Holiday Today!

Today was the public holiday for Brisbane Show Day so we decided to have a bike ride in the morning, then spend the afternoon playing in the pool.

Bike Riding - By the Brisbane River

Initially we headed to a bike track around the Enoggera Reservoir, I thought a bike track around the edge of a lake would be fairly flat, oh boy was I wrong! It very quickly became apparent that we would not be able to do the planned ride when the approach to the reservoir was so steep we were barely able to stand on the shale and rock as we walked our bikes down to the start. After about a kilometre and having had to walk with Rosie up three hills (it's not easy for seven year olds to ride up steep hills on a fixed gear BMX) we thought better and returned to the car to re-plan our ride.

So we headed off to Southbank for a river ride. We started our ride heading north west along Southbank, crossed the Brisbane River via the Kurilpa Bridge, then in a roundabout way onto the Bicentennial Bikeway. This busy path took us south east along the river's edge to the Botanical Gardens then along to the Eagle St. Pier. We didn't want to wait for a cross river ferry so we back tracked whence we came and crossed back over the Brisbane River on the Goodwill Bridge. 

On top of the Goodwill Bridge - with helmet hair!

Once back on the south-side we again headed in a south easterly direction towards Kangaroo Point. 

Rock Climbing Kangaroo Point Cliffs

The girls thought all the people rock climbing on the cliffs along the rivers edge were really cool. They want to give it a crack so we might investigate that at a later date. We turned around at the cliffs and headed back to the car.

An Afternoon Swimming - Pool Now Finished!

We commenced the longest pool build in modern history on the 7th of February,  the pool was officially completed on Saturday the 10th of August when I braved the 18 degrees Celsius water and fitted the suction filters to the suction pipes, 184 days or just over six months after the build commenced! The pool was contracted to be completed on the 11th of April, we only missed that deadline by 121 days!

There have been hiccups along the way with enormous amounts of rain causing delays, contractors not showing up, problems with the ground it was built on, project variances and other annoyances. However now the pool is completed and the weather is warming up we are starting to really get some use out of the pool, thankfully the solar pool heating system has made a big difference!

The solar is doing a great job, in an earlier post I spoke of my first swim in the pool at a balmy 21 degrees C, as it turns out the temp probe was out of whack and needed calibration. Once correctly reading the temp, the solar started working properly and is now warming up nicely after a couple of warm days! I even spent a couple of hours in the pool yesterday afternoon, with the water temp at 22 degrees C it is quite pleasant.

The girls really love mucking about in the pool and it is amazing how quickly their ability in the pool improves, along with their confidence. In a couple of short hours Rosie gained enough confidence to swim under water the length of the pool - albeit with flippers but that is still a very big improvement for her! Both girls can duck dive and pick up small objects from the deepest part of the pool, which is 2.1metres deep. 

We have used a mineral salt blend called Acqua Therepe for the salts for chlorination, which apparently has many benefits, most of which are not really measurable. However the one thing that is very obvious is how soft the water is on your skin and hair. So far so good!

I wont win parent of the week this week, Emily has a little sun burn on her shoulders, I must remember we are no longer in a normal winter and act accordingly!