Achievement. I must be feeling better. After a good sleep, I thought I’d tackle the beach stairs for the first time in more than a year. Nearly two years, actually. I was going really well, descending, then climbing those stairs you see above (that’s a winter shot from April 14). There are 74 stairs, or there were then.  It’s been rebuilt at the bottom as in winter there was too big a drop from the bottom step to the sand. On one day, I did it four times. That was pretty good going for someone so overweight.

Anyway, I’ve now lost 3.8Kg in the past five days, bringing me down to my lowest weight in more than 10 years, I’d guess.

NB: the vertical scale is only 24Kg. That exaggerates the changes. The gap on the right is the Bali break.

Obviously that drop is anomalous, but I’ll try very hard to keep it off. Look at the trend line. That’s the important thing.

Anyway, I went down all the way to the sand and then stood with my ankles in the swirling water. Aaaaaah. That is the best feeling, and I haven’t been able to do it for a good while. I’m still not game to go into the surf. Not when I’m alone on the beach, that’s for sure. (By the way, ‘alone on the beach’. A fantastic 5Km long fine sandy beach with almost no-one there at 9.30am on a Wednesday. Take that, California. Perth does have some small city benefits.)

The next achievement was that I came back up the steps! Stopping frequently, OK, but it wasn’t too hard. It seemed easier than 2 years ago, as I suppose it should if I’m 10Kg lighter. This is the kind of exercise that makes you want to do it again.

Another achievement was that I did it all shirtless, just in my bathers. I’ve always been self conscious of my chest. Gynecomastia. I’ve developed breasts as I’ve got older. Quite large breasts. Droopy breasts. DD. It’s made it impossible to swim in public in recent years, but I’ve determined to overcome it, and I did in Bali. I had to. I’m going to continue it here, going bare chested (breasted) as often as I want to. So there.

Then I did the cliff top walk up to the highest point. My feet were dragging by now. I could only walk very slowly. But I got up and back, then had a cold shower at the public shower to wash the sand off, and back home. Nice.

So three achievements in one morning. Good going. Feel good. There’s only one drawback to going topless – no pockets. Keys tucked into bathers – ouch. Phone in one hand.

I forgot to mention: when I first arrived at the top of the steps, I saw a young guy far below coming up, carrying his mountain bike! Bloody hell, I have trouble just getting up landing by landing, but here he was, carrying that bike and stepping up as if it was nothing.

At the top, he stopped and spoke to me. I congratulated him on carrying the bike. Oh, it’s very light, he says. I said, have you been riding it on the sand? No, he says, he just took it down there for security, to keep it in his sight. Wha..? Why not use a bike chain?, I said. Nah, too easy to break, he says.  I think he’s buying the wrong cable lock.

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Next thing has been cleaning up as my cuz Tom is coming tonight. He’s over here from QLD on a work trip. Wants to hear about Bali. I’m going to try to persuade him to come up there, but he’s constrained. I’ll work on him.

The cleanup has absolutely knackered me, so it’s nap time.

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I took stills and video on my Sony phone this morning, but I cannot get them to transfer to the PC. I can’t even find them