Zara and I were conned last night.

The plan was to have dinner last night with Zara’s best friend, Rozelle. Somewhere along the line the plan became dinner with Rozelle and her colleague, Nick, as a surprise for his birthday.

So it was nearly 8pm and we were supposed to meet up with Rozelle at the restaurant. She calls and tells us to take our time because she was going to be a few minutes late. No probs, traffic was a bit slow anyway. Zara and I both were both blissfully unaware when we met Rozelle. The three of us went in to what looked like a nice quiet restaurant. At the time, Zara didn’t think anything of the fact that all of the staff were looking at her.

Turns out the surprise was on Zara. I didn’t see because I was behind her, but apparently the look on her face was priceless – mild surprise as she saw a few friends and thought, “Oh, what are you doing here?”, then confusion, then embarrassment as she realised she’d been had! Rozelle had managed to rustle up a few of Zara’s high school friends for her 30th birthday.

Hope everyone is having an excellent Christmas. HPG needed to have a good lie down on the couch after our big family eat.

Need to do a bit of riding now to offset all of the food and hang on to the YJOY.

I went out for a solo cruise on Beach Rd last Saturday. It was a pretty messy ride. Undisciplined bunches and lots of cowboys in the peletons.

On the return stretch, coming home from Mordi, I latched onto a pretty dumb bunch. They were pretty quick but were riding all-over the place. Often riding 3-abreast, over-taking without signalling and changing places within the peleton, without any warning. I just sat at the back to stay out of trouble, but at least use their draft.

The worst part was when this bunch decided to over-take the “Total Rush” bunch, who really weren’t actually going all that slow. It was a very messy over-take. Parked cars on one side and cars trying to over-take on the other. I don’t usually like the Total Rush guys, but this time, they were well within their right to yell at this undisciplined bunch. And, because my bunch had misjudged how fast the Total Rush bunch was actually going, it ended up being a painfully slow overtake, while we were getting insults hurled at us.

Eventually we over-took, and I sheepishly remained at the back, hitching a ride. All was fine for a minute. Then suddenly I feel this massive whoosh, and the Total Rush guys just fly past us. They must’ve been doing around 60km/hr. They came past so fast, no-one in our bunch had a hope of latching on. Obviously retaliation for the previous over-take. I must admit, the Total Rush guys did show them how a proper over-take is supposed to be done.

I received a WISH gift card a few months ago for a rather sizable amount so I’ve been trying to use it up for a while. It works out well for me because I can use it at the Safeway supermarket near home and near the office.

Now that I have it down to the last few dollars ($8.15 as of this post, to be precise), I’m having some trouble buying something to cover the rest of the card. According to the FAQ on the website I should be able to spend more than is left on the card and cover the difference with cash or credit card. However, the last two times I’ve tried to do this the self-serve checkout returned an error. Just then at lunch, I actually tried to buy a couple of things totalling as close to $8.15 as I could but I miscalculated and went over by 15c.

This is annoying me somewhat. Yes, it’s only $8.15 but I refuse to leave it unspent and let Woolworths Limited have my money.

It was all a bit last minute with a call from Keith last night but we managed to make this YPR #58 with Keith, HY, CL and myself. I have not been on the bike at all since last weekend so I did have half a mind to ride from home to Keith’s place but it was a struggle to get up this morning at 6am. It was quite a sight to see several small bunches as I was driving up Studley Park Road through Kew – almost the new Beach Road.