"In the beginning"

Disclaimer

The views expressed in this blog are not necessarily the views of the blog management, (on the other hand, they are not necessarily not the views of the blog management).

No effort has been made to stay within the bounds of the truth in this blog as it has always been the view of the management that the truth should never be allowed to stand in the way of a good story.

Sunday, December 02, 2007

Fun Monday Dec. 3



Robinella from Robins Nest is our host for the day.

Da rules are;

In honor of exhaustion, color and self-love
, I present you with this week’s assignment. I want you to dig through your blog files and show us your best effort. Why you consider it your best is up to you. C’mon, you know you have a favorite - show it to me one more time.



The following post was satisfying to write and proved quite popular to my readers that surely lets it
qualify, It was the return part of a trip to WA for my Grand-daughter's wedding, this is a journey of
about 5000 km as I fit in a fair bit of visiting on the way.

As the story text will explain this turned into a bit of an adventure, but it all finished up OK, now
I'm not sure of the best way to go about the re-run of the post, so I've decided to cut and paste it
across, this way you don't have to wade through the comments as well as the post.

Sorry its a bit long, lots of my ramblings are.

Saturday, March 17, 2007

The return trip across the Nullarbor

The hard thing about this post is knowing where to start and finish, it seems there is so much stuff that I want to post that I’m confused (not an altogether unusual state for me to be in.)

First because I just know that both Merle and Val will expect some
comment on the football…. there was a brief time during the 2nd quarter that I felt like talking about football… but it passed, for those who don’t understand that comment, the football team that Merle and Val support beat the team that I support in the pre-season competition, they proved to be the superior side pre-season… we’ll see what happens in the season proper!!

OK that covers the football, I have once again crossed the Nullarbor plain and arrived safely at Vicki and Rex’s home at Wudinna, it’s only a rest stop this time though as they are in Adelaide at the moment.

Getting here proved to be an interesting exercise, when I left Perth I went to visit some old friends who live on a property at Beverley, we had an enjoyable visit that lasted for an afternoon and night (late!!) then I said my farewells and left to commence my trip towards home, trouble was I left my mobile phone (which I hate with an almost violent hate) and my wallet there, I got 250 kms up the track before I discovered this so had to use a public phone to check that my wallet was there… it was!!... so I told Joan that I would have to come back for it as I needed my credit card to finance the trip home, at this time the money I had put in the phone ran out so the conversation ended.

With a heavy heart I turned the car around and headed back whence I had come, along the way most passing motorists wave to one another in the Australian bush so I was waving away too, one motorist even flashed his lights at me, what a friendly sort thought I…. you know where I’m going with this don’t you… I arrived back at the farm to find no one at home and about 10 minutes later in came Neil and Joan with the phone and wallet they had taken about 100 klms towards where I had phoned from to save me having to return the full distance!!!!

So I have… started a 2000 klm drive of with a 500 klm warm up run… wasted 6 hours and $50.00 worth of fuel… and caused my friends to drive 200 klm as well, a word of explanation… they turned around and chased me when they saw my Subaru steam past them… now I’m not going to say that I was annoyed and speeding, I’ll just say their Utility had never traveled that fast before and it still wasn’t fast enough!!!

After abject apologies for having caused them so much trouble I set off again, by now I was about 7 hours behind schedule, a little stressed, and tiring fast, so instead of the 800/900 klm I had planned on traveling I only got about 500 klm (plus the wasted 500 klm) along the track and had to stop for a couple of hours sleep as I was starting to get very noddy.

I believe I may have also damaged my, “no animals were hurt in the making of this trip reputation too”, a little swamp Wallaby charged the car and collided with the side of it, I turned around and found him sitting in the middle of the roadway but when I got out to (a) take a photo of him, and (b) establish that he was unhurt, he hopped away seemingly alright… but he traveled much slower than he had when he hit the car at full tilt.. I’m hoping that he is OK, the car is unscathed so he must have hit it only a glancing blow.

As I didn’t have my Roo spotter Marcus with me I decided to tag along behind a road train for a while… let him clear the way of Roo’s for me, he maintained a pretty constant speed so it wasn’t any problem to sit 20 or 30 meters behind him, after a couple of hours of this however the back of the trailer seemed to be changing shape and generally being a bit hard to concentrate on so I stopped for another sleep.

This whole story has yet another aspect to it… I have the ability to get lost in any town with two or more streets… this is entirely the fault of my second wife!!!! Julie was an excellent navigator and would tell me what to do and where to go (even when we were in the car… Ooops, that’ll get back won’t it Wazza) consequently I just had to follow her instructions and I wouldn’t get lost, but then we separated and I have perfected the art of getting lost!!

Jacqui’s husband Walter has recently bought a GPS (Global Positioning System) unit for his car and after both he and Marcus bent my ear about the joy of never getting lost again I bit the bullet and bought one also, those of you who know about them will know how great they are and those that don’t can take my word for it…. BUT… there just had to be a but didn’t there, this is another electronic device that I have to learn how to use.

