This guy (well the photo is his stunt double) turned up again today. I bought him on the 14th of June, and, after a day or so he went missing. He appeared without any explanation on 27th June. Yesterday, I was thinking that he was probably dead, and in fact a couple of weeks ago, there were bits of detritus in the tank that could have been fish body parts. After I did my weekly tank clean this afternoon, there he was for about one minute before he went in to hiding again.

 

I don't know how a fish can just hide out for 4 weeks without being seen, but this guy does it well. It seems that he hides in the end of the tank where I put the food in, so he must get enough to keep going.

After weeks of forced inactivity, I finally got back on the bike today… Yay! A combination of an injured arm from when a ute knocked me off, then various surgeries on vulnerable parts of my body has kept me off the bike for about two months. Today was the day!

I usually take my phone with me to both provide audio stimulation and log my ride. A minute into the ride, the phone tugged my earphones and crashed to the road. Luckily I retrieved it before a car was able to run it over. It now has a cobweb feature at the top left hand corner.

I decided to not let this little set back deter me. I continued on down the road and to the edge of town. A couple of dogs came out of one yard and started chasing me. I kept my nerve and just rode straight ahead. I left them behind after a couple of hundred metres. I reached my goal which was the Santos shed (4 km from home) then turned around. 

The dogs came out again, but this time the traffic was heavier. The big black dog ran across the road to head me off, while the little one yapped from my side of the road. A car behind me slowed to my pace and a truck coming the other way almost collected the black dog.

One of the great things aobut living in a small town is that not only do you know who lives where, but where they work as well. I called in to see the owner and told her what had happened. She said the black dog belongs to a neighbour and she had already complained to him this morning because the dog had killed some of her chickens. I hope she is able to get the dog restrained and out of everyone's way. I may be taking a photo next time to give to the ranger.

So it's been a day of mixed blessings- a fish that was MIA turned up alive and well and a bike ride was completed almost as planned despite a broken phone and aggressive dogs.