The Next Level: Portland

22/3/2015

Rather coolish night but beautiful blue sky in the morning. After a huge, Sunday breakfast, including a whole avocado, heaps of bacon, 3 eggs sunny side up and a BP coffee, I decided to stay another night here in Portland so that I can get the washing done (a wet weather front is apparently coming), work catch up on some course work, read a bit, finish chapter 2 in Wanderlust (at the moment I attribute one chapter to each territory/state in Australia) and relax a bit.

Wanderlust: "Blessed are the curious. For they shall have adventures." (Lovelle Drachman)

At breakfast, I also met a German couple who are traveling from Melbourne to Darwin, by bike, going through the red center. Interestingly designed bike though, one of these where you're sitting totally different. She said it is way more comfortable, especially when you are doing long days (they aim for 120-150km all going well) and carry a lot of baggage. I wished them well for their trip!

After blogging, and studying for 90 minutes, I finished 4 online quizzes for the course and then went for a walk. There is a beautiful track around that I might run tomorrow morning. Portland is a town with a big harbour, they are loading timer and wood chips from what I could see, and maybe some grain or other stuff too. Nice clean city, not much is happening on a Sunday – many of the cafes with good ratings on Urbanspoon were closed. But I found a coffee shop that provided drinkable coffee.

There would be a nice running track around this lake

While I absolutely love taking photos with my 35mm 1.4, the perspective from a 24mm lens is just so different!

Black swan - almost like in Perth!

For the material handling readers ;-)

Could not resist taking another one

Quite a big piece of equipment on the wharf... and some cranes

It was a really productive afternoon as well, doing further studies, reading and thanks to the great WiFi here, getting some more guitar lessons from Justin. As I was getting tired of playing the same songs and chords over and over again, I learned the basics for the 12 bar blues and the minor pentatonic scale today. These two give me a lot to practice in the coming weeks!

For everybody who wants to learn guitar or increase their skills, I can highly recommend Justin Guitar – I did quite a few of the free online videos and bought the beginners songbook on the iPad to support Justin.

It is amazing which awesome resources you can find in the Internet – well, provided you got good Internet access, something that lacks quite noticeably when traveling in rural Australia.

Sunday evening was steak night – I found that Aldi are selling Grass Fed Eye Filet steaks, and had to try them. The result was superb. Nicely prepared, just with salt, pepper and a knob of butter, two bunches of steamed broccolini (correct, with grass fed organic butter!), half a bottle of Spanish Tempranillo (I needed some light, 12,5% Alcohol wine for a change!) and the remaining organic, double cream brie for dessert, followed by chocolate in the van. Living like a king!