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So, I’m sitting in the gallery yesterday and my uncle calls me up.

Him: You’re going sailing tomorrow!
Me: I am?
Him: Yeah, a mate’s got a boat and he’s going out – I can’t go but said you would, that alright?
Me: [stunned but curious] Sure!

So, we went sailling. Pretty cool in fact, learnt how much there really is to manage to get a boat to do what you want. It’s a 31ft race boat, I’m not good with the terminology, but I helped out a bit and we ended up winning a friendly race across Jarvis Bay

The wind was playing silly buggers with us, coming from all sorts of directions, gusting, dropping to nothing and then coming on strong again – really good weather to see how different situations require different tactics to get where you want to go. All in all it was a great day, definitely better than sitting at home playing on the internet and doing random things. I got some sun, I got some new skills, and I got to meet a few cool people – all in all another great day

Ok, another one just as I typed it

GPS odometer 1355+change

Today was a relatively short day travel-wise, since I started in Goulburn and was heading for canberra – roughly 100km of driving. Nothing terribly exciting to report as far as the travel went, the Federal Highway is pretty boring. I went past Lake George which is rather empty at the moment, so it looks like a giant flat plain.

Canberra’s just like everyone said, designed for the public servants and rather boring. Looking down some of the streets makes me think of what Movie World is like without all the glitz, a manufactured town by boring people for boring people. I would say it doesn’t have personality, but it does. It’s just a really boring one. The streets are nice and wide, very well planned out and so forth, but that just makes it look more empty than it is. There weren’t many people around the place except for old people and students at the tourist places and boring corporate types in the eateries at lunch time.

I walked around parliament house, which is rather… parliamentary. It’s not exciting, and anyone that says it is has to be a politics student or old. I took a few photos, just to see if I could make it un-boring, but I don’t think I achieved that, I’m just not that good.

Meeting up with Mum we stopped at a little italian place for lunch, because I was starving by then – breakfast was coffee and cigarettes. I got the Tattaglia Carbonara, a wonderful mix of bacon, mushrooms and a white wine sauce over fresh pasta – quite tasty. Caesar salad with calamari was mum’s dish, which seemed nice but the seafood didn’t taste too nice to me.

Our next stop was the Canberra Gallery, where we checked out a few different exhibitions including a celebration of 60 years of the Canberra Photographic Society. Some great shots, and a nice group of displays.

Next we went to the War Memorial, which is an impressive structure – as it should be – it’s quite amazing to see our military history. I saw one of my relatives on the giant wall of rememberance, wandered through the exhibits and even saw a photo of another one of my relatives on the Sandakan photo wall. This wall is quite saddening because it shows a photo of each person put to death in the Sandakan Prison camp.

So now I’m sitting on a couch in one of the rooms of the Crowne Casino, pondering what to have for dinner. I guess I’ll just find some nice little place and munch, then toddle around taking photos of things until I get tired

As a PS to this original post, I went out and had a shitty dinner – the WORST lasagne that I’ve ever had, tasted like it was made of last week’s leftover horse meat or something. Went back to the room, hung out, then went out again to grab some stuff out of the car and locked myself out of the room – go me!

This is basically as I typed it on the night, I’m too freakin’ lazy to reword it or remove the tiredness.

Arrived in goulbourn as of 11:30pm trip odometer is 1246km

God damn that was a long day, but it really seems like it flew past. Starting in Kempsey I travelled south (as is to be expected).

Stopped in the supa cheap in newcastle to try and find a sydney/surrounds UBD or similar, and got totally distracted by an intermittent squeaking noise emenating from the engine bay. I seem to be running on crazy at the moment, because it took me until Belmont to stop somewhere to find a long screwdriver to try and sound it out on the engine – all I could hear was that it was coming from somewhere at the “front” of the engine (not the gearbox end, since it’s a FWD car) and it changed when the RPM of the engine changed. I decided that I couldn’t work it out, so I sent an SMS to Darren to ask for help and he said it was probably the timing belt and to spray some CRC/WD40 on it to test it. I finally found a servo on the way out of Belmont and grabbed some – spraying some into the timing cover and onto the timing chain seemed to fix it, so I stopped in an Auto Pro at Gosford at 5:36pm to get some silicone spray as directed. Spraying that liberally in the timing case cover while the engine was running seems to have fixed the problem for now – the belt had probably dried out a bit, hence the squeak. I think it could have been aggravated by the timing case cover gasket being rather messed up, hanging out in places and the cover itself being cracked.

