The bowls

I went to the doctor first thing this morning. Probably something pressing again the nerves that go to my thumb. Let's give it some more time. OK.

Then I picked up the trophy for the squash tournament I'm organising for work tomorrow night.

In the evening I went to Haarlem to visit a bowls club. I saw this apartment building in Amsterdam on the way there. I love it.

And then, I bowled! I went to bowls clubs "Ons kinnehim" in Haarlem. They recently hosted the first official Dutch open with countries participating from all over the world (Scotland won I heard). It was fun but I'm not sure yet. It's all very different from Australian "Night owls" bowling...

When I came home I noticed that the first flower on my rose is opening up! It's full of buds :-)

The mothers day visit

Oh, what's inhere?

It's my bowls! I'm going to check out a club tomorrow. I'm praying that there will be some young folks as well.

I travelled to Alkmaar by train for mother's day.

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My mom also invited my cousin Margriet. My aunty Jo is her mom and she's not doing well at all so it was very kind to invite her I think.

Another beautiful orchid from my mom.

Me and my dad after dinner. (Photo courtesy of my mom ;-)

If we were Mason's ball...

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We had a breakfast appointment in town today. So we arrived at the Rundle market at 9:15. If you click this photo to see the bigger version, you can see how the city of Adelaide looks very much like a wild-west town. It just needs a dirt road, really.

This is my favorite shop. A lady who sells bags that she made her self. I hate bags but I have great admiration for someone undertaking this and being successful. Her stall shits on the others that sell chemical candy or Amsterdam raggy clothes.

We met Stephen for breakfast. It was very nice to see him again and we were honored that he managed to free up time from his overly bust study-schedule :-)

When we came home, the pigeons were sunbathing on our lawn.

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This is what you would see if you were Mason's ball. Quite the view don't you think?

I mowed the front lawn today. I think our lawn mower is giving up. I wanted to look what was wrong but it's put together in such a way that you cannot open it up. That pisses me off these days...

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I sat down in our garden with mason to clean my bowls. They are coming to The Netherlands with me and I'm planning to bring Night Owls bowls back with me as well!

Granite Island

We wanted to have a bit of a day out today so we did shopping first thing in the morning. Judging by the amount of trollies still outside it was not very busy. Lucky us!

Nicole was THRILLED being back at Woolworths ;-)

After dropping all our stuff of back home we drove to Victor harbour. But along the way we needed a toilet so we made an emergency stop in Hahndorf.

When going to Hahndorf, it's a SIN not to visit Chocolate @ No. 5.

They had mushrooms in their garden.

We parked out front of the Victor Harbour bowls club. They have THE best located greens I have EVER seen! To spend your old days like this is a DREAM! They were playing a team that had flown in from Canberra City.

After watching the bowls for a few minutes we proceeded to Granite Island. You can only get there by this long bridge.

Granite island is made of... granite. Lots of rocky granite.

Looking back towards Victor harbour.

You can also get there by horse tram.

Granite Island is an important place for aboriginals. An aboriginal face carved in a piece of granite decorates the entry to the island.

This is a little bronze of the penguins that live here. We didn't see any coz they go swimming at the crack of dawn. Good on them.

It's a beautiful island with lots of untouched nature.

Lovely views.

This tree had two cores. Must've been two trunks grown together.

Lots of years ago I sat at the exact same place :-)

More beautiful view.



Moss on a rock.

After the 1.5 hour walk we had a sit, a drink and I has cheez burger.

The gulls figured it right out. I don't make an effort to eat more than I really need nowadays so of course there was stuff left.

Sure enough, as soon as we were 3 metres away from the table they came right down.

A sign on our way off the island.

Super market hell

During lunch I walked past the new art work heart. They removed the "wrapping". I like it a lot.

I sat down under a tree in Victoria Square. Under the tree next door was an Aboriginal man. When he looked at me I greeted him with a nod and he nodded back. For some reason it felt meaningful. I don't know why.

It's nice to sit under a tree. I love trees.

After lunch I went to the supermarket (Woolies) in Rundle Mall. I needed some dips and crackers for at the bowls tonight.

It was fucking busy. I was fucking hot and sweating like a pig cuz I walked to fast...

After work I took the bus to lawn bowls.

It was the last night of this season, just a fun night. After the last competition night last week we have ended No. 13 out of 42 teams. That is not bad at all I think.

The come back

The way to work this morning was dramatic. Somebody allowed their car to kiss a bus. Pretty bad actually. The person driving the car must have overlooked the bus judging by the left front that was completely ripped off / dented / gone. You'd think it's kinda hard to overlook a 25 metres long and 3 metres high bus.

Police, ambulance and the firies were there and they blocked one side of the road which is why it took us half an hour to get to work...

I hope the person driving the car was OK though.

Driving to bowls after work we passed this four wheel drive with two dogs in the back seat. Don't know if you can actually see the second one. The photo is a bit crap coz of movement etc.

We kicked total lawn bowl ass tonight. We were ranked 15th and we played the runner up, nr 16. It was just Richard, Tony and me playing tonight and the first half we managed to squeeze out one point. Unfortunately our opponents squeezed out 20 points by half time. We sucked.

Then, after the break, everything turned around. We were on fire. We won end after end and when there was only one more end to go we were only two points behind: 18-20. Great come back.

A draw would've been well deserved for both parties but we ended up winning 21-20 after a measure of the third bowl that was 0.5 cm closer than the opponent's. Good stuff. What a come back!