Ive been getting to know my home town all over again. Lots of memories flowing back. So much has changed here. Don’t know how long I’ll be staying , camping spots are becoming harder and harder to find. Its like seeing things again for the first time and yet I’m felling very melancholy all the same. Its been good to catch up with friends. I always try and make an effort to call atleast every fortnight. Thx guys for the use of storage, showers, spare fuel,etc. I tried walking around the botanical gardens and ended up on pain killers for most of the day. It seems easier to walk on the saw dust trails than over the harder surfaces. I’m pushing the knee but its not improving. Having a break day before back to the gym in the morning.
the coffee shops here are great, even a micro brewymy favorite place in the city the botanical gardensthe van is 6m long by 2.7 high to give an idea of the tree sizeIm getting my ashes spread here
Ive finally transitioned to full time van life. No more staying in a mates backyard and living out of the house with all the luxuries. Still trying to get used to a routine. 5 days a week at the gym for workouts but also for showers, protein powder with fruit breakfasts and cold meat with salad lunches. Haven’t been home for three years. A lot has changed. Start the remaining timber work on the van next week. Its hard finding things to do all day.Trying to do as much walking as possible to build up the knee. Ill get the bike back on the road soon, to fill in a few hours, the walking is seizing up the leg.
Finding different camping spots of a night is harder in the cities. Moving every day so I don’t get kicked out of a spot.
middle of city under the Morton bay fig treesbeach campingalong the river bike ways
Van life TIP number 1
carry your own TP most of the public toilets either only give you 3 pieces as per the automatic versions or are usually out. Another is to carry your own soap and hand sanitizer . its harder and harder to find soap in public toilets especially in Tasmania.
I was put onto a short hike near where I was traveling through to a suspension bridge. I thought easy, clearly marked wheel chair access. Not too sure of the distance only that it should have been within my limits and I haven’t been doing much on the blog. The road started off with massive tree ferns and a blanket of wild flowers along the sides of the bitumen before reaching the parking bay. The track seemed well marked and a gentle slope. The first 350 meters where well within my tolerances. The next 800 meters to reach the destination , going down hill felt like I was being stabbed in the knee every time I put my left foot down. I knew i was going to have trouble climbing back up the gradient. Wheel chair access pigs arse., came to mind as clearly whomever designed the track had never spent time in a chair I finally reached the bridge and thought this was not a good idea. 15 feet at a time dragging my knee back up the hill until reaching the first sign post a half a step at a time with that leg. The walk itself wasn’t that inspiring but like many things it wasn’t the destination but what you learn along the way. I took many things away from that short hike. Id spent months and months pushing myself to increase my lung capacity to post COVID levels and to increase my knee strength but all that felt like I hadn’t achieved anything today. I managed to get back to my camp and washed down several panadiene forte with an iced coffee. It knocked my out for hours. When i first damaged my spine I had to take ten panadiene forte a day with a 6 pack of beer just to function. To get out of bed, to walk the dog. Trying to get all the meds out of my system has lowered my resistance to pain killers. It was when I woke up that I thought of how much more work I still had to do to get back on my feet. I didn’t leave it at not accomplishing anything, only that I would have more work to do.
Mountain Ashbridge supportsstill trying to identify I believe its a coral fingi
Sorry for the lack of posts lately. Ive been trying to get back on my feet after having COVID and pneumonia. Pushing myself pretty hard. Doing a minimum of 6kms a day on the bike and up to 30kms on some days, pain being the limiting factor. I was doing the below workout two times a week and have had to separate things up to a two day split with trying to do legs as many times as possible. I cant do much unless I can get this leg to work properly or atleast to a level I can adapt to. The lung capacity is still too low to get back on the road to finish off my training courses. Im either too tired or in pain by the end of the day to concentrate on much else. After loosing 10 kilo I was doing 2 kilo bicep curls and after four months have finally gotten up to 6 kilo. I was doing 9 kilo curls before the Tassi trip. Ive lost a lot of lung capacity and conditioning. Getting back to a decent level of fitness has been my main priority over the last few months and will be for the next year if I want to get back into the field. Besides I cant get serious about looking for a rescue another staffy if I cant walk far enough to exercise a dog.
