I set the alarm on my phone last night, because I didn't want to change the alarm times on my alarm clock, and then have to fix them again.

I was able to sleep in this morning, so I set the alarm on my phone for 9.45am, when it went off, I woke up, and dragged myself out of bed, because my mate (the drummer) was coming to pick me up at about 10.30am.

I looked at the time on my watch, and saw that it was 8.45am. Oh damn, I never fixed the clock, because of daylight savings, on my phone.

Bugger, that's an hour of sleep I could have had. Oh well, I'm up now.

I sat on the computer for a while, and then I got ready, had a shower, got dressed, had breakfast etc.

My mate turned up a little while later, he came in, we bummed around for a couple of minutes while I finished getting ready, and grabbed the REM ticket, and then we jumped in the car, and drove over to our other mate's place.

When he got ready, not long after we got there, the 3 of us jumped in his car, and we drove Wyoming shops. My mate had a cough, and wanted to buy some cough syrup.

While he was at the chemist, I took advantage of it, and went and bought a new ventolin.

We got back in his car, and then drove home again, and we waited in the car while he went in and took some cough syrup. Gees, he could have just bought a measuring cup thing, and taken it in the car, instead of coming all the way home again.

He came back to the car, and we got going again. He asked how big a shot glass was, and I told him 30mL for a standard one, which he thought it was, as he'd used a shot glass to measure the syrup. Heh.

We went and got on the freeway, and drove into the city. We parked in the parking station that we usually park at overnight, when we stay at the Travelodge.

We walked around the city, got on George St, and the first place we went was a poster shop, we spent quite a while in here, maybe 15/20 minutes, looking through all the posters.

There were quite a few good ones, but I've got no where to posters, no walls to put them on, and I'm never at home to look at them anyway.

We left from there, and continued up the street. We decided to go into the pub, to get a beer and some lunch.

We went in, and I asked the chick behind the bar if we ordered food at the bar, and she just said "the kitchen's over there", yes, that's all good and well, but you didn't answer my question. I then asked her if we ordered here, or over at the kitchen, and she said at the kitchen.

Fair enough, I've been in other pubs, where while they have a kitchen, you order at the bar, and you collect your food from the kitchen.

We went over, worked out what we wanted, and ordered our food. While we waited, we ordered drinks, and found a table. We sat and chatted for a while.

I reached in my pocket, and found the instant scratchy I'd bought on my way back to work after lunch yesterday, that I'd forgotten about.

I scratched it, and won nothing.

I found I still had the programme from Cockatoo Island in my pocket too, so I showed that to my mates, since they were interested as to who was playing there.

Lunch was served at that point, and we sat and ate, and then after lunch, my mate wanted another beer, but I don't like more than 1 beer, so I got a contreau instead.

When we finished our drinks, we kept wandering, and went into the record shop that my mate and I had gone to the other day when we were down here, to go to the Beatles exhibition.

I'd already looked through most everything in here the other day, but I just dragged around looking at it all again.

When we left there, my mate (the drummer, who'd had a couple of beers at lunch), needed to go to the loo.

We continued wandering up the road, figured there'd be some in the KFC we had lunch at the the other day.

We waited while he want in, came back a minute later, saying they were closed for cleaning or something.

We kept going, and went into the Queen Victoria Building, thinking we'd find some toilets in there fairly easily. Wrong.

We ended up going right through the QVB, before eventually finding the loos, what seemed like a kilometre away from where we'd come in.

I decided to go to, if it's going to be this hard to find loos in the city.

We came out, and exited the QVB, back on to the street, and then my mates wanted to go into HMV, not realising that we could have just gone straight in there from where we came out of the toilets, not having to go out on to the street and back in again.

We wandered around in there for a few minutes, I couldn't beleive how expensive everything was in here.

We left, back on to the street again, and the walked to Red Eye Records.

Again, I'd looked at everything when I was in here the other day. We all ended up in the second hand section upstairs at one point, and the chick working in there had all the Crowded House LPs on the floor, and was repricing them.. more expensive, presumably now because Paul Hester is dead.

I thought that was awful, to be doing that. We spent a little bit longer in there, and then I got fed up, and said I was going across the road (to the 7-11) to get some chips.

I went out, crossed the road, and not paying attention, accidently walked into the newsagent next to the 7-11, and thought it was the strangest looking 7-11 I'd been in, before realising what I'd done.

I went out, and into the real 7-11 this time, got a bag of chips, and went back across the road.

I just got back across the road when my mates came out of Red Eye, and then we started walking back to the car, because they'd both bought stuff they wanted to drop off in the car.

On the way back, we got near the EnergyAustralia building I used to work in, when I worked for CSC, and my mate spotted the pub around the corner, which I went to a few times when I was working in the city at EA, and I said it was pretty good, so we went in there.

We sat in there for about 20 minutes, having a drink and a chat, and then we left, and kept heading back to the car.

We got back to the car, dropped all the stuff off in the car, and then we decided to try to find the drum shop my mate (the drummer obviously) wanted to go to, to look for a new drum kit, because the one he has now is a pile of shit.

We walked up into Surry Hills, and we found it. We spent a good hour and a half in here, looking at all the drum kits, and accessories. My mate spotted one he was interested in, and the guy was pretty good, gave us a good deal, but because it was getting late, and they wanted to shut (it was nearly 7pm), he told us to come back tomorrow.

We left, and walked back to the city. We had another mate, a guy the guitarist and I were at school with, who works in Maitland too (as well as working at Target with my mates), he was coming down to go to the concert too.

My mate tried calling him, but there was no answer. He'd worked in Maitland today apparently, bugger, I could have worked today, and got a lift back with him, oh well.

We figured we'd go and get some food, and wait for him to contact us.

We walked down to the Entertainment Centre, and went into the pub across road. We ordered dinner, and then we were looking for a table to sit at.

The bouncer came and told us there was one outside, but by the time we got to the door, it was already taken.

We stood around for a while, looking for a table, with no luck.

Eventually our food was served, we spotted a table for 6, with 2 guys sitting at it, so the 3 of us sat down at that table with them, and ate our dinner.

I went and got more drinks, and then realised I needed more cash (to buy more, after these drinks), so I asked at the bar if they had an ATM, no, the chick told there's a CollectingWealth bank ATM around the corner though.

I finished my drink, and went off to find it. So much for "around the corner", it was ages away.

I got some cash out, found that I'd been paid (woohoo), and then I walked back to the pub.

I sat in there for a minute, but it was far too loud in there, all people being obnoxious, I couldn't stand it.

My mate said that our other mate had been in there, and was across the road getting some McDonalds.

I said I'd go and find him, and wait over there.

I left, walked across the road, found him, and we stood and chatted for a while.

The others came out of the pub, and across to us, and then the 4 of us went in.

On the way into the Entertainment Centre, the four of us got bailed up by charity workers, OxFam, and Amnesty International or something, getting us to sign petitions about golbalisation or something.

We go past them, and got to the bar, and got drinks, and then we went in, a bit after 8pm, found our seats, and sat through the opening acts.

Little Birdy had been on for a while before we got in there, they were just finishing up, did 2 or 3 more songs, not bad, and then went off.

We waited for about 15 minutes while they setup the next opening act. Michael Stipe came out and introduced them, a group called "Bright Eyes". They were absolute crap.

I was just about falling asleep listening to their boring songs, that all sounded the same.

The played for ages, and and ages, it seemed like they'd never end. Eventually they went off, and then we were left waiting another 25 minutes or so while they did another setup on the stage, and REM finally came on at 9.30pm.

Michael Stipe was done up with some weird face paint, like a mask across his eyes, I couldn't make out what it was to start with, and thought it was actually the shadow from him wearing a flat cap.

The started up, and did about 4000 shit songs off their crap new album, and then they did Orange Crush, which the whole audience got involved with, and then the spent more time playing crap new songs.

It got even worse from there, Stipe saying that "we come from a sometimes confusing place, the United States", at which point a whole lot of the audience booed at him.

He seemed to have trouble understanding that.

He went on to go on about the war in Iraq, that they didn't agree with, and they'd put together a couple of songs in protest of it.

Ugh I don't think I can handle this.

I went out, and went to the loo, which suprisingly quite a lot of people decided to do at that point.

I went back to the bar again after that, got another drink, and some popcorn, because it smelled pretty good.

My mate (the drummer) had come out too, we just sat outside, and waited for both of the crap songs to finish, and then we went back in.

After that they did more shit new songs, and the Stipe went on about how it was one of the roadies birthday's, and he hadn't said anything, so we all sang Happy Birthday, and the roady walked off the stage in the middle of it.

They did more crap songs after that, I think they did "Losing My Religion", and then they all went off the stage.

They came back after a couple of minutes, there wasn't a huge call for an encore, compared to some of the concerts I've been to, but they came back, and did a few more songs I don't reallty care for, and went off again.

Here's a setlist from the concert:

1. I Took Your Name
2. Bad Day
3. The Wake-Up Bomb
4. The Outsiders
5. Maps And Legends
6. Electron Blue
7. Electrolite
8. Strange Currencies
9. The Great Beyond
10. I've Been High
11. Leaving New York
12. Orange Crush
13. I Wanted To Be Wrong
14. Final Straw
15. Imitation Of Life
16. The One I Love
17. Walk Unafraid
18. Losing My Religion
Encore
19. What's The Frequency, Kenneth?
20. Everybody Hurts
21. Drive
22. Animal
23. Happy Birthday (to a road crew member)
24. I'm Gonna DJ
25. Man On The Moon

ripped off from here, and here's a setlist for the Friday concert (that I accidently put in here first):

Finest Worksong
Bad Day
So Fast So Numb
Boy In The Well
So. Central Rain
Electron Blue
Heron House
Leaving New York
7 Chinese Bros
Animal
Great Beyond
Orange Crush
Wanted to Be Wrong
Final Straw
Imitation of Life
The One I Love
Walk Unafraid
Losing My Religion

Encore
What's the Frequency Kenneth
Everybody Hurts
Exhuming McCarthy
Sweetnes Follows
DJ
Man on the Moon

ripped off from here.

That was it, so we all left. No one was terribly impressed with the concert, out of our group.

I couldn't believe they didn't do songs like "Stand", or "It's The End Of The World As We Know It".

We walked back to the car, and paid for the parking, we'd hit the maximum amount by now, $50, not hard since we'd been in there since about lunch time, and it was now almost midnight.

We jumped in the car, left the parking station, and got out of the city.

We stopped at a service station on the north shore, and got food and drinks, and then continued home, back to my mate's place.

We hung around there for a little while, and then my mate (the drummer), gave me a lift home, and I went to bed.

I woke up at 7am, got up, went and had a shower, got ready, and had breakfast.

We were at work at 8am.

I was working on something, around 9.30am, when my phone rang. I answered it, having difficulty hearing it, because of the crappy mobile reception in Maitland.

It was some chick calling me back from Australia Post, about my enquiry yesterday.

I started explaining about the registered mail, and wanted to know if I could get it redirected to the Maitland post office etc, she said something back, but then the phone started dropping out.

I asked if there was a number I could call her back on, and she gave me the number I'd called ysterday, got trapped in the menus, and ended up getting hung up on.

Oh no, I'm not doing that. I kept moving around until I found a spot, with my head on the side, where I could get just enough reception.

The chick said that she would find the mail addressed to me, waiting in the Eatons Hill post office, and redirect it to Maitland, and it would probably take about 3 days to get there.

She asked if there was anything else they could do for me, but I told her that I couldn't think of anything else at the moment.

I went into a quick meeting with the project manager, trying to sort out some status codes, so we have a proper flow in the new system, didn't get very far however.

I went back to work, working on something else, leaving the status codes alone for now, and then had to go and have another meeting about it.

This time the project manager, and the woman who looked after the old system and I went into the managers office (since he was away) to have a meeting, and discuss some functionality that the old system had, that hasn't been described in the scope of this project.

I went back to work for a while, and then I became freezing cold, because of the stupid airconditioning running far too low.

I locked my machine, was just about to head up to see the guy upstairs about lunch, and my phone rang.

I answered it, it was the guy upstairs, using someone elses phone, and wanted to know about going to lunch, so I went up there, and then a few of us went out to get some lunch.

We walked down to the shipping centre in the mall, and went to the bakery, and got pies, and then we went back out into the mall, found a bench, and sat down to eat.

When we finished eating, we were just sitting chatting, and some guy went running through the mall, followed by a cop, chasing him, who yelled "give it up mate!".

The guy running went into the shopping centre, and a couple of seconds later a guy from IT came out of the centre. We were joking with him later, asking what the handoff was, as it looked well done, guy running went in, he came out.

The cop kept running, ran into the shopping centre, nearly bowling over a couple of people dawdling in the door way.

He came out about 10 seconds later, dragging the guy he'd been chasing, and walked him back through the mall, where they'd started from.

He sat the guy down, and held him for a while, and then a cop car turned up, and another cop was there.

We sat and watched the whole thing. About 5 minutes later, a paddy wagon came screaming through the mall, going about 80km/h, which was really unnecessary, and dangerous, when there are people, kids, strollers and stuff everywhere, and the guy is clearly under control.

They loaded him into the paddy wagon, and then the 4 cops hung around for a minute.

We got sick of watching at that point, so we started walking back to work.

I was thirsty, so I went into the newsagent to get a drink, got some green cordial drink or something, and an instant scratchy ticket.

I kept heading back to work, bumping into a ton of people from work on their way out, to lunch or whatever.

One of the people I bumped into was the building manager, who for once didn't have a go at me for something, but had to jokingly make some smartass comment about me drinking a green drink (considering my green hair).

I got back to work, and wandered up with the others to the IT area. The guy from Orange who's looking after IT was there, so I spoke to him for a few minutes, and then I went back to my desk.

I did some work for a while, and then I went to go and see the email guy, to find out if he'd got the gmail invitation I'd sent him.

He was on the phone though, so I spoke to someone else for a while.

This guy was annoyed with the one of the support guys at the moment, so when he went away from his desk, the guy went around and stole the other guy's LCD screen.

I decided to get in on these shenanigans for once, I usually keep out of it, I popped a couple of keys off the guy's keyboard, and I put a couple of packing bean things in there, and then put the key caps back on, so the keys wouldn't press properly.

I then sat down with the email guy, since he asked me to have a look at something for him. He was trying to configure the backup client on a few servers to send him mail, but he couldn't work out how.

We went through, looked at all the tabs, configured it with his email address, but there was no where to specify the mail server or anything.

I figured it probably used the default MAPI settings (or whatever they're called), so I asked him to send a test mail from the machine, and found that it didn't have mail configured on it.

Once we configured mail, then we were able to send a test message, and the backup mail notifications started coming through.

I asked the email guy if I could get a lift home today, because I'm going to see R.E.M. in concert tomorrow night, and there's no way I'll get into the city in time if I'm at work tomorrow.

(I'm taking Friday off too, because there's no point spending half the day on trains to get to work, to get there in time to go home again).

He said that was fine, and then realised that he had to leave immediately, because he was supposed to pick up his son from football practice.

I went down, grabbed my stuff, and went and jumped in his car, and we drove back. It pissed down with rain on the freeway.

About halfway home, the email guy called his son, to find out where he was (because he was already going to be late to pick him up), and he said that they'd cut the practice short because of the rain or something, and he'd already been picked up.



The email guy dropped me at home, he knew the area, because they practice on the sports oval around the corner from my place.

I sat around for a bit, and then put some dinner on.

My mate (the drummer) called me, to find out what was going on tomorrow, and I told him that I'd just got home etc. I said I wasn't sure of exactly what the plan was, I said I'd have to speak to our other mate (the guitarist).

I got off the phone, and I called our mate, to find out what he wanted to do tomorrow. He wanted to go down around lunch time tomorrow, wander around the city, and then go to the concert, and come home.

I got off the phone, and had my dinner, and then after that, I called my mate back (the drummer), to tell him what the plan for tomorrow was.

I watched some tv, and drank a bottle of Riccadonna I'd left in the fridge from a couple of days before.

I spent a bit of time modifying the TiVo install script I wrote and look after, and then I reimaged the disk for my test TiVo.

I went through and setup the TiVo again, this time to use the digital STB, and then I went to bed.

I woke up, at 6am, to the alarm going off. I lay in bed for a bit, listening to the radio.

In the news they said that Paul Hester, the drummer from Crowded House had died, he'd hung himself in a park near his house over the weekend.

That's pretty sad.

I got an SMS from the guy from work who was giving me a lift, he was running 45 minutes late, so I lay in, and I got up at 7am.

I got ready, had some breakfast, and finishing packing bag, with my toiletries stuff etc.

I got another call from the guy, he was coming down Kariong hill, so he'd be at my place in a little while.

I waited, he turned up, I went and got in the car.

He was giving another guy from work a lift to work this morning, so I jumped in the back.

As we left, the guy put some music on, a Crowded House CD. I asked if he'd heard about Paul Hester, he said he had heard.

We got on the freeway, and headed to work. Nothing eventful happened on the way to work.

When we got to work, I sent an email to a solicitor on the TiVo mailing list, asking for a bit of advice about my unlicensed driving charge.

I spent the rest of the morning coding, and then I went up to see the guy upstairs, and find out about going to lunch.

He wasn't there, so I sat and talked to the email guy, he was showing me the web based email account he had, and I asked why he didn't use gmail or something, with 1gb for free (now 2gb apparently).

We went to gmail, not that it's linked to anywhere on the google site (seems strange), and then couldn't find anywhere to sign up. Gees, I thought it was public by now.

I told him I had a few invites, so I'd send him one.

The guy I'd gone to talk to came back from wherever, and we went down the road to get some lunch.

On the way down there, we saw another guy from work, and chatted to him for a minute.

On the way back from lunch, it started raining. Annoying.

I tried to go to the music shop again, to see if they had any acoustic bass guitars, but they were closed again.

There was a note on the door, I went up and read it, apparently they were closed because the owner had died of cancer, and there would be new people running it from next week.

I walked back to work.

I was doing some work, and I remembered about the registered mail in QLD, my mate's ex gf's brother hadn't called me back over the weekend, and I'd forgotten about it.

I called up Australia Post, to see if I could arrange to get the mail redirected to the post office down here.

I called them up, and spent 10 minutes getting through the hideous menu system, only to get to a point where it said "we are unable to take your call at this time, please call again later", and then hung up on me. ARGH!

I looked on the website again, and found where I could send them an email, so I did that, asking what the procedure was for getting registered mail redirected.

I went back to work after that.

The guy from upstairs came down at about 4.20pm, and told me he was going to Newcastle, taking another guy to pick up his car or something, and wanted to know if I wanted to go wih them.

I was busy, in the middle of something, so I said I'd stay at work, and catch up with him later.

About 6pm, I called to find out where he was, and he was on his way back to Maitland, so I said I'd stay at work and wait.

I ended up staying at work until 6.40pm, when the guy called me, and then I left, and went and jumped in the car.

We went over to a chick from work's place, and chatted to her for a little while, and then we had to go to another woman's place, because the guy that got a lift to work is staying there, and his bag was still in the car.

Meanwhile, the guy from work who'd gone and got his car from Newcastle went over to the sex shop at Thornton. A couple of people at work were going to get something to send to the chick who left (and had the accident), as a joke, but didn't end up getting anything, because it was all too expensive.

We left the woman's place, and we drove back to the pub where we were staying, checked in, and then went and dumped our stuff in the room.

We came back down from there, and ended up sitting in the bar for a little while, watching the news on tv, and chatting with a guy who's leaving in a couple of weeks.

The guy who went to the adult shop came back, and then the 3 of us went down to the Grand Junction hotel to get some dinner.

While we were sitting there eating, in the beer garden at the back, there was some really gross guy that kept coming in and out of the bar to go to the toilets, and in between he'd hock things up, and spit them on the plants.

On one trip, he actually blew his nose on to the plants. Disgusting.

When we'd finished eating, we left that pub, and went to the other one, where the bartender used to be a Newcastle Knight, and we had a couple of games of pool, and a few drinks.

The guy who'd gone to get his car wanted to watch the soccer match that's on tonight, so he left, and went back to the pub we were all staying in.

We sat around a bit more, having another drink, and then we left too, and walked back to the pub we were staying at.

A couple of guys from work were sitting watching the soccer.

I didn't really want to go to bed, so I sat and watched it too.

The guy I'd stayed drinking with didn't last long watching it, and went to bed.

It was 2 - 0 for ages (our way), so the guy who'd got his car figured it was a foregone conclusion, and went to bed.

A few minutes later the other guy went off too, just leaving me sitting watching it.

We scored another goal.

While I was waiting for the end (only about 10 minutes to go) a guy from the bar came up, I spoke to him for a second, and then he checked the fridge and cupboards, that there was enough stuff for breakfast, and went back downstairs.

When the match finished, 3 - 0 our way, I went to bed, it was about 11pm.

Another nice lazy day.

I got up, about 11am.

It was rainy and crappy outside, yuck.

I sat around for a bit, and then the sun came out, so I went and did the washing.

Dad came and asked about the pressure washer, I told him it was still around at my mate's place, because I'd had to walk home the other night, and it's not like I was going to carry it 5km home.

I called my mate (the guy who's dad owns the aircon business), amd I asked him to bring the pressure washer back if he got a chance, he said he'd do it later.

I contined bumming around, on the computer, watching tv etc.

I went and hung out the washing, and then watched tv.

My mate turned up, he'd brought the washer back, and left it on the driveway. We chatted for a while, and while he was there, the phone rang.

It was my mate from Newcastle, he was still around at our other mate's place, and he was bored, because our mate was still in bed.

I told him that our other mate was here at the moment, and I was speaking to him.

I would have invited him around, but after the way he was behaving last night, I couldn't have handled him.

I got off the phone, and chatted to my mate a bit more, and then he left.

I went back to watching tv, and then had some dinner.

I assume I must have brought the washing.

I fixed my hair again, since it had faded a bit in the last week

I packed my bag for work, and then went to bed.

Before I lay down, I'd set the alarm for 7.30am. I woke up 7.28am, but I was physically unable to get out of bed.

I went back to sleep, and woke up again at 8.30am. I just lay there, knowing that I had to get up, because I had to walk home to get ready, and get around to my mate's place to go to Cockatoo Island today.

I got an SMS on my phone at 9am, telling me that I had another hour (because daylight savings ended last night), so I just lay there more, until 10am (only 9am on the clock).

I knew I had to get going soon, but I ended up falling back to sleep.

I was woken again at 11.30am (10.30am) by my phone ringing, I spoke to my mate for a few minutes, said I was going to start trying to get organised in a minute.

I got off the phone, and lay in bed for a few more minutes, I heard my mate's phone rining, he ignored it, and it rang again a minute later, and was ignored again.

I got up, and I went around and collected all my stuff. I'd left my jumper in my mate's car, he just woke up, so I asked for his keys to get my jumper out of hs car.

I went out, and got my jumper, and then came back inside, to give him his keys back.

He asked if I wanted a lift home, that suits me, rather than spending about the next hour and a half walking home.

I got dropped at home, I was feeling really seedy.

I had a shower and got ready, I was feeling a bit better now.

I knew my mates would have left to get to Sydney already, so I had to find my own way there.

I looked at the train timetable on the internet, there's a train in about 15 minutes.

I went down, jumped on my bike, and raced to the station, parked, ran to the station from the parking lot.

Terrific, there's a line in here, only 2 windows open, everyone's waiting in the eftpos line, and I need to use it because I have no cash.

Eventually they opened the 3rd window and it had eftpos, so I went over there, and told the guy I wanted a return ticket to the City, or Circular Quay or whatever.

I put my card through the window, and the guy said it was only $9 for the ticket, and pointed out that it was a $15 minimum for eftpos. Argh.

Then the train I wanted to be on arrived.

I fished in my pocket, and found that I did have a stack of change, I grabbed it out, and found at least $12 worth of change, so I furiously through $9 through the window, grabbed the ticket, and piss bolted down on to the platform.

I got down there just in time for the guy to shut the doors on the train. Fuck. Like he couldn't have waited 2 seconds when he saw me come piss bolting out of the stairs heading for the train.

I turned around, and sat down, fuming. I had a look and luckily, because of the Easter Show, there was another train in 20 minutes, rather than an hour.

I used some more of the change to get a drink, and then I sat and waited.

I tried to call my mates, no answer. I eventually gave up, and sent an SMS, telling my mate that I was waiting for the next train.

Eventually the next train turned up, late, and I got on, and headed for the city. This train was going to take longer than the one I missed, because this was almost an all stations.

I put my ipod, and just sat back, and rode the train.

I got to Central, jumped off, and headed around to the City Circle line, to get a train to Circular Quay to get the ferry.

I tried calling my mate again, no luck, sent an SMS telling him that I was waiting for the train to CQ.

I got a call back, and I told him I'd be around there in a few minutes, they were still at CQ, waiting for the next ferry.

The train turned up, and I jumped on, it went to the next station, Town Hall, and then to Wynyard, and when I looked at the indicator board, it said the next stop was North Sydney, that's not right.

I jumped off the train, before I started heading home again, and then I went and checked the indicator board, the other train on that line, going the other way, was going to the airport. WTF is going on here?

I went and checked the map, and worked out what line I wanted to be on, the one I was on. I kept checking the indicator board, and the map, and it just didn't make sense.

I gave up, and decided to just walk to CQ, it's not far from Wynyard.

I headed out of the station, up to the street. I went past an ATM, and thought about getting some money, but it's more important to get to CQ to get on the next ferry with my mates at this point.

I started walking down towards CQ, and as I got close, my phone rang, my mate wanting to know where the hell I was. I told him that the train had been all stuffed up, and I'd ended up walking down to CQ.

He told me they had gone on the ferry, and I'd have to get the next one, in 1/2 hour.

I went to buy a ticket, and realised I needed to get some money first, so I went to find an ATM, found one, with a huge line. Great.

Eventually I managed to get to the ATM, and get some money out, and then I went back, and bought a ticket.

I headed over to the wharf that the ferry for Cockatoo Island was leaving from. On the way there, there were some Aborigines putting on some display, and a whole bunch of people standing around watching it, blocking the whole walk way.

I had the shits by now, with the trains, having to walk down here, having to line up for ages at the ATM, and now people standing around blocking the way, so I just walked straight through the middle of the Aborigines.

I'm here to get a ferry, you can dance around anywhere, so go somewhere else.

I got on the ferry, and sat and waited, for the ferry to go. Ugh, in my current state of seedyness, sitting on a ferry going up and down was not where I wanted to be.

Some woman was wandering around handing out little bits of paper, she gave me one, advertising The Vagina Monologues on at the state theatre or something. Yeah, like I'm going to go to that.

After about 15 minutes, the ferry left, and headed for the island, it took about 10 or 15 minutes to get there, once it was going, it wasn't as bad as when it was stationery (or is that stationary?).

I got over to the island, and was about the 3rd person off the ferry. I called my mate again, and told him I was over on the island, and I needed the ticket to get in.

There was a security bag check, I didn't have a bag, or anything, so I didn't need to get checked, and I went through there.

I waited for my mate to come out, he called me again, and I said I was waiting at the gate to get in.

He said he was at the gate too, but couldn't see me anywhere. Eventually we worked out that there were 2 docks, and our ferrys had come in at different ones, so I waited a bit longer, my mate came and gave me the ticket over the fence, and I went and got admitted to the island.

I had to have my ID checked, apparently they'd just arced up about people not checking IDs, so then I got the ID check wrist band, and then went to walk in, but they told me I needed a second one, an admission band, or I'd get thrown out.

I got that one, noticed it was a 3 day pass band, but they're probably using them because it's the last day.

I went in, and my mate and I started walking back to the shed they were in, watching Eskimo Joe, on the way, there was a beer tent, my mate told me he had a few drinks inside, so it was just if I wanted anything.

I went in, and was wondering if I'd regret getting anything to drink, but I got a can of Bundy and Coke anyway.

I went into the shed with my mate, and we made our way through all the people, to where the rest of the group were. There was the guy whose dad own's the aircon business, and a couple of other people that I've met before, mates of my mate whose wife left him.

We watched Eskimo Joe, pretty good. My mate told me to go and get more to drink, and after the first one, I was actually feeling better.

I made my way out of the shed, and decided to go and get something to eat first though. I went in to the food place, and bought a hamburger.

When I turned around to leave, I noticed a chick standing there, wearing a Rocket Science Tshirt, I nearly wore my Rocket Science shirt (the same) today.

I went out, and ate the burger, and then went and bought 3 more cans of Bundy and Coke, and I managed to get the chick in the beer tent to give me 2 of them unopened, which she said she wasn't supposed to do, but what would it matter really.

It's not like I can really leave with them, from an island.

I went back into the shed, and found the others again, putting the extra cans on the ground.

My mate had gone to get more too, and he came back a few minutes later with more cans.

I think someone took a picture of me with a cheesy grin in front of the can collection on the ground.

We watched the rest of Eskimo Joe, and then we filed out.

My mates went to the loo, and then my mate realised he needed more money. I told him I'd seen a portable ATM thing near the gate I came in, behind the loos.

We went around there, there were 6 ATMs on the trailer, but only 2 were working, and everyone was lined up behind one of them.

While we lines up, my other mate went around to check the ATMs on the other side (there were 3 on each side), and then people cottoned on, and moved around there.

While we were waiting, some hideous stench came from somewhere, must be something to do with the toilet block we're standing behind.

When my mate got his money out, we decided to see what was going on up the hill, so we started wandering, and it was a bit too much like hard work getting up there.

We got to the top of the hill, and sat down, we were only there for about 15 minutes, and then I checked the programme I'd got on my way in, and realised that Pete Murray was starting in a minute, which the others wanted to see.

We went back down the hill again, and back into the shed we'd come out of before, made our way towards the front, standing behind the sound board.

Pete Murray came on, and did a couple of songs. Behind us, a guy started mucking around in his bag.

Next thing, he's blowing up a blow up doll, dressed in a leopard skin skirt and blouse.

Once he'd done that, he stripped down to his undies, and climbed into a leopard sking car seat cover, to look like Tarzan.

He climbed up on a pillar in the shed, and started dancing around, and we noticed he had a sign on him, saying "Cave Bitch".

He was up there for quite a while, and Pete Murray got really pissed off, because about half the people in the place had turned around to look at the idiot.

It was pretty funny though.

I went out to get more drinks, having finished the cans from before (and a couple more I'd been given during leaving the shed last time, and coming back).

We watched Pete Murray until almost the end (the "Cave Bitch" got down off the pillar).

We filed out of the shed again, and found a little bit of grass to sit on.

While we were there, my mate whose dad owns the aircon business started talking to some chick sitting there.

My mate (whose wife left him) and I wandered off, to have a discussion about how he's been going the last few days etc.

We ended up wandering up the hill again, and having a look around up there, there were stacks of pubs up there.

My mate wanted to get some food, I couldn't find anything I really wanted, and was too full of grog anyway.

While he got something to eat, I went to find the loos. I bumped into the others we'd been with before, told them where my mate was, and then kept going.

I found some portaloos, it was now dark, and going into an unlit portaloo in the dark was an interesting experience.

I went back and found my mate, waiting for some nachos or something.

He got his food, and sat and ate it, and then we wandered back down the hill again, on the way bumping into the "Cave Bitch" on his way up the hill, dragging the blow up doll by its hair.

I tried calling my mate that we'd left before, and I told him we were getting on the ferry leaving in a minute.

He told us that he'd just gone up the hill looking for us, so we told him to pissbolt down, because the ferry was going in a couple of minutes.

We spoke to the guy boarding people, and asked how long we had, and if he could wait a minute.

Our mate came running over, and we jogged onto the ferry, and then it left.

We headed back to CQ, our mate was a bit pissed, and so I was able to take the piss out of him, he got fed up and went inside to lie down.

I sat with my mate outside on the ferry, enjoying the view of the harbour at night, it was terrific.

When we got back near CQ, we went in to find our mate, and bumped into the chick he'd been talking to before.

We got off the ferry, and walked back to the trains, the 3 of us got on the next train.

We all got off at Central, and our mate left, since he had booked a room in the city to stay in.

My other mate (whose wife left him) and I got on the next train for Gosford.

It got back to Gosford, and I walked back to the parking station where my bike wa parked, and once I jumped on, and started heading for home, regretted not having a jacket, it was freezing, and I wa just wearing a tshirt and jeans.

I got home, sat around for a while, had some dinner, and then I got back on my bike again, and rode over to my mate's place.

Our mate from Newcastle had come down (that was why we came back from the city so early).

We sat out on the front verandah, and chatted for a while, they were talking about going out to the club tonight, I really couldn't be bothered, but I'd just drag along anyway.

While we were out on the verandah, my mate had put some music on that we were listening to through the window, and some music from the Boondock Saints came on.

Our mate from Newcastle got ready, had a shower, ironed a shirt etc to go out, but then our other mate decided that he was too tired, and couldn't be bothered (which was fair enough, because it was now really midnight, but daylight savings made it 11pm).

My mate decided that he'd rather just watch the Boondock Saints, so his sister gave me a lift back home (rather than having me riding around with no license), to grab the DVD, and go back to his place again.

When I got back, my mate was on the computer, so I sat in the loungeroom with our mate from Newcastle.

There was some rubbish on the tv, so my mate was a smartass, and he turned the volume down, and put the radio on over the top, which made for something fairly interesting to watch.

Our other mate came off the computer, and we put the DVD on.

They paused it a couple of times to go and have cigarettes, I wasn't going outside in the cold for no reason.

We finished watching the movie, and they went out to smoke again, I sat and watched some of the deleted scenes on the DVD.

They came back in, and we finished watching them.

Our mate from Newcastle had been really beligerant all night, wanting to go to the club, and then wanting to smoke pot, and just being a really annoying pain in the ass, so by this time, I'd had enough of him, and I went home, and went to bed.

