Dalekboy

So Mother's Day we were in Melbourne, at my sister-in-law's place with the rest of shazgirl's family, when there's a knock at the door. Gaylene's defacto goes and answers the door, comes back a few moments later and says, "Danny, someone's just backed into your car."

I go to the door and the young woman, who is looking very upset, starts apologising. I ask her if anyone was hurt, she says no, and I tell her that's all that matters, anything else can be sorted. We head out to my car, and I'm expecting that she's backed into the door or a fender. She's apologising the whole time.

"Any idea where you hit?" I say, unable to see any damage.
"The bumper bar."
I look. Some of the dirt from the Nullarbor trip has been scraped off, and there is a kind of dark rubbery mark. I wipe at it with my hand and it comes straight off, as does more dirt. The girl is still apologising. Defacto-in-law comes out with his camera, and asks if I want a photo taken of the damage.

I point to the shiny, undamaged chrome where I've just wiped away the mark and a layer of dirt and say, "Yeah, get a pic, it's never been that clean before."

I assure the woman that there is no damage done, then my curiosity kicks in - can I see her car? It's a newish vehicle, maybe two or three years old. The car wasn't even running when she hit me, she just took the handbrake off and let the gentle slope of her driveway carry her out. There's a hole in her bumper bar. The material has actually been torn open by a very low speed impact with my car. She's going to have to get a new bumper, she's probably up for around $1200. Her indicator is also smashed.

She wants to exchange details, she's still worried about my old bomb. I tell her that there's obviously no problem, but if I do find one, she lives across the road from my relatives, they can collect her details. She calms down a little. We say goodbye and head inside.

When Shaz and I come to leave, I notice the bits of her broken indicator on the ground next to my car, and can't help but feel a bit guilty...

...and just a little triumphant!

Go the Belwood!

I made some solid decisions a few weeks back, one of which was to start exercising. ( Ways I'm achieving a few minor goals and victories )

It's a big year ahead for me. Given I don't know what my health will be like in 12 months (this time last year I had absolutely no reason to expect any drastic change, barring accidents) I've made plans. Big plans, at least for me.( Read more... )

Lots of words below the cuts...

Piss on people's floors
( Read more... )




The Belwood
( Read more... )

Left Eucla at 3:30am Perth time. Was a good drive though after heading through a collection of locusts, the car has picked up a cricket in its fandoogle. This means that the car starts to make a chirping noise if we go over 85kph, as the dipthrong gears rub the insect and excite him. The horny cricket is a cosmetic problem, but the chirruping sounds so awful, we're just staying around 85.

How do crickets ever get laid? Must be a lot of deaf ones.

Even with the speedometer broken, figuring out our speed is simple enough. We just use the stopwatch function on our mobile phones and time how long it takes to travel between two of the markers that are placed at ten kilometre intervals. Then we take that time, convert it into seconds, see how many times that number goes into 3,600 and we have our speed. Don't know why I ever bothered with a speedo in the first place, it's so easy.

And now we have the audible horny cricket noise to let us know when we've passed 85, so that's one set of calculations we don't have to do.

Eventually got to Stokes Inlet by around 10pm. An easy day's drive. Just under a thousand kilometres in around 18.5 hours with several stops along the way for food, wee, photography and to compare hoon tans.

I don't know why everybody doesn't do this trip.

Treated myself today by getting my car cleaned. It was rather amusing, as the main young bloke to work on it couldn't figure out the immobiliser, then couldn't figure out the gears (he hadn't noticed the clutch) and then kept stalling it. hehehe

So my brmmm brmmm is all sparkly and gleaming again after having driven it over to Perth, then up to Uluru and home again. Yay! Though it still has a bootful of red dust from the Hyden/Norseman road.

Today was a tough day of Santa-ing. The suit ups your temperature enough that you sweat in an air conditioned shopping centre, so you can imagine what I was like on a 35 degree day. I was literally dripping sweat. Just think, some people pay good money to clean out their pores in steam rooms, meanwhile I get paid to exude moisture.
I still have a slight dehydration headache, but I had a fun day as St. Nick. The kids were good, I refused to give a stall holder a lolly since she snatched one from my hand yesterday and I got to drawer winners out of a barrel in a competition that no-one seemed at all enthusiastic about.

Spoke to a woman yesterday who had just had all her Chrissy presents stolen. As she said "You hear about it all the time on the news, but this time it's me." She was reasonably chipper about it, happy that her son was too young to realise. Gave her a big hug and a lollipop, it's all I could do.

I've had one stall holder give my elf and I fruit every day, which is very kind. It came in handy yesterday when I was giving lollipops to some kids and one looked at the proffered sweetie and said he couldn't have it because the red food colouring makes him really sick. So I dropped it back in the bag and pulled out an apple and got a good smile :) Yay!

Well, I'm off to drink my fourth litre of water for the day