I’m really tired and there’s plenty more driving to do tomorrow I’m sure. The goal for tomorrow is to get to Canberra – about 150km – because I don’t have to be in Culburra Beach until Thursday night or Friday as my uncle won’t be there until then.

Well, that’s day one’s travel done. By the time I’d packed the car and ran some errands it was about 11am before I left – being unable to stop hugging my cat Charlie probably didn’t help either :’(

I’m following the M1 down the east coast because it’s the easiest route and seems to be the most direct anyway There’s also plenty of towns and places to stop if I need to, which is a comfort considering the condition of the car that I’m driving.

Speaking of cars, I probably should have updated more about the gemini project, but bleh. It’s officially shelved until further notice, and will probably be scrapped entirely. In a few months the mazda’s likely to give up the ghost or get to a point where it’s going to need a large amount of money poured into it to keep it on the road. The clutch is failing, the CV joints need doing, the stem seals are leaking and it’s generally a piece of junk. The TD isn’t much better, with obvious rust repairs that have been done, loads of surface rust and other issues that need to be sorted out, and it’s not even registered yet.

At this point I’m going to DIY (not dodgy) repair the mazda until it gets unmaintainable, and by then I should have myself back in a position to find another (good) car to buy and drive. Something cheap, plain and easy to maintain while being reliable.

Currently I have to leave the fan setting on “heat” while driving the Mazda for more than a short distance at highway speeds otherwise it gets hotter and hotter and boils the water out of the system – something I avoid now I know how to fix it. I don’t know why it does it, there has been mention of the coolant system having air in the top of it, a possible thermostat issue or otherwise, but I haven’t been in a position to test either of these things lately, so that’s something to sort out later. At the moment it’s fine to drive all day like that as long as I don’t put the windows up and turn the car into a mobile sweat box.

Right now I’m sitting in the Park Drive Motel, a three star hotel on the river in a town called Kempsey, which is about 100km south of Coffs Harbour in New South Wales. I’d originally planned to stop at Grafton, but by then it was only about 3:30ish, then I planned to stop at Coffs, but then it was only about 4:30ish… then I planned to stop at Nambucca Heads, but it was a hole and I thought I could get a nicer place for cheaper. The only place there with a vacancy wanted $55/night for an on-site caravan with no facilities or $80/night for a cabin with ensuite. Uh, no.

So, I kept driving, and ended up in Kempsey at about 7pm. Being a little worried about the possibility of getting food on a public holiday in a small town, and also about finding somewhere cheap with a vacancy I stopped at the first place I saw, and this is it. It’s not bad. Not exactly resort quality, but for $60 a night it’s got a queen sized bed, aircon that I’m not likely to need, views of the highway (and sounds) my own shower, a tv and a room well and truly big enough for me to swing several cats in a bag around. Considering it’s a place to sleep in and then keep travelling I’m happy

The local Steak and Seafood place called The Flaming Steer has a seafood basket and a serve of wedges on its way to my room, so that should keep me fueled until I find a truck stop in the morning for a delicious greasy breakfast of pig and chicken bits.

According to the trip odometer on my GPS, I’ve done 490km so far – not a bad effort for a tiny little car full of stuff. I’ve probably gone through 3/4 of a tank of fuel which is pretty good – easy when it’s mostly highway k’s. I’m going to keep a track of the odometer readings and how much I’m using to work out how much it’s cost me to do this trip. The main killer for fuel usage is all the hills, other drivers (yay for it being a public holiday and lots of families on the road) and speed limit changes. Small towns are great, and there’s plenty of them on the trip, but can’t they just make a giant highway through all of them and just let us do 100km/h the whole way? 100-80-60-40-80-100-70-etc is annoying, I’d hate to be a long distance truck driver and have to do that all the time!

There isn’t many adventures to tell of really, I stopped in Ballina for lunch, and had a burger with bacon and some chips – two dollars buys you about two child-sized handfuls of low-quality chips, won’t be going back there again. Uh, I stopped somewhere for a smoke and a pee. That’s about it.