Saturday, July 10, 2004
Revenge
We have figured out that we can make the car name badge on our car say something different if we chop it up...
2 PAJERO Badges, chopped up, with the O made to be a C, can be made to spell
JAPCRAP
so, we will institute this forthwith.
and, we also found out that PAJERO means wanker in spanish.
why did nobody tell us this before?
Fuck bollox toss wank bastard
AHHHHHHH! ARRRGGHHHHH!
so we got the head back together.
engine wont turn.
checked everything.
everything where it should be.
started taking it to bits again.
figured out that the cam is stopping the engine from turning, even without the rockers attached.
The cam is warped.
we gotta get a new one, and new rockers. we gotta wait till, guess when, wednesday again, if we can get the bit to cairns in time for the plane.
im running out of time, patience, humour and money.
goddamn bastard japanese crap shit boxes
Wednesday, July 07, 2004
Hitch Hikers Guide is Back!
Wow! One of my all time favourite comedy shows, the hitch hikers guide to the galaxy, is back, with new episodes covering the rest of the books. Fantastic! Can someone record them for me please?? Cheers....
heres the site....
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/hitchhikers/index.shtml
Bungee Jumping
Oh yeah, forgot to say, we went bungee jumping in Cairns. Its something i said id never do, cos i thought itd muck up my back, but thought what the hell and off we went...actually, my back feels a lot better than it did before.
one jump was 120 dollars, or all day for 135 so we did all day, although did arrive a bit hung over and 2 hours late for opening but what the hell. a beer soon got the courage flowing and the hangover suddenly didnt seem so bad.
the first jump was the worst. 50 meters up on the platform with a little lake underneath, up on the hillside with the cairns coastline and the beatifull turquoise sea at what seemed to be eye level. so serene, which was at total conterpoint to the fact that you were trying to convince yourself that jumping off this was going to be OK....you knew youd be safe, but somehow that didnt matter...every molecule of your body is telling you that death awaits...and dont look down, for christs sake, dont look down, but of course you do, as you need to know that your feet are still away from the edge....and then it gets worse.
something i always thought was that you be in a harness with the rope attached to that, around your waist or something, but as it is they tie your ankles together and attach the rope to that. this makes it much more scary....so as the guy is telling you to edge back on the platform,...go on mate, bit further , bit further... you are so afraid of tripping over your own feet and plunging off the edge at the wrong time (if there is such a thing...)...maybe you have to jump at the right time or something horrible goes wrong....
this makes it much worse. all the time theres a cocky aussie on rope control, who obviously does 5 death dives before breakfasting on raw chicken heads and tequila, possibly even both at the same time, telling you to move a bit futher out...put all of your feet off the edge except the balls...(theyve long since dissapeared north too) and all the time you are holding onto the rails at the side with white knuckles. taking the first hand off is ok, but getting the second off is nearly impossible, but once you got it, then you have no choice.
a bit of advice from the guy as to what type of jump you are going to attempt (for there are many of them, the elevator, the titanic, crucifix etc...), this first one for me was a swan dive, hands to the side in the air and leap forward as if you are diving off a diving board, in an elegant, controlled manner....
and then countdown begins, a friendly voice much like that of a dj counting a record or something, 5 - 4 - 3 - 2 - and jump....
and you lean forward, a bit, then a bit more, your legs try to crouch to spring you off the platform in a perfect swan dive...well, thats whats supposed to happen...and off you go. what happened to me, and that of nearly everyone who does it the first time i saw go, is that you crouch,legs trembling, bring your hands down to scrape the ground like you are a monkey or something and lean forward, lean forward a bit more....then eventually you topple forward, falling off the platform like a sack of spuds....the bit before the topple is THE worst, because you are trying to calculate point of no return all the time...i could stop now , and not do this...and its approaching and approaching...if i stop now im never going to do this....and off you go....
screaming like a girl and smiling at the same time....down you plummit....and of course, the bastards have programmed your rope for a water splash, and so you get an unexpected mouthfull of putrid water at the end of your scream, and as you are upside down, it comes out of your nose along with snot and then its all over. beutifull....
then you scream a whoop and holler, have a beer and try and gee yourself up for another go.
up you go, that long climb to the top. And i was wrong....the first time isnt the worst. the second time was the worst because you know you have to go through with that stomach wrenching moment just before you fall off the platform, when you tell your legs to jump and your brain intercepts the message, tries to say "dont be such a stupid bastard" just when you need it to shutup .....and you can tell yourself that you have done it, you are a man, conquered your fear of hights, and that you just dont need to do it again, even though it was fun, wasnt it?
so of course you do it again. all smiles as you get to the top. then you wait for the others to go, then its your turn. different jump this time, lets try an elevator, the fat aussie suggests and i nod my acceptance meekly, all the time going....ahh, you stupid bastard kevin, why ........this one you have to hop backwards off the platform with your arms folded.