I got up, and got ready, spoke to my mate (the drummer), and arranged for him to pick me up.

I waited around, and got picked up again, and then we went around to pick up another mate (the guy who works at abc's sister's boyfriend), because he's sold his car.

We got over there, and the guy came out, his car was still there, apparently the people buying it were on their way over to make the final payment, and take the car.

While we were waiting, we were chatting, and the guy said that his gf had been called up this morning, by the marina, telling her that her parent's yacht had sunk over night.

Apparently a boat had sunk, all they could see was the top foot of the mast above the water, and they'd been able to account for all the boats except for that one.

They'd tried to call her parents, but they were in Melbourne of Adelaide at the moment.

(A few days later I heard that it actually wasn't their boat that had sunk, it was someone elses).

It started to rain a bit heavier, so we went inside the house to wait.

We sat in the computer room, and chatted for a minute, and then the people turned up.

They came in, and were planning to use internet banking to transfer the rest of the money across, they couldn't go to the bank, because it was Saturday, and Easter.

The guy jumped on my mate's computer, and when he tried to login to internet banking, he found that his account had been locked out.

He tried calling the support line, but as expected, it was closed.

That was the end of that, the people left again, saying they'd have to come back in a few days, next week, once the bank was open again.

We sat around for a few more minutes, and then decided to leave. On the way out the door, I had a quick look in the kitchen, and noticed a bit of fire damage over the stove.

Apparently a guy staying there, working with the other guy had put some chips on ("Ah the chips!") and then gone and had a shower while they cooked, lighting the cupboards on fire.

We went out, got in the car, and went over and picked up my mate's girlfriend.

From there, we all went over to our mate's place (the guitarist).

When we got there, he was just bumming around, and showed us that he'd snapped a string on his guitar again.

We all got organised, my mate (guitarist) and I got in his car, and the others got in the drummer's car, and we drove out to Erina to get some lunch.

They ended up in front of us, and when we got to the shopping centre, it was a nightmare, everyone was out at the shops. What the hell is going on? they couldn't go to the shops yesterday, because they were closed, and now everything that's in the shops is going to change?

Anyway, the others were lucky, and managed to find a parking spot, my mate and I ended up driving around for ages, every parking spot was taken.

We ended up down in the staff parking, it was full, we went into the maintainence vehicle parking, and it was full, with people parked all over the medians and footpaths.

There were even people parked in the gardens.

We gave up. I called our mate, and told him that we couldn't find a parking spot, and didn't know that we wanted to find one, since all the people from all these cars were obviously in the shopping centre, and most likely half of them in the food court at the moment.

We said we were going to the pub to get lunch, and they could do what they liked.

We went to the pub, parked, and went in, we ordered our food, and then I went to get a drink.

I ordered a screwdriver, and the chick behind the bar's like "What's a screwdriver?". Christ. I explained it, and she made it.

We went and sat down the back to wait for our food, and our mate turned up.

He'd left the other two at the shopping centre, they'd gone into the Chinese restaurant for Yum Cha or whatever.

I gave him $20, and told him to go and order himself some lunch, because it was his birthday, the least I can do is buy him lunch, and to get me a drink while he was there.

We got our food, and ate, before we finished he got his meal, and ate, when we'd finished eating, the three of us jumped in the 2 cars, and we all went across the road to the music shop.

My mate was leaving the others at the Chinese restaurant, they could find their own way home.

My mate bought new strings for his guitar, and while I was here, I figured I should get some strings, because the ones on the guitar are probably the stock ones it came with, and they're a bit crappy.

I bought a new set of strings, a set of "Blue Steels", $65, god damn, for 4 steel strings.

We left the music shop, and as we headed back to the car, my phone rang.

It was the guy that lives at Wyong, and fixes the computers, he wanted to know if I could come and install a motherboard in a case for him.

Why can't he learn to do that himself. I told him that I couldn't, because I was busy, and even if I wasn't, I had no way to get to Wyong, without a license (and I'll be stuffed if I'm going to walk 10 minutes to the station, get a train, and then walk to his place, all to do work for free).

I crapped on to him for a few minutes as I got in the car, and we started driving back to my mate's place.

The three of us got back to our mate's place, and I played a little bit, and then our mate (the drummer) went home, because he had to get changed to go to dinner and a party tonight, that we were all going to, for his birthday, and it was our mate who works at abc's sister's boyfriend's birthday tomorrow.

I ripped the strings off my bass, and started putting the new strings on, while my mate did the same to his guitar.

When I had the new strings on, the bass immediately sounded a lot better.

It still wasn't as good as the guitar I was playing at the music shop when I picked my amp, but that's understandable, considering the cheapest guitar they had was about $1000 worth.

Anyway, we started playing, and weren't doing too badly, it would have been nice to have the drummer though.

We started playing "Wipeout" by the Hoodoo Gurus, and then when we finished playing it, someone started banging on the front door.

Oh here we go, someone making a noise complaint about us. I'll let my mate go and answer the door, and deal with it, because I might just fly off the handle.

My mate went and answered the door, and immediately it was obvious that he wasn't arguing with someone about the noise, but I was having difficulty working out exactly what was going on.

Not long after, my mate came back in, along with a older lady. He told me that he called her "Nana Moon", and she'd been his next door neighbour at a house he'd lived at when he was little, and she'd stayed in touch with him and his dad.

She came in, said that she'd heard the music from the street, as she walked on her way from the Leagues Club home after a few drinks, to home, and decided to come and visit, since there was usually no one there.

She sat down, and we continued playing, saying that she loved hearing it.

My mate gave her the lyrics to "Wipeout", they were written on the guitar/bass tab sheet we had been looking at.

We had her sing the song, and we played, it was pretty funny.

After that we chatted a bit while playing the instruments at lower volume, and my mate's dad came home, and we chatted a bit, and my mate told him how "Nana Moon" had sung along.

We spent a bit more time there, and then we left, since we had to get to the party shortly.

We went to the service station, and while my mate was paying for the fuel, I went into the bottle shop next to the service station, and looked around.

I ended up buying a bottle of Riccadona, not finding anything much else worth getting.

As I was walking back to the car, my mate was heading to the bottle shop to get himself something to drink at the party.

I went and got back in the car, and waited for a few minutes for my mate.

He came back to the car, with a 6 pack or something, and then we left. He drove me back to home, and I came inside and grabbed my ipod and a 3.5mm/rca cable.

I jumped back in the car, and we drove to the place that my mate that works at abc's parent's live at, and his sister lives at, since that's where the party is, because his parents are out of state at the moment.

We got up there, and our mate, the drummer, was already here. We went in, sat around for a little while, and then we all piled in the drummer's car, and we drove to Gosford, to the Thai restaurant.

We started looking at the menu, we had to wait for the guy who works at abc, and the guy who's dad owns the aircon business.

We waited, and waited, and waited. We ordered starters while we waited.

I called them to find out what was going on, and they said they were on their way.

My mate who's wife left him called me, wanted to have a chat, about what was going on later tonight, I said I didn't know at this point, I was out at dinner, and I'd call him back later.

I sat around and waited a bit more. My mate who lives in Newcastle rang me about something, and I told him I'd have to call him back, because I was at dinner, (I didn't want to be rude, talking on the phone at the table, and I couldn't be bothered going outside, and I couldn't hear him anyway).

The others finally turned up, and we ordered our meals, and ate, spent about an hour in there.

When we finished eating, and paid, we went back to the cars. Someone went next door and bought a bag of ice, we loaded it into the boot of the car, and then we went back to the guy who works at abc's parent's place.

The guy who works at abc and the guy who's dad owns the aircon business went home again, very social of them.

We got back there, and had a few drinks.

I called back my mate (whose wife left him) and told him that we were just hanging around up here tonight, but that the others (who had been at dinner with us, and gone home) were probably going to the club.

I tried to call my mate from Newcastle, but there was no answer on his phone.

I put my ipod into the stereo, and we listened to that, until the battery ran out, and then my mate who works at abc's sister used hers.

Someone had a disposable camera, which got used taking a whole stack of stupid pictures.

About 3am we decided to watch a movie, and someone put A Clockwork Orange on, which we watched about 15 minutes of, and then my mate who works at abc's sister went to bed, not wanting to watch it.

We turned it off not long after that, and put The Goodies on, watched an episode of that, and then I was falling asleep, so I went and lay down, it was about 4am.

I like blogging these lazy days as much as I enjoy doing these lazy days, nothing to do, nothing to write about, anyway..

I got up, and got ready, at some reasonable hour, probably around 10am.

I was picked up by my mate (the drummer) and we went round my mate's place, and I played the guitar for a few hours.

We went to get some lunch, at about 2.30pm, and my mate (the guitarist) wouldn't eat any meat, because it was Good Friday, so he went to Red Rooster and just got chips, I went to Hungry Jacks and got a double whopper, to make up for him not wanting to eat meat :-)

We went back to his place, and ate our lunch, and then played the instruments a bit more.

I got dropped at home after that, and didn't do much at all, watched a bit of tv etc.

I didn't drink today, first day in ages, I couln't be bothered, and I'm a bit over it, since I now have a few drinks every single day, since after leaving work, there's nothing to do to fill in time between leaving work and going to bed but drink.

No idea what time I went to bed, possibly late, I usually end up watching Rage for a while.

What an idiot.. I thought this day was a Friday, since I went home, but it was actually a Thursday, the day before Good Friday, which is why I went home..

(But then again, since losing my license, I have sort of lost the plot in general).

I got up at 7.40am, and started getting ready.

I'd brought my Bundy hawaiian shirt up with me, but after been shoved in my bag all wekk, it looked like a total mess, so I had to iron it.

Once I'd done that, I went and had a shower, and got dressed, and had some toast for breakfast, and then went to work.

I got to work, did a little bit of coding, and then had to go and ask the project manager some stuff about the way map naming works, and we ended up having a meeting about what we want to do with a few fields in the database.

Basically, it ends up with me having a stack load more work to do, building lookup tables, and logic to autopopulate fields on insert, perhaps I'll write some oracle functions to do it for me.

I was given a map showing the naming convention of maps in New South Wales, and how it's divided up, along the longitude and lattitude lines, that was pretty interesting.

There was a morning tea on this morning, they usually have on on Thursdays, so I went out there, and had something to eat, and stood around for a bit.

It's Easter this weekend, so we get a short week this week, with Easter Friday being tomorrow etc. They had Easter buns and Easter eggs on at the morning tea.

Someone mentioned about the double demerits over the weekend, and how you can check your license status online, and he'd found that he had no points left.

I don't know how that didn't mean he was suspended like me, since I got done with a 4 point offence, on a 4 point license, and I got suspended.

While I was out here, I ended up having a discussion with a few people about the way QLD do the system I'm replacing for NSW, and there was some talk of replacing the backend stuff of the system up there, that'd be pretty good.

I went back to work, for another hour and a bit, and then I went upstairs to find out about going to lunch.

The guy wasn't there, I spoke to the guy who looks after the email servers, and he told me that the other guy had said he wasn't going to have lunch, so he could leave earlier today, and had just ducked out somewhere.

I sat with him, since he asked me about a problem someone had reported, with visiting SSL sites through the proxy, and getting blocked.

We mucked around with that for ages, I couldn't find anything obvious as to the problem, the guy wasn't blocked, and when we went through his access report, there was nothing in there.

The other guy came back, and said he'd just wandered off to get a new wallet, because he'd lost his wallet last night.

This reminded of the fact that I hadn't given him the money for the room rent this week, which I withdrew, and then forgot about on Monday or Tuesday or whenever it was, so I gave it to him now, that was lucky, since he would have lost it, and he had no money or cards now.

He told me again that he wasn't going for lunch, and wanted to leave at 2pm or something, it was now about 1pm, I did want some lunch.

I went and got all the stuff from my desk that I needed, and took it up to his desk, and asked him to just chuck it in the car if he left before I got back from lunch.

He told me that there was an awful hawaiian shirt in Lowes, I'd probably love it.

Another couple of guys from work said they were going to the pub, so the three of us walked down the road to the pub.

I was starving, so I said I was going to get some food, some pies, and asked if they wanted anything, but they didn't.

They went into the pub, and I walked down to the bakery, on the way stopping to look at the hawaiian shirt, but it was like XXXL, so I just kept going.

I bought some pies, and then walked back and into the pub, and up to the bar to get a drink.

I'm standing at the bar, looking at the stuff in the fridges, trying to work out what I want, and I start going "I'll have an uhhh..", and the chick behind the bar goes "Bundy? and coke?".

Heh, I wonder what made her guess that, I wonder if it was the Bundy hawaiian shirt I was wearing.

I didn't really want coke, so I got a Bundy Dry & Lime instead, and then paid, and took it and my pies into the pokies room where the other couple of guys from work were sitting.

I ate my pies, and drank my drink, and we chatted. I kept expecting the other guy from work to call me, telling me he was leaving, but he didn't.

At about 2.30pm, I decided to leave the pub, and went back to work, I don't remember if the others came back, or stayed in the pub.



I grabbed my stuff I'd brought up, and then went with the guy down to his car, and we left.

We headed the back way to the freeway, through Kurri Kurri, which is a bit quicker than going through East Maitland.



We got on the freeway, and headed south, listening to The Smiths.

We got near the Ourimbah exit, probably about 5km before it, and the cops had pulled over a huge truck, and they were trying to climb all over the truck. God knows what's going on there.

We got off the freeway, and I got dropped at home.

I dumped my bag, and all my stuff, and then I got my helmet, and I jumped on my bike. (Who cares about the fact my license is suspended? not me).

I rode straight over to my mate's place, to see if he was there, and if he was, how he was going in the days after having his wife leave him.

I got around there, and found it very quiet. There weren't any cars there, and I don't think my mate's bike was there either.

I went around to my other mates' place, the guy who works for abc, and the guy who's dad owns the aircon business, to see if perhaps he was around there (because he'd been there when he called me on Tuesday about it).

Nope, there was no one here either. I went around the corner to the supermarket, the one I used to go to on my way home each day, and I bought some food, since I had absolutely nothing to eat at home, and then I went home again.

I'd just got in the door, and my phone rang. It was my mate who's dad owns the aircon business, he was telling me that his ex gf's brother (who lives at the address on my license and rego) had told him that some registered mail had arrived for me, in Brisbane.

Terrific. What the hell am I supposed to do about that? they can't collect it, and I'm 1000km away. Hmm, you get a slip in the mail to let you know there's something to collect at the post office, which I think I can sign to send someone on my behalf to collect the mail.

I said that perhaps they could send the slip down to me, and I'd sign it, and send it back, and then someone could go and collect the item (whatever it is, but I suspect my court summons), and send it down to me.

My mate told me that apprently his ex gf's brother was coming down to visit her, so then I got to thinking he could bring the slip down, and I'd sign it and then get someone to collect the mail when he went back up.

I tried calling the guy, to ask if he could bring the slip down, so I could sign it, but he didn't answer his phone, so I just left a message with the story, and asked him to call me back.

Once all that was sorted out (or so I thought), I went back to making myself a drink, which I'd been trying to do before the phone rang.

I made my drink, and sat down to relax.

A little while later, my parents came in, with some groceries they'd bought for me. They must have been in here during the week, and seen that there was no food.

They put the food in the fridge and cupboards, and we chatted for a while.

They told me some parcels had arrived, and had to be collected from the post office, that must be my drink dispenser (holds 6 alcohol bottles), and the digital STB I ordered early in the week.

I went down, and grabbed the boxes out of the car, yep, it was the parcels I'd expected.

I opened up the digital STB first, and mucked around with that for a while, and set it all up.

I got a bit bored with that, so I opened the other parcel, the drink dispenser, and assembled it, and then loaded all my grog bottles into it, and made myself a long island iced tea with it.

I drank it, while listening to some music, and then mucked around with the digitial box a bit more.

I finished my drink, and made another, and then I felt a bit crook, maybe the convenience of the long island dispenser is a bit too convenient.

I made some dinner, and ate it, and sat around for a while, but I was feeling a bit pissed, so I went to bed.

I got up at 7.40am, after that hideous night's sleep. I felt pretty tired.

I had a shower, got ready, had breakfast etc, and then went to work.

I sat and worked on code, and then I got really cold again, because the stupid airconditioning is set far too cold, and the duct is above my desk.

I went upstairs, to get away from it, and try to worm up a bit.

The guys had just gone for coffee, and I was so cold, I went across the road, and got a nasty coffee, and then came back to the building.

I stayed up here and had a chat for a while, and then we decided to go for lunch.

I went and got in the car with the a couple of people from work, and we drove down to the Grand Junction, to follow up on the house we'd looked at the other night.

We went in, but the woman who owns the place wasn't there. The guy left his details with the bartender lady, she said she'd give them to her Mum (the woman who owns the place) later.

We went and had another look at the outside of the house, and then we drove around to the leauges club, because a support lady who took a redundancy when the department relocated was up visiting, and they'd all gone there for lunch.

We went in, and up to the restaurant in the leagues club. The food in here is pretty crap, especially for $12 for all you can eat, when about 1/2 plate is all you can eat.

The guy from work didn't want anything to eat (I don't blame him), because the food is crap, and the woman on the door wouldn't let him come in, because she reckoned he was just trying to get out of paying, and would eat anyway, off someone elses plate or whatever.

He had to argue with her for several minutes, that he did not want to eat any of the food, and was not going to eat any of the food, and she eventually said that he could come in, but that he would be thrown out if he was seen eating anything.

Jesus. He went in, and then I paid, and the woman started on at me, about how she had to go through that, or people would be tempted to eat anyway.

Somehow I doubt that, if someone wants to eat, they're going to pay. (Even after paying, I still almost have to make myself eat the food).

I had a few plates of food, it was pretty crap as I expected. The support woman was right up the other end of the table, when I'd finished eating, I went up and sat and spoke to her for a bit.

A few people were going back to work, so I left, and went and jumped in the car, and got driven back to the office.

On the way through the carpark, we stopped and looked through all the old pcs, someone was doing an asset check the other day, and a Dell server was missing, so we had a quick look to see if it was there.

It wasn't, but while I was looking, I spotted a shoebox with a couple of mobile phones in it, a stack of data cables, a few chargers, and a couple of phone cradle things.

I needed a charger, because I'd forgotten to bring mine up with me, and my phone was running low, so I took the box with me inside.

I found a charger suitable for my phone in the box, and put my phone on to charge.



I spent a little while updating the report query code in the system I'm wirting, and then was called up by the guy upstairs, because one of the production systems was broken.

I went up and had a look, managed to find something that I thought could have been the problem, and left him dealing with that, and then I went back to my desk, and continued working.

I'd been there for about 5 minutes, and then the evacuation alarm started going off in the building.

What on earth? We all went outside, and wandered across to the "evacuation area", aka the barbeque.

We stood around out here for a while, not knowing what was going on, but we could hear some sirens, and the fire brigade turned up.

We continued standing around, people just chatting, and wasting time. If I'd brought my stuff with me, I would have just left, and gone to the pub, a few people had been organised enough to bring their stuff, and they left.

Eventually the director of the department came out, and told us that there was something going on, the fire brigade were checking it out, and we had to wait for them to give the all clear.

He congratulated us on leaving the building in such a fast and organised manner however.

A few minutes later we were told that we could go back in the building, and we all filed back in.

We heard a bit later, that someone (some cleaner or maintainence person) had been mucking around in the lift shaft plant room, and had caused some smoke, and it had set the fire alarm off.

I did a bit more work, and then the guy from upstairs came down to see what I was doing. I finished up my work, and then we left, giving a guy a lift to the station, because he's going home, and had a big bag.

We went back to the pub where we were staying and parked the car, and then went to the other pub, where we start drinking.

The librarian was there, so we sat and spoke to him for a while, and had a couple of drinks, and then we moved across to the other pub, where we were staying.

We found another guy from work in here, and had a couple of drinks with him, and then we all went down to the club we'd been at last night, playing pool and listening to the jukebox.

We got down there, and got more drinks, and chatted for a while, and then I went in and played to pokies for a while, wasting a few dollars.

I came out, and the others were ordering dinner, so I ordered some, and then we chatted and drank while we waited for our food, and then ate the food once it was served.

We had another couple of drinks, and then we all left the pub, at about 9.30pm, and walked back where we were staying.

I sat and watched the tv for a little while, and then we all ended up out on the balcony chatting, and went to bed at 10.30pm.

I was lying in bed, and got an SMS from my mate, the drummer, something about The Who, at 11pm.

I managed to get to sleep fairly easily for once, probably because I felt like I hadn't slept for 3 days.

I got up, at 8am, and went and had a shower.

I was feeling a bit seedy, probably not surprising, considering the amount of alcohol I consumed last night.

I made some toast, after finding the toaster, in the cupboard.

We went to work, I went to my desk, and I continued extracting the mp3s from my ipod.

I then had to go into a meeting for 2 hours, about the last place I wanted to be while feeling hungover.

When I got back, I sent an email to the guy upstairs, and asked if he wanted to go for lunch, but I didn't get a reply.

It was freezing cold in the office, and I was getting a headache it was so cold (I just had a queasy stomach before).

Normally I would have just put my jacket on, which I've done before when it's been freezing, but I couldn't do that now, because my jacket was at home.

I decided to go and buy one, while I was out at lunch.

I went out of the building, and walked down to the shopping centre. I went into Kmart, looked through the blokes clothing, found a jumper that looked ok, and just as I was about to buy it, I spotted another one that looked better, and was cheaper.

I grabbed that, and went down to the checkout. When it was rungup by the checkout chick, it came up even cheaper, they had a sale at the moment.

I paid, left, on my way out of the shopping centre, I went to the bakery, and bought a couple of pies.

I went and sat in the mall, under a tree, and ate my pies.

I decided to go to the music shop on my way back to work, and see if I could get an acoustic bass guitar.

I got to the music shop, and found that it was closed, great.

I went back to work, and mucked around with the database content.

I started a new module in the code, to generate the files we need to send with paperwork to the scanning bureau, files that describe the format/page size etc of all the papers to be scanned.

I was working away on that when my phone rang. I answered it, it was my mate I went away on holidays with.

As soon as I answered the phone, I could tell there was something wrong. I said hello, and then there was just silence for a second, and I could feel tension coming through the phone, it was weird.

My mate started talking, and he told me that his wife had been having an affair, and had left him.

We spoke for a little while, I told him I was sorry I couldn't be there, since I was stuck at work with no way to get there.

He told me that he was going to see some of other mates, and we'd catch up on the weekend.

I got off the phone, and I felt really upset. The other people in the office could tell something was up, because they came and asked me what was going on.

I sat there for a little while, and I was so busy thinking about the whole thing, and trying to think of any clues as to this while we'd been away on holidays.

There was no way I could get my brain back around coding, so I didn't even bother trying.

I picked up my stuff, and I left work, it was after 5pm anyway.

I walked to the pub I was staying at, and dropped off my stuff in the room (ipod/glasses) and took some panadol.

I went down into the bar, and the others were there.

I went and got some money out of the ATM to give to the guy upstairs, to pay my half of the room rent for the week, and then got a drink, and forgot to give the money to him.

I told them what had gone on, and we chatted for a while.

It started raining, fairly heavily. When it let up, we headed down to another pub to get dinner.

We got down there, and played pool, and when we finished our game, we ordered dinner.

We loaded up the jukebox with money, and queued up a stack of songs, and waited for dinner.

Dinner was served, and we ate it, while listening to the music from the jukebox.

After dinner, we put more songs on, and played a few games of pool, and drank more.

We left the pub, and walked back to the pub we were staying in, and ended up sitting out on the balcony chatting for a while, and then went to bed.

I couldn't get any sleep, just tossing and turning for ages, I gave up in the end, and grabbed my ipod, and queued up all the Rush songs, and listened to them between 2.30am and 4am, when I finally managed to get to sleep.

Ah, here we go, back to the long days at work.

I got up at 8am, since the project manager was coming to pick me up around 9am.

I had a shower, and some breakfast, and then waited for the project manager to arrive.

I got a phone call from him at 8.45am, telling me that he was running late, and would probably be there about 9.20am.

I continued waiting, and he did turn up about then, so I grabbed my bag, and went and jumped in the car.

We drove to work, making chit chat on the way, and got to work around 10.15am.

I went in, and to my desk, working for a while, no one making any comments about the fact that I had a green mohawk.

Eventually I had to go upstairs for some reason, and then I received a few comments, from the people working in IT, and the couple of chicks from Forestry.

I hung around up here for a while, doing work of some description (why I was up there), and just chatting, and then I went back downstairs to my desk.

I asked them how they'd gone using the code I finished just before I left on holidays, and apparently it had all mostly worked, there were only a couple of annoyances they had noticed, but it didn't stop them from doing work.

I went through the main issue, the check that I put in to stop them adding the selected value in a dropdown box.. I found that it was a problem with Internet Exploitme. I had a javascript function to append a newline to the value selected, but IE was overriding this, and adding both a carriage return, and a newline.

Stupid windows and it's CR LF rubbish. I'd tested this in Firefox, and it worked fine, because it did what it was told. I changed the function to add both a carriage return, and a line feed, instead of just the line feed, and then it was working in both IE and Firefox.

Once I'd done this, I went back to working on the table design, and had a discussion about one of the fields, going on for ages, before I identifed that I could just drop the field (which a few days later I discovered I couldn't, and I had to rebuild the field, typical).

I went and spoke to the guy upstairs, and then we went out to lunch.

On the way back to work, we stopped in at the pub, since it had been his 40th birthday on the weekend, and a few people had organised to go for some drinks.

We hung around in there for a while, because it seemed like about half the people from work were in here.

We went back to work after that, I worked with the guy on some table he was working on, and then I went back to my desk, and continued working on my table structure.

I started having a discussion with the manager of the indexers, and a couple of the indexers about starting on a database specific to the maps.

I got a phone call, telling me to go upstairs, because we were having a birthday cake.

I went up, and a couple of women from work had put 40 candles on the cakes (2 cakes, because all the candles wouldn't fit on one cake).

He blew out the candles, and we cut the cakes up.

I was sitting (on a desk) eating a bit of cake, and the building manager came in, and had a go at me and a few other people sitting on desks, saying that was what chairs were for.

I ignored him to start with, thinking he wasn't being serious, "yeah, haha", but he wouldn't give up until I got off the desk. Jesus, it's like being at school.

We hung around here for a while, and then I found out who had bought the cakes, so I tried to give them some money towards it, but they wouldn't take it.

I went back to work, and decided to copy all the music out of my ipod, on to my computer at work.

I plugged it in, and tried running sharepod, that was still on my ipod from the trip in Bundy, but now I had all the dll issues again, like I had trying to get it running the first time.

I had all the dlls I needed last time, I tried force loading them in, but it still wouldn't work. I googled around, and the dll that was causing issues seemed to be something to do with MDAC, so I downloaded the latest version of that, and installed it, but it didn't make it work.

When I installed MDAC, it told me it needed a reboot, so I gave in, and rebooted the machine, which was annoying, because I had so much stuff running.

After the reboot, it still didn't work properly, with exactly the same error. Damn.

I kept googling, and then I found some references to something called
"scripten", containing the dlls I needed, so I downloaded that and installed it.

Finally, I had managed to get sharepod working. What a nightmare. I started extracting the music to the hard drive in my work pc.

I got a call from my mate I went away on holidays with, we was wanting to know about setting up an ftp server, so that someone could send him a file, or he could send someone a file or something.

He told me that he'd followed the help, and enabled the ftp server, but didn't know what to do after that, and I explained that he'd need to configure port forwarding on his adsl router, and he'd need to find out what his routable IP was, and tell that to the person he wanted to connect.

The phone dropped out at that point, and I called him back, and finished the conversation off.

I went back to work, and the phone rang again a few minutes later, it was a message from my mate from Wyong who does the PC repairs, he'd called while I was on the phone, and left a message asking me something about the internet.

I called him back, and sorted that out.

I continued waiting for the music to extract from my ipod, it was pretty slow for some reason. I don't know why, since I run 2000 on my machine at work, and it's got the USB2.0 running properly.

The guy from upstairs came down, and I spoke to him for a while, and then he took my bag, saying he'd go and check into the pub.

I spent a little bit of time blogging, while I continued waiting for the music to extract.

My phone rang again, another message, I'd put my phone down on the desk when I got off it before, and I'd put it where it was out of range of the tower, I must have bumped it a little bit, and put it back in range.

I answered it, it was a guy I went to Tafe with in 1999. I chatted to him for a bit, he was wanting to know about long serial cables.

I talked him for a while, explaining about using cat5, and rj45 adapters, and then after going through all that, he explained that he needed 25 pin cables, and needed all 25 pins, because it was for remoting of detonators, he's doing a course in demolitions or something.

I then suggested he get some ribbon cable, and some db25 crimp connectors, and make up long cables that way.

I got off the phone, and continued waiting for the music to extract.

I gave up, only 1.5GB had come out of it, and I'm not sitting around here at work all night.

I took my ipod, and left work, and walked up to the first pub, where we go to drink after work (to start with).

I sat and had a few drinks, and then when we started talking about going for dinner, I went to the other pub, where we were staying, and got the key from the bar, and went up to the room, and dropped off my ipod.

We all walked down to the Grand Junction hotel, to get dinner, they've just reopened, after renovating the kitchen (I think, maybe this happened the week before, I don't remember).

We had some drinks, and then we went in to the restaurant, and had dinner.

The guy from upstairs had heard something about the house next door to the pub, so when we left the pub, at about 11.20pm, after getting some takeaway drinks, we went to look at the house.

We walked back to the pub we were staying at, and when we got there, a guy from work was there, so we sat out on the balcony, and drank our takeaway drinks.

I eventually went to bed, a bit after midnight, and didn't get much sleep.

This was a very busy day.. the day before I finally go back to work.

I got up at about 11.45am, and just bummed around.

I watched some DVDs, the Rush in Rio DVD I bought the other day, and then the Duran Duran DVD that I bought at JB HiFi a few days ago (which was really crap).

After that, I watched the Boondock Saints again, because I haven't seen it for ages.

I spent the rest of the day just bumming around, doing absolutely nothing.

I packed my bag to take to work, clothes for the week etc.

I recoloured my hair, since it was looking a bit faded again, had a shower, and then I went to bed.

Let's see, a lazy Saturday before I go back to work on Monday, a week later than I was supposed to..

I got up after 11am, really getting into these lazy days off work.

I bummed around on the computer for a bit, had some breakfast.

I decided to watch the TMBG DVD I bought yesterday, it was prettry good. I was trying to do some blogging, but I kept getting distracted watching the TMBG videos.

About half way through watching it, my brother came in with some mail for me.. ahh.. the missing mail.

There were a few letters, some via the QLD address, and some local. I opened all the QLD stuff first, there was a letter telling me that I had accumluted 4 points on my license, which meant I had to make a choice, either a 3 month suspension, or a 1 point license for a year.

I opened the second letter from QLD, it was a reminder that I'd not advised them of my choice regarding the suspension, or 1 point license, and if I didn't, then my license would automatically be suspended, from the 24th February until the 23rd May.

I opened the 3rd QLD letter, it was something about my insurance.. a renewal of my 3rd party insurance.. dated in September last year. Ooh, great, I only got that 6 months late.

The local letter was just a useless bank statement, telling me about the tiny amount of money I have sitting in an account I haven't touched since I was going to Tafe in 2002.

I went back to watching the DVD after that, a bit pissed off about the whole situation again, in regards to this mail.

I finished watching the DVD, and was just sitting there, when my mate (the drummer) called me, he wanted to know what I was doing, I said "nothing", he wanted to know if I wanted to go out for lunch, I said that sounded ok, so I'd see him shortly.

I jumped in the shower, and got ready etc, I was waiting for my mate to turn up when Dad came in, asking me stuff about the mail, and I explained the situation again, getting a bit pissed off, because I'm jsut sick of the whole thing.

I went back to waiting, and my mate turned up not long after. I went and jumped in the car, and we drove over to our other mate's place,and went inside, while we waited for him to get ready.

I got a call from my mate I went on holidays with recently, he said we were having a bbq tonight, a party for our mate that lives in Newcastle, because it's his birthday.

He told me that our other mate, the guy whose dad owns the aircon business, wanted to borrow my parents high pressure water washer thing, because we're having the party at his place, and out the front is filthy.

I said I'd try and sort it out, because I wasn't at home.

I got off the phone, and then I called home, and asked about borrowing the washer, Dad said it was ok, I said that my mate would probably just turn up and collect it.

I called up my other mate then, to tell him that he could collect the washer from my place, to clean the cement. He then told me that he would be out at Erina in a bit, getting food for the bbq later, so I said I might see him out there, since we were going out there to get lunch.

My mate finished getting ready, and we all jumped in the car, and went out to Erina.

We went into the food court, and bought lunch. While I was waiting for my burger to be made, I saw a couple of people I know, my mate who lives at Wyong (and fixes computers)' daughter and son-in-law, who are both cops.

I spoke to them for a few minutes, and mentioned my situation, with getting busted, and charged with unlicensed driving, and my mate's son-in-law told me that he deals with it all the time, from the other side, when he catches people, and they just turn up to court, say they didn't get the letter (even though they've been living wherever, forever, and get every other piece of mail), didn't know they were suspended, and it gets dismissed.

Hopefully QLD works the same way as down here. They wanted to keep going, so I said I'd see them later. Apparently my mate's daughter is pregnant, but I didn't notice it when I saw her (my mate told me later when I was on the phone to him).

I got my lunch, and found the others sitting outside, so I went out there, ate lunch.

While we were eating, I saw this weird looking woman, and I thought "Who does she think she is, Casey Chambers?", so then I said it, and my mate turned around, saw her too, and said that it was her. Heh.

