of Botany and land it the carbon-friendly way. Turns out the box was as tall, wide and almost as heavy as I am - the warehouse manager actually used a little forklift to lower it into mum's car. We wrestled it up the stairs and sat down to watch the DVD. I still can't believe we've gone and done this. I have to remind myself it's no different from someone laying down cash for one of those treadmills, stationary bicycles, exercise balls and mini trampolines they end up ignoring after the initial buzz and good intentions wear off. The X-pole exposed   The X-pole is basically a set of chromed sections that screw together, with a...

Pole Dancing [def:] A type of vertical gymnastics using a stationary or spinning steel shaft and usually, footwear with a sharp heel. Said to have been invented by a bored cleaning lady in a fire station one evening, although this has never been verified. The Carousel: rather like twirling honey on a spoon - when you're not falling flat on your ass "Pole dancing? Want to try it? BYO pole!" I'll try anything once, maybe thrice, and I know who I get it from: my 69-year young mother of all mothers.   She greeted me at Sydney airport with her latest "why the hell not?" idea: pole dancing. Specifically, a website scribbled on a piece of paper: www.polestars.com.au Her intention was that I do it, not "what?-me-with-my-bad-back?" she, but I secretly signed both of us up for the $A39, 2-hour "taster lesson."  On the big night, we took ourselves into town on the bus, armed with our "Virgin Polestar" e-reser...

I was originally putting all my book, talks and DVD news on a separate Livejournal blog, but now I'm going to simply start putting it on GALFROMDOWNUNDER.BLOGSPOT.COM You (and I) can reference that earlier material here: http://gfdu.livejournal.com

The view from my homestay in Kaneohe, Oahu First, a mini movie review ... I'VE JUST crawled out from under a crocheted cushion after 'viewing' the Wachowski Bros (Matrix) 1996 movie, '"Bound." I don't think I'll sleep tonight, I'll need a stun gun and a Valium to close my peepers... which were closed for probably 60% of the movie. Extreme suspense, violence, Joe-Pesci-at-his-damndest dialog, a severed digit (or ten) thanks to a pair of garden clippers, plus a rather topical twist: a lesbian couple star as the glam Bonnie and Clyde. Topical, because I've just seen "Brokeback Mountain", this year's darling gay western flick. 'Bound' has terrific acting and plotting, highly recommended. Warning: it contains some serious Vaseline-covered lens action. I'm now holed up in Oahu, via the Big Island, Kaui and Maui, as the guest of Bike Friday customers Ralph and Bernice. Ralph is the Bike Friday Club of Hawaii leade...

This story originally appeared on the Bike Friday website (now on the Internet Archive) MOVIE CLIPS UDPATE Dec 2006: See this interview on ... YouTube - click on the movie below. “I MAKE an instrument for the future, but alas, in the present,” laments David Hannauer, pulling various egg-shaped pieces of clay from their protective socks. Laid out before me is a small ensemble of his vast ocarina collection, “small egg-shaped wind instruments with a mouthpiece and holes for the fingers”, according to my laptop dictionary. All but two are the careful handiwork of David himself, who dreams of the day he can get enough people interested in this quirky, glorified whistle to form an ocarina “choir”. David hails from a family of musicians – he was a child cellist, his mother is a volinist, his sister plays with the Brooklyn Philharmonic orchestra and his dad sings. Happy birthdays and Grace at the Hannauer house were always rendered in pitch-perfect six part harmony. Bor...