i did 7 jumps in all...each time got worse and worse to jump, the tension building before it got nigh on unbearable, but we'd paid for it and that was that, may as well get the moneys worth. and the few seconds after you jumped were phenominal.
the funniest one (on reflection, i could have killed the bastard at the time)was probably "the pendulum", where you have to lean out backwards with fat aussie holding the rope, till you are at a 45 degree angle. then he pulls you in towards the platform, and lets you go. except he didnt do that. he spent what seemed like about 45 minutes pulling in, letting go, pulling in again, then just when i was bored with that, he pointed at the floor of the tower and said "shit, whats that?..thats broken.." and of course i looked and went "what the fu..." and as i did this he let me go. This time i screamed the most expressive scream i have ever let go, a real high pitched "WWWWAAAAAAAAAAAYOUBASTARD"
Definately the worst was the last jump. I decided i wanted to conquer a fear, i have this weird thing that happens to me with heights, first, i dont like them, but second, whenever im near an edge, i get this impulse to run and jump off it, can see it in my mind, me running and leaping, and ive always wanted to do it in a morose kind of way. Anyways, for an extra 15 bucks, you can jump off the roof of the tower. So i signed up, drank 2 tequilas, climbed the tower, got into the special harness that you can run in, it ties round your waist, and then had to hang around for about 10 minutes while the operators were on their tea break, all the time trying to get my head round it. Then i said, well, lets do it. so up onto the roof we went (they had a diving board, a slide and a ramp up there, but only the ramp was working, something wrong with the other two). This is going to be the last jump for me for the day, so the guy on the tower isnt going to see me again, so hes talking like ok, well, see you later, take care etc, and im thinking that its the last time im going to see anyone the way he's talking, which didnt bolster my confidence any.
The setup is a ramp that slopes down and goes off the edge of the platform. all you can see is the sea and the sky from there and you can feel the wind gusting and the platform flexing. I have to get on the ramp, and to do this i have to go the bottom of it, near the edge, and climb onto it, and then walk back up the incline. im shaking like a leaf, all the time he's saying, ok kev, all you gotta do is run, jump as far as you can, have a nice flight etc, so he's trying to gee me up...then he starts the coundown....
when he got to 3 , i started bellowing, "AAAAHHHHHHH" like i was some kind of kamikaze, and on 1 i was running, no turning back....off i leapt, screaming all the way down, still running when i was in the air...ah jesus it was good.
i dont think i ever want to do it again though. although there is a 450 meter jump you can do from a paraglider, which si might be able to talk me into. at least thats just one jump.
i guess we'll see when we get back to cairns
Planes, trains and automobiles...
we still here, waiting for a temperature sendrr and a camshaft oil seal so we can put the rest of the engine together and get on the road....they should have arrived on the plane today, its wednesday, its mail plane day, and its exciting!
...however, would you fucking believe it, the plane has broken down.
there is some sort of conspiracy going on trying to stop us from leaving.....
ah well. its the final "state of origin" game tonight, NSW vs Queensland in the rugby league...a strange game where you can get tackled 5 times before having to give up the ball. i think its a bit of a crap game compared to union...all they seem to do is run the ball, get tackled, run the ball, get tackled five times and if they make it over the line, they score, if they dont, the other side gets it. still, the ozies love it. Of course union isnt as popular here, having lost to us in the world cup.....however, the shine of that has worn off since getting our arses well and truly kicked by the aussies in sydney last week, 55-15. as i said, luckily most of the aussies have no interest in union anymore.....otherwise we'd never hear the end of it....
when not fixing the car, am either cooking, cleaning showers & toilets, chopping wood, drinking booze or smoking fags and generally chilling out. generator goes off at 10pm, so everyone is in bed quite early, except for the odd night where me and steve and some of his mates get shedded on rum...simon has given up drinking and smoking and has turned into some sort of fitness freak, going on daily 10km runs in the 30 degree heat. ahh well, some one has to do it....could be worse, could be me! actually, hes only given up ciggies cos there arent any marlboro red to smoke....hes being a bit of a fag snob, if thats an allowable thing to say.
well, the universe continues unabated and the world still turns, even if our crankshaft doesnt.
laters
kev
Sunday, July 04, 2004
Car things
well, most of the car is back togetehr now, got the head on, turbo, inlet and a few other bits and bobs.
unfortunately, i screwed the temp sender trying to take it off the old head and so we need a new one, and we gotta get a new camshaft oil seal, hopefully we'll get them tomorrow and then the thing will begin to look like a car again...
we shall see.
apart from that, ive been given a bottle of jim beam, and im gonna give a good go at drinking most of it....laters people