I continued eating lunch, and a couple more of my mates turned up, my mate who works at abc's sister, and her boyfriend.

We chatted to them for a while, and then when we were all finished eating, the 5 of us wandered around the shops for a bit.

I called my mate, who I'd been on the phone to before, about the washer, to find out if he was out here yet, he said he'd be out here in a little while.

I hung around where he said he'd meet me, and the others left, since I said I'd get a lift back with the other guys.

I remembered my mate (that I went on holidays) asking me to get a card for our mate, so while I waited, I went into the newsagent, and started looking through the cards. I couldn't find anything really funny, figured I'd keep looking.

My mates (the guy who's dad owns the aircon busines, and the guy who works at abc) turned up, I went over, they bought some meat at the butcher, and then we went to the bakery to get some bread.

I forgot all about the card, we left, went back to the car, and drove back to my place, and picked up the high pressure washer.

We went back to their place after that, and I setup the washer, and then my mate (who I went on holidays with) turned up, with his dog, and we spent the next hour or so cleaning the cement, and the table and chairs.

My mate (who I went on holidays with) was on the phone a few times to his mate that lives in Sydney, trying to get him to come up, but he was arguing that he didn't have any money etc.

I told him to just go to the station, and tell them that he didn't have any money, because they have to let you travel on the train, because it's a government service, and they aren't allowed to refuse travel to people because they have no money.

My mate was trying to work out how to transfer some money to his mate in Sydney, but it would take hours or days to get between banks.

My mate who works at the ABC said that he was with the same back, so he transferred some money from his account across, and it went across immediately.

My mate washed his bike that's been parked there getting covered in crap for about 2 years (because he's too much of a wimp to ride), and then we moved it into the carport.

Once we'd finished, we grabbed some beers. My mate who works at the abc had got some awful beers from somewhere, because of the novelty label.. a 70s looking woman, nude, but with latex over her bits that you can scratch off like a lottery ticket.

A little while later my mate's wife turned up, we put some music on, stood around drinking and chatting for a while.

We fired up the bbq, and started cooking the meat up. My mate told me that his wife had brought around some music DVDs, and he wanted the ACDC DVD on, so I went in and put that on.

We finished cooking the meat, and all sat down to eat, outside, watching the ACDC DVD projected on the wall inside, through the windows.

My mate who lives in Wyong, and fixes the computers called me, I don't remember what he was going on about, but I think it was something about a stuffed motherboard. I really didn't care, I was trying to eat my dinner.

I got off the phone, and then my mate who lives in Newcastle turned up, having ridden his pushbike from Gosford train station.

He sat down, had a beer and some food, and we said Happy Birthday and all that.

My mate's wife took off to pick up my mate's mate, in Sydney, the guy he'd transferred the money too.

She came back about 20 minutes later with him, and we sat and chatted and drank more etc, and listened to music.

A while later, my mate's wife left, and she took the dog with her, because he was being a pain, and trying to run away.

We sat inside for a while, it was getting a bit cold outside, and continued drinking.

About 1/2 hour later someone had the smart idea of using the projector to show pr0n video clips, that went on for about a half an hour, my mate finding shadow puppets to be particularly hilarious.

After the novelty wore off there (far later than it should have) someone put a movie on, King Arthur or something.

I found it quite boring, and when someone went to the service station to get cigarettes, I took the chance, and wandered off, and started walking home, at about 2am.

About 1/2 way home, while just walking along minding my own business, a car went past, and once it was past me, some idiot hung out the front passenger window, and yelled "Dickhead!" "Wanker!".

Hmm. How about "coward", for waiting until the car was past me before yelling it, when I couldn't kick the shit out of the side of the car as it went past.

I got hmme at 2.55am, bummed around at home for a while, put the tv on, used the computer, and went to bed at about 3.40am.

I got up early, which was strange, since I got back late last night, and had been pretty pissed.

I was in the bathroom when I heard the phone ring, damn, everytime I get in here.

When I came out, I found my phone, and called back my mate (the drummer), he wanted to go into the city today, go to a couple of music shops, and go and see an exhibition of Beatles art.

I said it sounded pretty good, got off the phone.

I had a shower and got ready, had some breakfast etc, and then my mate turned up.

I grabbed a Blue Oyster Cult CD, and went and jumped in the car, we drove down to Hornsby, getting off at the second last exit on the freeway, and going the back way into Hornsby, which took ages.

We went into the Westfield car park, parked, and then walked across the road to the railway station. It's cheaper and easier to park here, and get a train into the city, than trying to find parking in the city.

While we waited on the station, I was pretty hungry, so I had a packet of chips from the vending machine on the station, but either it was always out of the sun, or the machine was refridgerated, because the chips were freezing, gross.

The train eventually turned up, and my mate and I got on, and rode it in to Town Hall.

We came out of the station, and I went to the Coles Express lunch bar thing, and got a bottle of water, while he got some money out of an ATM.

We walked up to the street, and across the road, and went into Utopia records.

We spent about 45 minutes in here, browsing through all the stuff, there wasn't anything terrific in here, nothing that grabbed my fancy.

We left there, and then tried to work out what we wanted to have for lunch.

We wandered right through the Queen Victoria Building, looking for something for lunch, but we couldn't find anything that we wanted, so we ended up going back to the KFC we'd gone past between the record shop and QVB.

We ordered our food, and sat and ate in there, and then we left, and started looking for the Beatles exhibition.

We looked around, my mate had some idea of where it was, but we couldn't find it.

We went to an information booth, and asked them, and they were able to tell us where it was, we then found it.

We walked down there, and went in. We paid our $10 admission, were given programmes, or guides, or something, basically explaining each of the pictures on display.

We started looking at the pictures, all sorts of candid photos, posed photos, stills from Yellow Submarine.

There was about 100 pictures on display, as well as a few pictures of the Rolling Stones, and a few of Elvis. I don't know why they would have Elvis photos in a Beatles exhibition, I thought the 2 were mutually exclusive, and you can only like one or the other.

We spent a bit over and hour looking at all the photos, and then we left.

We left the exhibition, and walked up the road to Red Eye records, we browsed around in there for quite a while, there was stack of good stuff, but it was all so expensive.

I ended up buying a couple of DVDs, Rush in Rio, a live concert, and a They Might Be Giants DVD, with a whole bunch of their video clips on it.

We decided to go home at this point, to avoid the afternoon rush of commuters trying to get out of the city, so we walked towards Wynyard station, I stopped into a convenience store and got a chocolate bar, and then kept walking.

We got on to Wynyard station, and waited for the train, it was late, what else is new.

While we were waiting, I started looking around, and saw a chick waiting on the station, wearing a pink thong, this was obvious because she had the sides of it pulled up so far above her pants, oh well, she had the body for it.

Eventually the train turned up, and my mate and I got on, found seats. We rode it back to Hornsby, and then got off, and walked across the road, back to the Westfield car park.

We headed for the exit of the carpark, paid $10 for parking, so I gave my mate $5, and then we left.

I put on my Blue Oyster Cult CD, and we headed for the freeway. We got on the freeway, and then it started to rain, and the freeway got slower, and slowr, and slower, and we ended up completely stopping. Great, I wonder what's going on, if it's just the usual phantom traffic jam, that makes everyone else down, even though there's nothing there, or if there's actually been a prang.

We started moving again, and sped up, and kept going, not terribly fast, but moving anyway, and eventually got back up to full speed, but there was nothing, no prang, just one of those dumb slow downs.

My mate wanted to go to the bottleshop on the way home, asked if I wanted anything. I said I had grog, but wouldn't mind going to the supermarket for something for dinner, so we went to bilo, and he went and bought grog, and I got dinner.

My mate dropped me off at home, I just sat around for a while, on the computer, watched tv etc.

I cooked dinner, and then ate it, watched more tv.

I did some blogging, while watching tv.

I went to do something on the computer, with some sound files, and realised that some of the stuff I've downloaded recently is missing. I must have lost it when the disk went wobbly, and I had to recover everything. It must still be on the old disk.

I mucked around with the machine, pulling the SATA controller out, and putting the disk with the trashed partition table back in, I ran Stellar Phoenix across it again, and found the missing files, in a directory named "New Folder" for some reason, explaining why I didn't recover it before.

I rescued those files, put the machine back how it was before, with the SATA controller in etc, and then I went to bed.

Hmm, St Paddy's day.

I was just having another lazy day before going back to work next week.

I was still lying in bed at 11am, when the phone rang.

I answered it, it was my mate who's dad owns the air conditioning business I used to work for.

He asked what I was doing today, and said "nothing", he asked if I wanted to go out and do something for St Paddy's day, since he had the day off. He thought the other guy that lives there, my mate that works from the ABC was home too.

He went and kicked his door, and confirmed that he was home, so we planned to go and do something, it was looking like a bit of a crappy day, and since I'm not supposed to ride, they said they'd get ready, and turn up in a little while.

I got up, had a shower and started getting ready. I figured I'd wear my green suit, since I had been planning to wear it to work today, I'd thought about it before I went on the holiday and found out my license was suspended.

I finished getting ready, and was sitting on the computer when my mates turned up.

We sat around for a short while, we all had a beer, I called a taxi.

We chatted for a little while, and the taxi turned up about 10 minutes later, damn, that was quick.

They left the half beers, we jumped in the taxi, and went into Gosford.

We went to a reasonable looking pub on the main street, I haven't been in there before, since they aren't open late. I got a guiness, my mates got other drinks, and we looked at the menu, trying to work out what to get for lunch.

Nothing much grabbed our fancy on the menu, so we figured we'd just have our drinks, and then keep going, and get lunch somewhere else.

We sat and drank, and chatted. My mate called our other mate, the guy I'd just been on holidays with, he said he'd come down in about an hour. When we finished our drinks, we left, and walked down the street.

As we were waiting to cross the road, my mate spotted a chick that we all know, because she went to the school I went to, and then she left when I left, and we were both at Tafe (she was doing her HSC there, I was doing my first IT course), she packed it in, and went back to school, but went back to a different school, the one my mate had gone to.

We crossed the road, and then started talking to her, she's working in some temping agency in Gosford. She's not bad looking, it's too bad she's a religious freak.

While we were talking to her, some half pissed bloke wearing a green plastic hat came up and complimented me on making an effort on the day, wearing green.

Yeah, whatever mate, and then he left. We finished our conversation and kept walking.

We were heading across to Iguana Joes to get some lunch, it started raining a little bit heavier as we got closer. We were walking across the sports field towards the club, and I noticed that I had a large amount of blood all over my hand.

What the hell is this? I had a scratch or something on my hand, and blood was just pouring out of it.

We continued walking to the club, and went in. I went into the toilets to wash my hand, and work out where it was bleeding from, after washing the blood off, I couldn't find where it had come from, it must have stopped then.

While I was in here, I noticed how lower class it had become. When this place first opened, the sinks were very classy, the taps were sensor operated, you just wave your hand under the tap, and could adjust the temperature depending on which side you put your hand, the sink is just a large slab of marble or similar, sloping backwards, and the water runs down a gap at the back.

Now, the sensor taps have all been removed, and they have replaced them with really scungy looking normal taps, that are just cold water, and a grill of chicken wire has been put in the gap at the back of the sink.

I finished in there, and went back out into the main area of the club.

My mates and I went and got in the line to order food, that didn't take too long, I ordered a steak.

We grabbed some drinks, I ordered a Bundy and coke, my mate commented that it was a good Irish drink, to which I replied that I'd already had a Guinness today, and what had he had?

We took our drinks, and went and sat outside. We chatted for a minute, and because there were a couple of empty pool tables, my mate said we should play, so we all moved over near the pool table.

He and I played pool, I don't remember who won, he probably did, but he commented that I'm no where near as crappy a player as I used to be.

The few games I've played while hanging out in Maitland must have been some good practice.

We went and sat down again, chatted, and a little while later our mate that had been called up earlier arrived.

We finished our drinks, and I went and shouted more, this time I had a Jameson and Coke.

On my way back to the table, some woman shouted that "I probably wasn't even Irish!" commenting on my green suit and hair presumably. I replied "no, but I am a Quigley", so she said "that's alright then".

I got back to the table, and our food had been served, and our mate that had just arrived had collected mine for me.

There was a huge steak on the plate, it filled up half the plate, I wonder if I can even get through it.

Our mate went and ordered some food, we continued eating, and chatting, he came back from ordering a couple of minutes later.

A little while after that, some woman comes around asking about the cars that people are driving, because someone's left their headlights on.. my mate had, so he went out and turned them off.

My mates went and got themselves a bottle of wine. I said I didn't want any, because of the preservative 220 in it, but they said it was a really nice wine, so I ended up having a glass of it, it wasn't bad either.

The others had only got tiny steaks, which they said were terrific, but they'd finished, so it was just me still eating, but I was able to take my time, because my mate was still waiting on his, which arrived a couple of minutes later.

We continued chatting, both my mate and I eating, and then when we'd all finished our meals, we just chatted for a while.

There was bugger all going on in this pub, so we decided that we'd all go around to our mates' place (the guy who's dad owns the aircon business, and the guy that works at abc).

We went out to the car that my mate had driven down in (becaue we'd got the taxi), and we all got in, it was starting to rain a bit heavier now.

My mate started the car, and started reversing out of the parking space, and then the car stalled. Hmm, this is an automatic, how do you stall an automatic?

He tried to start it again, but it wouldn't start. We were blocking a car that was trying to get out of the carpark, so 3 of us jumped out, and pushed the car back into the spot.

My mate tried for a few minutes to start the car, but it wouldn't start. It was turning over with no problem, but it just wouldn't fire.

We jumped out, opened the bonnet, I went about checking everything obvious, spark leads, battery terminals, nothing looked obviously wrong.

My mate tried started it again, and it would just turn over and over, but not fire. I suspect it's got something to do with fuel.

My mate called up the NRMA, to find out about getting someone out to look at it, he was told that the car wasn't listed on his memebership, so he'd have to pay the membership for the car.

We looked, and there was no fuel, so we told our mate to call them back, after we tried putting some fuel in, rather than pay $80 or whatever to join the car to NRMA, have the guy turn up in an hour, and put some fuel in it.

So he said he'd call them back, and hung up. We tried to think of anyone that could give us a lift to the service station, since it was raining, and really windy now, but we couldn't think of anyone.

The 4 of us started walking the kilometre or so to the nearest service station, we got about 1/3 the way there, when my mate realised he could have called his dad, so he did, and he said he'd come down in a bit, so we walked back to the car/club again.

We all sat in the car, and waited. We sat here for about 10 minutes, and then someone asked the question "why are we all sitting crammed in this car, when we're parked at a perfectly good pub?", so we all got out of the car, and went back inside again.

We ordered more drinks, I had a Glenfiddich on the rocks this time, we sat and chatted, and waited. After about 15 minutes, we'd finished our drinks, so we went back out to the car again, and my mate tried starting it again, but it was still no good.

A couple of minutes later my mate's dad turned up, we grabbed a jerry can of fuel off him, and my mate put it into the car, then my other mate tried starting it again, over and over, but it was still no good.

Someone had the bright idea of trying to jump start the car, which I thought was ridiculous, it wasn't going to work, because the car was turning over and over without issue, the radio was working, the lights were on, it's nothing to do with the battery.

They wouldn't hear it, and said it was "worth a try anyway". Whatever you reckon. I was expecting several minutes of mucking around, positioning the other car, and putting the jumper leads on etc, all for nothing, but then my mate went into the back of the car his dad was driving, and pulled out this self contained jump start thing.

It must have a couple of big capacitors in it or something. He went about connecting that up to the battery, and then my mate tried starting the car, but, what a surprise, it did absolutely nothing, and made no difference, and the car still didn't start.

I said again that I thought it must have something to do with the fuel, perhaps the fuel pump is buggered.

My mate decided to call the NRMA again, join the car, and get someone out here to look at it.

We left him with the car, calling NRMA, and the other 3 of us piled into the car with my mate's dad.

It was raining quite heavily now, and as I got in, I noticed that I had green shit running out of my hair, down my face.

My mate told me not to drip it on the seat or anything, but then his dad said it didn't matter, because the car had been written off from the hail damage a few weeks ago, or whenever that huge hail storm was.

My mate's dad took us all back to my place, where my mate had left his car.

I quickly came inside, cleaned the green shit off my head and face, and dried my hair a bit, and then went and jumped in their car.

We went back down to Iguana Joes again, spoke to my mate, waiting in the stuffed car. He'd called NRMA, arranged for someone to come out to look at the car, but they wouldn't be there for another hour.

We decided to go to the supermarket, and get some grog and stuff to take back to our mate's place if we ever got there, so we jumped back in the car, and drove over to the supermarket, leaving my mate to wait for the NRMA again.

We ll went into the bottle shop, I bought a bottle of Glenfiddich. It was up in a locked case, so I had to ask one of the staff to get it for me, some woman came from behind the counter to get it, and commented that she had to feel my suit, and did. Wow, polyester.

I wanted some ice to go with it, but inconveniently the bottle shop doesn't have ice, so I had to go into the supermarket to get it. I then got stuck in a line in there, buying one damn thing (where's the express lane for people buying 1 thing, and paying with cash?).

I finally got through there, the others were waiting in the car, and my hands were full, otherwise I probably would have gone to the bakery to get something to eat.

I got back in the car, and we took off again, driving back to find out how my mate was going.

When we got back, the NRMA was there. It looked like the guy was packing up to leave. I asked him what the story was, what it was, if he'd fixed it etc.

He didn't tell me much, only that it was something to do with the fuel pump (he suspected), but he couldn't fix it, so had called a tow truck.

He finished packing up his tools and whatever, got in his car, and left.

It was still raining, so we got in the car with our mate again. He told us the same thing, it was supposed to be the fuel pump, the guy couldn't fix it, and now he had to wait for the tow truck.

My phone rang, it was a guy from work. I can't remember what the conversation was about, but more than likely something to do with something at work.

While I was on the phone, the tow truck turned up, so we all got out of the car, my mate gave the keys to the tow truck driver, and arranged for the car to be towed to the Holden dealer nearby, so then we all got in the other car, and drove around to the Holden dealer.

We sat in the car for a minutes, the tow truck turned up and the guy unloaded the car, and we headed into the office to book it in.

The guy asked what the story was, and my mate started telling him, but was leaving out some of the details, so I interjected to tell the guy how the car had started, had then stalled etc, in case it gave him a better idea of what had gone wrong.

My mate got pretty pissed off, but I just said that he might have needed a bit more information than he was giving him, anyway, the car got booked in after all that.

We went back and got in the car, and my mate drove us all back to his place.

We unloaded the grog and stuff from the car, went in, sat down, and had drinks.

My mate's dad has bought another projector "for work", and my mate's got it attached to his computer at the moment, so he just crapped around on there for ages. I got fed up, and started mucking around with the receiver, trying to put the radio on, because it was so boring.

Our mate who just dropped his sister's car off to get fixed noticed me trying to put the radio on, and said to our other mate to put some music on or something.

He pissed around with the computer a bit more, and eventually put "Me, Myself and Irene" on.

I've seen this before, and wasn't terribly impressed with it, but I sat and watched it again anyway, while drinking glasses of Glenfiddich.

When the movie finished, someone brought out a bottle of Bundy liqueur, so we all had some of that, and then I finished it off.

We sat around more while my mate stuffed around on the computer, a little while later he put on "Supertroopers".

I drank more of the Glenfiddich, watched the movie.

When that finished, my mte started stuffing around on the computer again. I was getting a bit bored.

My mate started playing some boring shootemup game on the projector after that, and I was contemplating walking home before I fell asleep.

Eventually someone else got the shits with that, so then my mate put on "Bad Santa", and I watched that properly, I'd already seen the first half of it at another mate's place a few months ago, one morning after we'd all been drinking, and when everyone had fallen asleep, he turned it off.

That wasn't a bad movie, seeing it properly, and in full.

While we were still watching the movie, a bit after midnight, my mate goes like "what day is it??", and we tell him, and he realises that he was supposed to go to second part of a first aid course a few hours ago. Oops.

We kept watching the movie, and our mate went and put some mini pizzas in the oven, good stuff, I'm starving, we didn't eat dinner either.

When the movie finished, at about 1am, my mate and I spoke about walking back to our homes, but our mate said he'd give us a lift back, because he hadn't drank all that much, so he did.

I couldn't be bothered doing anything when I got home, I just went to bed.

Let's see, the second day home.

I got up late again, like yesterday, probably 11am or so.

I jumped on the computer, and went through more email.

My mate who plays the drums called me, asked what I was doing, nothing, and if I wanted to go and get some lunch, I said that sounded good, and he'd come to pick me up.

My hair was looking pretty awful, another few days and washes after the chick in Woolies comment that it looked like an old tennis ball.

I dug around in the cupboard under the sink, I think there's still a bit of green dye left from the last time I did this (hence my blog picture), but that was ages ago, this stuff is probably dead, oh well, I suppose it will just wash out and not do anything if it is.

I used it to recolour my hair, and it didn't do too bad of a job, not as good as when the stuff isn't several years old though.

I had a shower, and got ready, and then my mate turned up a little bit later. We're going to see Mark Knopfler at the Entertainment Centre tonight, and I'm not sure what I'm doing for the rest of the day, so I took the tickets with me, in case I didn't end up getting back here before going down to the city.

I jumped in the car, and we went out to the Woodport at Erina for some lunch. I had a steak I think, and it was pretty good, and a couple of drinks.

While I was at lunch, the project manager from work called me, he wanted to find out what was going on, and I was saying that I was going to take the rest of the week off, and I'd start back next week, and I'd have to get the train up there or something, and he offered to give me a lift up on Monday morning, so I gave him my address, and sorted all that out.

We spent about an hour there, and then decided to go and wander around the shops at Erina Fair, so we jumped back in the car, and went there.

We wandered around the shops pretty aimlessly. I went to the discount beauty products place, where the hairdressers had gone to get the dye they'd used on my hair, and I bought a new bottle of it, to keep retouching my hair until it grows out a bit, and I get sick of it (or have to go to court).

There's a bunch of cool colours they do, I might do a bright blue next time.

I got that, and kept wandering, we went into Sanity or some other place that sells DVDs, they had a special on, and I got a couple of Cheech and Chong movies for about $5 each.

We went over to JB Hifi after that, and wandered around, I think this is when I bought a Bowie in concert DVD, and perhaps a couple of others, but I can't remember, and my notes about this day are pretty piss poor.

We went back to the car, and headed for home, on the way, we decided to stop at the Leagues Club. I got a letter a couple of weeks ago that my card was going to expire, and my mate wanted to join so that he can get in when he's pissed, since he won't have to sign in, and that was where they picked up that he was pissed and wouldn't let him in last time.

We went in, I renewed my card, they just reissued last years photo, and my mate joined and got his card, because he's over 30, he didn't have to have a photo on his card.

My mate dropped me off at home, when I got back I lent him my Best of Bowie DVD that we'd been talking about while we were out, that he wanted to see.

I sat and watched the Bowie in concert DVD I'd bought, and did a bit of blogging.

I went through some more email after that (I'm still trying to catch up on stuff that came in during the time I was away).

At about 5.10pm, my mate came back, and picked me up.

We went around to our other mate's place, the guy who plays lead guitar. He wasn't home, was still at work or something, so my mate parked his car at his place, and then the 2 of us walked down to the Leagues Club.

We sat in here, had a couple of drinks, I put some money in the jukebox and queued up a few songs. A couple of songs in, some guy came over and asked if we'd put them on, and then commented that we had good taste in music.

I was a bit hungry, so I got a packet of chips from the vending machine, my mate got some too, he started eating his, and said they were stale.

Certainly looked stale, you could squash them, they weren't crunchy at all.

I told him to complain at the bar, perhaps they'll get him another packet out of the machine or something, or just tell him to go away at worst, but he couldn't be bothered, so he just left them.

We sat in here until our songs finished, and then someone came along and put some crap songs on, so we left, and walked back to our mate's place, he should be nearly home by now.

We got back there, and he was home, we went in, waited around for a bit while he got ready. His dad was there, and said that he'd been there the whole time, so we could have come in earlier. Oh well, I wanted a couple of drinks, and didn't want to rock up and drink someone elses beer (or drink beer for that matter).

It was now about 6pm, our mate finished getting ready, and we all (drummer, lead guitarist, his dad, and me) went and jumped in the car, and headed for the city.

We got to the end of the freeway, and started down the highway, ah, the old drag I used to do every single day to get to work.

Those drinks in the club were getting to me, I need to relieve myself. I asked my mate to stop in the next service station, he did, and both my mate I'd been with at the club earlier and I jumped out of the car to go, and found the toilets out of order. Oh god no.

We looked around, but there was no where else to go, so we got back in the car, and asked our mate to stop at the next service station.

We went into the next service station, and their toilets were closed for cleaning. What the hell is this? Again, there was no where else to go, so we got back in the car to try again. I was in a bit of pain by this point.

We got to the third service station, and my mate and I jumped out, and this time found the toilets out of order again.

I give up. This service station had an area where we could get around behind it, so my mate and I climbed over the little fence, made our way around behind the service station, and relieved ourselves.

We jumped back in the car, and continued heading for the city. We got into the city, and went into the parking station we use when we stay in the Travelodge (haven't done that for ages).

We walked from there down to the Entertainment Centre, and got down there about 8pm. The show is supposed to be starting now, and there's no opening act, just Knopfler.

We headed up near the door we were supposed to enter at, grabbed a few drinks at the bar. I was starving, had hoped to get some dinner, but had to make do with a packet of chips from the bar.

We sat at a table ear the bar, drank our drinks, I ate my chips, and then we headed in, now that the majority of people trying to get in had got in.

I went over, showed the tickets at the door, and the usher showed us to our seats, it was now about 8.10pm, and just as we were getting to our seats, the show started. That's pretty good timing.

Everything about this concert was good, the seats were good, it was a good view of the stage, straight on, instead of being over at the side, the audio was good, it was clear, loud, and properly mixed.

Mark was playing excellently.

I don't remember all the songs they did, but all the ones I came to hear were done, Money for Nothing, Sultans of Swing, Telegraph Road, I think he did Walk of Life, So Far Away.

About halfway through the show, I had to go to the loo, so I went out, relieved myself, and on the way back in, I went to the bar, and bought drinks for all of us, beers, except for my mate who was driving, so I got a bottle of water for him.

I went back in, gave them their drinks, and watched the rest of the show. There was only one encore, we'd hoped for another, but he didn't come back out, he'd done all the songs I wanted to hear anyway, so I was very happy.

It ended at 10.30pm, which I thought was pretty good, to have had Mark out playing for nearly 2 1/2 hours.

We left, walked back to the parking station, and paid for the parking, this was a total bargain.. $8. I don't know how we managed that.

We went back to the car, jumped in, and headed for home, my mate drove us back to his place.

I'm not sure what time we got home, probably around midnight, we hung around here until 12.30am, and then my mate who picked me up dropped me off at home.

I went to bed not long after getting home.

I found a setlist for the concert:

Why Aye Man
Walk of Life
What it is
Sailing to Philadelphia
Romeo & Juliet
Sultans of Swing
Done with Bonaparte
The Trawlerman's Song
Song for Sonny Liston
Donegan's Gone
Rudiger
Speedway at Nazareth
Boom, Like That
Telegraph Road
Brothers in Arms
Money for Nothing
So Far Away
The Mist Covered Mountains/Wild Theme

It came from here, looking at that page, almost every concert was the same, that's a bit boring.

Ah, it's good to be home, but at the same time, not.

I lay in bed until about 11.30am.

This was a pretty bludgy day, I got up, sat on the computer for a little while, going through some of the emails I'd got in the last few days.

I went and some washing, washing all the dirty clothes I'd collected over the last week and a bit I'd been away.

I went through the rest of the emails, and sat and did some blogging, I had a few drinks, not much else to do, now that I'm stuck at home and can't ride anywhere, or get to work, andthere's no food here.

I assume that I hung the washing out when the machine finished, but I didn't note that, so who knows.

I listened to music, and continued to blog, trying to catch up with the month or so that I'm behind, I think I managed to blog 3 or 4 days worth.

About 8pm, I was feeling a bit hungry. There was nothing in the place to eat, that's why I'd had a couple of drinks before, because it was the only consumable stuff in the place, but now I was starving.

Oh well, stuff it. I rode to the supermarket, bought some dinner, and rode home again.

I put the dinner on to cook, put the tv on, and watched, ate dinner when it was ready, watched a bit more tv.

I blogged a bit more, and then I went to bed.

I hugely exciting day, I don't even actually remember any of it, I'm just going off what I wrote in this blog as notes.

I probably brought the washing in and the end of day, but again, I didn't note that, so maybe I didn't.

I got up at about 9am, and started getting ready, I went and had a shower, when I came out, my mate was cooking the breakfast.

He left me to finish cooking it while he had a shower.

We were cutting the time a bit fine, it was almost 10am already.

There was no time to have a proper breakfast, we made sandwiches out of the stuff, and I finished packing my bag while it cooled a bit, and then frantically scoffed it down.

We chucked out tons of food, there was nothing else to do with it, I had no room to carry it, and it wouldn't last all day unrefridgerated on he way home anyway.

My mate had already gone down to load up his bike, I grabbed my bag, went down to reeption, returned the room keys, and then went down into the car park and loaded up my bike, it was just after 10am.

My mate's bike was still out the front from when he'd moved it last night, so once my bike was loaded, I moved out of the carpark, and parked next to him near reception.

The chick working in reception came out, and gave me some really sour look, my mate commented that that was a death stare if ever there was one, gees, what did I do?

We jumped on our bikes, and took off out of Byron Bay.

We got about 15 minutes out of town, and it started pissing down with rain. My mate and I rushed off the road, up towards a sheltered picnic area, we jumped off our bikes, and undercover.

I grabbed my wetweather gear out of my bike, and pulled it on, but it's a bit late, I'm already soaked, and now this is just going to stop me from being able to dry if it stops, though it will get warm if it doesn't.

Once we'd put our gear on, we jumped back on our bikes. My mate took off across the wet grass a bit faster than me, so he was able to get back on the road in a gap before me.

In the couple of cars that followed, one was a paddy wagon, great, I let them pass, and then I dropped in a couple of cars behind them.

I could see my mate off in the distance, and I just followed him.

We only went a little way further, and it stopped raining, typical.

We got to Ballina, and I saw my mate take a right turn at a roundabout. I followed around when I could, and then I tried to work out where he'd gone, into a service station or something, because we both needed fuel soon.

I checked the few service stations along there, but I didn't see him in any of them, so I figured he must have kept going, because we still did have a little bit of fuel.

I kept going, ended up on a road I thought was going the right way. The rain started again, and it was toatally pissing down so I couldn't see a thing. Luckily I was the only thing on the road going this way, so I was able to slow right down, and wasn't holding anyone up.

I kept going for a bit, went past some Macadamia Castle, and then realised that I needed fuel. I took the next exit from this road that advertised fuel, and headed into a little town. I pulled into the service station, it wasn't even a self serve.. the guy came out to fill peoples cars up with fuel.

I filled my bike though, I don't trust anyone else filling my bike, it's too easy to spill fuel, even I do it when I'm not paying attention.

I filled up, went in, bought a bottle of water, and then had to pay via eftpos because I realised I had no cash. I got some cash out, and asked the guy the best way back south, and he told me to head for Ballina, where I'd come from.

I got back on my bike, and headed back where I came from, back towards Ballina.

Hang on, I thought.. Ballina.. I've already been there, this guy's telling me to go back north (not realising the turn I made and lost my mate resulted in me heading back north, and the guy was right, heading for Ballina was back south).

Anyway, so thinking this guy was full of crap, telling me to go to Ballina, I started going there anyway, sure I was going the wrong way.

A couple of minutes later I went past the Macadamia Castle again. Now I know that guy is full of shit, I've just come past here. I turned around, and started heading for Tweed Heads, not realising that I had been going the right way, and now I was back going the wrong way again.

I kept going, what I was thinking was the right way, heading for Tweed Heads, and then I found myself back where the Nimbin tour bus had come to go back into Byron Bay on Saturday, and I realised I had totally fucked up.

I'd ended up leaving Byron Bay, getting to Ballina, heading halfway back to Byron, then halfway back to Ballina, then almost all the way back to Byron again.

Fuck me. I turned around again when I could, and I was back heading for Ballina again. I don't want to know how much time and fuel I've just wasted. God knows how far ahead my mate is now, like an hour probably, I'm never going to catch up to him.

It ended up being about 80km of fuel I wasted, since that was what was on my trip counter when I got back to Ballina for the second time.

This time I didn't turn right at the roundabout where my mate had, and I'd followed him, I just headed for the sign for Grafton, pretty certain that was where I was wanting to go.

I'm pretty sure I'm heading south now. At least the rain has stopped, the sun has come out, and the road is drying up, even though I'm not, because the rain gear is keeping all the water in.

I kept going until I needed fuel, and then I stopped, refilled, hopped around for a bit, and kept going. I did 2 of these runs I think, 2 hours/200km at a time. I think these runs were about 12pm, and 2pm.

About 4pm my ipod ran out. Damn. I'm still hours and hours away from home. I'm going to be insane by the time I get there.

On the third stop, my mate had tried to call me, I tried to call him back, no answer, our fuel stops must be out of sync.

I took my wet gear off, because now the sun was shining, and the road was dry, and I was feeling all yucky from being so wet for so long.

I had a packet of chips, and then I got going again.

The next stop (I think) was Taree, this was about 6pm. I went into McDonalds, got a couple of cheeseburgers, and went back to my bike to eat them. I didn't want to sit in there, because my ass was totally soaked, I didn't want to sit down, and it would look a bit suspect standing around in McDonalds eating.

I got fuel here somewhere too, and then kept going.

