Early morning, Lavender Bay

Morning Walk Wooden Boat
Originally uploaded by oliverw.

Time out: let's take a moment to reflect.

Lavender Bay is my favourite bay in Sydney harbour, and the walk along the foreshore from the bridge to Berry Island and beyond is all beautiful. The whole way I'm thinking, "how the hell can this be free? in what other country in the world would you be able to do this, for free?"

In the Web 1.0 days I used to take our golden retriever, Jemby, along to work at Yahoo! up the hill in North Sydney. I'd take her for a walk at lunchtimes down along the foreshore.

Any time there's water nearby, she starts pulling like a team of oxen, and this one fine winter afternoon I decided to let her climb down the timber steps along the foreshore (just out of bottom of frame of this pic) and go for a quick swim. Problem was, the steps ended just above the water, she's an old dog, and she couldn't get back up again.

So when I climbed down on the timber steps and began hauling her out, the rotten timber of the steps collapsed, and the dog and I went into the harbour. I managed to grab the remaining stair as I went down and so was able to keep the top half of my body out of the water, but needless to say, by the time I got me and the dog back up on dry land we were both pretty wet and seaweedy.

One of the weirdest experiences in six years at Yahoo! (wow, that's saying something!) was trudging back to work, sitting down at my desk, me and the dog both still dripping seawater. To their credit, Yahoo! didn't have a problem with me still bringing Jemby to work, but they did ask that I try to keep us both from swimming in the harbour again.

Believe it or not, it isn't the only time I went in the sea fully clothed during a Yahoo! working day. But that's a whole other story...

(Thanks Oliver for the inspiration!)