A Sad Farewell

24 June - Despite desperately wanting to sleep in this morning after far too many late nights I was up at 730 because my old housematt, Mark, had given me a pair of tickets for a preview screening of 'Superman Returns'. Had arranged to go to see it with another ex housematt, Ashu, who couldn’t be woken from his slumber in time so I ended up seeing it by meself out in Metrotown. Won’t give it away other than to say that it was pretty good as comic book movies go although Brandon Routh's Clark Kent wasn’t nearly as endearing as Christopher Reeve's although his Superman was suitably handsome and as good as could be expected (Superman is hardly the most interesting of superheroes, he's just too perfect to be evoke any real depth), Kate Bosworth's Lois was a pale wash of Margot Kidder's husky chain smoker, Frank Langella's Perry White seemed to be trying to reprise JK Simmons J Jonah Jameson from Spiderman and Lex Luthor was just not in it nearly enough and in his far too brief presences of screentime f**king Bryan Singer ripped off some of his lines from the first Superman - unforgiveable. Still, there were far worse ways to spend the morning. Came back home, had some pancakes and met up with Thomas for a coffee and went bag shopping (i love bag shopping, even when they're not for me) and went for a little bit of a ride around the side. Did a little bit of maintenance on Celeste - there's not a hell of a lot of things that can go wrong wih a fixed gear but when you've got an older frame there's a little bit of fine tuning to make sure everything is running together smoothly - second hand spacers and bolts don't really lend themselves to perfect alignment. I'm learning ... slowly. Practised my trackstand for a while and didn’t get very far - i've got to get this and skidding down pat before I come home - apparently, when it comes it comes and then it's like riding a bike (i think i've got that mostly down by now).
And, sadly, I also had to say my last goodbyes to Jason today. Met him and Colleen for a rather tasty, reasonably cheap, Chinese meal at the Shao Lin Noodle Hut - on Monday morning he's off across Canadia at the rather frightening clip of 180k/day - by the time he returns to the fair city of Vancouver I should probably be settled back in Sydney and I really don’t know when i'll see him again. Despite loving this city I can’t see myself returning to live or even visit for quite a few years and Jason did the 'Oz Experience' a few years back so not sure when he'll be making the journey down that way. Keeping in international contact is always a very difficult thing even with the wonders of email - correspondence always tends to trail off into nothing after a few months or years - however, unfortunately, that's just one of the drawbacks of travel - you meet great people and then have to leave them behind.