Walk the line

I finally picked up my HEL braided brake lines today, after ordering them months ago. They were only $110 (compared to the $300+ I was quoted by the local Honda dealer for the same product about a year ago). Now all I need is someone to help me install (read: someone to install) the lines. Saf? Anyone?


In other news, Aaron and Steve from Rilusi Motorcycles had their store pre-opening today. Celebrated with a BBQ and a sausage sizzle, I even rode in the rain for that. And I'm the worst of the sunshine riders. The official opening is next Saturday, so for those interested:

RILUSI Motorcycles
Aaron Mather - Proprietor
Unit 1, 18 Boag Rd, Morley WA 6062
ph 9375 9703
fax 9375 6938
mob 0419 921 884

Tomorrow I'll be attempting to wash the bike then head out for another BBQ (for silly 250 riders) to make some noise and maybe even stop past and watch some of the PR boys play cricket.

Sif

Bailz: SIF NOT UPDATE YOUR BLOG IN A WEEK MAYA!!

Like OMG, the ex-king of drivel telling me to update my blog. Now I've heard it all. Get back to work and beat down upon your subordinates.

Well, not too much to report really. As you know, I was in Leonora the last two weeks and I got back on Friday night. The weekend was cruisy, with little to do other than eat and sleep. Work has been flat out - so much so that today I actually felt ill because I was doing about 15 different things for the equivalent number of people and everyone wanted it done when I was away.

I couldn't even be bothered going to fencing tonight. I just wanted to clean my gumboots and fix the headlights on my bike. As usual, for the 3rd time, it was the high-beam/low-beam switch. I got it fixed in 50 minutes. I think I would have kept that down if I had bothered to see if any wires were being crinked as I was screwing the whole thing back together. I think I'll perfect it for next time. As per the last few times I've fixed the switch, some contact cleaner that I lifted from another mine site and a roll of wet'n'dry made the switch come up a treat; or at least until it gets chockers with dust and shit and it stops working again.

News in brief:

One of my girlfriends went to the Pride Parade on the weekend and picked up a straight guy.

Julz is in Malaysia on holiday for another few weeks so I'm out of mid-week drinking buddies.

Pumpkin is heading to Oz this month - bring me another pair-o-clogs foo!

Mozilla Firefox 2 came out October 24th, so jump on the bandwagon and "rediscover the web", no shit, its a great browser.

So that's about it for this edition, no photos this time, but I did find something super-cool on good ole YouTube... Evanescence doing my fave Smashing Pumpkins song of all time... Zero.

Sunny Leonora

Yep, I'm currently in Leonora on a ripper 26.4Kbps dialup line. w00t! So this one will have to be something quick.

I'm here for work, to commission and partake in startup of a new underground drill rig, the first in Australia, and actually the first in the world (apart from the prototype). Things are going really well with it all, but of course there are always a few teething problems.

Commissioning crew nicknamed "The E2 Elite"

The weather has been fantastic for the times that I've been on the surface; mornings, lunch and shift change. Hot and 36 degrees most days, although today it has been partly cloudy.

Gwalia mine at sunset

It's been pretty tough out here, two weeks of pub food and servo lunches aren't a dream holiday and I had my first bout of "what the hell did I eat that for" last night and didn't end up going to site.

I've been doing shifts here and there to accomodate for the dayshift and nightshift operators, coming in to work at 10am, leaving at the end of shift, then getting called out at night when they're ready to drill again. I'm over being called up at 11pm to go in to work, but when I get there, I see that things are going they way they should; it's pretty rewarding.

At the face

I've managed to do a little touring around the place, checked out a little bit of the mine. I'm hoping to scope out the museum one day when we've got some time off in the afternoon. And when I get back to Kalgoorlie on Friday (I think), I'll go to the Superpit.

Gwalia pit

Till then, its business as usual, working hard, eating badly and not sleeping! Glad I have my iPod though... thank god for the technology! but damn this dialup line!

And a funny one for the record

Lunch in the Valley

Yesterday was a perfect day to head out to the Swan Valley to have lunch and some nice wine.

I picked Ben up around noon and we headed out to Sittella Winery where we were meeting up with Julz, Eric, Harry and Aleisha. Of course as usual, everyone was late. This gave Ben and I the opportunity to sample some of their creations.

The 2006 Verdehlo and the 2004 Shiraz were winners and I couldn't help but buy a few bottles. A1.

The rest of the crew eventually appeared and we sat down for lunch. I had the seafood platter. Mmmm, marron. Soooo tasty. We downed a bottle of Shiraz and had some dessert.

Having some lunch

Maaaaaaaate

Time to hit the Margaret River Chocolate Factory to taste some free chockies and buy some of course! Seeing as I shouted lunch, I managed to scab some freebies off Julz. Thanks dude! A little bit of chocolate and chocolate-orange fudge, some chockies, and a mug!

