Birthday

Having birthday in July is cumbersome. In Poland it was in the middle of summer holidays, if celebrated, then in random place and company.

In Australia it is in the middle of the winter, same story. Memorable was my 50th birthday. I decided to celebrate it at Mt Buller. I went there for one week, my Family came just for my birthday, plus I had few random guests, inhabitants of the ski lodge. But important thing happened three days before. There was a blizzard, they closed all ski lifts. Resigned I went to ski hire to return skis I could not use. They offered me some back-country skis.

Where could I ski on these? - I asked.

Every where - was the answer.

It was prophetic. In the next many years, I participated in cross-country ski marathons in 17 countries.

But today, there was very little snow in the mountains, but beautiful sun in Melbourne. Yesterday, on Sunday, I made a bike tour in company of some 10 friends. It ended with coffee and cake in our home. I prepared a poster for the ceremony. Guess from it how old I am?

.. Sylvia baked a cake. This is sharing duties.

Today, I went for some swim. 50 years ago, it was my favourite sport, I even competed in University club. Nowadays I run out of breath after one length of the pool. But today I swam 1000 m. In 9 instalments. Still it was a nice effort and nice memories.

Winter

Winter is coming slowly. Most of July there was cold but minimal snow falls. Lately we had mixture of both.

Last Saturday (17/07), I accompanied Michael and his family in snow play in Lake Mountain.

First, Michael transported Matilda on his back...

Then we tried to build a snowman and an igloo.

Felix invented a modernized version, with a glass roof. As a material we used ice sheets from the frozen creek...

During drive from Melbourne, Felix told me:

- I know how to ski, I saw it on TV.

I think it was not so much TV , but his ballet training which helped him to cope quite well with icy snow and slippery skis.

But playing on toboggan was most enjoyable.