My first problem is quite closely related to my hatred of mobile phones (cell phones) one of the many things I dislike about them is “texting” not that I have ever “texed” but people walking blindly along the sidewalk, or anywhere else, texting someone they saw 4 minutes ago anyway… so I had to ring my favourite daughter to find out how to do this so that I could enter the address I wanted to go to.

The first address I entered was that of my son who I was going to stay with, Bruce lives in a fairly new suburb that I have visited several times (and got lost in EVERY time) so I was delighted when the charming female voice told me to drive carefully and to take the next RH turn, she then gave me precise instructions to proceed through several round-abouts taking the 2nd exit, which I found amounted to going straight ahead, we were getting along like a house on fire until suddenly I came across…. a fire…. that had caused the highway to be closed, taking the detour that was on offer was fine until Sally the SAT-NAV started to tell me to take the next RH turn at every road that came up, other times she would tell me to make a U turn, now in lots of cases these were little gravel roads that obviously didn’t go anywhere… so I ignored her… many, many times, it seems that what was happening was that Sall wanted me to return to the original route, she was quite oblivious to the fact that there was a fire… although I told her so … A LOT.

The detour that we had been put on was “the OLD coast road” which I knew would get us to much the same place eventually and SHE should have just plotted an alternative route but SHE didn’t!!

Some portion of blame for this situation is no doubt due to my very brief acquaintance with Sall and was resolved by me putting the address in again with my current location as the point of origin.

Our relationship has been brief but stormy so far, but I do find that if I fluke giving the right destination and other details she feels she is entitled to, her directions while quite repetitive are in fact helpful in resolving the “I’m lost Syndrome” so there is some chance we will become compatible eventually, on the other hand I may well just be lost electronically as well as physically.

As usual I have lots of photos and probably more stuff to post but it’s getting late and I desperately need to catch up on my sleep so that will have to wait!!

Posted by Peter at 3/17/2007 11:35:00 PM

Labels: Traveling

20 comments:

Marcus said...

A great story Pop, well worth a second read.

willowtree said...

"Don't leave home without it"

Robinella said...

I loved this story. It tells me a lot about you.

LZ Blogger said...

Peter ~ I am not sure that I remember this one Peter. But it reminds me of a story (the GPS part) of a friend who was trying to get his 42ft. Motor coach to our house from California. After some 1500 miles of driving (finally he called on my cell to say he was hopelessly lost in our town). I gave him directions from where he was (about 10 miles away) to our house. As Mrs. LZ ran out to meet them at their rig, I asked him how he could have gotten so lost with his GPS, well come to find out... he had entered the WRONG ADDRESS in his GPS. He put in south instead of north for the street address. So much for a HIGH-TECH adventure. We had a great visit with them for a few days inspite of the problem. ~ jb///

Jenny, the Bloggess said...

A total adventure.

Cliff said...

Beautifully written. Did you have help?

A Slice of My Life said...

That sounds like quite the adventure!

Susan at A Slice of Life

ChrisB said...

I'll remember not to travel with you then, but on the other hand I'm not bad at navigating. However, my hubby (Embee) was out with pals on Saturday and one of them was convinced he could navigate without the use of 'Sarah' (our sat nav) and apparently they ended up going east instead of north down the wrong motorway~ I'm so glad I wasn't there!!

Beckie said...

That was quite and adventure and a good story too.

Unknown said...

Sounds like you had quite a trip! Hate having to turn around to go back and you had to go such a long ways. Love GPS! Great invention. Glad the wallaby was ok too.

Big Dave T said...

My wife is an excellent navigator in a way. If she says go in one direction, I go the opposite way and it's almost always right.

Sandy said...

What a terrific story teller you are! Thanks for sharing this.

karisma said...

Now that does sound like quite an adventure. I must admit though that a mobile phone would have solved all of that (provided it worked in the outback).

The GPS is one piece of technology we have fallen in love with. Its helped out in many a dilemma these days although my hubby calls ours the NAVBitch because she is quite bossy!

Joy T. said...

What a great story and definitely quite an adventure!

Anonymous said...

What a riot!

My friend recently bought a GPS - and guess what...it doesn't work on super cloudy days so here in Oregon it is going to be useless 2/3 of the year.


Dreaming What Ifs...

Sauntering Soul said...

I also had to purchase a GPS as I have no sense of direction.

Great story!

Christina said...

Good story - I'm with you, I can get lost just about anywhere.

Walker said...

This was a great story the first time i read it and ev en better the second time.

Dawn said...

What an exhausting trip. I think your problem with Sally is that you just don't follow directions. I have heard GPS systems work pretty good, but like people, they can make mistakes and get lost too. I think you will just have to find the happy medium of when to trust her, and when you know better. Good luck with that. This was a great post, well written, letting us feel your pain in it all.

Pamela said...

I"m very happy you posted this. It was a wonderful repeat.

You really missed your calling!!! Probably because you didn't have a gps telling you what to do... giggle.