It was great to catch up with everyone, and it was such a brilliant day. Later that night was Scott's birtday party/Trav's housewarming; a nice and quiet one at Trav's house. Good to see some fellow engineer's there too. Happy housewarming Trav :)

Cocktails on Campus

For a night that had so much advertising, last nite, I was actually a little disappointed. At least the event was free. Julz came to pick me up around 8pm then we and a few others drove all the way up to Joondalup (ie: South Geraldton). We waited around for the ever-so-late Harry and made our way in. It was a pleasure to meet his new miss, Aleisha!

ECU Student Guild and Sport and Rec (with the AUG, Australian Uni Games, participants) are joining forces to hold this years most prestigious event, The Guild and AUG Cocktail Night.

We started drinking cocktails from the bottom of the list upwards, beginning with a Toblerone. After then making our way through another 3 cocktails, Toblerone was the absolute worst. I don't know that the red one was, but it was great. So great, that I had dribs of red and orange cocktail still stuck to my ankles the morning after. Ewww.

The thing that really got me about the night, was the severe lack of talent. No good looking people, and the turnout was a bit low. Of the 300+ tickets, people were streaming in and out and a crowd never really developed. The highlight of the night was watching a girl fall off a couch because she was sitting on the top of it. Comedy Gold. Tax-ey!

OMG - I'm wearing lipstick!

Aleisha and Harry

Julz and Me

Eric and Me

We got bored after about 11pm so we all decided to grab some food to ease our hunger pangs. Nothing better than Chelsea Pizza for a late-nite snack. We stuck around eating pizza and drinking beers and being merry well into the night, and Julz ended up with the leftovers.

An Australian First

At work on Wednesday, I was part of a two-man team set to simulate drilling on a brand new underground drilling rig. An Australian first, the only one in the country right now, and I'm also heading off to sunny Leonora on Monday to be part of the commissioning team.

The big rig

Rainer and I were the two in charge; a crazy old Swede that likes to smoke a lot, eat sausage rolls and swear. "What's up Rainer?" "I have no fuck-king idea!" "Oh..."

Later in the day when we realised that I had stuffed up the drill plans he said "I have this fuck-king pain in my head" ie: a headache. He's a funny bloke, really.

We're running the show

The day ended and I was knackered. Not only that but everyone only just remembered that I was off to Leonora and email-less for two weeks so they're all like "oh, can you do this before you go?" I've never been so busy in my life. Working 10 and 11 hour days in an office environment is so wrong in so many ways. I'm actually really looking forward to learning heaps and having a break from the "usual" day to day shizzle. Will try to take some time to take pix when I'm away.

Today I went nuts... no, I went MAD!

Yes, today was the MAD Ride and what a perfect day it was to see about 1000 bikes ride from Shenton Park Hospital to Scarborough Beach.


Check-in was $10 from 9am but I got in about 9:20 after stopping of at the ATM for some cash. Of course, being rugged up in gear means that I withdrew about $300 with my helmet on. The guy from the drycleaners was fully scoping me out like I was doing something dodgy. I swear he had a notepad with my rego number and was about to ring the cops. I hope I don't get a phonecall...


Anyway, the best part of the day was catching up with heaps of fellow riders like Kym and Stu, Lush, Carly, Col, Saf and Jana, Frank, Jeff, Dugy, Dave and Keez, Casey and Ryan, Rebecca, Shrike, Gavin, AhnLong...

So off I go on the ride, waving a honking at kids on the side of the road, getting waves back. The ride wasn't as slow as last year's, with traffic management being a little more organised. Some bottleneck slow spots, but it was riders' faults for making four lines of bikes over two lanes then merging back into one lane. Silly badgers. My bike was well behaved and didn't get too hot.

I saw one small incident where a lady on a cruiser has either ridden into the back of another bike or simply lost footing on the side sloping hill and its gone over. She was fine and I didn't really see the bike; just unlucky I guess.

Pulling up to park in Scarborough was a bit of a nightmare, people all over the place, bikes trying to park on the diagonal. Now the poor girl was getting a little warm... I parked up only to be told by the guy I had parked in that he was about to leave. At least he told me! We swapped spots and I was clear to move my bike for the rest of the afternoon.

I grabbed my jacket and headed to check out the stalls and marquees. I was really impressed with the PSB Girls stall with calendars for sale - WOW only $25 (with proceeds going to MAD), and I'm in it! YES - I'm in JULY 2007! w00t!


Some wicked bikes were on show, and spoke to Aaron from RILUSI. The shop front of RILUSI Motorcycles should be ready for November 4th, and he told me that he'd cog my bike for free if I chuck some promo stickers on it. Hmm, tempting. But still doesn't change the fact that the drags are $40 and are a complete rip. But still, he's got gear coming in and that means only good things.

Heaps of prizes were given away on the day and of course, the Casey Stoner Race Replica CBR1000RR- which I didn't win so move along, nothing to see here.

The ride home was uneventful also but it was good to see so many bikes on the roads today. In all, a great time was had.

MAD 2007...? Hell yeah!