Workout Routine (Reverse Drop Sets)
Day 1 Chest and Shoulders
Chest
Dumb Bell Coffin Press
Machine Chest Press
Cable Pull Upper and Lower
Shoulders
Front Raise
Reverse Flys
Shrugs
Barbell Upright Row
Seated Shoulder Press
Rotator Cup Cable Side pull
Day 2 Legs and ABS
Leg Press
Leg Extension
Hamstring Curl
Calf Raise
ABS
Side Cable Bend
Cable Crunches
Day 3 Back, Triceps and Biceps
Back
Seated Row
Lat Pull down
Machine Rear Deltoid Row
Dumb Bell One Arm Row
Triceps
Cable Pushdown
Cable Kickback
Overhead Cable
Biceps
Concentration Curl
Alternating Hammer, wrist up, wrist down , partials
I came across this project from Mitch at Agonic through the Baer Solutions Channel. Apart from looking like an every day bracelet it can also be used as an improvised cable tie for handcuffs or for locking a hotel door for added security. A great addition to an EDC. Check out Mitch’s other contributions at Grand Thumb and Dirty Civilian.
We live in a time where you can be in the name of fairness you can’t share the stories you write for my news publication on social media. We live in a time in which in the name of the common good you can be kicked out of your bank and online payment system simply for expressing the wrong political views. We live in a time in which in the name of social justice you can commit a serious crime but get a more lenient sentence if you happen to be the right skin color. We live in a time in which in the name of safety you can be arrested for exercising your right to peaceful protest if you happen to be protesting the wrong thing of course.
I came across the below speech and thought of how much Australia had become like this. However the Australian Government is just better at hiding what laws they are instigating.
Don’t Forget What Happened During the Plague (Because you cant mention the C Word) Since COVID the Cuntry has never been the same!
Just a quick idea of laws and acts brought into parliment concerning freedom of assembly, covid 19 breaches in human rights, Communications Legislation, anti terrorism laws such as consorting laws, I still havent looked into banking within this country.
Freedom of assembly
New South Wales, Tasmania and Victoria adopted new laws carrying large fines and prison sentences for participating in unauthorized protests.
In August, police in New South Wales arrested 34 peaceful protesters and a legal observer at a demonstration in Sydney against government inaction on climate change. Twenty-one people were charged under the Roads and Crimes Legislation Amendment Act 2022 and faced a two-year prison sentence or a fine of up to AUD 22,000 (approximately USD 14,170) if convicted.
Covid-19
Australia has restricted the rights of its own citizens to enter and leave their own country.
Strict arrival quotas due to limited quarantine facilities left more than 43,000 Australian citizens stranded abroad.
From March 2020 to November 2021, Australia banned its citizens from leaving the country as a public health measure during the Covid-19 pandemic, unless they met strict criteria. In August 2021, the ban was expanded to include Australians who normally live abroad. This punitive approach to travel left tens of thousands of Australian families separated from their loved ones.
After a spike in Covid-19 cases in India in May, the Australian government announced a temporary measure of banning Australians who had been in India from entering Australia. Those who disobeyed could face fines of up to AU$66,000 (US$56,000) or five years in prison. No bans on citizens were put in place following similar spikes in 2020 in the US and UK.
Freedom of Expression
Human Rights Watch research found that Australian universities are failing to protect the academic freedom of students from China and of academics who criticize the Chinese Communist Party, leaving them vulnerable to harassment and intimidation by Chinese government supporters. Chinese pro-democracy students in Australia alter their behavior and self-censor to avoid threats and harassment from fellow classmates and being “reported on” by them to authorities back home.
A new regulation was introduced into parliament in August that would make it easier to deregister nongovernmental organizations if they promote protests in which minor offenses occur.
