A spot of bother

Most people know me as a free and easy kinda person, there's not much that bothers me. But (OLD) PEOPLE THAT CAN'T FUCKING DRIVE, do. Ready, set, rant!

< rant >
Right. I'm riding along in my usual kinda way; wasn't speeding or really weaving, filtered some lanes, took off reasonably, hugged some corners and generally enjoyed the 20 mins that I have to myself on my ride home from work.

After taking a nice left hander (thanks to Main Roads WA for resurfacing that one, nice job boys!) off Tonkin Hwy onto Morley drive, it was the home straight. Nothing too taxing from there, so I was just on my merry way.

I actually saw a fellow rider without a helmet on. Man, he looked wired. I could see how massive his pupils were through his sunglasses. Weird. Aaaaaaanyway....

So I'm riding along down a hill, at the correct speed mind you, where any normal person in a car would go "oh, there's a bike, won't pull out yet", but NO, not one, but TWO fucking cars pull out in front of me. Now, they're coming in from my right, and I'm in the left of two lanes. Again, the logical choice would be to pull into the lane with no traffic ie: the lane without ME in it; ie: the right lane. Car 1 pulls in, which I've seen and slowed down, and Car 2 then pulls out and I'm like "oh, they'll stay in that lane" and then they keep going! I nearly collected myself into the arse-end of a Ford Explorer!

10 points for an excellent emergency brake; no smoke or locking up at all, very controlled and changed down gears at the end AND even gave her the old 12V horn... but then the adrenalin kicked in and ZOMG did I go fucking mental! I sped up to this old wench who luckily had her window down where I proceeded to serve about 100 profanities and gave her the regulation "what the fuck is wrong with your head?" sign language.

By then I was rattled. I was starting to shake a little. The reality had just kicked in. If I had been doing 80 in that 70 zone, I would have collected myself. Fair call. But, if she had looked for 1 second rather than half a second, she may not have pulled out on me. What if I had my high beams on rather than normal light? What about a high visibility vest? What if I was in a car with small children? Seriously, if everyone, and I mean everyone from cars, trucks, taxis to scooters and motorbikes looked where they were going and weren't so complacent, there wouldn't be close calls like this. And I bet you right now, they happen every day.

Now, I read a statistic today, that motorcyclists have made up 27 of 166 road fatalities in WA this year so far. Twenty-seven (that's about 16%). Regardless of who's fault, there's people out there dying in vehicle accidents. So please, look out for yourself, and the girl on the bike next to you, or the dude in the van behind you. I do however want to conclude by thanking those people that DO do the right thing and look where they're going and are courteous on the roads. I know you're out there... somewhere...
< /rant >

'MO progress #1

Update on the late starter, now the hot favourite...

Still sexy, now just looks more like a crim. Up to $470 of a current target of $1000. At $1000, the head gets shaved! At $2000... we'll see!

Rhino FTW!

Have you supported MOVEMBER yet? Click the link dammit!

http://www.movember.com/au/sponsor, enter the rego number which is 38247 and your *credit card details. All donations of $2 and over are tax deductible...
*It's a secure transaction

Movember

It's MOVEMBER! And if you're not in the loop, then you're just not doing your bit!

Fellow rider "Rhino" is getting sexy with a 'mo this month and if you'd like to sponsor him (like I did) click here.

So help out where you can to raise awareness for Men's Health and grow or sponsor a 'mo this month!

Progress report: Day 4

And put a shirt on! Nah, you can keep it off.... ;)
LOVE YER WORK!

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 :)