back in black

Well I'm back from Townsville. And I've darkened up a little from too much sun without sunnies or a hat. Proper summary to follow, but for now I need sleep.

leaving on a jet plane

I'm off to Townsville tomorrow morning (7am flight, eew). People keep asking me why I'd go up there for a holiday, and the answer to that is mainly because I've never been and just want to see what it's like. The receptionist at the gym doesn't seem to be able to understand this... Anyway I'm back in the great south east on Monday night (yes, that's right, a four day weekend suckers). Until then, have a great long weekend folks.

the windscreen, my only weakness... how did you know?

My car appears to be a magnet for disaster. Ok, disaster is probably too strong a word - I'd be really worried otherwise. Anyway, I was driving on the highway on Saturday morning and found myself boxed in behind a truck (there were cars either side of me so I couldn't just change lanes). Next thing I know I hear the bang of something hitting my car, and after a few seconds of swearing and frantic searching, I found a rock chip in the passenger side of the windscreen. Not good.

Yesterday I took it in to get filled in or whatever they do so that the cracks don't spread - I really didn't feel like replacing the windscreen. They did give me a bit of a scare beforehand though when they had a look at the chip - apparently it was nasty (what do you expect when I was driving at about 115km/h into it, and who knows what speed it was travelling at me at...) and there was a chance that when they used the machine to fix it, the windscreen would crack and they'd need to replace it. $109 and half an hour later it was fixed and all good. Still looks the same to me, but apparently they did some fancy stuff involving injecting the cracks with some resin or something like that. I trust them... I have a lifetime guarantee on it anyway so I'll be back if they didn't do it right.

This car is becoming more expensive than I expected. Oh well.

pilot

I flew a plane this morning. A Cessna Skyhawk. Don't tell anyone though, I'm pretty sure I wasn't exactly supposed to... It wasn't a lesson, just went along with someone with a pilot's licence who decided to put his fate in my hands once we were in the air. I thought I was just coming along for a ride. I was wrong.

This morning I found myself steering the little aircraft (the first non-commercial aircraft I've ever been in) around Redcliffe Aerodrome towards the runway - after a quick five minute rundown on how it worked, I got told to steer the damn thing. After almost wetting myself when I headed away from the bitumen, I got the hang of it and got us to the runway. Once we took off, I got a quick overview of the countless buttons, switches, levers, dials and displays in front of me and got told what altitude to be at and which direction to go in, and then got told to fly the damn thing. It actually wasn't very hard at all. Wasn't quite like driving a car though, I'll tell you that now.

Heights aren't really my thing, but it was ok because I didn't really get the chance to worry about it, I was too busy trying to make sure that we weren't too high or too low, and heading in the right direction, as well as looking out for other aircraft around and dodging the clouds. I had my camera with me but was also too preoccupied to take many photos. Whenever I did get the chance to gaze out, I found the view to be awesome. It wasn't like when you're on a passenger jet with a window seat and have this little hole to gaze out of. You had this big open view of everything.

After a touch and go at Caboolture (I obviously had nothing to do with that, I handed the controls back over) we flew towards the Glasshouse Mountains and this was when I started to feel a little nauseous. There was a bit of a wind coming in from the south, and that coupled with the bits of turbulence from the wind coming off and around the mountains when we got near them (damn you Reynold's number...). Managed to survive though - I think that by concentrating on keeping the plane heading in the right direction helped me forget about the possibility of being sick. Not to mention making sure I didn't fly into the mountains...

Anyway it was an awesome experience. Not sure if I'm keen to get back into that cramped cockpit and thrown around anytime soon though. I went straight to bed when I got home, had a killer headache. Not having much sleep the night before probably didn't help either. I need to harden up a bit, really don't feel like throwing up everywhere... Though all I had for breakfast was a muesli bar, so it's not like there was much that could've come back up.

first blood

Well it's finally happened - my new car doesn't look quite so new anymore. Not sure exactly where or when it happened, but there are now some chunks of paint taken off the left rear bumper. All I know is that it was a white car. It could've happened anywhere between my house and somewhere in Brisbane, and any time before Sunday. Actually, now that I think about it, it had to be after Saturday night - I washed my car that night (my first drive-thru car wash), and since there were white paint remnants left on my car, it had to have been after that. Oh well, I guess the first bit of damage to a brand new car is always the worst, because it goes from perfect to not-so-perfect. It had to happen at some stage. Now the floodgates have opened, and any further damage sustained sometime down the track won't feel so bad.