A bill to create new police powers to conduct online surveillance of criminal suspects and take over their accounts was passed by parliament in August, despite the legislation failing to implement safeguards recommended by a parliamentary committee.
A number of rights have been restricted during the COVID-19 pandemic. They include:
The right to freedom of association: With the virus being air-borne and aggressively transmitted in groups, social distancing is key to limiting the spread. Restrictions on association with other people have been introduced worldwide during the pandemic. Restrictions have ranged from total bans on associating with anyone outside your household to only being allowed to gather in groups of limited size for purposes like weddings, funerals, and work.
The right to peaceful assembly: Protests involve large groups of people meeting together and so have been restricted during the pandemic for similar reasons. Rights to protest and freedom of expression can be exercised in other ways – such as online – and have not been completely restricted.
The right to liberty of movement: This applies to moving between states in Australia as well as to the freedom to leave a country (including Australia). Border restrictions are explicitly recognised in international law as a right that may be lawfully restricted during a public emergency.
The right to family reunification: This includes a right to reunification across borders, but is similarly recognised in international law as a right that may be lawfully restricted in a time of public emergency.
The right to enter your own country: International law provides that people should not be arbitrarily deprived of this right. Again, it is a right that may be lawfully restricted in a time of public emergency.
The Communications Legislation Amendment (Combating Misinformation and Disinformation) Bill 2023 is now in the public consultation stage.
No other nation can match the volume of Australia’s counter-terrorism laws. Their sheer scope is staggering. They include:
control orders, which allow courts to impose a wide range of restrictions and obligations on people to prevent future wrongdoing. They can mandate curfews, limits on phone or internet usage and electronic monitoring
preventative detention orders, which allow police to detain people secretly for up to two weeks, either to prevent an attack or protect evidence relating to a recent one
mandatory retention of all Australians’ metadata for two years and access by enforcement agencies without a warrant
a power for the home affairs minister to strip dual citizens involved in terrorism of their Australian citizenship.
Many of these schemes are unprecedented in Australian law, outstripping even our historical wartime powers.
I had a particularly bad day with pain and was offered a beer which eventually turned into six, I rarely touch alcohol now. I had asked my house mate if he had ever accepted being in a wheel chair. He had been in it since he was 17 from a vehicle accident and was now 35. He had not. He did not like remembering or being reminded, or even seeing other people in a chair. This was important to me as a mirror to understand my own health problems. Ive had to learn how to walk three times now, its been 18 months since the severed quad tendon and still cant walk distance. Some days on the bike I have to force myself through the pain.
I had to ask myself if I had ever accepted my limitations and I think not, its those limitations that make me push myself more. Three you tube clips made me ask these questions. The first from Frogman Tactical that said “Train at the pace you can move at, embrace the burdens you have”. The second was I reached out to Ryan Humiston to try and get a work out routine for rehab. Its been four months at the gym and Im finally starting to build muscle again after loosing ten kilo to covid, but I want to take it to a different level now than I ever have before. Then thirdly after Ryans talk on how to become motivated i watched the link to Phil Hansen Embrace the shake where he talked about needing to be limited to become limitless.
Limited to become limitless! So in my life Ive crushed four discs,2 back operations, broken my sternum 3 times, had 2 bilateral lung transplants, 12 years of my life on an oxygen bottle, throat cancer, right shoulder cancer,right shoulder dislocations a whole other story in pain, having a lump taken off my head this week, and severed my quad tendon, spent 6 months in a leg brace then 6 months of rehab trying to bend the leg again, 16 days in hospital with covid and pneumonia loosing 10 kilo of body weight and went from 9 kilo bicep curls to 2 kilo after three months of loosing my lung capacity. I’m now down to 60 percent.
Yet I’m still doing 2.5 hours at the gym twice a week and between 6 and 15 kms on the bike each day and fitter than most people I know. I was training in more than 5 different martial arts after my last transplant. My limitations make me limitless!
