Plotting a path

Oh boy, did I cop a tongue-lashing! And this was from my friend with MS. If my daughter had sprayed the same opinion there would have been guilt as well as exasperation.

Sunday morning early, I hauled the bod up the rise to Paddington Town Hall to hail a 380 bus as the 389 did not start its service until 8:18 - this being a genteel suburb. By the time we turned from the Bondi Junction interchange into Grafton Street the bus was standing room only, so crowded it was with "young folk". There are immense benefits to having Christmas in summer.

Crossing over Campbell Parade just before 8am, the glare from the ocean was extreme and I made a mental note to get me a pair of prescription sunnies from OPSM this week - EARLY. Bondi is a very open beach with wide expanses of concrete, sand and water none of which are good for sensitive systems. Taking my next set of ankle-huggers off at the top of the ramp, I noted the open blister that I am no longer capable of feeling, tied the laces together and dangled them from my back-pack, already loaded with camera gear and water.

Dry sand quickly induced brain-fog. As luck would have it, for the first half of the beach prone bodies and their assorted gear were infrequent, but the sun was biting even this early, the glare was extreme and the effort required to plot any sort of a path, that alone a relatively straight one, was immense.

The North Bondi half of the beach was littered with bodies and awash with nippers in training. Trying to keep to the dry sand and avoiding outstretched limbs became an exercise in itself. Laughable when you realise that there must be 9 parts of dry sand to 1 part of wet, packed sand! Eventually, I plomped, exhausted, on a ledge in the shade and watched mummies and daddies introduce their sprogs to the joys of the rock pool at the northern end of the bay that is Bondi. It was just after 9am. Bloody hell, thinks I, I still have to get back. You can start to word the lecture yourself, I suspect.

I tumbled through the grill that is my front door a little before 10:30 - this little ramble along the dry sand at Bondi had taken 3 hours, 5 if you count the kip that I now had to partake.

Update - Tuesday
Missed the 389 that passes at 6:01, so up the rise to Oxford Street I trundle only to find that, this being a main peak-hour thoroughfare, the service in the opposite direction is patchy and I had to wait for the 333 at 6:34 and it would not take my pension card SO I HAD TO PAY!!

However, with brain in gear this time, I think I have this routine by the short'n'curlies, if it is permissible to mangle the vernacular in this way. Managed sand-stomping fromn 7 to 8 and home by 8:45 with a litre of milk for my weet-bix. A good pattern could be: bus there (30 mins), sand stomp (60 mins), bus back (30 mins). Tomorrow I will shoot for the 6am local bus and back here by 8am.

Went half way along this time, and returned. Rest. Then did a number of legs from the wet-dry sand divide to the promenade and back. My head and body was exercised and my mind was relaxed watching the (beautiful) people and the (magnificent) landscape.