Category: Transport

A Friendly Poke

Just a reminder that the Poetry Competition has but a few more days to run, it will of course be extended indefinitely, until some contribution from the female side is received.
By way of encouragement I offer this little piece from a local paper. When I read It I thought of Bearsy who has favored this form in the past, I have a hard time with the sonnet, something about counting in fives.
Continue reading “A Friendly Poke”

More Aussie Humour

While taking my obligatory daily walk, I usually listen to music that I’ve downloaded to my phone, but for the last few days I’ve varied things by listening to “Triple M”, an Aussie commercial FM station.   Of course, they carry adverts, which are frequently highly localised and delivered in a strong local accent, wherever one happens to be.   I’m inclined to ignore the content, but I learn a lot of dialect.

Yesterday, however, I was much amused by one for a new Ute – a Mazda I believe, though I could be wrong – which had a delightful political throwaway buried in the exaggerated Queensland Strine.   Describing the virtues of the new vehicle, at breakneck speed, the guy said –

… and as for grunt, well, this baby delivers 412 Newton-metres, which is more torque than you get at a Climate Change Convention …

Quite made my day. 🙂

This man has trashed Australia


This greedy, self-centred Irish gobshite (a word I hate, but nothing else is appropriate) has singlehandedly trashed the image of Australia around the world, playing havoc with our economy and ensuring that the airline that we were once proud to describe as an Australian icon will inexorably lose money and morph into another low service, poor safety Asian also-ran.

He ignored his customers, stranding some 80,000 of them around the globe.

Last year he took home $11 million as his salary plus bonus, but his declared objective is to get round Australia’s strong employment laws so that he can pay his employees Asian sweatshop wages.

He is a scrote.

Thank goodness that even Juliar had sufficient balls to (indirectly) order Qantas back into the air.

All at Sea

I had planned a blog about a local event that is usually well worth a visit and in preparation I moved the boat about 60 miles on Friday, about 30 miles on the Bay and 28 miles up the Chester river to Chestertown, Maryland, an interesting little town of some character. The event is the annual Downrigging Weekend which marks the end of the working season for many sailboats, the event attracts a large number of original and replica sailing craft, ranging in history from The Kalmar Nyckel a replica of the ship that established the first Swedish settlement in what was to become Delaware in 1636 through the Schooner Elf built in the 1880’s and still afloat. My personal favorite and a winter resident of Chestertown is the schooner Sultana a replica of a colonial revenue cutter built ten years ago from original lines taken off the ship when she was bought by the Royal Navy in about 1770.

We got in late on Friday and anchored opposite the Chestertown waterfront in time to see the firework display.  After that things got dark and interesting (well it is close to Halloween). A gale of wind and heavy rain descended, forcing the few of us who were anchored out to seek out the more sheltered local creeks to ride out the storm.  Saturday came slowly, bringing with it gale force winds and driving SNOW.  So far all the Saturday events have been cancelled together with my plan to take lots of good pictures of the various ships under sail.  The forecast looks none too rosy for tomorrow either but we will hang here in this creek and see what happens. More later.

Lucky tracks

Luck seems to follow me everywhere. Today in Tractor World as I was about to buy a packet of tractor Top Trump cards alarms started hooting and confetti fell from the skies. It turned out I was the 1,000,000th customer. Managers surrounded me, flash bulbs took my photo and I was told I had won a prize.
A week’s free hire of a tractor. Continue reading “Lucky tracks”

What does a redneck do with a golf cart?

I was given a golf cart as a birthday gift this year, the first mate decided I needed help getting around the property, the mailbox is about half a mile away at the end of the driveway and up a steep hill, it is quite a hike but not one that I make every day. The gift was greeted with a sigh and as much oh! yes and ah! perfect as I could manage on the spur so to speak.  Anyway it’s a two-seater gasoline powered 1994 model and has the thing on the back where one would keep the bag of sticks if one gorfed which I of course do not, and incidentally never have excepting for one game in the full innocence of youth when convinced by my Scottish uncle James MacDonald Millar that this would be a useful skill to have in later life I attempted a round (he lied).

The Metamorphosis

Gautrain

Collectors item ?

Have I mentioned my absolute dislike of the big cities? If not, I’ll just restate quickly that I absolutely hate them, the rush, the traffic, the insular attitudes, the crowds, I’m sure that there’s more but you get the picture.

I had to go to Johannesburg last week for a couple of meetings, I’d tried so hard to get out of the trip but the supplier / principle insisted and so reluctantly I booked my ticket. 9:00am flight up 15:45pm flight back.

In brief I was collected from O.R.Tambo (newspeak for Jhb international or Jan Smuts for those of you with longer memories) precisely on time, whisked off to Springs for a presentation and demo, then off to Rosebank for another and finally to Orange Grove for a quick lunch.

Needless to say up until the lunch everything had gone meticulously to my rather cramped schedule, then some old friends heard that I was in town, Continue reading “Gautrain”

Bin ‘ot ‘ere

Our second week of 100 degree plus days and when the air conditioning on one’s car fails one is forced to get creative.

The window unit air conditioner was easily “foamed” into the right rear window, getting mains voltage requires the trunk mounted generator, a few sheet metal screws and she’s ready to go.
All-in-all a simple and elegant solution to an overheated commute.