I was getting near home now, finally, and not really paying attention, so I ended up going almost the whole way into Newcastle.

It was only because I remembered about going down Wallsend road that I was able to bypass Newcastle, and get onto the link road.

I needed more fuel, so I stopped into service station along there.

I've been in here before. The guy who owns/runs this place is a weirdo. If I'd remembered that sooner, then I wouldn't have come in here.

Anyway, I filled up, went in to pay, and saw the weird guy. He recognised me from the last time I'd been in there, and started telling me some great long story.

I eventually managed to pay for the fuel, and escape his story, jumping back on my bike and heading back for home.

(Damn, it's now 5 weeks later, and I haven't got fuel since then, and I still have 1/4 of a tank).

I went from there across the link road, and onto the freeway, heading south. Not long now.

I got off at the Ourimbah exit, and made my way along the highway, and stopped in at my mate's place.

It was now 9pm as I got here. Christ, it's taken me 11 hours to get back from Byron Bay. Piss on the speed limit, it just makes travelling painful.

My mate's wife gave me some dinner, I sat and ate that. I chatted with them for a while, but then I was feeling really tired, so I collected my bag of dirty washing that my mate's wife had brought back with her for me, and I went home.

I went and spoke to my parents, and told them about me getting busted, and having a suspended license etc.

I sat and watched some tv with them for a while, but then I was feeling really tired, so I went back out to my place.

I sat on the computer, the first time in over four days, the last time I was on a computer was the one we took to Bundaberg, on Wednesday morning before we left.

I went through a couple of emails, decided "bugger it", and went to bed.

What a damn long day, 11 hours on the road, and about 700km.

I woke up, I was feeling really crook, I had a terrible pain in the guts.

There's no way in the world that I'm going to be riding home today. I went and sat on the crapper for a while, and regretted whatever it was that I did last night to end up like this.

I went back to bed for a while.

We had to be checked out of the room by 10am, so at about 9.30am, I went down to reception, and booked another night. I briefly spoke to my mate about it before I went down there, he said that he couldn't afford another night, I didn't care, I needed it.

Anyway, I paid for another night. It was cheaper tonight, because it was a Sunday night, I think it was only about $100. Paid it on my credit card, and then I went back to the room, and went back to bed.

I ended up getting up again at about midday. I went and had a shower.

While I was in the shower, the housekeeping came around, and knocked on the door. My mate dealt with getting rid of them, the guy was really annoying. "You have to check out", "No, we've booked another night", "You have to go down to reception to pay for it then", "We already have", "Oh, well that's ok then", and the guy finally buggers off.

I didn't know about any of this, my mate told me when I got out of the shower.

He'd stayed in bed the whole time.

I got dressed, putting on my jeans, which I hadn't worn since we rode in on Friday.

I decided to go for a walk around. My mate didn't look like he was going to get ready anytime soon, so I told him that I'd take my phone, and he could give me a call when he got up, if he wanted to find out where I was.

I started out just wandering around aimlessly, but then I decided to look for the Scottish chick. I don't know why I was bothering, it was highly unlikely that I was going to find her.

I spent an hour wandering around Byron Bay, looking in all the shops for her. I didn't see her or her friends anywhere.

I walked along the side of the beach, there was a cafe, I went in there, and I bought a bottle of water, because I'd got a bit hot walking around.

I asked the chick in there how far it was to walk to the lighthouse, she said she wasn't sure, so she asked a couple of the other people working in the cafe how long it would take to walk to the lighthouse.

They had a bit of an argument, it seemed that no one was really sure how long it would take, from 10 minutes to half an hour, to 45 minutes.

The one thing they could agree on though, was that it was faster to walk along the beach.

I thanked them, took my water, and found my way down to the beach.

I wandered along the beach, this wasn't too bad of a view, lots of hot chicks on the beach, and a few of them topless, I'm not going to argue with that.

I kept wandering along the beach. Gees I'm hot. I wish I hadn't worn my jeans, boots, and a black T shirt, I really look like quite a bit of a dope wandering along the beach like this too.

Oh well, I don't care.

I spent about 10 minutes walking along the beach. I wished I'd brought my ipod, this is a bit boring now, all this walking.

I kept going, and I got to basically the end of the beach.

I found my way up off the beach, into a carpark, there was another cafe here.

I went in there, waited for ages, and the guy at the counter finally asked if I wanted something, and I told him I just wanted to know the way to the lighthouse, and he told me that there was a sign in the carpark below.

I left, walked back down to the carpark, and through it, I don't really see where I'm going here.

I came across a sign, and it had a few different walking trails written on it, including one to the lighthouse.

I started trekking up the hill. This was a bit like hard work. Again I wished I hadn't worn such impractical clothes.

After a couple of minutes, trail went back down the other side of the hill, and ended up on a road. I wandered along the road, where I thought the trail would lead off again, and ended up finding it again at the bottom of a hill.

It took me quite a while to get to the top of the trail, I had to take a few stops as I got near the top, drinksome water, calm down a bit.

I didn't take the trail out to the most easterly point of Australia, it looked like a bit too much work to get back up to the trail and then up to the top of the hill.

I eventually got to the top, to the lighthouse.

I wandered around up there for a bit, catching my breath.

I went into the lighthouse, it's a museum too. I made a donation on my way in, and I checked out all the stuff on display, old lighthouse technology, and details about ships that have runaground etc.

I came back out again after about 10 minutes, I was so hot.

I finished my bottle of water, and chucked the bottle in the bin, there was a shop, I was just looking to buy something, but then I couldn't be bothered, I figured I'd just find the way back to town, down the road, rather than the awful trail again.

Just as I was looking for the roadway down, I saw the Scottish chick, I couldn't believe it, I've walked around for 2 hours, and I've found her.

Then I realised she was with some guy, and it wasn't he guy she'd been with yesterday, who she was travelling with (and she wouldn't have been cracking on to me yesterday if she'd had anything to do with that guy). Oh, great.

Now I almost felt worse than not having found her at all.

I walked over towards her, I heard her saying to the guy that I was someone that she'd met yesterday.

I said hello, and we chatted for a bit. She asked me if the pot chocolate was supposed to do anything, and I said that all it did to me was make me feel sleepy.

She told me that they hadn't come around last night because they'd got pissed, and gone to sleep.

I told them that they could go inside the lighthouse, so they went in, and I waited outside, looking out to the ocean.

A few minutes later, they came out of the lighthouse.

We chatted a bit more, and then they both gave me their cameras, and asked me to take pictures of them in front of the lighthouse.

Ok, does it get much worse than this. I took the cameras, and I waited while they moved back in front of the lighthouse, and I took a picture of them both on both of their cameras.

We chatted for a while, I offered to shout some drinks, I wanted to find out exactly what the story was with this guy, but they didn't take me up on that offer, we just stood around chatting a bit more.

We decided to go back to town, I asked how they had come up here, they told me that they'd walked up the road, so I suggested we go back down the trail.

We started walking down the trail, out to the southeast, over the ocean, there were some huge storm clouds, they looked like they were moving in fairly quickly.

We walked down the trail, and out to the most easterly point. The Scottish chick asked me to take a picture of her, so I asked her to stand in front of the huge storm clouds over the ocean, and I took her photo.

We continued walking after this, back on to the trail.

There were a few spots of rain, I wasn't too worried.

As we walked down the trail, the 2 of them walked in front, and I just trailed behind. I felt like just leaving them to walk away, and leave me behind.

The storm came over, and it pissed down with rain. I didn't care.

We kept walking down the trail. We got to the road at the bottom, and walked along the road, and then over the next hill, and back into the carpark again.

We walked through the carpark, and back to the stairs down onto the beach.

We walked all the way along the beach, back towards town, we were all chatting as we walked along the beach.

When we got back near town, the 2 of them decided to go into the surf. That wasn't really a choice for me, considering what I was wearing, so I said my goodbyes.

I had been thinking about giving her my email address, and asking her to send me copies of the photos I'd taken of her, but I was pathetic again, and didn't, and was a bit depressed with the whole situation.

I told her that if I didn't see her again in the rest of the day, it was nice to have met her, which it was, because I was going home tomorrow.

I left them, she started undressing down to her bikini, and I just walked away, across the beach, off the beach, and back on to the road.

I called my mate to find out where he was, he said he was still in the room, smoking.

I said I'd be back there in a bit.

I went into the beachside pub we'd been in at some point last night, or the night before, and I just got a lemon lime and bitters, my stomach was still churning, or I would have had some alcohol.

I finished that, and then I dawdled my way back to the room.

On the way, I looked in a few shops, I wanted to find a bad hawaiian shirt to remember the trip, but I couldn't find one bad enough, and they were too expensive.

I got back to the room.

My mate was lying on the lounge watching the tv, some crap Disney movie or something was on.

We went and sat out on the balcony.

I told him about having walked for 2 hours to find the Scottish chick, and finding her, with some guy.

He told me that if he'd been a chick, that would be the point where he'd give me a hug.

I just sat there depressed for a while. We went inside, another crap Disney movie was starting.

This one had Chevy Chase in it, and one of the kids from Home Improvement. We ended up sitting there and watching the whole movie.

A few hours after that we decided to go out for our last night. I went and had a shower, and got ready to go out.

We left the room, went for a bit of a walk. I said I'd wished I'd gone and got a bottle of Ricadonna earlier, but now all the bottle shops would be shut. We got a little way from the room, and I noticed that the drive through bottle shop was still open, so we went in there.

I bought a bottle of Ricadonna, and my mate bought a pack of smokes.

We walked back to the room, and I stuck the bottle in the fridge, and then we left again.

We decided to go to Cheeky Monkey's for dinner again. We walked down there, got in the line (not as bad as the other night), and we got in a little while later.

The chick taking the dinner orders asked if we were staying in a backpackers, and we lied and said that we were staying in the YHA, so we could get the cheap meals.

We ordered our food, paid, went in, and dropped off the ticket at the kitchen again.

We hung around up near the front, near the stage, and managed to get a seat at the front table, right in front of the stage.

I said that I wasn't going to drink anything tonight, just the bottle of Ricadonna when I went back to the room, but my mate gave me some money, and told me to go to the bar, and buy 2 of the faggiest, girliest drinks they have.

I went over there, and I asked the guy what the faggiest, girliest drinks they had were, and paid for and went back to the table with a couple of Bicardi breezers, one watermelon flavour, and the other cherry or something.

We sat and drank them, I felt like a bit of a dickhead, but at the same time I didn't care.

We sat there for another short while, they were having a "Miss Backpacker" thing in here tonight, so hopefully we'd get a bit of a perve with dinner.

We finished our drinks, waited, and they kept going on about Miss Backpacker starting soon. My mate said that he'd bet they'd start just after we got our dinner, and we'd have to move, because our table was part of the stage.

A few minutes later our number came up on the thing, I went and collected the meals, and went back to the table.

We got about halfway through our meals by the time they started it.

A guy running it came to us, told us that he realised it was a shitty time to assk us to move, and gave us a voucher for a couple of free drinks or a free jug of beer or something.

We took our meals, and moved to a little shelf at the side, near the DJ box, and finished eating our meals.

The first round of Miss Backpacker went on, all the chicks came out and stepped up on the table, wandering along and back a couple of times, all done up in their nightclub gear.

None of them are terrifically attractive, the Aussie chick looks like she's made of plastic.

That went on for another few minutes, and then they all buggered off again, so we sat back down at the table, even though we'd finished our meals.

My mate went for a wander, over to the bar, he came back ages later, he said he'd bumped into the British chicks from the Nimbin tour yesterday, and he'd managed to convince 2 of them to go in the next couple of Miss Backpacker rounds, sweet, they were pretty good looking.

We sat around for a while, and waited for the next round. I went and used our drink voucher to get us a couple of drinks, and then went back to the seats.

My mate who lives in Newcastle called my mate, but he couldn't hear him because of all the noise in there, so he said he'd call him back in a bit.

They did the next round about 15 minutes later, the swimsuit round. The British chicks had run back to their hotel, grabbed some undies, and come back, so they joined in that round, and that wasn't too bad at all.

After that was finished, we sat around listening to the music in there for a bit, and then we decided to leave, it was about 10.30pm. When we got outside, I reminded my mate to call back our other mate, and he did, as we walked along, back to the room.

We got back to the room, and sat out on the balcony. I grabbed the bottle of Ricadonna, and had a couple of glasses of that.

My mate disappeared out of the room somewhere, and came back ages later. He told me he'd been chatting to some guy out of one of the othe rooms, and just when he was going to come back in, some chicks had turned up.

They'd got out of their car, and started belting on the door of reception, but because there was no one there, it had not been answered.

My mate had gone down to find out what was going on, and they told him that they were supposed to be staying at some guy's place, but that he'd passed out, and wouldn't open the door, so they couldn't get in, and had to find somewhere else to stay.

He told them that if they couldn't check in anywhere, they could come back, because we had a spare bunk and the sofabed if they wanted it.

They said they would try a couple of other places, but if they couldn't get in anywhere, they would come back.

I sat there and waited for a while, I wasn't really expecting them to come back, but you never know. I waited for about 45 minutes, and then decided bugger it, they aren't coming back, so I finished the bottle off, and then I went and lay on the bed listening to my ipod.

I fell asleep listening to it, but then woke up again, so I turned it off, and went and put it on charge, I need this to last as long as possible tomorrow, it's going to be a long slow boring trip home at the speed limit, trying to blend in with the traffic.

I lay there again, and went to sleep, a bit after midnight.

I heard my mate get up and have shower, around 9am.

When he came out, I got up and had a shower and got ready, when I came out, he was cooking breakfast.

Mmm, bacon and eggs. We finished getting ready, and just before 10am we headed down to get on the tour bus.

It was already there, the guy was just coming to the reception desk, we told him that we were 2 of the 7 from this place going on the tour, and the other 5 were the chicks, and what room they were in.

He went into reception, and they were calling the phone in that room, but no one was answering. We were going to go up and knock on the door, but then the 5 of them came wandering back through the carpark at the back again.

They must have been out at the shops, or getting breakfast or something.

We went over to the bus, my mate and I paid, and jumped on the bus, in the back seat.

The 5 chicks got on, paid, and sat down the front of the bus.

We took off, went a little bit down the road, to the YHA where'd we started yesterday, and a few people came out of there, 2 scottish chicks, and a scottish guy.

They paid and sat in the middle of the bus.

We kept going from there, a little bit through Byron, and stopped at a Motel near where you first come into Byron Bay, and 4 well endowed chicks came across road.

Mate, it just doesn't get much better than this does it? 11 chicks on here now, and 3 guys.

When they got on the bus, we heard their accents, they were British, they paid, and sat in the couple of seats in front of me.

We started off, and then the drivers phone rang, he spoke to someone for a minute, got off the phone and said there'd been a stuffup, the other tour bus had missed a stop, so we'd have to go back and pick up the people.

We went back through Byron Bay again, and to another Motel, where 2 guys came out, and eventually came across the road, because it was pretty busy here.

They paid, and sat in the seats in front on my mate. My mate started talking to the guy who'd sat in front of him, but he didn't seem very chatty.

We got going and drove for a bit, and stopped in a little town outside Byron. The driver got up, and started talking about Byron Bay, and how it's a hippy place to a certain extent, but not as much as Nimbin, and how they try to keep big organisations out, by watching the development applications, and they go and protest when people like McDonalds want to come into Byron, and they get rejected.

He also mentioned about how Woolworths and Pizza Haven (or some other pizza place, not Pizza Hut) had managed to sneak in though.

Then he went on about the power that people can have, if they band together, like when the cops had introduced sniffer dogs to Byron Bay, and busted a couple of people for drug posession, so then several thousand people had gone and protested it out the front of the cop shop, burning effigies (sp?) of sniffer dogs, and smoking pot.

Because the cops were so outnumbered, they gave up, and the dogs were removed, and then he started going on about how we could use the same tactics to get rid of Bush, if people just banded together.

This was where he started to lose a few people on the bus, so he interrupted himself, and told us to get some food, or a coffee or whatever, and we got off the bus.

I went with my mate across the road into a coffee shop, I ordered the coffees, but the woman serving was too busy reading my shirt, so I had to order them again after explaining my shirt.

(I was wearing the shirt I'd won at the Bundy factory on Wednesday, it says "Things you shouldn't take out of Australia:" and then has pictures of native animals, and the last picture is the Bledislow (sp?) cup).

Anyway, we got our coffees, and then we wandered up the top of the hill, and got back on the bus.

The others slowly started turning up, they'd gone in to one place to get some toast for breakfast, and they were as slow as a wet weekend making it.

One we were all back on the bus, we took off again. When we got out of the town, the driver but some music on, and was telling us about how they'd just put a new CD player in the bus, because the old one was crap.

The music was pretty good, I can't remember exactly what they played (this was over a month ago).

We went driving over some rough roads, heading for Nimbin, I do remember a couple of songs at this point, there was "To Her Door", by Paul Kelly, and Steppenwolf's "Magic Carpet Ride".

As we started going up a hill, Adam Sandler's "Piece of Shit Car" came on, and my mate and I pissed ourselves laughing, because we'd just been talking about this the other night, and how we hadn't heard it for ages.

We took a turn off the road, headed down some really rough back roads, and then the driver turned into a tiny little driveway, and there was branches brushing along both sides of the bus going down there.

It opened up again, and then he was able to do about a 6 point turn, and turn the bus around. He parked, and we all jumped off the bus.

There was a huge sculpture of junk here, all sorts of somewhat technological things, fridges, tvs, fans, with plants growing all through it, and pottery items amongst it, very interesting. I wish I'd taken a picture of it.

(I wish I'd taken a camera on the whole trip to be honest).

Anyway, the bus driver told us that we were here to see some hippy guy, and he took a watermelon off the bus, and put it in the shade near the sculpture.

The hippy came out to meet us, a weird looking guy wearing a red tracksuit, with no shoes, and carrying a machete.

He introduced himself, had a thick American accent. The American chicks asked him where he was from originally, New York he told them, and then they chatted for a while.

We started wandering through his land, and he was telling us all about the stuff we were going past.

He also mention about how snakes are everywhere, and all the tourists started walking differently after that, and sticking to the middle of the track, instead of floating all over the place between the trees like they had been, heh.

My mate and I just smiled, bloody tourists :-)

We got to one area, and the guy started telling us about some trees that were there, and how they've tried to introduce them into other areas, because they make stuffed soil usable, but at the same time lower the water table.

This results in people having usable soil, but their wells dry up, and soil below the surface becomes all salty.

We kept going, and we got to some bamboo growing, and he went on to tell us about how we should be using bamboo for building houses, instead of hardwoods, because it's so much more renewable, and that the eastern cultures worked that out thousands of years ago, but we use hardwoods because of the renaissance (sp?) in Europe.

Then he started going off talking about chaos theory.

He interrupted himself, and we kept walking from there, past a lake, this was where he started telling us about how he got the land, having got it as a grant because it had been wrecked, it had no trees or plants or anything on it, and he's grown it all, and when his father died, he was able to buy more adjoining land.

My mate and I had been trailing the group the whole time, with the bus driver behind us.

One of the Scottish chicks had been dropping back, and started talking to us, and then a few words into the conversation the bus driver started crapping on to me about how he'd been trying to catch a lizard when he was little (because there was a big lizard next to the lake), and how it had ended up biting him on the finger.

All the while we're dropping back from the group, and I'd really rather be chatting with the Scottish chick.

He eventually finished going on about it, and then I was able to walk a bit faster and catch back up to the group, but now I'd been left out of the conversation.

We got to the hippies house, it was this little shack thing, with a verandah on the edge of the lake.

There was a stack of chairs around the verandah, so we all took a seat, the Scottish chick sat down next to me.

I had a good look at the hippies shack, it was just a single room, I couldn't really see what was up the back of it, but in the middle he had a desk with a computer on it, and in the front was a huge tv, a digital tv receiver, and a dvd player, and a sofa bed over at the side.

Hmm, if that's how a hippy gets to live, it doesn't seem that bad, a very peaceful area, people leave you alone, and you can have a few modern conveniences.

Out on the verandah, there were Christmas lights strung all over everything, that would look pretty cool at night.

A couple of the British chicks sat opposite us. Under the chair one of them sat on was a rubber snake, but she didn't see it.

She made some comment about bugs or creepy crawlies or something, and my mate asked her if she'd look under the chair, she looked down, saw the snake, and jumped about 3 feet in the air out of the chair. LOL.

One of the other British chicks sitting next to her reached down and picked it up, gently wobbling it so it looked like it was real, and the other girl is standing there going "Is that real??" "Is it real??", and wouldn't sit down again until she was shown it wasn't real.

The hippy cut up a watermelon, and we all grabbed a bit and sat around and ate it.

The hippy spoke to the bus driver for a bit, and they made up a rolly cigarette, and then the hippy offered it to me, but I don't smoke, so I politely refused.

The hippy asked if we'd heard of the band "Canned Heat", and I enthusiastically said I had. The hippy went and put a CD on (he had a CD player and a stereo up behind the computer evidently).

I was expecting him to put on "Going up the Country", but it was "On the Road Again", that started blasting out, and we listened to that.

Once that finished, we continued wandering, I was walking with the Scottish chick now.

We went past an old shed, couldn't really see what was in there, looked like some scrap wood, and lengths of metal, and gardening tools etc.

We kept walking, and the Scottish chick spotted some bananas on a banana tree (hmm, that's a bit of redundant information, they'd hardly be on any other tree, but anyway..) and then asked if they were bananas, and I told her that they were.

We kept going, and the guy showed us some other trees he had growing through that area, that grow fruit, starfruit etc.

Someone said something about lateral thinking, and the hippy jumped right on that, saying that there's no such thing as "lateral thinking", it's just thinking, and the fact that some people don't have as greater mental capacity as other people, when someone comes out with something that they didn't or couldn't have thought of, they say it's lateral thinking", which I agreed with.

We got to another point, with a weird looking palm tree with thousands of little round yellow berries around it, the hippy picked a few up, and ate them, spitting out the seeds, and then chucked a few of them to us.

They tasted like pineapple, very nice.

We kept wandering from here, and we ended up coming back out where we'd started, at the sculpture and the bus again.

We continued having a bit of a chat, the hippy started going on about how families are falling apart these days, and that people aren't faithful anymore, and that more woman are having extra marital affairs than men these days.

He was going on about it seems like woman want the "mean guys" to impregnate them, but then because the "mean guys" are useless husbands, they need to find some safe boring guy to be their husbands and fathers to their children.

I must admit, it did seem to have some merit.

I shook the hippie's hand, and then we all piled back on the bus again, the hippy giving some starfruit the the driver.

We drove from here to Nimbin, it took a while, there was more cool tunes on the bus.

As we got near Nimbin, the driver changed the CD, and put on some Aboriginal music, as we went past some interesting landmarks and stuff.

We listened to a few songs off that CD, and then he changed it again, back to a rock/comedy CD.

As we came into Nimbin, the song played was that comedy "Let's go Smoke Some Pot" song. Heh.

We got into Nimbin about 1.30pm.

When the driver pulled up, before we got off the bus, he spent a couple of minutes telling us about the fact that pot is illegal (for the backpackers who might not be aware), and to take it easy, in case people are trying it for the first time here, not to go crazy etc

We got off the bus, and started walking up the street. The Scottish chick was starting to have a conversation with me, and then some guy came up asking if anyone one wanted to buy any pot, and pulled a huge bag, like an ounce, out of his backpack.

My mate said he wanted some, but not that much, and neither did the American chicks, so we organised to go halfs with them, a half ounce each.

My mate didn't have enough money on his for that, so I went to an ATM, and pulled out some cash, and then the 8 of us (the dealer, the 5 American chicks, and my mate and I) went down a side alley, sorted out paying, and the guy separated the bag up.

When he looked in his backpack, one of the many ounce bags he was carrying had come undone, and his packpack was full of pot, so he went about trying to sort that out.

We got the bags, and then we came back to the street. My mate mentioned something about wanting to get some pot chocolates, and the dealer said he knew where to get good stuff, so we went with him into one of the shops a little bit down the road.

As we walked down there, he was telling us about how stuff works in Numbin, like the fact they send all the new cops in there to learn how to spot people doing deals, and stuff like that, but the fact that they stick out like a sore thumb, because they're alway in new cars, looking neat and tidy with new clothes etc, not like any of the people who "belong" in Numbin.

He also told us about the "taxi" service in Nimbin.. Nimbin doesn't have a taxi service, so whenever you hear someone yell taxi, someone's spotted an undercover cop car, so everyone can take off, and you'll also hear things like "taxi, 3 on foot", if there are undercovers wandering around.

We got to the shop, and went in, the guy hussled the people working in there, telling them that were were old mates of his, and then we got the chocolates for a few dollars cheapers than usual.

He offered them a bit of pot in return, but the woman said she wasn't smoking anymore.

My mate bought some hemp rolly papers while we were in here too, they were huge.

We came out of there, and the guy told us that he'd done that (hussled to get the chocolate cheaper) because he'd been ripped off by the woman working in there before, getting pot off him, not paying, and refusing to pay.

He left us after that, and my mate and I went for a wander. The Scottish chick hadn't waited around for all the pot stuff to get sorted out, so now I felt like finding her again.

We walk up the road, no one was up there, and no shops, so we crossed the road, and went back down the other side. you couldn't go more than about 5 metres without someone asking "you right for stuff mate?", heh. Everytime it was "yeah mate, we're right thanks", and keep walking.

We got right down the other side of the road, and my mate and I decided to go into the pub, we got a couple of drinks, and sat in there. The people in there didn't know what to think of me, sitting there with a green mohawk, wearing a yellow tshirt with stuff about rugby and rum on it.

We finished our drinks, and left the pub again, crossing the road back to where the bus was, and starting to walk up the road again.

We found the Scottish backpackers, so I got chatting with the Scottish chick again. The Scottish guy wanted a joint, we said we had tons of stuff, so they could have some of that (I'd paid half for our half ounce, and probably wasn't going to touch it, so I might as well give it away).

He wanted it prerolled though, and the others wanted some chocolates, so we took them to the shop where we'd got our chocolates, and they bought some, paying full price.

The Scottish guy asked the guy in there about getting a joint, and he bought a prerolled joint, paying about $10 or something for it, what a ripoff.

After that, the 5 of us decided to go to the pub, so we crossed the road and went into the pub again.

We bought drinks, and found a table, and sat and chatted. We finished our first drinks, and then I shouted a round of drinks for us all, and we sat and started dranking those.

My mate mentioned the stupid tattoo he'd made me get, and I showed it to them, there was a bit a laugh out of it, I said that I wasn't terribly impressed with it.

Some people sitting on one of the tables outside left, so we moved out there, and finished our drinks, and chatted.

I invited them all around to our room later, if they ran out of pot, or wanted somewhere to smoke it, instead of in the YHA, since we were staying just down the road, and they said they'd probably come over.

We chatted a bit more, and then we decided to go back to the bus, because we were supposed to be leaving Nimbin shortly, we all went to the loos, the chick's loos were on one side (where my mate nearly went in, hehe) and the guys were on the other side of the pub.

We reassambled outside, but we'd lost the other Scottish chick (not the one I'd been chatting up). He friends tried calling her mobile, but it was off.

We waited out there, and the Scottish chick (that I had been chatting up) went back and checked the loos, her friend wasn't in there.

We hung around for a couple of minutes, a bit worried, then we decided to go and check if she was back at the bus. We walked across the road and up the hill, to the bus, and she was there.

We jumped on the bus, a couple of the British chicks that had been sitting in the seats in front of me were in the back seat, so I took the seat where they'd been sitting, and the Scottish chick sat in front of me.

The driver cut up the starfruit that the hippy had given him, and passed it around the bus, it was ok, but I've tasted nicer fruit.

In the next few minutes, the rest of the people on the tour returned to the bus, and we left.

The driver commented that we were one of the most organised groups, normally they get held up by someone in the hemp bar, or still trying to organise a deal or something.

We started driving back towards Byron Bay, on a very scenic route. My mate ate half of one of the pot chocolates, and gave me the rest of it, it was ok, had cherries and stuff in it, I don't think the pot was very well chopped up, because I could feel bits of leaf in my mouth.

My mate joked to the people on the bus that I was the tester for the chocolates for anyone who'd bought them, to watch and see if I passed out or died or whatever, LOL.

About 15 minutes after eating it, I felt a little bit trippy, but more lethargic than anything, and I just became more tired.

We drove a bit further, we got to the top of a hill, and the bus driver said that the next 5 minutes 12 seconds of the trip was called "dancing with buses", and that he races the bus down the hill, with a cool Pink Floyd song going.

Woo, I perked up at that. He put the tune on, "One of These Days" (which according to my song collection goes for 5:14, but anyway), and we cruised down the hill, that was pretty fun.

It lined up pretty well, racing down, and then over peaks, and then the song ended just as we got to the T intersection at the end of the road.

We went a little bit from here, and the driver pulled into a big field, where there were some toilet blocks, and anyone who wanted a toilet break could go, about half the bus got off.

The driver was telling us about how he has a stall at this place on some weekends, making candles.

There was an old guy there setting up some sort of a hotdog van, and the driver spoke to him for a minute, and said he'd been running that stand for 30 years or something.

Once we were all back on the bus, we got going again, and went onto a road through a national park. The bus got pretty quiet at this point, and most of the people on there fell asleep.

We drove there for a while, and got to a lookout, where the bus parked, and we all piled off.

There were toilets here too, and some people went in there, the rest of us wandered down a short trail to a lookout.

It was on a cliff that went down over 100 metres, I looked down, and didn't like it too much, so I stepped away from the edge again.

I started chatting to the Scottish chick again, and I think she wanted me to put my arm around her as we stood at the edge and chatted, but I was too pathetic to do it.

We stayed there for a little while, and then we went back to the bus, and got on again. I think the Scottish chick wanted me to sit next to her, but again, I was too pathetic, and I sat back in the seat behind her again.

We got driving again, and another little while later we got to a little general store, we all went in there, and bought snacks and stuff (hehe, maybe everyone's got the munchies?) and my mate and I bought cans of Bundy and coke, because they had a little off license in the back.

We stood across the road and chatted with the bus driver, and the Scottish and British chicks came over, and we were all chatting.

There was some huge tank of a car parked there, a Pontiac or something, and we checked that out.

I noticed a remote control for the CD player sitting on the front seat of the car.. I've never understood why the hell you would need a remote control in a car, but now I did.. because the car was so huge, the dash was far away from where the driver would sit, you'd need a remote.

The guy came to his car not long after that, and started it up, it sounded pretty nice, and then he took off.

We stood around for another few minutes. Some of the girls had been going to the loo, and commented about how the toilet door didn't shut properly, and the driver said that people on other tours had complained of the same thing, that someone would just be wandering around the side of the general store, and then realise that the door was open.

I asked why they didn't think to just jam some toilet paper in the door as they closed it, that should hold it shut, but that would probably come under that "lateral thinking", which may or may not exist.

We all jumped back on the bus, and we headed back towards Byron Bay.

We got to the top of a huge hill, where you could see for ages. The driver asked if anyone wanted to stop and take photos in front of it, but no one was interested, so we just kept going.

On the trip back into Byron, my mate and I started chatting to the British chicks sitting in the rows of seats between us.

He told them about the stupid tattoo as well, so then I had to show it to them, but it didn't really get a response out of them.

We got back into Byron Bay, and the 4 British chicks were dropped off first, and then the 2 guys that had got on last (who hadn't really said anything to anyone all day).

The bus got back to our place, the American chicks jumped off, and then we got off. I'd been thinking about saying something to the Scottish chick, but I was too pathetic again, and didn't say anything except goodbye, and got off the bus.

Damn it, why do I have to be so useless around women? I could have asked if she wanted to go and get something to eat somewhere later, or anything, but I just piked out.

My mate and I went back to the room, and I poured us a couple of drinks, an we sat out on the balcony again.

My mate said that I'd missed out on a good view for some of that trip.. while we were driving through the national park when everyone was asleep, the British chicks' boobs were bouncing around, and they weren't crossing their arms or anything to cover them because they were asleep.

I decided I was hungry, so I took off back to Woolies again, bought another chicken, and some scissors to cut up the pot, and got some isacol to take the dumb tattoo off (since some of it was rubbing off anyway, and it looked a bit of a mess, but also because my mate wanted to take the fake tattoo off his face).

At the checkout, the chick commented that my hair looked very interesting, like "an old tennis ball", oh terrific, that's really the look I'm going for. It does look pretty crap though, all the time in the surf and the sun has massively faded it, not to mention the fact I've been washing my hair every day, since I usually only do it every other day when I've got it dyed.

On my way back from Woolies, I went across the road to the tattoo shop we'd been in last night, where I saw the cool celtic tattoo.

I spoke to the guy about getting a template for the fake tattoo guy to use, but he said they don't do that, they'll do a fake tat.. but only if you're pretty sure you want it (which I wasn't), so I left.

I went back across the road, because I realised I hadn't got any bread, and I went into the bakery and bought some, and then I walked back to the room again.

We sat out on the balcony and ate the chicken, and had a few drinks.

It was now after 7pm, we just had more drinks, and then I went and had a shower, took what was left of the stupid tattoo off my arm, and got changed, ready to go out, or stay and wait for the Scottish backpackers to turn up.

My mate started watching tv, I wanted to go out, but then he was saying that we should wait and see if the Scottish backpackers turn up, so I watched some crap tv, had a few more drinks, and waited.

We sat and watched tv until 10.30pm, and then I decided that they weren't coming, so I wanted to go out, rather than waste the last night we're in Byron sitting in the room.

I thought that I should leave my number somewhere in case they do turn up a bit later, and we don't miss them, I tried to find something to write on, and write with, but I had nothing.

