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Targa Tasmania 2008. We went, we saw, we conquered! Well, not quite, but it almost feels like it :)

I've been back a week now, and I think I'm still living in the Targa Blues. What a superb event! This year was quite a change for me to other rallies I have been in, partially because I was with a (comparatively) low budget team, but also because I was in a classic car - a 1979 Ford Escort RS2000. It was also interesting seeing as the car was not only borrowed, but also rather hastily put together as we were a rather last minute entry.

Wow, more than a month has passed since the last update! It's all gone so quickly, and yet I feel that not much has actually happened...

The carport has more or less gone up:

There are still a few things to do, basically I need to put the gutter and downpipe together and put it up, and fabricate the barge capping to put on. I also need to trim the roof down a little as it's a tad too wide. But yeah, now that the roof is actually on, motivation has sort of died a little :)

A week or two ago I had a birthday too, I went out for dinner with some friends at a place called The Verve Cafe. It was a nice restaurant, noisy but great food and a good atmosphere. I also had a small BBQ at the park, and I bought myself a Playstation 2 and Singstar, so we spent most of the night attempting to sing (but all we probably achieved was to keep the neighbors up, hehe).

Did some plumbing yesterday and ended up with a spot to plumb my car port gutters (when they are finally installed):

Trying to fit the T-piece in wasn't so fun, the pipes had been squashed by the weight of the soil on top so they were oval shaped. And well, the T-piece has round holes...

Today I re-did the piping for the downpipe at the front of the house as it will be in the way of the carport. Not entirely sure how I'll strap it to the house yet.

Tim came around just after lunch (Thanks Tim!) and helped me put the frame of the carport up. The Titan salesman told me that one person would be able to put the carport up by himself. Yeah right...

It's all bolted together, but it's totally out of level and probably not square. We were hoping to get the footings done today but putting the frame up took a hell of a lot longer than expected. The ground isn't overly level, and I accidentally dug one of the holes a bit too deep.

Next week I'm hoping to hire some acro props to raise and level the carport and pour the footings in. Might use some sun screen next week too, I'm a bit burnt. Oops.

Less than a month since the last update, and so much has happened! Let's see, let's start with Sydney (and the wedding).

Martha and I went down to Sydney at the end of last month for the weekend, for my cousin Jade's wedding. We flew down early and met up with some of Martha's friends and spent most of the day shopping (women... *roll eyes*) I was rather shocked as to how much things were in Sydney. At first I thought perhaps it was just that the brands were expensive ($400 for a pair of jeans???) but later discovered that some of the same things (like umbrellas) were also more expensive! I suppose Sydney-siders earn more, but still... I bought a pair of Japanese-cartoon-inspired pillowcase covers for $40... Ouch. But they're kinda funky. Most definitely not worth $40 though.

Valentines Day. It's come around again, the much hyped, over commercialized day that we all love (and hate). I've been really busy with work this year so didn't have too much time to think about or plan what to do until the day was almost upon me - dangerous!

I was trying to think of something "different" this year, and someone made the suggestion of cookies, and I thought... "Elephant cookies!!!" So I went everywhere, searched high and low for elephant shaped cookie cutters. It appears that they must not be very popular because they're pretty hard to find. I found koala's, monkeys, kangaroos, people and all sorts of other shapes, but the elephant continued to be elusive. Finally I found a baby elephant cutter as part of a set at Target. $15. Hmm. I just want the elephant. Not the giraffe, not the zebra, and not the rhinoceros. But I guess I didn't have a choice, so I got it.

I met Craig sometime in 2002 through a mutual friend. He was looking to do the Queensland Challenge touring road event in his Toyota Trueno, and was looking for a navigator. It sounded like fun so I put my hand up. The event was awesome, and we even managed to win class. I don't think I'll ever forget flying down the drag strip, watching the wall at the end coming up really quickly and going "umm..." and then Craig jumping on the pegs and sliding the car around the corner at the bottom, and finally pulling up at the stop garage with both of us laughing our heads off. Those were the days...

Over the next few years our friendship grew, among the memories are attempting to lower Craig's Hilux ute and then finding out that the bolts were too short, competing together in the 2003 and 2004 Queensland Challenges, watching Craig build PhatDat, his awesome Datsun 1200, getting chased out of his apartment by his then-girlfriend because she wanted to watch TV and we wanted to chat... Those were the days...

I got myself a GPS unit at the end of last year, a Garmin eTrex Legend HCx, and I thought I'd document how I'm currently using it.

Maps. Garmin have some good routable maps, but they do cost a fair bit of money so I didn't end up getting it. Instead, I've been sticking to the free alternatives (none of which are routable, unfortunately).

I tried Tracks4Australia initially but found that it wasn't overly accurate, and was rather out-of-date in places. That said, where it lacks in detail and accuracy, it makes up in coverage. Judging by the posts on the T4A mailing list, it appears that the person who runs the show has sort of run out of time to upkeep it, and isn't able/willing to share the work...

After months of casual looking, Martha picked up a Breville ESP8C espresso machine today. It normally retails for $199, but we managed to get it for $128 as RT Edwards at Redbank Plaza was having a closing down sale.

To go with the brewer, we got some Gloria Jeans beans, and headed home to see if we could brew ourselves some "cafe quality coffee". Martha used to work at BB's Cafe, so she's done this sort of thing before... And me, well I have the Internet to teach me :)

And well, it turns out we both sort of suck :) I'm not sure if it's the roast that's too course, or the machine is just too crap (after all it's only a $200 machine...), but for some reason the brew seems to come out very weak. It tastes nice, but just seems a little... bland. Oh well, hopefully a bit of practice will help to get our coffee's tasting nicer. For now I'm just rather bouncing off the walls from having too much coffee... WHEEE!

Last weekend was a long weekend (Australia Day), and what better way to spend it than to ride :)

Saturday was unfortunately spent doing daily chores and stuff, and with those out of the way, Martha, Sue and I rode out to Lake Moogerah on Sunday. It was a pleasant ride down, although perhaps a little "too pleasant" for Martha as she fell asleep about half way there... It's been raining a lot over the past few weeks, and it has certainly done the lake good. There were heaps of people there, and lots of boats on the water. It's probably the most water I've seen in the dam yet. Unfortunately the water was really quite brown and probably not suitable for swimming in...

After having a bit of a sit down, we left for home. Sue took us through Kalbar into Boonah, a rather nice piece of road that I'd never been on before. From there, it was onwards home...

Ever since the Kawasaki Versys came out I've been thinking about getting one. Raving reviews like this one from Web Bike World don't help, and this is only one of many.

It appears to be sort of like my SV650, except more capable, and more versatile, which is about what I want in a bike. I still absolutely love my SV, but realistically I'd like a bike that would be able to go off the beaten path more readily...

Anyway, so today I did the unthinkable and rode my SV650 over to Pro Kawasaki and said "how much to swap for one of those?". And the answer was $5600. Crunching the numbers, it sounds like a very reasonable price as it means I'd be getting between $5400 and $6700 for my SV depending on whether you counted the on road costs for the Versys or not. Problem is that $5600 is a lot of money, and it is certainly money I'm not prepared to spend at the moment...