Anyway, can I ask a favour of you? It would be cool if you could just vandalise any white cars you see with battlescars suggesting a collision with a black Liberty. That would be very much appreciated. Actually, that wouldn't really achieve much, would it... Revenge may be sweet, but I guess I'll never know whether one of the many cars I take my frustration out on is actually the perpetrator. Oh well, it's the best I can do.

Maybe I should call in the guys from CSI. They usually shine their different coloured lights on everything, swab stuff, hypothesise about what happened from different viewpoints, pull out some real corny lines here and there, and figure it all out in an hour, including ad breaks.

signed memorabilia

Signed memorabilia - I'm not really sure what the fuss is all about. Yet I'm addicted.

Today I bought a signed Canberra Raiders jersey.

This can now go with my footy signed by the QLD Reds, footy signed by the Wallabies, tennis ball autographed by Australian Open tennis stars, as well as various signed posters ranging from INXS to the QLD Maroons State of Origin squad. I'm sure there are various others which I have forgotten about and/or lost. That's the problem though, isn't it? I get these things but soon get bored with them (I mean, besides staring at it, what can you do with it, really?) and it's onto the next thing. Its not so bad when you gather the autographs yourself, as is the case with most of them, but when you buy things like the jersey, it becomes an expensive habit...

and i would drive 600 k's

Well I picked up the car on Friday evening after work. As of this evening, I've done about 600 kilometres of driving, stretching from as south as Northern NSW and as north as Redcliffe. Absolutely love it. The new car smell kinda messes with my head a bit, still getting used to it. I think I've figured out most of the dials and buttons. Well the important ones anyway.

After my last car, its just so good to drive. It packs more oomph, runs so smoothly, and is so comfy. Then there's the cruise control, which I had on my first car but not on the last one. 6 stacker CD means that I don't have to constantly flick between radio stations to find a decent song. I could go on and on, but I won't. What's annoying is how easily it gets dirty, especially when it rains (ie like this whole damn weekend...). Something tells me I should take care of this car better than the last, which I pretty much never washed or cleaned.

Also went to see Millencolin play at the Tivoli last night. That totally went off. Everyone was singing and jumping along. They're the best bunch of Swedes ever. Male ones anyway... Its always nice to see a band that's touring for their new album not just play the songs from that album - they played mostly stuff from their last three albums before the latest one, which was great, as well as a few of the newies (which I didn't know, as I hadn't bought the new album, but still enjoyed despite not being able to sing along) and the odd really old one (Bullion was awesome).

liberty!

Well it's official - today I popped into the Subaru dealership around the corner from the office and purchased a new car. Basically what I got was:

2008 Subaru Liberty 2.5i
2.5L AWD Sedan
4 Speed Automatic with Sportshift
Colour - Black Pearl
...and lots of other features (I'm not in the mood for listing every one - go to the website if you really want to know)

Anyway after a test drive, I spent a while haggling to get a better deal. I generally dislike car salesmen, but I had Shelley, a 28 year old car saleswoman who was friendly and appeared to be very understanding. Original price was about $38,500, and they valued my car at $3,000 for trade in. That meant that I was to pay about $35,500 in total. Anyway, the end result was that I got an extra $250 for my car as well as about $5,500 off the car. So I need to come up with $29,750. Not bad - I walked in there not wanting to be forking out any more than $30,000.

I didn't end up going for the ex-demo, I went for the brand new option. It should be available to pick up on Friday. It's funny - I'm not really excited about it. I guess it hasn't sunk in yet. Also, I couldn't sleep last night, so maybe I'm just too tired to get excited. I'm sure I'll be excited when I do pick it up - no doubt I'll be doing a lot of driving that evening.

The freaky bit in the day came when one salesman out the back mentioned that I looked familiar, and asked if I'd been on TV before... made me wonder if it was all some kind of April Fool's Day joke.