I searched all the drawers in the place, it's got a fully stocked kitchenette with a whole bunch of utensils in the drawer, but the bedside table only has a bible, not a pen or a notepad or anything, useless.

I asked my mate if he had anything, and he said he didn't, so then he went and knocked on the door of the room across the walkway that the American chicks were staying in, and was able to get a piece of paper and borrow a pen from them.

We wrote our names and mobile numbers on the paper, and then he returned the pen.

I stuck the paper on our door, behind the number screwed to the door, and then we left.

We went wandering around again, all the same pubs as last night, they were slightly less dead than last night, but still not pumping by any means.

We went into one place, where we'd been last night, where they serve a drink similar to a pina colada, but they serve it in a jam jar, I think the place was called Cocomungas or something, but this is relying on a memory from a pissed mind over a month ago.

A guy sitting in the front of the club left, so my mate and I took our drinks and went and sat over there.

We were sitting there for a few minutes, and then a couple of cops walking along the street stopped to talk to the bouncer, and the chick cop sat down at the table next to us, and started chatting to the guys sitting there.

I really didn't want to be in this close proximity to cops right at this point in time, and after drinking all afternoon, I might be tempted to do something I would regret.

I could see that my mate wasn't terribly impressed with them being there either, so we both finished our drinks, and left.

We walked up the road where the pizza place is, and we saw the Danish guy we'd been talking to last night, so we chatted to him for a minute, and he was out with one of the backpackers he was travelling with, who'd had a quiet night last night, so we spoke to him too.

We kept wandering afetr that, and walked down on to the beach, and along.

Some people had been making sand sculptures on the beach, there was a mermaid, and something else I don't remember.

We walked up the beach, and then found our way off the beach again, walked through the back streets, and found our way back to a club we'd been at last night, but not spent much time in because it was empty and bloody expensive.

We sat out on the balcony there, and were trying to chat to some chicks, but none of them seemed very interested in talking.

We ended up talking to some older women that turned up, we told them how we'd ridden up here on our bikes, and they thought we meant pushbikes, but that misunderstanding went on for a few minutes, until they questioned if it was possible to ride 800km in one day on a push bike.

Hmm, somehow I doubt it is possible to ride 800km in one day on a pushbike, but I know in Tour De France they ride a few hundred kilometres in a day.

We all moved inside after that, because the club was closing the balcony.

I ended up speaking to one of the women, and she was going on about her husband and kids, and then we ended up talking about IT, and I end up in a conversation about windows exploits.

WTF? I don't want to talk about work, I don't want to talk about windows shit. I'm on holidays, I want to be getting pissed and having a good time.

I got really pissed off at this point. Let's see, this is the last night in Byron, and I:

am supposed to be going home tomorrow
have to try to find a way to get to work on Monday
am wasting my time chatting to some married woman
am talking about windows crap
screwed it all up with the Scottish chick because I'm pathetic.

I wanted to go outside, since I was pissed off, and it was too smoky in here, I went over near the door, and I was told that I couldn't go outside unless I was leaving, fine, I'll leave then, but I'm not going to be so rude as to just leave like that, so then I went back to let my mate know that I wanted go back, and excuse myself.

As I got back there, they were getting up because they wanted to smoke, but you're not allowed to smoke where we were sitting (even though people were), you had to go and stand inside the door to smoke, like that's going to make a difference, when the door is shut.

I tried to excuse myself, but I didn't manage to, because people kept going in and out of the door, and I had to keep moving out of the way, so I couldn't get close enough to speak to my mate.

Eventually we all decided to leave, and we went out and down the stairs back to the street.

I really didn't want to be in this situation any more, and I started to feel a bit seedy, I think it was all the smoke in the club we were just in.

We wandered for a bit along the main road, and got to the Great Northern Hotel, and one of the woman ran in there to watch the footy or something, I took the excuse to leave, saying I was feeling seedy, and I didn't want to go in the overcrowded smoky pub, I'd rather just go back to the room, so I left.

I walked back to our room, as I got back there, I felt a bit better, so I decided to wander down the road to the YHA and see if the Scottish backpackers were hanging around anywhere, but when I got down there, it was silent, no one on any balconies or outside or anything, so I just walked around the block and back to our room again.

I got back there, and the paper was still stuck on the door with our numbers, so I took it off, and I went in the room, put the tv on, lay on the bed and watched rage for about 45 minutes, and then my mate came back, it was about 3.15am now.

We watched rage for a while, and chatted, and then went to bed. God I'm going to be wrecked, we're supposed to be getting up in the morning, packing our shit, checking out at 10am, and riding 700km or so home.

Rage was pissing me off too, it was all chick bands, or estrogen rock as I dubbed it. I turned it off and went to sleep about 4am.

I was half woken up early, my mate's wife getting ready to leave, and leaving to go home.

We were supposed to be going home today too, but at some point in the last few days my mate had mentioned that he had more days off next week, and as I'm a contractor, I don't have to be back at work until I want to be, so we decided to add a few days on to the trip, with a coupe of nights in Byron Bay.

I went back to sleep, and ended up getting up about 10am or something. I went to have a shower, but my mate was in there, so I just went and watched some tv and waited.

When he came out of the shower, I went and had one. While I was in there, my phone had rung, it was a guy from work, and my mate had answered it and spoken to him for a bit, and he said he'd call me back in a little while.

I finished in the shower, and got ready, and came downstairs, that was when my mate told me about the phone call.

I had some breakfast, and then my phone rang again, so I answered it, and spoke to the guy from work for a little while, explained to him about getting busted the other day, and exactly what was involved, just a ticket and a court summons, because apparently rumours had been getting around work that I'd been arrested or something.

I said that because I was suspended, I'd have to start living in the pub during the week, and only go home on the weekends.

When I got off the phone, the others were in watching the end of some cheesy horror movie, so I sat and watched that with them.

When it finished, my mate and I packed up all our crap, I put the ticket back in my bag, and then we loaded up our bikes, said our goodbyes, and took off going south.

We stopped near the Gold Coast airport, and went into the servo, and my mate bought a map of the NSW north coast, so we could find our way to Byron Bay. After that we went into Subway, and got some lunch, sat and chatted for a while.

I really wanted to get back over the border, into NSW, because I'm pretty sure that they can't do an online license check, and as long as I'm not doing anything really dumb, then they won't find out that my license is suspended if I get pulled over.

We jumped back on our bikes, and we were only about 10 minutes north of the border, I felt relieved as I went over the border back into NSW.

A couple of minutes later, some stupid truck changed lanes on top of me, and I had to race out between them and the road divider, and get in front of them, blasting my horn and then giving them the finger once I got in front of them. Dickheads.

We kept going south, and we took the Byron Bay exit off the highway, and started heading into Byron Bay.

As we got on that road, lots of cars coming the other way started flashing their lights at us, we slowed down.

I thought there had been an accident by the look of what I could see ahead, but when we got closer, it was just that someone had run off the left side of the road, and the arse of their car was blocking the left lane, so we had to go on the wrong side of the road around it.

We went just past it, and then my mate and I pulled over, there was a couple of people trying to help get the car back on the road, we decided that we'd see if they needed help.

When we put the stands down on our bikes, we just about went off the left side of the road too, the grass there was really dry or something, but really slippery, we both struggled to hold our bikes up, repositioned them, parked them, and then just as we started to walk back to help the guy get his car back on the road, they managed to.

In front of the car that had been off the side of the road, was a car with its bonnet up, so assumedly it had broken down, the guy had tried to pull in behind them to help them, and had gone off the road.

The two of us jumped back on our bikes, and continued into Byron Bay.

We went around a turn, and my mate spotted a cop car/speed trap ahead, we weren't speeding (since Byron Bay is all 50km/hr), but as we went past, the cop must have jumped in his car and followed us, because when I next looked in my mirror, there was a cop following me.

Oh crap.

I just continued following my mate, he was looking for the YHA backpackers, we were weaving all through back streets of Byron looking for it, and this cop was just sitting right on my ass.

I was being really careful not to speed, full stop at stop signs, indicating, head checks, everything properly, so he had no reason to pull me over, and then after about 5 minutes, we made another turn somewhere, and he didn't follow me. Thank Christ for that.

We found the YHA parked, and I asked my mate if he'd seen the cop car sitting on my ass, but he hadn't (another case of those useless mirrors). I was shaking, worried so much about getting pulled over.

We went into the YHA, and found out they were full. The woman told us of a few other YHAs down the road, so we decided to go and check them.

I didn't want to risk riding around anymore, it's not worth it here, so we decided to go for a walk, so I locked my bag on to my bike, we walked to the next one, they were full, and they told us the other one was too.

They suggested a couple of Motels, and gave us a map, we went across to one of them, but they only had a family suite left, which was $220/night, too much.

The woman in there suggested some Motel a bit down the road, saying that everything else was full, so we figured we'd have to go there, and we started walking back to our bikes.

On the way, we went past another place, the Bayside, I figured we'd ask in there, so I went in, they had 1 room left, with a 2 night minimum stay, it was $120/night.

Sounds great, so we booked in there. The room had an underground parking spot with it too, which suited me, so then I finished up paying for that, and we walked back to our bikes, and rode up and into the underground parking under the place we were staying.

We grabbed our bags and stuff, and went up to the room.

It was pretty groovy, double bed, 2 single bunks, sofa bed, kitchenette with stove/oven, balcony.

When my mate went in the bathroom, he found there was a washing machine and dryer too, cool, I can do some washing.

This is pretty dame good for $120/night.

I poured some bundy's, and we sat out on the balcony and relaxed for a while.

My mate found a brochure in the room for the Nimbin tour, that sounds good, I'd rather pay someone to drive us in there, so we can get pissed or whatever, and I don't have to worry about riding around when I'm not supposed to be, and on terrible roads.

My mate rang up and booked us both into the tour, they person who took the bookings told us that there were 5 other people from this place going on the tour tomorrow.

We decided to go for a bit of a wander, and got some food, and perhaps buy some thongs, because neither of us had brought any.

I'd got changed into shorts again, because it was pretty warm, and didn't want to wear my boots with them, because it looked dumb, so I ended up wearing my sneakers out, which were still soaked through.

We walked up the road to Woolworths, and grabbed a ton of stuff in there, a bbq chicken, bread, bacon, coke, juice, washing powder, cheese, crackers, and other junk we needed (or figured we needed :-).

We finished in there, and started wandering back to the place we were staying, on the way we looked in a surf shop for some thongs.. what a joke, there's thongs in here for like $100. WTF?

We got back to the room, and sat out on the balcony and ate the chicken, and drank Bundy and coke.

It doesn't get much better than this.

We just bummed around in the room for a couple of hours, watching some tv, eating, drinking, relaxing.

We decided to go out to get some dinner and go to some clubs, so I went and had a shower, and got ready.

We started wandering up the road, my mate knew about this place, Cheeky Monkey's, that he'd gone to when he was here last time, so we tried to find that.

We asked some stoned chick, first my mate asked her if "she was a local", and she started rooting around in her bag, I was a bit worried that she was looking for pepper spray or something, but then she offered my mate a lighter, and he said "no, I asked if you were a local, not for a lighter", and then asked if she knew where Cheeky Monkey's was, and she said she thought it was up that way motioning up the street.

We went the way she'd said, even though my mate thought it was the wrong way, we only went a little way, and then there was a guy standing on the corner handing out dinner discount things.. at Cheeky Monkey's.. so we asked him where it was, and he told us.

We walked down the road, and found it, there was a bit of a line out the front, so we got on the end and waited.

We started chatting to the chicks in the line in front of us, but they didn't seem too interested in having a conversation.

On the wall behind my mate there was a sign saying "Please sit on the rail", which I thought was a bit strange, and when I looked around a bit more, I saw another couple of them, saying "Please don't sit on the rail", so some smartass had removed the "don't" from that sign.

We eventually got in the door, and ordered our dinner, and then went in to wait.

It's an interesting way of doing things.. you order your meal at the door, and pay, they give you the slip with your order on it, and a ticket with the number on it.

You go in, take the order slip to the kitchen, and then wait for your number to come up on the serving counter, and collect your food.

When we got inside, the place was packed out.

We eventually found a seat on the table right at the front, this place is pretty groovy, they've got stainless steel sheets on the tabletops, so you can dance on the tables.

We had a couple of drinks, and then our meals where ready, we sat and ate them, and didn't hang around much longer, because it was too packed, and too noisy, you couldn't chat to anyone, and it was too hard to move around in there.

We headed back up the street, and on the way there was a tattoo shop, so I went in and started looking through the books of designs, there were quite a few really cool celtic designs.

We kept wandering from there, going into different pubs, but it was quiet as, we'd go into pubs, and there'd be about 3 or 4 people in there, or no one, I've not seen anything like it.

Very strange, considering all the backpacker accomodation is full.. where the hell are they all?

We kept dragging around the pubs, finding the same thing everywhere.. no one.

We kept wandering around the streets, we went back up where we'd been heading earlier in the night, before finding out it was the wrong way, there was a guy up here doing fake tattoos.

I thought about having another go, not one quite so tasteless as the one my mate had picked for me yesterday.

I looked through all the designs the guy had, he had a couple of celtic designs, but none were as good as the ones I'd seen in the proper tattoo place earlier.

My mate sat down and got one done, a black streak above and below his left eye. I chatted to the guy, and said that I liked the celtic stuff, but that he didn't have the designs I liked, so he said he could draw them up, but I'd have to pay for that.

He went on to say that the proper tattoo shops will sell templates for him to do fake tats from, so I said I'd see about that.

When we'd come back from Cheeky Monkey's, we'd seen a few people in the Railway Hotel, so we decided to go there, even though it seemed like it was rough as guts, oh well, it can't be much worse than the Grand Junction near work.

We got a couple of drinks in there, and then my mate was telling me to go and chat to some chicks that were in there, I went to the bar to get another drink, and that took ages, and when I got my drink and was heading over to talk to the chicks, they left.

D'oh.

I went back and sat with my mate, there was some guy chatting to him, he was a Danish backpacker, so we chatted to him for a bit, he said that all his mates that he was travelling with were back in the backpackers, because they'd been going all week, and wanted a quiet night.

It seems the same all around the place, everyone just wants a quiet night.

He took off, and then we finished our drinks, and decided to go back to the room.

We got back there, and I was sitting with my mate on the balcony while he smoked. He went inside, and I just sat outside.

A little while later, these 5 American chicks wandered through the car park below our balcony, being loud and obnoxious, and sounding like Valley Girls.

I went in and told my mate, and then we heard them (we aren't deaf :-) come up the stairs, and they were outside our room, so my mate opened the door and started chatting to them, and they said they were going on the Nimbin tour in the morning.

He finished chatting to them, and shut the door again, and then we went to bed.

I got up, and started getting ready, I went and had a shower etc.

My mate went into the kitchen, and started making some breakfast. I went in and got a bowl out of the cupboard, my mate asked if I wanted some cereal, I said yes.

I went to the fridge to get the soy milk, and the next thing, I turn around and my mate is pouring milk all over the cereal.

Ugh. I then spent the next few minutes pouring the milk off the cereal again, and put soy milk on it instead.

I went and sat outside, and ate the cereal, and left the milk.

I helped my mate push his bike back outside, from under the stairs.

I took the speeding ticket from out of my bag and looked at it.. oh hello.. I noticed that the cops wrote the number plate of my mate's sister's car on my ticket. Well, I don't think I'll be paying that.

I showed my mate, he said to just wait for the letter, and then reply with a letter saying that I don't own a vehicle with any such registration plate, nor have I operated one, they'll go and check it, find that it's got nothing to do with me, and will probably cancel it.

Now I just have to make sure that I can get the reminder letter.. because that'll probably go to QLD too, and it'll take me 6 months to get it from my other mate's ex girlfriend.

My mate and I gave some money to my mate's sister in law and her girlfriend, both for staying there, and for them to go and buy some food, so we didn't eat them out of house and home.

We grabbed the stuff we needed, loaded up the bikes, and then my mate jumped on his bike, his wife in the car, and I on my bike, since I had no real choice but to ride today, it would have stuffed everything up otherwise.

Anyway, the 3 of us took off, and went about 70km down south, to the Holden dealer where my mate's sister bought her car (which we were borrowing).

We dropped the car off there for it's service, apparently there's a free service included with the car purchase, and she only bought it a few months ago.

we waited there for ages, there was a line to book the car in, once that was done, we went back to the bikes, and grabbed a few things out of thr car, and got ready to leave.

My mate and his wife had left their mobile numbers as contact for when the car was ready to pickup, but now they realised that they hadn't charged their phones.

I said I had a phone charger in my bike (along with a cigarette lighter wired onto the battery), but when I pluuged the charger in, the phone didn't start charging. I looked more closely, noticed the charger had an LED on it, and that it wasn't on.

Hmm, something stuffed here, I'll bet the fuse has blown again. Oh well, no time for mucking around now, since I have to use an allen key to get the other side of the bike off, where the battery and fuses are.

My mate's wife said she'd turn her phone off to save the battery, and my mate put a diversion on his phone, that if it was off (if the battery ran out) then the call would go to his wife's phone.

My mate jumped on his bike, I jumped on mine, and his wife jumped on my bike as pillion, since my bike is more suited to carrying a pillion than his.

We took off, and we rode 20km or so back up the coast, and got off at the exit for Dreamworld, and weaved our way around and into the car park.

We went to the bike parking area, parked up, and I used my bike cable to chain both bikes togther.

My mate's wife's sister had given her a voucher, for cheap tickets, adults at kids prices. The offer was for "locals", people who live in QLD, or far north NSW.

Since I'm somewhat of a "local", with a QLD license, they said that I should buy the tickets, and my mate gave me his eftpos card to pay for them with.

That was fine, I went up to the window, gave the woman the voucher, and asked for 3 tickets. I was expecting to have to show her my license, but she just asked my postcode, and I told her my QLD postcode, which was fine, and then I used my mate's eftpos card to pay fro the tickets (he'd told me his PIN so I could do that, heh).

As I was doing that, my mate and his wife came up to the window, we got our three tickets, and then we went in.

The first thing we wanted to do was get rid of a lot of junk we were carrying, I had my helmet and jacket etc, I won't need those.

We went over to the lockers, ah, the same as they had at the rum factory, only this time we had to pay to use them (of course), $7 something/day, not too bad I suppose.

We were thinking we'd need 2, because they aren't huge, but when my mate paid and opened one up, we realised they were pretty deep, and if we used a slight bit of force, we should be abel to shove everything in.

I packed my helmet and jacket in the back first, so they can just squash that as much as necessary, and then we shoved more junk in.

Both my mate and I had brought shorts to wear around, instead of our jeans that we'd worn to ride our bikes, so we went into the men's loos to get changed.

Heh.. the toilet seats were those novelty clear ones with barbed wire and redback spiders in them.

We finished getting changed, and then went back the locker again, where my mate's wife was still shoving stuff in.

She'd worn her shorts under her jeans, so she didn't have to go anywhere to get changed. I unpacked most of the stuff from my pockets, put some sunscreen on, and then we locked the locker and started in to the park.

We only got a little way, and then I decided that I'd put my phone in the locker too, because I wouldn't really need it, and it's just something to have to worry about losing or having stolen or dropping off one of the rides or something, so I went back and put it in the locker.

I caught back up to them, they were heading over to go on the first ride, The Claw, one that's only been put in recently.

It was good coming on a Thursday.. there were no lines, the ride was just finishing, we went and got in the queue, it stopped, they unloaded it, and we got on immediately, sweet.

I didn't like this ride too much, it swings back and forth, and at the same time the bit that swings is round, with everyone sitting around the outside of it, and it turns around.

I didn't mind it too much when it would swing up, and you were looking at the sky, and then you'd go down backwards, but then when it swung back down, and you were going forwards, I hated it, and I was swearing my head off.

One of the times we went down forwards, there was a loud clang noise, I didn't like that either.

When we got off, I realised I had no loose change left in my pocket, it must have all floated out, and that must have been what I heard clanging, as it belted down on the big steel plates below the ride that drop down whe the ride starts.

We got off there, and headed straight over to go on the next ride, Wipeout.

I have no idea what this ride does, I didn't watch it, it was just loading up at this point, about to start.

I went and got in the line. My mate stood around having a smoke, and watching the ride, and then he came and got in the line, but there was about 10 people in between us.

We got on the next ride, ie once the run it was on finished and everyone got off.

I went around to get on, it's 2 rows of seats, one facing forward, and one facing backwards. I got on the front, and then the next bunch of people all went around to the back, so when my mate came to get on, there was only a couple of people in front of him.

Thos people were going to sit down next to me, so I asked if they wouldn't mine just leaving one seat for my mate, and they said that was ok, and then my mate thanked them, and he sat down next to me, and the people we'd spoken to said they weren't going to argue with 2 big blokes like us, especially one with a big green mohawk. Hehe.

More people filed on, and they got ready to run the ride. The front row had filled up to the end, but there were a few spare seats to my right (you get on from the left) because the chicks that got on before me originally sat there, and then moved right down to the right end, and I couldn't be bothered to move.

Now some chick got on, and there was no room, so she asked if everyone could move along one seat. I got up and repeated her request to everyone, and then someone said the ride was about to start, so I just sat down again.

Then they came over the PA, and asked everyone to move along one seat, so we did. Then my mate had to be a smartass, and make some comment about the seat (that I'd been sitting in) being wet, yeah, haha.

The harnesses came down, and we got locked in, and then the ride started. My mate's wife wasn't going on this one, she was just watching us and taking pictures.

This ride is hard to explain, the rows of seats are attached to rigth angle arms at the ends that turn around, so the seats go around in a circle, it does this for a bit, and then the 2 ends move independently, and it sort of twists around, and then the rows of seats start doing 360 degree turns, while the thing is twisting.

It all sort of settles down after that, the 2 ends go back in sync, and then the seats just rock back and forth for a bit, and then they spin around the other way to before, and the ride ends.

We piled off that, and went to work out what we were going on next.

My mate wanted to go on The Cyclone, which is a little rollercoaster. We went and got in the line for that, it's a massive queue area, all inside this spiral building to get you up to the top.

We had to wait in the line about 20 minutes here, but it wasn't too bad, because we'd only been in the park for a little while, and already been on 2 rides, with no great lines.

We chatted for a bit, and then when we got on the next run of the Cyclone, we ended up at the ass end of the people that could fit on the ride, so I wasn't able to go in the same coaster car as my mate and his wife, but that was ok.

I started out waiting in the line to get in the car in front of them, but then some kid asked if I'd swap with him into the car in front of that again, that suited me, so I swapped.

I started chatting with the Indian guy I'd be riding with, he was there with his kids.

The ride that was going finished, and the doors opened, and then the 4 of us piled into the car, the 2 kids in the front, and the Indian guy and myself in the back, we continued chatting while the ride got ready, and then left, and chugged up the first hill.

After that, it shoots down, swings around a bit, and there's a couple of loop the loops, it takes your picture halfway through the first loop, that was pretty groovy.

I got ready for it, and gave the camera a big cheesy grin and thumbs up as we went through, then did the other loop, it swung around a bit more, and then we ended up back where we got on.

Gees, that was quick. We got off, and sort of dawdled our way back down (you line up inside the building, on the spiral ramp, and go back down the outside of the building, on another spiral ramp.

We stopped and watched the next run of the ride, and then we continued wandering down. At the bottom of the ramp, you end up in a gift shop, and at the counter they have the photos of the last run on display.

We looked at them, I didn't mine the one of me, we grabbed the numbers of the photos, because we were talking about coming back to ride it again, so the 3 of us could get in the same car and photo.

We left from there, wandered back to main area of the park (because this ride is right off at the side).

They have a centrifuge ride there, I can't remember what it's called, but we went up and watched it going around, heh, there wre some people in there turned upside down, that looks cool.

When it finished, my mate and I went down to line up to go in it. The guy running the ride screwed up stopping it, and the door missed the stairs, so it had to go around again to line up the door properly.

Once that was done, all the people piled off, and they let us in. My mate and I went across to the wall opposite the door, and waited.

My mate said it was a race to see who could turn upside down first, heh, you're on. We waited another couple of minutes while everyone got in and they told us what to do, and then it started.

It took a little while before there was anough force to hold us against the wall, my mate beat me turning upside down, but I was only a little bit behind.

I blame it on me being a bit of a fat bastard, and needing a bit more force to hold me up against the wall.

We rode the whole ride upside down, not long after getting upside down, the force is too much to move again, so you couldn't turn bck around if you wanted to anyway.

After going around for a few minutes, they started slowing it down, and told people to turn back around, and then they slowed it to a stop.

Riding upside down stuffs you up, because it's spinning one way, and then you turn around, and it feels like it's going the other way.

We wobbled off that ride, and decided to go and get something to eat (_after_ going on that ride). While looking for a food place, we ended up in the arcade. I don't know why they would put arcade machines in a theme park, anything to collect money I suppose.

My mate bought $11 worth of tokens, the minimum you could buy, and the machines only took the tokens.

The first machine in there was one where there's a bunch of stuffed animals attached to a rotating belt by crepe paper, and you use a gun loaded with little plastic balls to tear the crepe paper.

There were a couple of animals hanging off by only a few threads, so my mate used almost all of the tokens trying to get one of them, and did in the end, an octopus.

He gave me a go before he got it, but the guns were so far out of whack in regards to aiming, it was only because he'd had so many goes that he knew how far off straight the gun was.

I put a couple of the tokens in the machine where you can push more tokens off the edge, if you get it in the right spot, but didn't get anything there.

I found a stack of tickets hanging out of the machine to get more tokens, so I gave them to my mate's wife, if she wanted to swap them for anything at the counter, because that junk is always for little kids and girls, hair things etc.

Once all the tokens were gone, we left, and went to find some lunch. We walked through Nickelodeon land, and stopped at a game where you can win stuff.

There were 2 games, the first you had to catapult rubber chickens into one of 4 cooking pots that were turning around in the middle, and the other was a giant version of the fishing game where you put the "hook" in the mouth of a fish when it opens as they are all turning around.

My mate had a go of the rubber chicken game, you get a 3 goes and a practice shot, on the practice he got one in, but then didn't get anymore, so his prize was some sort of stuffed animal.

His wife had a go of the fishing game, it was a bit of a stuffup, the fish's mouth would open, and she got the hook in, and it would shut again, but then it would just pull out when she tried to lift it up, this happened about 3 times, and then she finally got one.

Depending on the colour sticker on the bottom, you got a different prize, the colour she ended up getting was common, so they had a bucket of crappy prizes to pick out of, so someone picked out this long stick thing, a backscratcher or something.

I got to use a Homeresque joke, from when Marge and Homer were having a posh dinner, with about 6 different forks, including some super long on, and Marge asked "what's this one for?", and Homer in a posh voice says "I believe you use that to scratch your ass", or something like that.

We kept going, there was a big tent with food places in there, but nothing grabbed our fancy, so we kept going, and ended up finding our way back to the entrance of the park again.

There was a food area in there, so we went in there, I just got a sandwich and a drink, and that ended up being nearly $10, typical.

Once we'd finished eating, we started wandering again, and we went into the old western area of the park.

There's a place in here to get those old time photos done, and my mate was going on about getting them done, so we went and looked in there, and it seemed pretty cool, so we worked out what we wanted to do, and sat down to wait.

My mate's wife went in the back to get changed, and for the guys, all the clothes are made so you just put them on over your normal clothes. The shirts and jackets are a single thing that you put your arms into, and it does up at the back with ties, heh.

We put jackets on over that, and waited again.

I commented that we were like newsreaders, sitting there with shirts and jackets on, but with only shorts on.

We perved on the chicks getting photos done in front of us, and when they were finished, my mate and I were told to go and sit in front of the bar.

We sat there, and they put a card table in front of us, which hid the fact we were only wearing shorts.

My mate's wife sat up on the bar behind us, and then we were given a stack of guns.

We took about 10 different pictures, and then we went got up, took the gear off again, and my mate's wife went and got changed back again.

Once she came back, we went through all the pictures, and picked out the 3 that we wanted, and which one in the frame etc.

This was quite funny.. one of the photos my mate had purposely put a stupid grin on his face, and in the photo he looked like a gay porn star, and to make it even funnier, the chick working there kept displaying while we were trying to work out which ones we wanted.

While we doing that, she accidently scrolled back and displayed one of the photos of the 3 chicks that had got photos before us, and my mate jokingly asked if we could get one of them, and then his wife hit him, Hah.

We paid for those, and kept wandering, because it takes them a while to develop the photos, and put one in the frame etc, so we'd come back and get them later.

As we continued wandering, there was a stand to get fake tattoos. I looked at all the different ones up on the wall, but I couldn't find anything that I liked.

My mate got one, two actually, some sort of lightning bolt thing on both sides of his neck.

He kept going on at me to get one, and I said that I hadn't seen anything that I wanted, so he said he'd pick one, and pay for it. Whatever.

I sat down in the chair, and then he picked one, and told the woman which one. The way they do these, is the black is done with a rubber stamp, and then they touch it up with a brush, and do the colouring with a brush.

The woman went through and found the stamp, and carefully took it out of the drawer, and kept it where I couldn't see what it was.

Hmm, somehow I think my mate is being a smartarse, and the woman's worked it out, so she's playing along with him. She inked it up, and asked where I wanted it, my mate said on the top of my right arm, but she said it was too hairy, but the inside was ok.

I turned my arm over, and she put the stamp on the inside of my right arm.

She took it away again, after having stamped, and I realised what it was. Oh Christ. It's a tattoo of a chick with big boobs.

I jsut sat there with a very unimpressed sour look on my face while the woman touched it up and coloured it, and my mate pissed himself laughing.

Once that was done, we kept wandering, me walking along shaking my head.

My mate and his wife wanted to go on the chair drop thing that's on the side of the Tower of Terror. He'd been going on about it all day, I told him there was no way I was going on it.

I can handle anything except being hung way up in the air for ages, and then dropped. It's not going to happen, I'm not going on it. I looked after the bag, and my mate and his wife went in and lined up.

I waited here for a little while, about 10 or 15 minutes it took, I just watched the ride going through several runs, because they only get about 6 people on it at a time, but it runs on both sides of the tower.

I thought about taking a picture of them, but then they ended up on the run on the back of the tower, so I couldn't see them anyway.

When they came back from there, we kept wandering, and we went and got on the skyway, and rode across to the wildlife area.

On our way across here, it goes across the river that the steamboat runs on, they used to have a big show, guys would come out of shacks along the side and have shootouts, but they don't do that anymore, now they just run the steamboat around the river twice a day.

We walked right through the wildlife area, there were kangaroos hopping around in the first bit, and then we headed into the reptile bit, and looked at all the snakes, and then walked around to where they have a tiger show at the moment.

We watched the tiger show, it was pretty cool, they had the tigers climbing up on the handlers, and standing up tall, and jumping around between logs, and one jumped about 10 feet off the ground off a rock, and one climbed a tree.

Once that was all done, there were a few spots of rain.

We rushed over to go on the Tower of Terror, this is a little maglev train thing of 2 carriages, that races up the side of the tower that the drop is on, and then races back down into where you get on.

Anyway, we rushed over there, and got in the line. We had to wait in here for ages for some reason. A couple of times over the PA they said that due to bad weather they would have to stop the ride (probably because the tower is a lightning attractor, or the rain causes the track to be extra slippery or something).

We waited and waited and waited, eventually the line moved a bit, and then we had to wait for another few minutes, and they made the announcement about bad weather again.

Eventually we got up to wait to get into the carriages. There was a bit of mucking around here, as to who was going to sit in what row, but we got that sorted out. The carriages came back, and we all jumped in, I didn't want to sit on the side, so I swapped with my mate and sit in one seat.

We sat in that for a bit, and then it shoots off, up to 160km/hr or something, and before you come out of the tunnel, it takes your picture.

After it got out of the tunnel, it was a thrill, because now you had some idea of the speed you were going, everything flying past, then it shot up the side of the tower.

It felt like quite a few Gs as it made the right angle turn to go up the tower, and then you just hang there for a bit, and then it shoots back down backwards, and races back to the start.

This ride only took about 1 minute, I don't know why there was a massive wait before, when we were only a few people from the start of the queue.

We wandered out the other side, and we all packed into a lift, the lift goes down, and opens.. in a shop. How convenient.

This was similar to the shop near the rollercoaster, they were showing the photos from the ride. My mate bought one of us on that, because you get a whole carriage with about 15 people in it in one photo.

Heh, it's a pretty funny photo, I'm just sitting there looking inimpressed, even though it's supposed to be going 160km/hr, and there are other people who looked scared shitless.

We bummed around in here for a while, I browsed around all the merchandise, it's all so expensive.

Just as we left that shop, they came over the PA and said that the Tower of Terror was now stopped, because of bad weather, but they would continuously reasess the situation.

It started raining a bit heavier now, it wasn't really heavy, but enough to be annoying.

I went with my mate's wife back to the old time photos place to pick up our photos, and my mate went back to the Cyclon to see if he could get the photo of his wife and him on the Cyclone this morning.

After we picked up the photos, I said I wanted to go to the Nick shop, and get something for my brother, so we wandered back there.

I had a look in there, there was stacks of cool stuff, I ended up getting a Spongebob Squarepants inflatable hammer for him.

My mate's wife wanted to look for some souveniers, because she said people always give them to her, but she never goes anywhere to get them anything, so we went into some jewellery shop, and she decided that the stuff was all too junky, so she didn't bother getting anything.

We went back to the entrance, and my mate came back not long after. He didn't have the photo from before, he'd got back there, and they told him that they'd taken the systems down because of the weather, in case there was a storm or something.

We opened the locker, and dragged all our junk out again, my mate and I put our jeans back on, and then the two of us left, and left his wife there, rather than pillioning her around in the rain, and trying to carry the framed photo and other photos we had.

We went back to the bikes, I unchained them, and then I doubled my mate back to the Holden dealer to pick up the car.

On the way there it totally pissed down with rain, and we got soaked through. While on the motorway heading to the car dealer, a motorbike cop got on at one of the entrances, I just ignored him, hung back a bit, and he left us behind.

We got off at the right exit, and headed around near the car place. I had to make a U turn to get in there, so I waited to turn, as I did so an ambulance was screaming around, so I just stopped and waited for them, and then I noticed I had a cop car sitting on my ass, oh great.

I waited for a gap, and carefully made a U turn, making sure to not have any stuffups, because of my license being suspended, and pillioning my mate, when I'm not supposed to have pillions either.

We got into the car place, and my mate went in to pick up the car.

I jumped off my bike, and stood out of the car, and tried to get some of the excess water out of my clothes.

It took ages to pick up the car. I got fed up with waiting after about 20 minutes, and went in to foudn out what was going on.

They were trying to charge my mate for the service, that was supposed to be free. $109 they're trying to charge or something.

My mate questioned what it was for, and apparently it was for replacement of a blown globe or something.

How ridiculous. He stood there and argued with the guy, got the manager out, argued with him. Then he called up his sister to find out what the story was in regards to the free service, and ended up giving his phone to the manager to speak to his sister about it.

I went back outside to wait again, I was pissed off. He came out, and told me that they'd managed to drop it down to $40 something, and he paid it, but told them that he was totally pissed off, and wouldn't be coming back there again.

He jumped in the car, and I jumped back on my bike, and we took off to go back to Dreamworld to pick up my mate's wife, and all the junk.

He was making up ground here and there, speeding a bit, I was just hanging back, and riding proplerly, ie at the speed limit, both because of my license, and because the road is soaked.

My mate thought he knew a quick way back, but we ended up going the wrong way, and then ended up right back where we started, so we did a U turn, but then I missed getting through the lights so only got halfway through the U turn and back on the motorway the other way.

I was pretty sure I could find the way, because we've already done this ride this morning, I got back on the motorwy heading north, and got off at the Dreamworld exit, and made my way around back to Dreamworld.

I think I got back there about 10 minutes afetr my mate.

His wife got in the car, and he got on his bike, the 2 of us took off, and headed back up for his sister in law's place where we were staying, his wife had to go to McDonalds (or Hungry Jacks, some fast food place) somewhere back near there, where her sister is a manager, to get the keys so we could get in.

We rode back, found our way, parked up in the carport, and stood around trying to dry ourselves off a bit.

My mate's wife got back about 10 minutes later, and we went inside.

I went and got changed into some dry clothes, and put my wet clothes in the dryer, there was nothing I could do about my sneakers though, they were totally soaked.

I grabbed the bottle of Bundy liqueur, and had a few glasses of that.

We sat and tried to work out what we were having for dinner. My mate's wife's sister in law had bought food, sausages and stuff, which my mate's wife wanted, but my mate didn't, we ended up agreeing to order some pizzas.

My mate had to go and pick up his sister's computer from where she'd been living before she came down to his place, it was north of Brisbane somewhere, and was probably going to take a couple of hours.

He took off, and his wife and I sat and watched tv, and ate cheese and crackers. When my mate had been gone for almost an hour, we figured he was probably on his way back, so I called up and ordered the pizzas.

They were going to take an hour, so that was fairly good timing.

My mate got back about 45 minutes later, and the pizzas arrived not long after that.

We ate dinner, drank some more Bundy, watched tv, and then went to bed.

My mate's wife was getting up early in the morning to head back home by tomorrow night, because she's got her friends coming from Uni for a party or something.

I woke up, and got up about 10.40am.

I was feeling seedy, maybe I shouldn't have finished off that bottle of rum last night.

I had some water, and sat around for a bit, and then I had some cereal for breakfast.

I went and had a shower, and got dressed, packed up my stuff from the bathroom.

I grabbed my ipod, plugged it into the computer, and mucked around trying to find some software to easily copy the music out without the filenames being all stuffed.

I found something called sharepod, and after mucking around for far too long with dll files and ocx files and registering them, I finally got the software to start copying some music out (crap VB application).

I left that going, it was going to take a bloody long time, because of the fact that the USB in this machine is only running in 1.1 mode, like my mate's machine, because it doesn't have SP2 on it.

While that went on, I got ready to leave, found all my stuff that had got scattered around over the last few days, packed up my bag etc.

When my ipod finally finished copying the music out, my mate connected his ipod, and used itunes to load in some of my music.

Once we were all done, we loaded up the car with everything, I jumped on my bike, and rode it out to the front lawn, it felt really weird to ride, I haven't done it since Saturday night, and now it's Wednesday.

We said our goodbyes, and took off into Bundaberg.

We got to the rum factory, and parked, dumped most of our stuff in the car, I unloaded my pockets, and just took my sunglasses, since you're not allowed to take anything in, and then went in, we were there just in time for the last tour of the day.

The woman behind the counter was wearing bunny ears, but said that my green mohawk attracted more attention than that.

We paid, and she asked us a few questions, about the shoes we were wearing etc, and then we were given a token for the lockers out the back, and told to go and load our stuff in there, since you're not allowed to carry anything that could be a hazard, even watches.

We went out the back, used the lockers, they're pretty groovy, there's a touchscreen where you enter your birthdate, and select a colour, that becomes your combination, rather than having to carry around a key to lose.

My mate opened the locker, and we dumped everything that we hadn't left in the car in there, and shut the locker, and went back to reception, where we were told to go into a room behind it, where there were some benches.

We took a seat and waited, there was a bunch of people in there already, and a few more people turned up in the next couple of minutes.

The chick from reception came in again, and grabbed a remote control, and navigated through some sort of a media server (which I can't remember the bname of), and put some Bundy rum ads on the projector.

We sat and watched these for a while, and then she came back in, watched the last couple of ads, and put on a video clip about safety while being in the factory etc.

After we watched that, the tour guide came out, and we all went out through the side of the room, and ended up out the back near the lockers again.

We went across the road from there, and there were all gates, with some sort of a small rail line between them, we went through there.

The first bit of the tour was to the buildings that hold the molasses. They're doing some work on the main building at the moment, so it was mostly drained, but it can hold up to 5 million litres of molasses.

We walked through that building, it was a really deep pit, at least 10 metres down to the top of the molasses, and I have no idea how deep that was, even though it was mostly drained.

After coming out of there, the tourguide gave us samples of molasses on paddle pop sticks. My mate refused to have it, because he said he had it last time, and it put him off the rum.

We went into the next part of the tour after that, where they do the initial brewing of the molasses, the guy told us the name of the yeast they use to do that, some long scientific name, which I think I cane still remember.

We continued through the factory, past the vats where they wash the molasses, and to where they reduce it.

The guy went on to tell us about that, and he had some sample bottles of rum at different stages, and we smelled those. One of them was supposed to smell pretty bad or strong or something, but I couldn't even smell it.

We kept going from there, around to where the rum is put into the huge vats, and brewed for a year or 2 years or something (I can't remember now).

At this point, the guy asked if anyone could remember the name of the yeast they use to brew the rum, and both my mate and I said it together.

They don't expect anyone to remember, so they guy didn't have anything on him to give us for remembering, so he just gave us a couple of little wooden coin things, with a bundy bear decal on them, as a reminder that we'd answered him correctly.

He went on to tell us about the vats, and the wood they use, the fact that it has to be grown in the US, and even when they've tried to grow the same trees here, it ends up with rum that tastes different.

From this point, we went around and into a viewing area of the bottling plant, but it had already been shut down for the day, so we didn't get to see anything terribly interesting in there.

There was a fake bar in there, which the guy got behind, and then went through details of all the different rums that they make, which was fairly interesting, even though I've consumed almost all of them.

The only ones I hadn't tried was the liqueur that they make, which the guy described as being like chocolate and coffee, and other similar things all together, and the mid strength can they make now, but why would you bother drinking a mid strength.

There was a plasma screen in here, and the guy put on a short video about the plant in Sydney where they make the pre mixed cans, and box them up for distribution.

Once that was finished, we went back through the whole factory lot at this point, back to the lockers, and we all collected our stuff, and then we went into the bar.

As part of the tour, we got 2 drinks in here. There was a chick behind the bar, and the tourguide we'd had disappeared.

Everyone just sort of stood around in here, so I went up and ordered a Bundy draft, which a few other people got too.

The tourguide came back, and asked who it was that answered him correctly, my mate and I stepped up, and he had a couple of Bundy T-shirts, he said we could either keep the token things we had, or have a shirt, so we both took the shirts.

After that we wandered through the souveneir shop, looking at all the stuff, there was stacks of good stuff, but it was all pretty pricey, so I refrained from going crazy buying stuff.

Once I finished my drink, I went back and got the other one, this time I got a shot of the liqueur on the rocks, and went back to wandering around the shop again.

My mate got some glasses, and his wife got a tank top. I'd seen a belt buckle on display that looked pretty cool, but couldn't find them in the shop anywhere.

I spotted a Bundy hawaiian shirt, reduced to like half price, I knew I had to have that :-)

I worked out with my mate to go halves in a twin pack of 750mL bottles of the liqueur, and we both bought 350mL flask/travel bottles of Bundy, which are only available from the shop here.

I spotted the belt buckles on the counter, but they were like $40, too much.

We paid for our stuff, and went outside. One of the people who'd been on the tour with us had already come out, and had a bottle of Bundy Black, the stuff that's discontinued. He said he'd seen it on the counter behind the chick.

I had to get more of it if I could, since we probably won't see it again for another 10 years if at all, so I went back in, looked, saw it, and bought a bottle.

I went back outside after that, and I went with my mate and his wife over to the huge rum bottle they have up there (huge as in about 4 or 5 metres tall), and my mate's wife took a couple of photos of the two of us hugging the huge bottle.

We went back to the car after that, and I grabbed all my stuff, and jumped back on my bike, and we took off.

I followed my mate driving the car to get some fueld, and then we went to McDonalds, and had some lunch, even though it was about 5.30pm.

We finished in there, and I jumped back on my bike again, and we started the 4 hour or so trip back to Brisbane.

We got about 20 minutes or maybe half an hour at most south of Bundaberg, and I'm just following my mate, we were going a bit over the speed limit.

A cop car came the other way, and the lights went on, so I knew we were done.

We kept going, I started slowing down, watching in my mirrors, I saw them do a U turn and start coming back, yep, we're done.

I pulled over right then, why put off the inevitable. My mate kept going.

They raced straight past me, and went after my mate, so then he pulled over, and the cops pulled in behind him, it was about 150m down the road.

I figured that I was safe, they must have seen him while they were coming the other way, and not me, so they were getting him. I thought I'd just keep going, about a kilometre down the road, and then pull over and wait.

I got back on the road, and sped back up, as I got near the cops, they waved me in too. Arse.

I pulled in in front of my mate, turned off my bike, took off my helmet, and my ipod, and waited.

The cop came up, introduced himself, and asked for my license. He asked what speed I had been doing, and I said I didn't know, since I have to take my eyes off the road to check my speedo.

He asked me to estimate what speed I thought I was doing, and I said I guessed I had been doing about 125. He told me that he'd pegged my mate doing 122, so he was going to do me for the same.

Fine. Whatever. Just give me the ticket so we can get going I thought.

He asked me if I had any reason for exceeding 100km/hr, and I said I was just following my mate, and then he asked if we were travelling together, and I told him that we were.

He went back to the car. I sat there and waited. My mate called to me, so I walked over to speak to him.

He asked me what was going on, and I said I was being done for the same speed, and he asked me how, since they hadn't seen me doing it etc. I said I wasn't worried, I wasn't going to argue, I was just going to cop the ticket, since I doubt 22km over is a 4 point offence, so I'm not going to get suspended, I don't really care.

A couple of seconds later the cop who'd been busting my mate came back, and my mate started asking him why I was being done, and then the cop that was busting me called me over to their car.

I walked over there, and he told me that my license was currently suspended. "Eh?" I said.

He told me to come around behind the door, and he showed me on the terminal in their car that it showed that my license was suspended, due to accumulation of points.

I told him that I had no idea. That I'd been out of the state working, the mail must have gone to my QLD address, and I didn't know anything about it.

He asked me where I was going, I told him I was going to Brisbane, and he told me that I couldn't ride any further.

I just stood there, dumbfounded. The cop suggested that I get in the car, and my mate ride my bike back, and his girlfriend (which I corrected him, wife) drive the car.

I said that I would have to do that, and he asked if my mate had a bike license, and I told him that he did have an open bike license.

After that he gave me back my license, and the speeding ticket, and told me that I was going to receive a court summons, and this ticket was the least of my worries.

I walked back over to the car, on the passenger side, and stuck my head in the window, my mate asked what was going on, and I told him that I was fucked.

I told him that they'd found my license suspended, and I was going to be charged with something, and that I couldn't ride any further, and that he wood have to ride my bike back.

He jumped out of the car, and went around to the back of the car, and opened the boot, and started getting ready to ride, putting on trousers and boots and stuff.

The cops took off at this point, and just left us there.

My mate's wife got out, and went around and got in the driver seat of the car.

I walked over to my bike, and collected my helmet off the bike. I went back to the car, chucked my stuff in the back, and he finished getting dressed, and then went and got on my bike, and he took off.

I just sat in the passenger seat of the car, and felt sick.

In hindsight, I'm glad they didn't brethalise me, because I'm sure that considering the fact I'd had a couple of drinks within the last couple of hours, that I would have had a Blood Alcohol Content of more than zero, and then I would have been done for low range drink driving too.

There was some comedy CD on at the time, Denis Leary going off about something, I couldn't find it very funny. I just sat there with a pain in the pit of my stomach, feeling like I needed to spew.

We drove for 2 hours. I just sat there the whole time, didn't really say much at all, just sort of sat and felt sorry for myself.

We pulled in for fuel somewhere, and my mate filled up my bike. I wandered over and had a chat to him, telling him about how I felt, and that I was pissed off etc.

I went into the servo, and bought some juice, the woman working in there wanted to crap on about her son who's dyed his hair before. I really wasn't interested in having a conversation like this right at the moment.

I finally got away from her, and went back outside, we hung around in the servo for about 20 minutes, my mate had a couple of smokes, and made some phone calls, and then we got going again.

We did the next 2 hour leg of the trip, back to Brisbane.

We went through the toll booth at the start of the motorway, my mate's wife paying for both us, and my mate riding my bike behind us.

We continued south on the motorway, and there was a bit of a stuffup, my mate thought my bike was going to run out of fuel when we got near 200km, but because we were going slower now, it had another 40km or so of fuel left.

We pulled off at the next exit with fuel anyway, and we ended up in the servo we'd come to the other day, at Staplyton or whatever it's called.

I went over and spoke to my mate while he filled my bike up, having a go for the fact we'd missed the turnoff we were supposed to take, and ended up continuing south, but it was only by a couple of exists, so I don't know what he was bitching about.

When he finished filling, he went in to pay, and told me to move my bike, so I jumped on, and I rode it from the bowser across to a parking spot near where the car was parked.

After I did that, I got off, and saw a cop car parked near one of the bowsers, and a cop wandering around. Oh great, here we go, he'll wander over to have a go about me moving my bike 15 metres.

Nope, he just kept on going, ignored me.

My mate came out, and I mentioned it to him, and he said there's no way that cop would have done anything, because he had too many stripes on his arm, he probably wouldn't have even had a ticket book with him.

We hung around here for a bit. I asked if they expected there to be any coke or food back at my mate's sister in law's place, he said probably not, so I went into the servo, bought some bottles of coke, and packets of chips, and biscuits and other junk food.

I got back in the car, and he got back on my bike, and we travelled back to my mate's sister in law's place, and parked in the car port.

My mate's sister in law's girlfriend was there, she came out and said hello, and then we unloaded what we needed from the car, and went inside.

I sat down, and cracked into the grog. A few big glasses of the Bundy liqueur were good.

I couldn't be bothered finding anything proper to eat, so I just ate half a packet of rice crackers, before feeling a bit crook again.

We watched tv for a while, and then we all decided to go to bed.

My mate and his wife had a bed upstairs, I slept on the lounge downstairs.

There were no timestamps in my notes for this day, so it's a bit rough..

I got up, I don't know what time, I think it was fairly late, my mate was already up (so it must have been late).

My mate's wife was doing some washing, and asked if I had anything I needed washed, so I gave her a couple of hawaiian shirts I'd worn on the way up here.

I thought we were planning to go to the Bundaberg rum factory today, so I went and had a shower, and got dressed, ready to go there, but then they said we were going to the beach this morning.

I got changed again, into my beach gear, and we got ready to go down to the beach.

We loaded the surfboard in the car, hanging out the window, I jumped in the other car, with my mate's wife, her brother, and their Mum driving, and we went back to the beach we'd gone to on Sunday.

We parked up, my mate grabbed the board out of the car, and we all wandered down to the beach.

We went into the surf, and mucked around with the surfboard for a while, I don't remember how much time we spent down there, I think it was a bit after an hour.

Just as we were planning to leave, my mate's stepfather in law turned up, so we left the surfboard with him, and then we left, and came home again.

I went and had a shower, and got changed.

When I came back to the back verandah, someone had gone and got the junk food we'd bought yesterday, cakes and icecream, and we sat and ate that.

I went and grabbed another couple of VBs, it's horrid shit, but I didn't want to be drinking spirits yet.

We sat around out here for ages, just chatting.

Someone said something about the photos on the old computer again, so I decided I should go and try to sort that out, rather than having to do it tomorrow morning before we leave.

I went in, and dragged the old pc back out of the cupboard where they'd shoved it, and plugged it all back in, and booted it up.

I was trying to avoid having to do too much mucking around, I didn't want to have to pull the hard drive out and put it in the other machine, so I tried to find a way to avoid that.

First I asked for the camera, and found the cable, and plugged that all in, figuring that I could load the photos from the hard drive back into the camera.

It didn't work like that, first it didn't turn up as a drive, like I expected it to, so I had to use the photo software, and after mucking around with that for too long, trying to add photos to an album or something, I realised that it actually hadn't made any difference to the memory in the camera. D'oh.

Ok, next option, my mate still has like 3.5GB free on his ipod, I can use that to store the files, and then drag them back out on the other machine.

I plugged it in, and it detected the USB storage device etc, and I fiddled around getting that in device mangler etc, but there was no extra drive available after doing that. Argh.

I gave up at this point, and figured I'd just do it the way I knew would work.. pull the disk out, mount it in the other pc, and copy the photos across disks, it'll be faster anyway.

(Actually, what I didn't think of until later, was perhaps I should have rebooted with the ipod attached, I might have got a drive letter then).

So, I shut the machine down, and opened the case, and ripped the disk out, and then I opened the new PC we'd brought up, and I plugged the disk into one of the spare ide connectors, and just let it hang out the side.

I booted up the pc, and went about finding all their pictures, and copying them across.

Since I had it configured like this, I figured I might as well move their data across, there could be letters and stuff they need, so I just started copying across anything that looked useful.

Several times the virus scanner arced up, because there was all sorts of junk files on the disk.

About this time they started talking about going for dinner, we'd been talking earlier, and decided to go to Sizzlers for dinner, so I left the machine, and we jumped in 2 cars, and headed off to Sizzlers.

We went in, we all decided to have the salad bar, except for my mate's stepfather in law, who wanted a steak.

Once everyone had worked out what they wanted, I paid for everyone's dinner (since I'd hadn't been paying for very much this trip so far), and we went in and ate.

After dinner, we sat and chatted for a bit, and then we decided to go home, going for a bit of a drive around, because I hadn't seen much of Bundaberg.

We went out to the cars, jumped in, and my mate was driving, we followed the other car.

A couple of minutes after leaving, a cat ran across the road in front of the other car, they slammed on the brakes, and just missed it, the cat kept going across the road, and disappeared into a yard.

We kept going, driving around, I couldn't really see all that much, considering it was dark, being night, and also because Bundaberg isn't much bigger than Newcastle, so once we got off the main road, it just looked like any other suburb.

We got back close to their home, and in the last couple of kilometres, the car in front was swerving to hit cane toads on the road, and my mate swerved to hit any of the ones they missed.

We got back home, and I continued working on the computer.

Once I'd made sure to copy over all the files they might want, I copied the virus scanner install program, and adaware install on to the disk, shut the machine down, and put the disk back in the original machine.

I booted the other pc back up, with its disk reinstalled, and then I installed the virus scanner, and adaware.

At this point I realised I couldn't update the virus scanner, and it was ages old, so I took the disk out, put it back in the new machine again, and I virus scanned it with the new machine, which had been updated a couple of days ago when I built the machine.

I virus scanned the disk, it took ages, and at the end of it, there had been over 1700 virus infected files on the disk. No wonder the machine was so slow.

I shut it down again, and put the disk back in the original machine, I installed adaware, and ran that, and cleaned all the junk off, several hundred files it came up with.

I don't understand how people can let their machine end up like this.

Anyway, after I finished with that, I shut the machine down, and I put the machine back together, and I put the cover back on the other machine.

I checked the laptop that my mate's brother in law had, and it didn't have any virus protection or anything on it either, so I grabbed my usb memory key thing, and I installed the antivirus software and adaware on the laptop.

I grabbed the phone line out of the new computer, and plugged it into the laptop, thinking I'd dialup to update the virus scanner, but then I figured I couldn't be bothered. It'll update the next time it goes on the internet, and if it doesn't go on the internet, then it probably doesn't need the latest definitions.

Just as I started running the virus scan, the power went off.

Someone made a smartass comment about me working on the computer, and I was able to retort that they were both turned off, and I was working on the laptop, and the battery was charged.

I kept working on the laptop, and about a minute later, the power came back on again.

When I finished on the laptop, I plugged the new machine back in, boxed up the old one, dragged it back and put it in the cupboard again.

After that I went and sat in the loungeroom to watch some tv, and relax, I'm sick to death of mucking around on computers.

My mate's brother in law went in and turned the new computer on, and tried to dialup, then came out whinging that it wouldn't connect.

I went back in, and had a look, and it was coming up saying there was no dialtone. I grabbed the phone, and checked it, there wasn't a dialtone.

Someone went and checked a different phone, same thing, no dialtone, strange. I wondered if it was something to do with the blackout, like the exchange had blacked out too or something.

I checked all the phone cords, that no one had tripped over and pulled it out, or done something to cause the extension cord to get shorted out, but I couldn't find anything.

I wondered if the modem was doing something funny, I reached around behind the computer to unplug the phone line.. and found it plugged into the network card. Uhh..

I checked the phone, oh wow, a dialtone. I plugged the phone line back into the computer, into the modem this time, and then was able to dialup to the internet without issue.

I went back to the loungeroom, and parked myself watching the tv again.

When whatever we were watching finished, my mate's stepfather and mother in law went to bed, so we went and sat out the back.

We were out there for a little while, and my mate's brother in law came out, and sat and chatted with us.

We chatted for a few hours, and had a few drinks, we finished off the bottle of rum from last night, listened to some music, and then we went to bed about 2am.

I was woken up by the phone ringing, it was about 9.50am.

I answered it, it was one of the contractors from work.

I chatted to him for a while, he wanted to know something about one of the systems at work, and if the ecommerce stuff was working, I told him that it was as far as I knew, but that I was currently off on holidays, 1300km away, and I hadn't been at work since last Wednesday.

After that, we chatted about tivo for a while, because he bought one a few months ago, and set it all up.

After about 10 minutes, I got off the phone, and lay down again.

My phone rang again about 30 seconds later. Argh. I answered it again, it was the message service.

My mate's dad, who runs the air conditioning business I used to work for had called me a couple of minutes earlier, while I'd been on the phone to the guy from work. I listened to his message, he wanted the details of the guy who could fix the equipment his son broke, who I gave the details to yesterday. Argh.

I deleted the message, hung up, and called him back. I chatted to him for a couple of minutes, gave him the details again, and then got off the phone again.

I wasn't feeling too bad this morning, even after all the grog last night. maybe it was the bit of activity last night, running around smashing cane toads.

I sat on the computer, and out the window I saw my mate's wife leave, she'd been talking about going snorkeling this morning.

I checked the itunes download that I restarted last night, it had crapped out again, around the same time. d'oh.

I mucked around, and tried seeing if starting it again while it was still going would resume it, but no luck.

I decided to get wget, because then I know I can resume the download.. that gave me an idea, maybe I can resume this download, from firefox.

I downloaded wget, and set it up, and then I did a find on the hard drive, and I found the partially downloaded itunes setup file in firefox' cache.

I copied it into the wget directory, and attempted to continue the download with wget, and it actually worked, it resumed downloading the partially downloaded file from firefox, that was pretty cool.

It finished downloading, and I installed it, and connected my ipod, everything looked like it was working properly.

I checked my email, went through all that, that wasted an hour or so. There was no sign of my mate, still in bed I'll bet.

My mate's wife came back from the beach, and stuck her head in the door, I just said gday to her, and then she went to go and get something to eat or something.

We bummed around for a while, my mate finally got up, and then we all got ready to go back down to the beach.

Because the surfboard won't fit in the car, my mate was a smartarse, and joked that we should take the crappy little boogy board down to the beach, so I climbed up and got it from on top of the roof beam in the garage/guest area.

I went in the car with my mate, and his wife and mother in law went in his mother in law's car, and we drove to the beach, went to a different beach this time.

We parked, walked up the beach for a while, and then dumped our stuff, and went into the surf.

My mate's mother in law wore her sunglasses in, and my mate said she was daring, and she said she'd never lost a pair of sunglasses at the beach, and had been wearing that pair in for 7 years.

About 10 minutes later, she was hit by a wave, and lost her glasses.

We all went over looking for them, but we weren't able to find them, they must have been dragged out when the wave went back out.

We mucked around in the surf for quite a while, my mate's mother in law left, she had to go to work or something, and my mate's wife went off to go somewhere, just leaving my mate and I on the beach.

We sat on the sat for a while, he read a book, and I just lay there.

There were a few chicks sitting a little way along the beach from us, one of them got up and went down to the surf, she was pretty good looking. My mate told me to go and talk to her.

She stayed down at the edge of the surf for a while, didn't go in, came back up and sat back down again.

My mate was going on and on at me to go and speak to her. I said I was just taking my time.

I got up, and I walked over there, not really knowing why I was doing this.

I walked over to where they were sitting, there had been 3 chicks earlier, now there was only 2 here. They said hello first, I found that surprising.

I chatted to them for a bit, telling them that I was up here on holidays, and asked if they knew any good pubs or clubs to get a drink etc, just trying to make some small talk.

The chick who'd gone down near the water just told me to talk to the other chick, so I chatted to her for a few minutes, she told me about a pub in town, and somewhere else that had karioke on Wednesday night (but we were leaving on Wednesday anyway).

She asked if I'd been at the other beach yesterday (since not many people have green mohawks up here I guess), and we chatted for a bit more, and then I said I'd see them later, and walked back over to where my mate was, and sat down again.

We chatted for a bit, and then his wife came back and sat with us, we stayed there for another short while, and the third chick came back, went over to the other two, and a little while after they they got up and left.

We stayed on the beach a bit longer, and then we took the boogey board, and jumped in the car.

I figured we were just going back to my mate's mother in law's place, but we went to the shops instead. I didn't have my wallet with me, so I wasn't able to pay for anything.

We went in the bottle shop first, and grabbed quite a few bottles of wine, to try to replace all the stuff we'd drank last night, and then we went into the supermarket.

We wandered around, grabbing food to replace the stuff we'd eaten in the last few days, and to get some stuff for us for the next couple of days before we left. We got a bunch of junk food too, ice cream and cakes, what's a holiday without junk food?

On the way out of the supermarket, we went into the bakery and got cakes and stuff, ate them in the car on the way back to the house.

We sat out the back again, listening to music, the speakers and stuff were still out here, so we just plugged our ipods in again.

I had a couple of VBs, and then went and had a shower, and got changed.

When I came back from having a shower, my mate's mother in law was serving the dinner, a lasagne. Everyone had special requirements for having theirs served, someone wouldn't eat some vegetable, someone else wouldn't eat something else etc.

I said that I was easy, I'm a garbage guts, and will eat anything, she said that suited her.

We sat and ate, listening to music again, and having a couple of drinks. My mate realised he was out of smokes again, so he wanted to go and get some.

We wanted to go out cane toad hunting again, so we drove to the supermarket we'd been at this afternoon, to get some supplies.

We went in, grabbed a bottle of metho (apparently that does wonders to them), but then we needed a way to spray them, we tried to get one of those trigger action bottles, but they were sold out. My mate asked some chick working there, and she went and looked for more stock out the back, but they didn't have any.

I suggested that we just get a sauce bottle, we can spray them with that, and it's got a bigger nozzle too. We went around and found one, and then went up to the checkout.

My mate got his smokes, and we ended up chatting to the checkout chicks for a bit, they asked where we were from and stuff, and my mate commented that they probably don't see many people looking like me up here, but they said that we'd be surprised.

We left there, and we drove back towards the house. On the way we saw a couple of cane toads, so I filled the sauce bottle up with metho, when my mate saw the next one, he stopped, I jumped out of the car, sprayed the toad, and then tried to light it up with a lighter, but the wind was blowing too hard, and kept blowing the lighter out.

The toad got a bit annoyed, and hopped off the side of the road, so I had to give up, because otherwise I would have ended up lighting a grass fire or something.

We got back to the house, and grabbed the golf clubs (my mate's brother in law had found a proper golf club somewhere today, rather than the silly pitching wedge we had last night, but we took it anyway), and then we went through the back garden looking for toads.

We found a couple, my mate would hold them down with the club, I'd spray them with metho, and then light them on fire, it was pretty cool.

He'd let go of them after that, and they hop away on fire, I was pissing myself laughing.

My mate's brother in law came out after that, and he helped us look for them.

We ended up grabbing a bucket, and collecting them. We found a few in the backyard, while I was rummaging through the garden I hit my leg on a tree stump, and scratched my leg.

We figured it would be easier to get them off the side of the road, so went walking along the road collecting them.

We spent about 1/2 hour, and we ended up getting about 10 or 12 in the bucket, so many that they were stacked high enough that the ones on top could jump out, so then we had some fun.

We went back out the front of the house, and one at a time, we'd flick them out of the bucket, spray them with metho, light them, and we took turns belting them across the road with the golf clubs.

I was able to get a bit of practice in, and my shots weren't as crap as last night, I even managed a cracker of a shot where the toad flew clean across the road, and into the field on the other side.

My mate's brother in law said it was one of the best toad shots he'd seen. It was just a fluke though, I couldn't manage to do it again.

When we had about 4 toads left in the bucket, we dumped the 4 of them out in a heap, sprayed them with metho, lit them, and let them hop around for a bit, that was so funny, to see some flaming mess hopping around.

Once they stopped hopping, we belted them across the road.

Ah, that was enough fun, we went back and sat out on the back verandah again, and cracked into the bottle of Bundy that we'd got at the bottle shop this afternoon.

I was feeling a bit sore, I think I'm sunburnt. My mate's wife looked, and my shoulders and back were all sunburnt. They had an aloe vera plant there, so I put some of that on my burns, and felt a bit better.

We ended up sitting here drinking until who knows what hour of the morning, and then went to bed.

I woke up at 8.30am, I don't know why, considering I'd only gone to bed 4 hours before.

I lay there, thinking about getting up. I could hear people rattling around in the kitchen.

I'd left the door open, my mate's wife stuck her head in, and I said I was getting up in a minute, and then I sort of fell back asleep again.

I woke up again at 9.30am, I lay there a bit more, and then fell sleep again, woke again at 10.30am, and just lay there, and finally actually got up about 11am.

I felt really seedy. I wonder why.

My mate was up, he came and brought me a glass of water, I said I needed some Panadol, and that I had some in my bike. I sat there for a minute, and then I staggered out to my bike, got the Panadol, went back inside, took some, and sat down for a bit.

All the others were ready to go to the beach, my mate wasn't, so he said that we'd get ready and go down there in a bit, so they all left, and it was just my mate and left there.

We sat out on the front verandah for a while, my mate read his book, and I just sat there and felt seedy.

I decided to go and have a shower, that usually makes me feel better when I'm a bit hungover. I went in, grabbed some clean clothes and my toiletries bag, and went down the back to the garage, to have a shower.

On my way between the house and the garage, I went out the back door to the verandah where we'd been sitting all night drinking, the bottle was still on the table, and there was only about 1/6th of the bottle left. Bloody hell, we nearly drank a whole 750mL bottle of rum in about 5 hours.

I got in there, and while getting ready to have a shower, I felt really really seedy, and I spewed, there was bugger all there, just like bile or something. Yuck.

I had a shower, and then I felt a bit better after that, and I put on some clean clothes, and went out to sit back on the front verandah with my mate again, we decided to get ready to go to the beach, so I went in, and put my board shorts on.

I was just sitting around waiting for my mate to get ready, I saw a copy of "Chicken Soup for the Soul", so I started reading that, to pass the time, when all the others arrived back from the beach. Oh well.

They'd taken the big surf board down there, and said it was a waste of time, it was flat as, no waves at all. The tide was supposed to come back in in a few hours, 5pm or someting, so we'd all go back down there again then.

I just sat around a bit more, my mate's wife and mother in law said they were going to the shops, to get stuff for lunch, and did we want anything, and then they left.

We decided to setup the computer we'd brought up for them, which my mate and I had unpacked on the verandah last night, my mate's stepfather in law commented on us leaving it on the front verandah, gees, I don't think it's going to go anywhere, we're out in the middle of canefields, and we only put it there at 4am this morning.

Anyway, we ripped all the old stuff off the desk, and out of the way, and then we unpacked all the boxes, and set it all up. My mate's stepfather in law started talking to me because the F1 was on tv, so I went out to speak to him, I'm sure the others can work out how to setup the computer.

Once they'd got it all unpacked, I went in, checked it was all plugged in properly, and then we booted it up. I installed the printer driver, and did another bit of fiddling that had to be done.

My mate's wife and mother in law came back from the shops, so we left it after that, and had lunch.

They'd got a couple of bbq chickens, so we made up sandwiches, and then went and sat outside and ate them. Eating something made me feel a bit better, because I was still feeling pretty crook from last night.

After one sandwich, I was feeling quite good, so I went and made another, but after eating that, I regretted it, I was back feeling seedy again.

It was getting really hot. I don't think I could live up here, it's just too hot for me. I decided to go back inside, where it was slightly cooler.

I went in with my mate's brother in law, and we finished setting up the computer, configuring the internet connection etc. Once that was done, I dialled up the internet, and checked my email.

I think there were about 50 new emails, because I hadn't been able to check them since about 6pm Friday night, it's been nearly 2 days. I went through them all, and then I decided to download itunes, so that my mate could put some more music into his ipod.

I started off the download, it was going to take a couple of hours, and then I got off the computer, because my mate's brother in law wanted to use it.

I went back out to the loungeroom, gees, it was hot in here now. I watched the tv for a bit, and they started talking about going back down the beach, so I grabbed my stuff, just shoes basically, and we loaded up the surfboard into the car again, and got ready to go back to the beach.

My mates brother in law was going on about the computer, and we said to just leave it on (since it was still downloading itunes), and then we jumped in 2 cars, since there was 6 of us, and an 8 foot surfboard.

We drove to the beach, only about 5 minutes away, parked, grabbed the stuff, and headed down to the beach.

I went straight into the surf, to try to cool down. The first thing I noticed, on the way in, is that the really shallow bit as you go in, isn't cold here. I don't think I've ever been able to walk into the surf before, and not have that little bit of cold while it gets to your knees.

After about 10 minutes in there, I was feeling about a million times better. Gees, I wish I'd come down here this morning.

We all went in the surf, and took turns having a go on the surfboard. The surf was pretty flat, you'd get a wave come through every now and then, but they had no push, so you'd try and get up on it, but just get left behind.

We spent about an hour or so down the beach, and then we drove back home again.

I went in to check the computer, and found that the itunes download had crapped out at about 80%, 20 something meg, nothing I did would make it start again, crud, I'll download it again later.

I sat around for a bit, because the others were having showers. I had to wait a bit longer, because my mate's wife was in the one down the back, and all my stuff was in there, once she came out, I went down the back, and had a shower, and got dressed again.

We started getting stuff ready for dinner. I cleared away the stuff from out the back, noticed my shoes still out here from where I'd taken them off last night.

My mate said something about getting some music going, and I said we could use our ipods, we need some speakers, then my mate said we had the subwoofer/speaker set we'd brought up to go with the computer.. brilliant idea, since it'll have a 3.5mm plug on it too.

We asked someone to find an extension cord to run out the back, and then my mate and I went in and unplugged the speakers from the computer, grabbed them, and went back out.

We asked about the extension cord again, my mate's brother in law had found one, plugged it in, and run it out the back door.

We plonked the speakers down, plugged them in, I went and got my ipod, and plugged it in, and started it up, it sounded better than I'd expected.

We left that going, and a little while later the dinner was ready.

I don't remember what it was that we had, but once we'd finished eating, we started drinking again.

I think we started on Scotch and cokes, and then a whole bunch of different wines were coming out, I think between the 5 of us, we went through 6 or 7 bottles of wine, and then I polished off the bottle of Scotch.

While were drinking, since it took us a few hours, we sat there listening to music. My mate had gone and got his ipod, and had a bunch of comedy mp3s on it, so we listened to them, most from the Bob and Tom show.

One of the songs he had was "Yeah Toast!", which is basically just a guy singing about toast, but it's really funny, and we were all laughing pretty hard at that, so I think we listened to that 3 or 4 times during the night.

After we'd gone through all the comedy stuff, we went back to listening to music, and chatting.

About 10.30pm, my mate realised that he needed smokes, so we went and jumped in the car to go and get some (he hadn't been drinking all that much, only a few drinks in the last few hours). It's a long way to the service station.. about a 15 minute drive.

On the way, we spotted some cane toads on the road, so my mate was aiming for and running over them, that was pretty funny.

We got to the service station, and went in, my mate got some smokes. There was some really sus looking guy hanging around in there, but he just started chatting to us.

The whole situation seemed pretty cool, I'm standing here in shorts and a t-shirt, not wearing any shoes, with a big green mohawk, and some rough looking guy just starts talking to me like he's known me for ages.

Anyway, we finished chatting to the guy, my mate had his smokes, we jumped back in the car, and drove back to the house, running over a few cane toads on the way.

A couple of times my mate missed, so we'd stop, and back up, and run over them, or do a u turn, and go back and over them, for the ones we reversed over, I opened the door and hung out, directing my mate to make sure we got them.

We got back to the house, and decided to have a bit more fun with the toads. Everyone else had gone to bed, since it had got a bit late now, and it was Sunday night, and they had to work tomorrow.

They keep an old pitching wedge on the front verandah, for dealing with cane toads, we grabbed that, and then my mate and I went wandering around the streets for a bit with it, pelting all the toads that we saw.

I was pretty good at spotting them, even if I do say so myself, too bad my golf skills are so poor, that while trying to avoid smashing the club onto the road, I'd be too high, and swoop over the top of the toads, or just give them a tiny tap.

I think we spent about 45 minutes out here, just wandering up near the street lights, since it was too hard to spot them in the dark.

The toads are both really dumb, and somewhat smart, at the same time. When you see them, they'll just sit there, with their heads up, and you can line up the club right next to them, and they won't even blink.

Sme of them aren't that dumb, and while they won't take off, they sit in the shadow behind the telegraph poles with the street lights on them, where you can't see them, because your eyes adjust for the brightness of the light on the ground in front of the pole.

Anyway, once we got sick of this (and I still didn't have any shoes on, so my feet were getting sore from running around on the road, and in the scrub at the side of the road), we went back, sat out on the back verandah again, and chatted for a while.

We decided to have a bit of an earlier night, and we decided to go in at 2.30am, instead of 4.30am or so like last night.

I went in, and turned on the computer, did a bit of blogging, and kicked off the itunes download again. I left it downloading, and I went to bed, and to sleep.

Heh, I just noticed that the time on this blog draft was 3.08am, must have taken me longer to blog than I thought, but I was making notes on everything that happened since we left at 7pm Friday.

I got up at 9.10am, and we went down to have breakfast, since they only serve it until 9.30am or something.

We paid for it at the front counter, the guy there was the guy who'd been on call last night, who'd sorted out the stuff up with our room.

My mate apologised for stuffing him around last night, but he told us that he'd been up half the night anyway.

He then joked that we were the last people to eat breakfast, so we had to eat everything so he didn't have to put anything away. Somehow I don't see me eating the entire contents of 3 catering boxes of cereal.

I had a big breakfast, I was starving, and then we went back up to the room, I had a shower and got dressed, then we collected all our stuff, phone, ipods, chargers etc.

My mate didn't have anything with him, just his wet weather gear that I'd ended up carrying, so he didn't have a shower or anything, because he had nothing to change into, since all his stuff was in the car, which was now in Brisbane, 400km or so away.

I loaded up my bag, we checked we had everything, and then we went down and loaded up our bikes. My mate had a smoke, and then we took off, it was about 10am.

We rode another 100km, since we both still had half a tank of fuel left from last night. I don't remember much of that trip, I'm pretty sure that it was uneventful.

About 11am, we stopped in for fuel, I think we were at Grafton, and while we were there, my mate was telling me that this was as far as he got last time, because the clutch in the car had died, and he'd had to get it towed, and get a new clutch, and sleep in the car because he'd brought his dog with him.

After he'd got the car all fixed (having to borrow money off his mother in law, which he'd just paid back a few days before), he gave up, and went home again.

Next door to the petrol station we were in, was this weird house, it had a huge "Jesus Lives" sign hanging in the front verandah, and chairs all over the place, and a stack of speakers stuck all over the walls.

While we were hanging around in the service station, some weird looking people came out of the weird house, got in a Terago van, and took off somewhere. I didn't like the look of the place, or those people at all.

We did another 200km run, this too was pretty uneventful, It was warm, that was nice, I remember I was riding along with my jacket undone.

About 160km in to the trip, we went through a little town, and past a sugar refinery, we'd slowed right down, and as we came around a bend, there was a cop sitting there. We weren't speeding at this point, so we were left along, and just kept going.

We got to the big prawn, at Ballina, and we pulled in for fuel. We fuelled up, and moved our bikes, and went inside.

It's a restaurant and stuff too, and it was now about 12.30pm, or perhaps 12.45pm, so we decided to get some lunch.

We ordered our food, I was feeling too hungry, so I just ordered a sandwich, expecting to get one of the soggy premade ones out of the counter, but they made a fresh one, that was good.

We also both ordered apple juices, and they asked if we wanted pop top ones, which I assumed to be the ones with the vacuum sealed metal lid, that pops up when you open it, but then they gave us these crappy little bottles with caps you drink through, like you'd give to little kids.

I couldn't be bothered arguing, and I wasn't all that thirsty anyway, so I just took it and went.

We went and sat to wait, I noticed they had a Daytona USA arcade machine in there, wow, must be new, that only came out in about 1994 I think.

My mate told me that the cop near the sugar refinery was the one that had busted him on the last trip, which he almost managed to talk his way out of.

The cop had been busy busting someone else, and hadn't had the radar gun on my mate, and was claiming that my mate must have been speeding because it sounded like he was. What a ridiculous thing to claim, which is why my mate was talking his way out of it, asking the cop if he was claiming that his ear was calibrated to know what speed all vehicles are doing from their sound.

He'd nearly got out of it, and then our mate, the guy who lives in Newcastle, who'd been following a bit behind pulled up, and explained that why my mate's bike sounded like he was speeding, was because he had a straight through exhaust can, so at that point my mate got slugged with a defect notice for his muffler.

After telling me that story, my mate went for a wander around, and he came back and told me that they also had one of those old cocktail machines, oh wow, I went over to have a look at that, and we were just about to sit down for a game of space invaders, when the woman served our food.

We went back, ate our lunch, and relaxed. My mate asked if I wanted a beer, I said no, because P licenses are now zero alcohol, so it's not worth getting pulled over for speeding or something, breathalised, and busted for drink driving because I had one beer.

He asked if I wanted a light beer, same story, it would be even worse to get done for drink driving after having a light beer, and I don't see the point of drinking light beer anyway, that shit taste, with none of the effect.

I just finished drinking my apple juice. My mate went in to the loos, I waited with all our stuff, and then I went in and relieved myself.

When I came back, my mate asked me if the two old guys were in there, I said I saw one old guy in there, and he went on to tell me, that when he went in there, there was an old guy standing at the urinal, and another old guy had come up and tapped him on the shoulder.

They guy at the urinal had just turned around to face him, and had pissed all down the other guy's leg. He'd gone off at him, and then gone over to grab the paper towels you dry hands on, and start trying to dry his trousers off.

I'm glad I missed that when I was in there.

We grabbed our stuff, and headed back outside, we'd been here for about 45 minutes now.

A big bike group had turned up, we spoke to one guy sitting on his bike, parked near ours, they were going down south, and out west, we warned him about the cop down near the sugar refinery.

My mate had a smoke, and while I waited for him, the bike group took off, and headed back where we'd come from.

We bummed around for another couple of minutes, checked everything was in order, and jumped on our bikes and took off again, we're only a couple of hours from Brisbane now.

We did the first 100km without issue, and then went over the border into QLD, instantly the road got better, we now had about 4 lanes going each way, and we continued heading for Brisbane.

About 150km in to the trip, I'm just going along, following my mate, minding my own business, and the idiot driving some huge black 4wd next to me just starts changing lanes on top of me.

I put my horn on, but it's pretty pissy, I never did get around to mounting the 120db air horn I bought on my bike, so I just held that on, and the guy continued coming over, I started moving over to the right, and slowing down, so that hopefully I could just drop behind him, rather than get squashed against the concrete divider.

He kept coming over, and I still had the horn on, I was preparing to punch or kick the side of his stupid car, but he must have got close enough now (I was now out of the lane, into the rocks and crap between the lane and the divider), that he was able to hear my horn, and he swerved back into the lane he'd come from, and I was able to get back into my lane.

I flipped my visor up, and I gave him a mouthful, but he had his window up, so he wouldn't have heard me, he would have seen the gestures I was making with my left hand and arm though, and then he put his hand up like "oh sorry". Dickhead.

We kept going, continued the trip, we were both getting pretty low on fuel, so we swung off the motorway, and headed into a service station, at Staplyton, or Stapylton or something.

As soon as we got in there, to the bowsers, and got our helmets off, I asked if my mate had seen the dickhead run me off the road, he said he hadn't seen it. I don't know why he has mirrors on his bike, he never uses them, and I think they're pointing at the sky anyway.

We refuelled, and my mate called his wife, so that she could come and get us, since we didn't know where her sister's place was, (where she'd stayed last night).

She said she'd be out on a a certain street in a little while (Dunno what street, I was just going to follow my mate, and hope he knew where he was going). I went and got a drink, and sat and relaxed, nearly there.

We jumped back on our bikes, and headed out, back to the motorway, we went to the next exit, got off, and then just followed the road a bit. My mate took off, so I raced to catch up, and then I realised that he'd seen his wife, so we followed her.

We got to a set of lights, on red, and he pulled up alongside her, and spoke to her, I just waited back (I wouldn't have fit up the side anyway) and then the lights went green, and we all took off.

We weaved our way through some streets, and to the complex where my mate's sister in law lives. We parked in the car port, and went inside, it was nice to sit down. I've no idea what time this was, but I think it must have been about 3.30pm.

We just chilled out for a while, and they asked me how long I wanted to stay there, because my mate wasn't riding any further from here, he was piking out and getting in the car to do the next 400km to Bundaberg, so it was just how long I needed until I was ready.

At this point I'll mention I'm annoyed. I spent probably an hour or so in 5 minute bits as I added to this blog during yesterday. Yesterday afternoon my machine decided to crap itself, and because I was typing in the editing window on blogger, I lost all the stuff I'd typed, because I hadn't saved as a draft. Now I have to write all that stuff again, which pisses me off. Crappy windows.

Ok, so we're sitting around at my mate's sister in law's place, I'm just relaxing, getting ready to do the next bit of the trip, another 4 hours or so to Bundaberg.

My mate didn't want to leave his bike in the carport, because he didn't like the look of the people around the area, there was a backyard we could have put it in, but it was a common backyard, to about 8 or 10 units, and that was probably worse, because then kids would be more likely to muck around with it.

He joked that he should park it inside, and his wife said that her sister had offered that.

About 4pm, my mate's sister in law's girlfriend came home from work, and we chatted to her for a bit. My mate asked her about parking his bike inside, and she said that was fine, that there was room under the stairs for it.

We moved the stuff out from under the stairs, and found some cardboard, and put it down in case there were any oil drips, and then we moved his bike inside, and pushed it in under th stairs.

I think there's a photo of it parked there, I'll have to see if I can get it, it's a classic.

We sat around for a bit longer, and then got all our stuff organised again, I loaded my bag into the boot of the car, and we took off heading for Bundaberg, at about 4.30pm.

Well, it was actually 5.30pm QLD time, since they don't have daylight savings, (because the extra hour of sunlight would fade the curtains), but I didn't adjust my watch, or my body clock while up there, because I was only there for a week, and it wouldn't have been worth it, so this is the only reference I'll make to the time difference, since I'll remember the times as I read them off my watch, set to NSW time.

My mate was driving the car, and I was following, since I didn't know where we were going, and after a few seconds, it was evident that he didn't know where he was going either, because we were weaving all over the place through streets, and it wasn't anything like the way we took when we went in there.

We eventually made our way back near the motorway, but not before my mate went into a dead end street, and we had to chuck a uturn, head back to the lights, and then we got on the motorway heading north again.

The next 100km/hour or so of the trip were uneventful, I can't remember anything about it worth writing about. At the end of the 100km leg, was a tollway, since it was the end of the motorway. I followed my mate, and he paid for both himself and me, and then the tollbooth worker waved me through behind him.

That was good, it saved me stopping, taking my glove off, and mucking around trying to find change to pay the toll. I really wish they would get rid of tolls for bikes, it's just a pain in the arse.

We kept going, and got a little bit further up the road. Another idiot started changing lanes on top of me. I don't remember much of that one (I'm working from notes I made a month ago), but I'm certain that I would have abused them.

We kept going after that, and when I got near having done 200km, I pulled up alongside my mate, and motioned that I needed fuel. He nodded to acknowledge, and then I dropped back, and back in behind him.

We kept going, and got off at the next exit that advertised fuel, and I started filling up. We hadn't been going as fast as we had been before, now that he was driving the car, so I wasn't as low on fuel as I thought, I only managed to fit about 2/3 of a tank in, since I was getting better fuel economy from going slower.

While I was filling, my mate came over to speak to me, and he told me something that he asked me to say nothing about, but in light of the events of the past couple of weeks, it probably doesn't make much difference now. He told me that he was having a bit of a heated discussion in the car with his wife, she's said something about wanting to go to England, without him, and he was trying to work out what she was on about.

He didn't say much more about that, just asked me not to say anything about it to his wife, which I was fine with.

I finished filling up, and chatted a bit more, and then my mate went in and paid for my fuel, I got my stuff together, and we kept going.

About 30km out of that fuel station, the ipods battery gave up, and I was left in silence. Oh d'oh, I was just enjoying it too, I was listening to "One Slip" by Pink Floyd when it went off, and the last couple of lyrics I got were:

o/`
A momentary lapse of reason,
That binds a life for a life,
There's one regret, you will never forget..
o/`

Which lead me to complete the verse..

o/`
Not charging my ipod while we were stopped in Brisbane for an hour.
o/`

So now I was left with a scary thought. I've got 170km of fuel left, and about the same distance to Bundaberg left, so I'm probably forced to ride the rest of this trip in silence, entertained only by my own thoughts. Oh god no.

After a few minutes of that, I came to a Homeresque arrangement "Shut up brain, or I'll stab you with a Q tip!", and then I continued in silence, trying not to think about stuff, just concentrating on the road.

Somewhat luckily, we only did another 60km after this, and we pulled in for fuel again, I hadn't even doen 100km yet, I wondered if my mate or his wife had to use the loo, or wanted a drink or something to eat or whatever, being the reason for stopping here (since my mate had only got out of the car at the last stop to talk to me, and pay for my fuel).

I pulled into the bowser, and took my helmet off, and got the earbuds out of my ears, since there was no point putting up with the discomfort when I couldn't even get any music.

There were a couple of cars towing big box trailers, filled with all sorts of crap, either they're going to the tip, or moving house.

My mate came over, and said that we stopped in here because he wasn't sure of the availability of fuel for the next 150km, now that it was getting a bit late, so we might as well take the chance when it presents itself.

I started refilling my tank, even though I wouldn't even need 1/2 tank, better safe than sorry. I mentioned to my mate about my ipod having given up 60km ago, and how boring it had been.

He offered me his ipod, just rattling around in the car now, and I figured I'd risk putting up with whatever songs he had in his ipod, rather than listen to nothing, so I said that would be good, and he grabbed it out of the car for me.

I finished fueling, only about $6 worth of fuel I think, and my mate went in and paid.

I put his ipod on, and got organised, and then we left.

The cars with trailers had left a few minutes before us, so we got a bit up the road, and got stuck behind them. My mate managed to use the last of the overtaking lane to get in front, leaving me stuck behind.

I carefully overtook the first one, on the wrong side of the road (where it was dashed lines), and then I was stuck in the middle of them, this was even worse, the trailer in front was swaying from side to side, and it was a couple of minutes before I got a spot where I could over take it, but then I did, and was able to catch up to my mate.

The rest of that trip was uneventful too, we were about the only vehicles on the road. We did another 80km run, and then stopped for fuel again.

My mate fuelled the car, and then gave me the hose, and I filled up my bike, and then we moved into a carport at the side of the service station.

We weren't far away at all now. We hung around in this service station for a while now, on the last run, I'd hit my limit for riding, my right leg was really sore (this is why I stopped in Glen Innes on my way to Brisbane last time, and the fact it was 2 degrees), so I was hopping around trying to get some circulation back.

I had a can of V, and just bummed around a bit. My mate had a smoke, and a wander around, his wife called her mum and told her that we were nearly there.

After that, we finished mucking around, got ready, and took off. I figure it's only about another 40 or 50km to Bundaberg now.

We continued along the road, this bit was good, the end was near, I was looking forward to sitting down with a beer, and having some dinner, it was after 8pm now.

As we were going along, I kept getting distracted by the sky, it was so clear, there were so many stars ("My god, it's full of stars!"), and I had to consciously stop myself from wandering up and staring at the sky.

My mate must have been mucking around with the radio or something, or just being a smartass, because he slowly started drifting over to the left, until both left wheels were off the road, and in the dirt. I was getting sprayed with crap, and just about had to run onto the wrong side of the road to get out of the stream of crap.

He realised, or finished being smart, and swerved back on to the road. We went another couple of kilometres up the road, and he started drifting again. I flashed my high beam at him, and he straightened the car up.

We kept going, got a little bit further, and then something shiny came bouncing along the road at me, I thought it was a drink can or something, so I swerved to the left around that, and then my mate hit some of a truck tyre that had blown out and was sitting on the left side of the road, and it flicked up, and I had to swerve to the right around that. Jesus, what's going on?

We got into Bundaberg, and stopped at a set of lights, I stood up over my bike, trying to get some circulation in my legs again, and then we kept going. We have to be there now..

We kept going, made a couple of turns, and ended up back on back streets again, where the hell are we going? We've done 50 something kilometres since the petrol station now.

I kept following, and we ended up on a long straight road, that had cane train tracks running across it every few hundred metres, they were pretty cool to ride over.

We made a few more turns, ended up in the middle of cane fields, and then finally we turned and parked in the front yard of a house. It ended up being 70km or so from the last stop.

I parked my bike, and then just tipped off it, and fell onto the ground. I'm here, thank god for that.

My mate's stepfather in law (does that even work?) came out, and greeted us, I picked myself up off the ground, and went inside with them, and then parked in a chair to relax.

We chatted for a little while, and they mentioned that they'd forgot to tell me it was a little bit further than Bundaberg, and I sent an SMS to dad to let him know that I'd got there.

My mate's mother in law had made us dinner, steaks and stuff, so we all dug into that. I was after a beer, but they didn't have any, they only had VB and some light beer left from the wedding a couple of months before, so I had to have a VB.

After dinner, we went out the back to the garage, they don't use it as a garage, it's more of a rustic guest house, there's a sofa bed, and tv, and stuff in the main area, and there's a bathroom in the back, and a proper bedroom there too.

We set that up, my mate and his wife dragged their stuff into the bedroom, and they pulled the sofabed out for me to sleep on.

We went and sat out the back after that, and someone dug out the bottle of Bundy Rum Black that my mate had organised for them to get for my birthday, and we cracked into that.

I took my shoes off, my feet were so sore.

My mate mentioned something about playing the xbox, which was setup on the tv near the sofabed I was supposed to be sleeping on, and I knew that was going to end in tragedy, because I'd want to go to bed soon, and then my mate would want to sit there and play xbox all night.

They worked that out, so they said I could stay in the spare room inside, that suited me. After that, we went back out and continued drinking.

We ended up sitting there until 4am drinking the Bundy Black, and chatting, and relaxing.

Then we realised there was some stuff in the car we needed, first we unloaded the computer, just put the boxes on the front verandah, and I grabbed my bag, and went around the back, and in the house.

I went out and spoke to my mate again for a bit, and then I went to bed, I think he went to play the xbox.

Phew, I finally got here, it was a 500km ride last night, and an 800km ride today.

OK, I as I get back to being way behind, almost a month behind, it's time to try to catch up. I've been putting off blogging the last few weeks, since I mainly don't want to recall some of the stuff, but anyway..

So to jog my own memory, this is the morning of Friday 4th, and I'm planning to get to Brisbane today, on the way to Bundaberg.

I woke up early, and got up 8.40am.

I had a shower and got ready, and finished packing my bag, with my toiletries etc.

As I was finishing packing up my stuff, and making sure I had everything I could need (phone charger, usb cable for ipod etc) Mum came in.

She asked if I wanted to go inside, to show my hair to her friend (who's a hairdresser), umm, not really. A couple of minutes later she came out anyway, and made some comments on it.

She was going in the charity event, "shave for a cure", where people can shave their heads or colour their hair etc, and get sponsors to raise money for cancer research.

I'd thought about going in this, but you had to actually have your hair shaved/coloured in a week or so, when we'll be away, so the timing wasn't going to work, so I just shaved/coloured my hair anyway.

Mum came in with her sponsor book, I said I'd sponsor $5, but then found I didn't have $5 on me, so Mum waid I could owe it to her (which I still haven't paid, oops).

After that, I finished making sure I had everything, and I left.

I rode around to my mate's place, to finish setting up the computer, I got there at 10.20am, went in.

His wife was up, she told me that my mate hadn't gone to bed until 6am this morning. Great, somehow I don't think we'll be leaving at midday like we planned then.

I finished speaking with her, and then I went in to finish on the computer. I'd left it downloading windows updates, which were taking forever for some reason, I wonder if they've finsihed..

I find that the computer is off. Hmm. I turn it back on, and the other pc, since the other one is acting as a gateway.

My mate's plugged the monitor keyboard/mouse back into the other pc, his new one, rather than the one I was working on, so I swapped them back.

Now I found that I couldn't get any video output.. ahh.. because I turned it on with no monitor plugged in, it's defaulted to tv out I'll bet.

I rebooted it, now that the monitor was plugged in, got the boot screens, windows starting, and then nothing. Uhh, wtf?

I rebooted again, and again, same thing each time. When windows should have been coming up, it was just going blank. Hmm, I wonder if this has anything to do with changing the refresh rate, which I did last night.

While downloading updates, I noticed that the monitor was making extremely annoying high pitched noises, and I adjusted the refresh rate, to see if it would fix it. I set it to 75Hz, and then the noises stopped.

I'm suspecting that it switched from 60Hz to 75Hz without problems last night, but since it's been shutdown, trying to start it into 75Hz isn't working.

I rebooted again, and started the machine up in safe mode, or vga mode, or whatever bloody thing they call it these days, and then I was able to use the machine, but it was hideous, 640x480, in 16 colours or something.

I tried adjusting the display settings, and then rebooting, but it came up stuffed again, back into safe mode again.

No matter what I tried, as soon as I tried changing the resolution, at which point I would have been able to change the refresh rate (since you can only change the refresh for the current resolution, stupid design), the display would blank, and I'd have to reboot for another go.

I googled around for answers, and found something about editing the refresh rate settings in the registry, that could work, I spent a while going through there, couldn't find anything much relating to refresh rates in there.

I found a utility that's supposed to reset the refresh rates for all resolutions back to default, so I tried that, didn't work, tried it again (after a reboot from a blank screen), still no good, even after mucking around with the installed monitor settings (removing it from device mangler etc).

I was getting a bit desperate now, I don't know if I'll be able to fix this, I either need a better monitor that can handle the refresh rate, and then I can set it back down, or I'll need to reinstall windows, which I don't have time to do, because we're supposed to be leaving in an hour or so.

I continued mucking around, and I decided to remove the video card drivers, and then I rebooted, reinstalled them, and it seemed to be working, back with default refresh rate.

Thank Jebus for that. I left the refresh rate along this time, and put up with the hideous noises the monitor was making.

I went about trying to install the six million windows updates again, let that go for a while, and then gave up.

I still couldn't fix the issue of the USB running slow I'd seen last night, because apparently that's a fix that requires SP1 or SP2, and I can't install either of these because I didn't use a proper key when I installed the crap (windows).

I mucked around for a bit, and then decided that there wasn't much more I could do.

My phone rang, it was my mate who I used to work with, for his Dad, doing the air conditioning stuff.

He asked me if I'd be able to have a look at one of their pieces of equipment.. he'd knocked it off a desk or something, and broken it. I tried to work out what piece of equipment, and he told me it was a new bit, they'd only had for a couple of weeks, typical.

Anyway, I told him that I couldn't look at it, because I was planning to leave in the next couple of hours, heading 1300km up the coast to Bundaberg, and I wouldn't be back until next Friday.

We chatted for a bit about that, and then I suggested that he take it to the electronics guy at West Gosford I know, who I used to do stuff for, when I was working in the internet cafe.

He said he'd probably take it around there then, and then I got off the phone.

I went back to mucking around on the computer, 12pm came and went, and I continued mucking around on the computer.

Hmm, so much for getting to Brisbane today. It's about 10 hours away, and I don't want to be riding too late tonight.

My mate finally got up about 12.30pm, ok, not too bad, but now he's got to get ready, and the car still needs to be loaded etc, we're not going to be leaving until at least 2pm.

I chatted to him for a bit, and then I said the computer was basically finished, shut it down, and boxed it up.

After that, I went and put it outside, ready to be loaded into the car.

He bummed around for a while, and not much went on, time just ticked away, and getting to Brisbane today was getting more unlikely.

I loaded up the car, with the computer, the stuff they wanted to take, and my bag, so I wouldn't have to drag it everywhere.

My mate's wife got a bit fed up, said she wanted to have left by now, and then my mate starting being unsure of whether he was going to take his bike or not, or get in the car, and that effected her, as to whether she could leave, and go first etc.

He sat around for a while, trying to decide what he wanted to do. He decided that he would take his bike in the end, so his wife could take off first.

I decided I'd rather have my bag with me in that case, in case we end up hours and hours behind, and don't make it to Brisbane, and stay in a motel or whatever, then I can have a shower, and get changed in the morning.

I grabbed my bag back out of the car. It was now about 2pm.

My mate decided that he wanted to ride, but not in silence.

Ok, so now what? I suggested that he just get one of those little digital tuning radios. I've had one before, and had some success with it, you can put the earbuds in, and run the cord down the arm of your jacket, and clip the radio on your right sleeve, then once you're riding, you can reach over with your left hand and adjust the tuning etc.

That wasn't good enough though, he wanted an mp3 player, an ipod.

I pointed out the fact that it was going to waste hours.. going to buy it, loading the music, and waiting for it to charge.

Didn't matter, that was what he wanted. Oh well.

We arranged that I'd pay for it, and he'd pay for fuel for me, and stuff like that, since his card is near the limit, and then we'll sort out the difference after the trip.

Since this was the plan, I told him that I'd go and buy it, and he could have a shower and start getting ready.

It was now a bit after 2pm. I went and jumped on my bike, and started to take off. I had to park and get off again, because someone had left the car door open, and I couldn't get past it. After that, I continued, and I rode to Dick Smith in Gosford, since they're probably the closest place, and it will mean the shortest time wasting.

I got there, no parking spots, bugger it, I parked on the footpath out the front. I should only be here for 10 minutes anyway.

I jumped off my bike, and some yobbo hanging around out the front starts crapping on to me, cool hair etc. He went on to tell me something about how he'd had to shave his off to go to a funeral or something, stuff I really wasn't interested in at this point in time.

I managed to get away from him, and into the shop. I went over to the case with the ipod stuff in it.

Hmm, there's no display model, just an empty display stand for it, that's not a really good sign.

I tried to attract the attention of the staff, several times, but they were busy with other people. I went and lined up at the counter, thinking I could just ask for one there.

I get stuck waiting in the line for 15 minutes before I finally get to speak to someone, I ask if they have any ipod minis in stock, "no" is the reply, so I told the guy "thanks for nothing", and I left.

It really wouldn't have been to hard for them to put a post-it note or something in the case on the display rack saying "out of stock" "sold out" etc, and saving people like me wasting 15 minutes waiting to speak to their ignorant ass.

Anyway, I took off from there, conveniently there was a gap in the garden, so I was able to ride from the footpath straight out down the gutter on to the main road, saving me exiting the carpark, chucking a uturn, and having to wait at the lights.

I went over to the Apple store, once I found it, because I've not been there before, I've only seen the sign for it. Anyway, once I found it I headed in, and as I went in the door I noticed it said that the Apple store had relocated out to Erina (since it was a side project of some computer company). Great.

Someone came out from an office, and I said I was after the Apple store, so thanks anyway, and I went back out the door.

As I was walking back to my bike, one of the guys came out, and was telling me where the new store was, I listened, but I really didn't want to have to go out to Erina, it will just waste more time, and I want to get going.

I started heading back, and I realised there was a Betta Electrical shop in the new shopping area, so I went there, I thought I was pushing my luck, they're more for selling tvs and washing machines I think, but it doesn't hurt to ask.

I parked, went in, asked the guy if they sold them, and he told me that they weren't allowed to.. because Domayne sell them, and they have some sort of an arrangement that stops other shops that are too close from selling them.

I thanked him, got back on my bike, and I went to Domayne. I went into the computer section, and I looked where the ipods had been, they weren't there anymore, hmm, I asked a guy, he said they're up the back, so I went up there, found them.

I looked at all the stuff, this didn't look too promising either.. I can see new 6gb ipod minis, but no 4gb models. I looked around for a bit, in case I couldn't see them for looking, but no.

I headed up to the counter, and I asked the woman if they had any, and she wasn't sure, some chick from another checkout said they only had the 6gb ones.

Great. I left, went back to my bike, and at this point I gave up. I've already wasted an hour on this now.

I started heading back to my mate's place, I decided to stop in at home on the way back, because I realised I'd forgotten to bring my sneakers, and I didn't have a power cord for the computer we were taking up, so I stopped in, and grabbed that stuff, and then went back to my mate's place.

The car was gone, so his wife had got fed up with waiting, and left.

I found my mate still sitting on the front verandah, drinking a coffee, still in his boxer shorts, so he hadn't bothered to do anything in the last hour. I was getting a bit annoyed now, but I just chilled out, because I don't want the trip to be crap before it's even started.

I told him the story of going to 4 places, and having no luck, and that I didn't think he was going to have any luck.

We went inside, and he started calling up shops all over the coast, Big W, Target, Myer, Dick Smith, everywhere was sold out.

I said that perhaps the Apple store would have some, so then we tried to contact them, but the directory assistance chick had no number for them.

We called up the computer business where I'd gone, and found out that they'd relocated, and they were able to give us the number of the new shop at Erina.

We called them up, and the guy said he had a stack of them, so we got him to put one on charge.

After my mate got off the phone, he realised a problem.. the monitor had been loaded in the car, and was now on it's way to Brisbane.

He had an old crappy monitor in the garage, so he went and got that out, and then showed me that the pins in the plug were all bent. Ugh.

It was now about 4pm, my mate finally got in the shower and started getting ready.

I started working on the plug, and I managed to straighten all the pins out, and carefully plug it in to the pc.

I booted it up, missed getting the boot menu up, because I'd have to start up in VGA mode, since this is only a crappy old 14" monitor, and it did have a 17" on it, so it'll be running at some resolution that this one won't be able to handle.

I let it boot anyway, figured I could just ctrl+alt+del ctrl+s it to shutdown, but to my surprise it actually managed to handle 1024x768 or whatever it was set at.

I quickly went in and changed it back to 800x600, because I don't trust it doing 1024x768 for very long.. I had a monitor before that smoke came out of after doing it for a while.

Once that was going, I bummed around for a bit, checked my email or something.

My mate got out of the shower, and got ready, and then we headed out to Erina. I had a rough idea of where the shop was, but we couldn't find it, even after riding around a little bit.

My mate called the shop again, and they told us exactly where they were, and then we went around there.

We parked, and went inside. When we got in there, there was an old woman in there collecting one of those stupid round macs with the screen attached to it on an arm. It had been in for repair.

She was asking what was wrong with it, and was told that the power supply had packed up, and then she asked again what was wrong with it, and the guy just told her again that the power supply was stuffed.

The whole situation was just so stereotypical, the only people who buy macs are grandmas, and the guy working in there had no idea what he was talking about.

Anyway, my mate went up to the chick at the counter, and told them that he'd called ahead, and there was supposed to be an ipod on charge, some guy came out, he explained the situation again to him, and he went and got the ipod off charge.

I paid for it, we had a bit of a chat, and told them about wanting to go up the coast, and about not being able to get one from anywhere else because they were all sold out, and I joked that they should put a surcharge on for being the only place with stock.

We left after that, and it was nice to get out of the Apple store, everything about it just felt wrong.

We rode back to my mates place, and installed the software, and then my mate went about loading some songs into his ipod.

It was now after 5pm, probably even 5.30pm now, so I doubted us getting to Brisbane tonight, more like Coffs Harbour, half the way to Brisbane.

I said we should probably stop off at Coffs, there's a Formule 1 motel/hotel thing there, $49/night I think, or that's what it was when I was up there a couple of years ago.

He decided to call and book ahead, I wouldn't have bothered, but it doesn't hurt.

He got on the phone, and organised all that, a twin room, paid with his credit card, and we got the after hours entry code.

Yep, it was $49/night, (good memory!).

We were getting a bit hungry, so we ordered some pizzas. My mate had complained about the pizzas from last night, so he had a credit for a couple of free pizzas, so we used that, and ordered 2 pizzas delivered, even though the ones from last night had been pickup.

We mucked around on the computer a bit more, and my mate loaded more music into his ipod.

The pizza guy turned up, and I went and collected the pizzas.

We sat and ate them, and then I decided that I would muck around with the ipod a bit, to fix the issues with the volume level etc.

I grabbed mp3gain, and installed it, and set it about normalising all the mp3s on the ipod to 98db. This was going to take a while, since the usb ports were running slow, in 1.1 mode, because you need SP1 or SP2 installed or something, and my mate hadn't done that (Crappy XP).

He'd only put a 100 songs or so in, so it wasn't that bad, I wouldn't have waited for it to do much more than that, when I did my ipod, hanging off my pc, running win2000, with the usb running in proper 2.0 mode, it still took a few hours to go through the full 4gb.

While I waited for that, I went back out and ate some more pizza.

I came back in, and while the mp3gain was still going (nearly finished) I googled around for the stuff to fix the cap in the firmware in the ipod, because of that stupid French law, that stops portable players that can exceed 100db being sold in Europe.

Since when is Australia part of Europe?.. let me guess, since it's not part of the US, it's classed as "Non US" along with the other 95% of the earth.

Anyway, I found gopod, downloaded it, waited for mp3gain to finish, and then I used gopod to undo the cap in the firmware.

My mate finished getting his stuff together, and we finally left, it was right on 7pm.

I put my ipod on, and the first song that came on was "The Long Run" by the Eagles, how true, it will be a long run, I think it's about 500km to Coffs harbour.

We got on the freeway, and headed north, towards Maitland. It started to get dark, and I noticed that my mate's stoplights (I was following him) were flashing a bit, and then they went off all together.

I thought perhaps a fuse had blown, but it didn's seem right, because they had been flickering, so it was more likely a loose connection or something. We kept going, it got darker, and then my mate's lights came back on again.

We got a bit further up the freeway, and they went off again. They ended up in a pattern where they'd be off for 10 minutes or so, and then would come on for about 2 minutes, and then flicker a bit, and go off again.

We got to the end of the freeway, and continued heading for Maitland, since a little way in from there you decide whether to go up the New England Highway (which I went up when I went to Brisbane last time), or up the Pacific Highway, which we were going up this time.

We got to the roundabout where you decide which way to go, and there was a huge articulated truck/road train whatever you call it, tipped over on it's side, fallen out of the roundabout.

It had only just happened a short while before, because there was only a few people there, and one fire truck, we kept going, and as we got a little bit further up the road, there was a stack of fire trucks racing the other way, assumedly on their way to get the truck out of the road.

We kept going for another 45 minutes or so (and my mate's lights continued going on and off, but now they were on more than off, which was good, because it was pitch black), when we got near having done 200km from home, and then we pulled in for fuel.

When we pulled into the bowser, and started filling, I told my mate about his lights flashing, and I said I figured it was a loose connection or something, we finished fuelling, moved our bikes, and then went in.

I went in first, and I paid for my fuel, forgetting that my mate was going to pay for my fuel, oh well.

We went back out to our bikes, and I started checking the wiring, I reached all around behind the lights, and did find that the plug/socket near the lights was a bit loose, and as I jiggled it around, the lights were going on and off.

I mucked around with that for a minute, and managed to get it to plug together properly, and the lights stayed on.

My mate went to relieve himself, and I just hung around the bikes.

A paddy wagon pulled into the service station, and they filled up, and then hung around a bit, I found that a bit suspect.

My mate came back from the loos, and we chatted for a minute, got our stuff together, and jumped on our bikes and took off again.

We rode another 200km, this next leg was really uneventful, all it was was us racing along, and then we'd get stuck behind someone for a couple of kilometres until we got an overtaking lane, and then we'd leave them behind.

After that 200km was up, and we needed more fuel, we pulled into another servo, it was now about 11.30pm.

We fuelled up, moved our bikes, went in, and my mate paid for both of our fuel. He ordered some hot chips, and then we bummed around outside for a minute, he had a smoke, while we waited for the chips to be ready.

We went back in, and ate our chips, and then we went and bummed around outside a bit more, just taking a rest between runs.

While we were standing around, a couple of holden commodes full of kids turned up, with doof doof music pumping out of them.

A chick got out of one of them, and came over to make some comments on my hair, saying that I'd done it for the charity thing, and I told her that I hadn't, I'd been thinking about it, but the timing didn't work etc.

We chatted to her for a minute, and then got our stuff together again, and kept going.

About a minute down the road, we passed the sign saying 109km to Coffs Harbour, sweet, only another hour or so to go.

About 20 seconds after this, we went past a side road to the left, with a bunch of kids standing there, hmm, I thought I saw one of them chuck something at me, and next thing, BANG!, I got hit with something on my left upper arm/shoulder.

I didn't know what it was to start with, I thought it might have been a rock, or a brick or something, because it really hurt, I was going probably 80km/hr when I was hit, and then I realised that I was wet, ah, it was a water bomb.

Now that I was past the initial shock of being hit with something, pain, and realising I was wet I was pissed off. My mate had taken off ahead, I slowed down, I started flashing my light and beeping my horn, trying to attract his attention, because I wanted to go back and run over the dickhead.

He was too far ahead though, and didn't notice me flashing my light, so I decided bugger it, I'm not going to just chuck a u turn and go back, and deal with these kids, and then have my mate notice I'm not behind him, and worry where I am (or not even notice I'm not there, and just leave me behind).

I sped back up again, and just tried to catch up to my mate, because he'd got close to a kilometre ahead in the time I'd slowed right down, while thinking about going back.

We kept going, the rest of the trip was uneventful, I was just fuming, and it took me the rest of the 100km to fully catch up to my mate, and then we got into Coffs Harbour, and then found the Formule 1 motel we were staying at.

We went to park in the bike parking at the front, but some inconsiderate driver had parked his car across all the bike spots diagonally.

We parked up near the entrance, jumped off, and I told my mate about the water bomb incident.

We unloaded our bikes, and went in, my mate entering the code on the front door.

We found our room, my mate put the code in again, opened the door, and we went in, to find we had been given a double room, ie a double bed, and there was no bunk or anything.

Uhh, not gonna happen.

I dumped my stuff (since it weighed about 50kg), and sat on the bed.

My mate tried calling them up, in case they had someone on after hours to answer the phone, but only got a message saying there was an intercom available for after hours contact.

He went out to find that, and I just stayed sitting in there. I checked my watch, it was 1.09am, so we probably got in about 1am.

I'm stuffed, I just want to go to bed, but I'm not sharing a double bed with my mate.

I sat there for a minute, and then my mate came back, he said he'd spoken to someone, and they'd given us a new room, so I picked all my stuff up again, and we dragged up to the new room.

My mate put in the new code, went in, and found what I'd expected to find the first time, 2 single beds and a bunk above them.

We dumped all our junk again, I grabbed my phone charger out, and my ipod charger, and plugged everything in.

Crappy room only had a double power point, with an alarm clock in there, so that was unplugged, the 2 ipods went in there, and my phone ended up on charge in the bathroom, in the single power point for shavers and stover, precariously balanced on the shelf above the toilet that I didn't like the idea of.

When I was plugging it in to charge, I noticed I'd got a message, I checked it, it was from Dad, something about wanting to know where my rj45 crimping tool was, and to let him know when I got there.

I replied, told him the crimping tool was in my toolbox, and that we were only at Coffs, because we hadn't let until 7pm.

I changed out of my bike trousers, and put on shorts, ready to go to bed.

The new room we were in, was at the back of the building, and my mate noticed more parking around the back, so he suggested that we move our bikes around there.

I grabbed my key, and we both went out to the carpark, and moved our bikes around the back, my mate lit a smoke, and then we wandered back around to the front of the building.

My mate said we should let the tyres down on the car parked across the bike spots, I said I'd been thinking about that too, since we easily could have snuck around to the side between the car and the garden, and no one would have been able to see us, and let both tyres down on that side.

I was thinking about it, but there were some people sitting outside, so I figured it wasn't worth it, in case the car is something to do with them, or they see us go over there. A minute or so later, a bunch of guys came out, and went to the car, so if we had decided to do it, we still would have been there, oops.

My mate finished his smoke, we went over near the people sitting outside, they ignored us, and we just went back inside, and back to the room.

I got in to bed, my mate put the tv on (Rage was on), and we had a chat, and then at about 3am, I was feeling pretty tired so I rolled over to sleep, and my mate read his book for a while.

Phew, that's the end of that day, it was a bloody long day.

I woke up, and got up, at about 8.40am.

I got ready, ate a couple of muesli bars for breakfast, and then I left home.

I rode around to the bike place, and dropped my bike off. I left my helmet and gloves there, don't want to have to carry them around all day.

I came out, and there was a taxi waiting across the road, with his light on too, that's convenience. Before I had a chance to wave though, he took off. Bugger.

I started walking along the road, towards the shopping centre a couple of kilometres away, figuring I could get a taxi there, if I didn't see one along the road I could flag down.

As I walked along, I kept checking behind me, to see if there were any taxis going the same direction as me, but as timing would have it, I didn't see them coming, only once they'd gone past, that happened twice.

I got pretty close to the shopping centre. There's an apple shop here somewhere, I thought I might have a look in there, because I didn't find time to get the parts to make the firewire charger, so I'm still without a portable charger.

Before I got there though, I spotted a taxi on the other side of the road, so I flagged him down. I then had to get across the road, and that took me about 5 minutes.

I jumped in the taxi, and told the guy I wanted to go out to Erina Fair. He told me that he'd just had a new meter put in, and I was the first customer. Hmm.

We chatted a bit on the way out there, I told him how I was going up the coast tomorrow, and he told me about a holiday he'd been on, where he'd fallen out with his mate, because his mate had gone up a few weeks before, and whenever the guy wanted to do anything, the other guy would say "done it, you wouldn't like it", so they didn't end up doing anything, except driving to cairns or somewhere, and then driving back home again.

A couple of times on the way out there, the meter crapped itself, but it was still ticking up, so the driver didn't seem too worried.

We got out to Erina, and the amount on the meter ended up being $16.20. That seems pretty cheap. I think there was something wrong with the connectivity between the meter and the engine, so it was only counting the time, as if we were waiting somewhere, rather than the distance.

I got my wallet out, and found that I had $65.20 in cash on me. I asked the guy if he could break a $50 note, no. I showed him I only had $15.20 other than that.

I asked if I could pay with a card, and he showed me the eftpos machine, and then said that he wasn't allowed to use it.

We sat there for a bit, I was thinking I'd have to go to an atm and get a $20 note or something, but he'd probably think I was going to do a runner.

He ummed and arred for a bit, and then said that the $15.20 would have to do, so I gave him that, thanked him, and got out of the taxi.

I wandered around the shops a bit, it was now about 10am, 2 1/2 hours to fill in until I go and get my hair done.

I was still wearing my leather jacket, so I got a bit hot. I decided to go and find a backpack or something, so I could take my jacket off, and be able to carry it around easily.

I went into Target, they only had crappy looking bags, and they weren't cheap either, I was hoping to find something for $10 or $15. I went into Big W after that, and they didn't have much either, the same sort of poor selection, of expensive ugly bags.

I went into a couple of bag shops, and eventually found a large black plain backpack, $20 or something. Whatever, so I bought that.

I wandered for a bit, and then I took my jacket off, and shoved it in the backpack.

I went back into Big W, and looked for stuff I'd need to take on holidays with me, and bought some clothes socks and undies and stuff. I browsed through the mens clothes, and found a pair of shorts on sale for $20, so I got them too.

I paid for the stuff, and left, I was just shoving it all in my backpack, when someone tapped me on the shoulder. It was my mate's wife (who I was going to QLD with tomorrow, along with her husband), she was out there filling in time.

She said she was thinking about getting some roof racks for the car, because her stepfather has a Mal (big surfboard), that she's thinking about bringing back with her.

We went back into Big W again, and looked in the auto section, found some universal roof racks, about $30 or something, not too bad, but she wasn't sure if the car had a gutter on it, (where the universals attach), I said that it probably did, but was possible that it didn't.

We left, and went out to the car park, and had a look at the car, and found that it did have rain gutters. We went back in, but she said that she was only thinking about it, and didn't know that she could actually have the board yet either.

We wandered around the shopping centre for a bit, and my mate's wife said she wanted to get some ham for lunch, so we went into Woolworths, and she got some ham.

I mentioned that I was thinking about getting a wrist band, for my left arm, because when I ride, there's a gap between my jacket and my glove, and it's getting a bit of a tan, and it looks uneven, because in the gap on my right arm, I have my watch.

We wandered around a bunch of jewellers after that, and I tried on a few different bands.

One place had a sale on, 50% off silver, but they didn't have anything I really liked, because I was after something fairly chunky.

We went into another place after that, and they had a couple that I liked, I eventually decided on one, it was supposed to be $230 or something, the woman went away, and came back and said that I could have it for $175, so that was ok, and I bought that.

After that, we wandered around a bit more, I went around to the hairdressers, in case I could get in a bit earlier, but they didn't say anything about, so we kept wandering.

My mate's wife decided to go home, it was now about 11am I think. I decided I'd go and get some lunch, that'll waste a good bit of time, and then just wander around a bit more, and then go back to the hairdresser.

So I went and got lunch, it did waste a bit of time, but only about 1/2 hour, so I just wandered around for a bit, looking in CD shops and stuff, wasting time.

I went into the hairdresser around midday, because I was sick of wandering, and I sat there until about 12.20pm, when they started on my hair.

The guy shaved it into a mohawk, leaving all my facial hair, so I looked a bit like Mr T.

They hadn't got the colour, so one of them took off around to one of the shops in the shopping centre to get the dye.

Once my hair was cut properly (took a while, at least they didn't stuff it up like last time), he put the peroxide on my hair.

I went and sat under the steam thing for about 45 minutes for that to take, and looked at some crap magazine they gave me.

I came out from there, and the guy washed my hair, and then put petroleum jelly all over my hairline, to stop the dye from colouring my skin.

After that, he put the green dye through my hair, and I went and sat under the steam thing for another 15 minutes or so, and he rinsed some of it out.

The guy tidied it up a bit, trimming hair, and then asked one of the other guys to check it, he came over, and asked what I wanted done with my beard and stuff, and I asked them to take it off, so they guy did, and had a go at the other guy for not having done it already.

Once that was all done, I grabbed a tub of gel, and paid, it was about $100 all up.

I wandered around to Gloria Jeans after that, and got myself a coffee, and sat and drank it.

After that, I decided I should probably buy a towel and a pillowcase to take with me, because the green stuff in my hair comes out all over everything, and I don't want to be wrecking other peoples stuff with it.

I went and looked for the stuff in Target, didn't find what I was looking for, I just wanted a black towel, and a black pillow case, I found the pillowcase, but it was like $13, bit much.

I went and looked in Big W after that, and had less luck there, I didn't find a black towel or a black pillowcase.

Some little kid came into the aisle while I was looking at the towels, and said I had cool hair. Great, it appeals to children, just what I wanted, not.

I found some beach towels on sale in there, one with all colours and black patches and stuff, it looks like such a mess already, that any green stains won't be so obvious, so I grabbed that, bought it, only $10 or something too.

I went back to Target after that, to get the pillowcase, as I was heading for the checkouts, I saw that they had some stuff on special too, including a black pillowcase from $20 down to $7 or something, it's a european pillowcase, square, so it won't fit properly, but I don't really care.

I bought that, and then I left, shoving it in my bag.

I wandered over to JB hifi after that, looked at the DVDs, and ended up buying a few cheap DVDs, I bought a movie "Seems like old times", a comedy that the tivo guy in Melbourne had told me about, a Bowie concert, and some Duran Duran concert thing.

I went back over to the shopping centre after that (JB Hifi is on the other side of the carpark).

While wandering around, some dopey guy in the center started talking to me, he was there trying to get people to go to the gym they've opened out there. I told him that I wasn't going to be around for the next week.

He gave me a card about it anyway, supposed to have $35 value, somehow I don't think so. He took my details, and said he'd give me a call. I didn't want some idiot ringing me up, so I gave him a wrong number.

I walked away after that, and as I thought about it, the number is of someone I know, d'oh, he'll probably ring it, and then they'll give him my number.

I decided to buy some jeans after that, so I went into a jeans shop, looked what they had, wanted something in black, I don't like blue jeans, they didn't have much, only a pair of grey acid washed jeans, I tried them on, and while they weren't really what I was after, they weren't too bad, so I bought them.

I paid, left, and kept wandering. I had more time to fill in, since my bike isn't ready until about 5.30pm or something.

I thought about getting a toiletries bag, so I haven't got stuff all floating around in my bag all week. I went into some cheap homewares place, and found one, it was $15 though, bit much, oh well, I don't care.

I bought it, it was all full of paper or something, so I asked the woman at the checkout to take it out, because my backpack was getting full as it was, without carrying around screwed up paper.

I had another wander through the shopping centre, decided that I really didn't need anything else now.

It was about 4.40pm, so I decided to go back to the bike place, and find out how they were going. I went down to the taxi rank, no taxis, waited around for about 10 minutes, and one turned up.

I jumped in, and told the guy I wanted to go to the bike place, to pick up my bike, and then he started chatting on about when he used to ride. He was a Canadian I think, he just went on and on about riding.

We got to the bike place, the meter was $20 this time, I paid and wandered over to the bike place.

My bike was all done, the guys in there had a bit of a laugh at my hair.

I went in, chatted with the guy a bit, and then I paid for the work, $553 it was, for the clutch plates, brake pads, and labour to fit them. There was also stuff like oil for an oil change in there (since they had to pull the engine apart to fit the clutch plates).

I rode back from there, and went to my mates place. I was only there for a little while, and said I'd come back around a bit later, to sort out the computer we were taking with us tomorrow.

I headed for home, but realised there wasn't any food at home, so I went to the supermarket on the way home, got some food, and then came home.

I sat and spent the afternoon going through the stuff that I'd bought, ripping all the tags off everything, and packing my bag to take with me tomorrow.

I cooked the food, and ate it, and watched the end of Sneakers that I'd started watching last night.

While I was watching that, a storm rolled in, and it pissed down with rain, terrific, just what I want to have to go out in.

I went in and saw my parents, and told them that I was going off for a week up the coast, and I'd probably be back next Friday night or something.

There was some mail there for me, just crap though.

I waited a while, and the rain let up, so I decided to go out then, and I went back to my mate's place.

I was there for a couple of hours, I had to get all the photos off one of the machines there, and on to another machine, and then I reinstalled windows on it, and all the drivers etc.

I put all the rest of the stuff on there that it needed, virus scanner etc, and left it installing windows updates.

My mate has his sister staying with him at the moment, she took off to go and get some pizzas, when she came back with them, they were on that nasty thin base. My mate rang up Dominoes and had a go at them about it, and got a credit for 2 pizzas.

I left the machine downloading/installing windows updates (there's about a million security updates you need these days, so that was probably going take all night), so I went home, and went to bed.

I woke up early as usual, but I got up early for once, so I could have a lot of time at work today, if I needed it.

I was hoping to have all the work done by midday, so I could leave early this afternoon, but I doubted it would actually happen.

Anyway, I got up about 8am, and had a shower etc, and got ready for work.

I left home at 8.40am, and I rode to work, getting fuel on the way as usual.

When I got near work, I ended up behind a cop car, I just followed along, they were going like 40 or something, in a 60 zone. FInally they pulled over, and I kept going, watching in my mirror, they did a U turn, and took off. Dunno what's going on there, maybe they were lost or something.

I got a bit further to work (this was all within about 2ks of work), and after going around the corner, some idiot just starts changing lanes on top of me, so I had to beep my horn (still got that pissy horn on there, because I never got around to finish mounting the air horn), and then I got to work.

I got back into it, I made up the Oracle table I needed, entered some test data, and then it all looked like it was working. They'd told me a couple of days ago about the security that they needed implemented, I'd started coding that in yesterday, so I worked a bit more on that.

I had to edit all the screens and forms I'd already done to add that in, which was a bit of a pain, but anyway. Once I'd done all that, I had to take a break for a bit, to clear my mind, so I went to see the guy upstairs, and find out what was going on.

While I was up there, my phone rang, it was the guy from the bike service place, where I was taking my bike tomorrow. He told me that he'd not been able to find the seal they had (the correct one, to replace the wrong one Yamaha originally sent). He'd tried to order another one, but Yamaha were out of stock again, I'm back to square 1, this is what happened before, and it took 6 weeks to get the seals.

Argh. He said he had the rest of the stuff though, clutch plates, and brake pads, so we were right to fit that. He asked me when I'd be dropping the bike off, and I said it wasn't today, because I was at work, but I said I might be dropping it off tonight, after hours, so they could get started on it first thing in the morning.

He thought about it, but there's no after hours key dropoff, and my bike would have been sitting in a commercial/light industrial area all night, which he didn't like the thought of, so I said I'd just drop it off in the morning then, he told me he wouldn't be there until about 9.30am, so I said I'd drop it off after that.

I got off the phone, and then three of us decided to go out for lunch. We walked to the cafe down the road we've been going to, and ordered lunch.

A few minutes later, a couple of other people from work came in, and sat with us.



We ate our lunches, and chatted with the other people who'd come in for a bit, and then I took off, and headed back to work. I still had a few more hours of work to get through today, I had been done as quickly as I'd hoped.

I got back to work, and continued on the data entry interface. At the last minute, they sprang on me the fact that they needed to be able to upload files along with the data that was going into Oracle. The files just had to go on the filesystem, not in Oracle or anything, but the files had to be renamed to match some of the data that was going into Oracle, so there was a way to link the files to the records.

Argh. I rushed into trying to find how to do that, thankfully the php documentation is pretty good, so I found some example code, and was able to chunk that in pretty quickly, but then I found that it wouldn't work, the file wouldn't actually get uploaded.

I was tearing my hair out, I have to get this working today. I checked all the necessary settings, php.ini settings relating to uploads etc, the upload directory, permissions, all sorts of stuff.

I kept mucking around with it, it just seemed broken. I was continually trying to upload files to test it, different files each time, eventually one of the files went up.

What I discovered, was that I thought the max upload file size in the php.ini file was in kilobytes, not bytes, so I had an upload maximum of 16k, instead of 16M specified, and I'd been trying to upload files of a few hundred k, until that last one, a text file or something.

Phew, at least it works. I fixed the settings, and turned off all the debugging stuff I'd added to allow me to try to work out what was going on.

It was finally all working, and usable. It was about 5pm now, good.

I setup a production instance of the interface (since I have a development environment that I work in), and I went over and saw the people who have been hired to load the data, and I showed them how to use it.

It all seemed to be working, and they were happy with it. I noticed a couple of things that didn't work properly in internet exploitme, which they were using, rather than Firefox, which I've been using for development/testing.

I said it was just stuff I'd have to fix when I got back, but it didn't stop them from being able to use it, there were just a couple of niceties that didn't work.

It took me about 1/2 hour to show them the procedure from start to finish. I'd like to think it was fairly self explanatory, and they didn't seem to have any questions about anything, so that was good.

After that, we just chatted for a bit, becuase they knew I was going off for a week.

I finished up about 6pm, grabbed my stuff, and prepared to leave. I was just about to leave, when I remembered about the floppy drive I was trying to sort out. I called up my mate in Wyong, and asked him about it.

He'd called the guy he knows, but he didn't have any floppy drives either, so that was the end of that. I said I'd be in Brisbane on Saturday, so I could probably get one there somewhere.

I grabbed my stuff, and I left, and rode for home. I didn't know this would be last time I'd be riding home from work for a few months (but I'll come back to that in a blog in about a week).

On the way home, after getting off the freeway, an ambulance was rushing somewhere, so I pulled over and let it pass, it went through the speed camera, and it went off, heh.

I kept going, and went to the supermarket to get dinner. Bugger, I finished all the breakfast cereal this morning, and didn't think about it, so I didn't bring my backpack, and I can't buy more, because I've no way to get it home on my bike. I just bought muesli bars instead.

I didn't end up with much, because there's no point stocking up on food, just to leave it at home for a week.

On the way through the checkout, the woman commented on the frozen meal I was buying (dinner). "Is this dinner?" or something she asked, "yeah". "What are they like, they don't look like much", "it's just food" was my reply. She found that somewhat disturbing and humerous at the same time I think.

I finished there, paid, went loaded up my bike and headed for home. It started to rain a bit on the way. I noticed the bottlo near my place was still open, so I stopped in and got a 6 pack of bundy and coke cans.

I came home, made dinner, and ate it, and had a couple of cans.

I played the guitar for a bit, and then I put "Sneakers" (the movie) on, and went to bed to watch it.

I heard Dad get home about 11.50pm. I watched the movie until about 12.30am, and then I paused it, and turned the tv off.

Woo, I'm finally up to blogging this month. Only 20 days behind now..

I woke up, it was about 9am.

I got up, had a shower and got ready, had breakfast, and left for work.

I got to work 10.30am. The woman who used to run the old system (before I redeveloped it) was back, she's been in Germany for the last few weeks.

I cracked right into coding the data entry interface of the new system. This was supposed to be at a workable point early last week, and until it works, there's a bunch of people they've hired sitting around not able to do much.

I need to have this working before I leave tomorrow night, since I'm only in today and tomorrow, and then I'm getting my bike serviced, and on Friday I'm riding to Bundaberg.

Anyway, I sat there, and I got stacks of work done on the loading interface.

The administrator of the old system came to talk to me for a bit, because she's been suggesting things for the new system. She gave me a chocolate from Belgium, it was terrific.

I got back to work, and got more work done, I was getting somewhere, but there's still tons of work to do before this is usable.

At about 11.50am the phone rang. It was the guy in the motorbike clothing place on the way to work, my gloves had come in. I said I'd be up there shortly, and got off the phone.

I did another few minutes work, finishing up the bit I was working on. I went out to my bike, and I rode up to the bike place, and I picked up the gloves, and paid for them. It was now about 12.20pm.

I wore them back from there, they're an alright fit, but still a bit tight, I suppose they'll stretch a little bit.

On the way back to work, I went for a little ride around town, and I parked near the bank near the mall. I went into the shopping centre, and bought myself a couple of pies for lunch, and a drink.

I went back to my bike, loaded the stuff, and rode back to the office. I sat at my desk, ate my lunch, and continued working.

I found a couple of bugs in the production system, so I sorted them out, that took a little while. I can't spend much time on the production stuff, I really need to finish developing the data entry interface.

I kept working on the data entry interface, and got it to the point where I needed to create another Oracle table, and I really couldn't be bothered to do it at this point, working out the data types, field sizes etc, I figured I'd do that tomorrow morning, so I just did a bit of a cleanup on the code I'd written.

The guy from upstairs called me about 5pm, he was leaving, and wanted to know if I wanted to go to the pub or whatever. I said it sounded like a good idea, so I went down, and we walked to the pub.

I sat and had a soft drink with the others at the pub, and we chatted for a while.

Someone mentioned that the chick who'd left last week had had a bike accident, apparently her parents have a farm up north a bit somewhere, and on Sunday, she'd dropped a dirt bike on herself, and broken her arm and leg, so she was in hospital or something. Not very good.

I asked where everyone was at lunch time, since I didn't hear from anyone (and I usually do), it turns out that a few of the IT guys had been at one of the other sites, down the road a bit, that we use as the data centre, sorting out backup tapes or something.

Apparently there's an adult shop next to the building there, and two of the IT guys had gone in there, they hadn't managed to get the other guy to go in with them.

They mentioned that there was a Paris Hilton blow up doll in there.. for $1500! Christ. I don't think the real one costs that much.

We chatted a bit more, and around 6pm, I decided I'd go back to work, because my mind had been ticking away on some stuff while I was in the pub, and I decided to go back and code it while I was still thinking about it.

I headed back to work, got the stuff in, tested it, looking good. I ended up doing another hour of work, but it sorted out stuff I had been expecting me to take a few hours to do.

While I was back at work, I called up my mate at Wyong that fixes PCs, to see if I could find out about a floppy drive, since we forgot to get one for the machine we're taking to Bundaberg.

He didn't have any new floppy drives, only old ones (which I'm not going to bother with, why would you, when a new one is only $10, and second hand ones rarely work properly).

He said he'd call a guy he knows, find out if he had any, and sort out me picking it up on my way home tomorrow or something.

I got off the phone, and was thinking about going home. I called the guy from upstairs, to find out if they'd got organised enough to go and get some dinner yet, he said they were going down shortly.

I finished up, and I walked back to the pub again. I got there a bit after 7pm. We sat there for a little while, they finished their drinks etc, and then we walked down to another pub, where we usually get dinner.

We got in there, and I ordered dinner, I was starving, so I got the mixed grill, which it claims is "not for the faint hearted", I'll have a good crack at that. I also ordered a soft drink, and paid, and went out to wait with the others, who had already ordered.

One of the others had ordered a bottle of wine, so they brought that out, and I had a glass of that, since there was no sign of my soft drink, maybe it will come out with dinner or something.

We sat and chatted a bit more for a while, and then the food started coming out. I received my meal, a huge plate of food, but the drink didn't turn up. I wasn't all that worried, so I didn't say anything.

We ate our food, it was a pretty good meal, but I managed to finish it with no great issue, and could have eaten a bit more, but I refrained from pinching the salad and chips off the plates of the others who had finished eating.

A woman from work turned up, with her daughter, and she chatted to us for a while, and her daughter ate some of what was left of the guy from upstairs' steak (he ordered a huge steak, and then didn't eat very much of it).

She ended up hanging around for quite a while, just chatting to us, and then she left, and I left not long after, about 9.30pm I think it was, and headed for home.

I would have got home about 10.40pm probably, and then I bummed around on the computer for a bit, and went to bed not long after, so I could get up at some reasonable time in the morning, to get back to work early.

Ok, I'm like 11 days behind on blogs. I've got rough notes saved in blogger as drafts, so I can come back and write the blogs.

Anyway, I finally got that picture of Bob Carr standing near the guy from work's car, it's been sitting on my machine at work for like a week now..

You can see it here. I'll edit the original post, and add a link in there too.

It's a huge image, I don't know what resolution the camera is that took it, must be 5MP or something. The image is about 735k.