#and when you gotta do dam removal. you get the engineer

[pinacoladamatata]

I hope we get to see the creation of the veil I hope we get to see the creation of the veil I hope we get to see the creation of the veil I hope we get to see the creation of the veil I hope we get to see the creation of the veil I hope we get to see the creation of the veil I HOPE WE GET TO SEE THE CREATION OF THE VEIL

[vaulteventmedia]

10 Things to do before winter sets in.

A Fall Checklist of 10 Things You Gotta Do Before Winter Sets In When the last of summer's heat is a faint memory, and you're pulling out your hoodies more than your shorts, it's time to tackle a few simple chores that'll make winter more pleasant and prevent some nasty surprises next spring. This fall checklist helps: #1 Clean and Stow Your Mower If you’re not familiar with fuel stabilizer, get to know it. If your mower sits for months with gas in its tank, the gas will slowly deteriorate, which can damage internal engine parts. Fuel stabilizer ($10 for a 10-ounce bottle) prevents gas from degrading.Add stabilizer to your gasoline can to keep spare gas in good condition over the winter, and top off your mower tank with stabilized gas before you put it away for the winter. Run the mower for five minutes to make sure the stabilizer reaches the carburetor. Another lawn mower care method is to run your mower dry before stowing it. 1. When the mower is cool, remove the spark plug and pour a capful of engine oil into the spark plug hole. 2. Pull the starter cord a couple of times to distribute the oil, which keeps pistons lubricated and ensures an easy start come spring. 3. Turn the mower on its side and clean out accumulated grass and gunk from the mower deck. #2 Remove Garden Hoses From Faucets Remove garden hoses from outdoor faucets. Leaving hoses attached can cause water to back up in the faucets and in the plumbing pipes just inside your exterior walls. If freezing temps hit, that water could freeze, expand, and crack the faucet or pipes. Make this an early fall priority so a sudden cold snap doesn’t sneak up and cause damage. Turn off any shutoff valves on water supply lines that lead to exterior faucets. That way, you’ll guard against minor leaks that may let water enter the faucet. While you’re at it, drain garden hoses and store them in a shed or garage. #3 Drain Your Sprinkler System Time to drain your irrigation system. Even buried irrigation lines can freeze, leading to busted pipes and broken sprinkler heads. 1. Turn off the water to the system at the main valve. 2. Shut off the automatic controller. 3. Open drain valves to remove water from the system. 4. Remove any above-ground sprinkler heads and shake the water out of them, then replace. If you don’t have drain valves, then hire an irrigation pro to blow out the systems pipes with compressed air. A pro is worth the $75 to $150 charge to make sure the job is done right, and to ensure you don’t have busted pipes and sprinkler head repairs to make in the spring. #4 Seal Air Leaks Grab a couple of tubes of color-matched exterior caulk ($5 for a 12-ounce tube) and make a journey around your home’s exterior, sealing up cracks between trim and siding, around window and door frames, and where pipes and wires enter your house. Preventing moisture from getting inside your walls is one of the least expensive — and most important — of your fall maintenance jobs. You’ll also seal air leaks that waste energy. Pick a nice day when temps are above 50 degrees so caulk flows easily. #5 De-Gunk Your Gutters Clogged rain gutters can cause ice dams, which can lead to expensive repairs. After the leaves have fallen, clean your gutters to remove leaves, twigs, and gunk. Make sure gutters aren’t sagging and trapping water; tighten gutter hangers and downspout brackets. Replace any worn or damaged gutters and downspouts. If you find colored grit from asphalt roof shingles in your gutters, beware. That sand-like grit helps protect shingles from the damaging ultraviolet rays of the sun. Look closely for other signs of roof damage (#5, below); it may be time for a roofing replacement. Your downspouts should extend at least 5 feet away from your house to prevent foundation problems. If they don’t, add downspout extensions; $10 to $20 each. #6 Eyeball Your Roof If you have a steep roof or a multistory house, stay safe and use binoculars to inspect your roof from the ground. Look for warning signs: Shingles that are buckled, cracked, or missing; rust spots on flashing. Any loose, damaged, or missing shingles should be replaced immediately. Black algae stains are just cosmetic, but masses of moss and lichen could signal roofing that’s decayed underneath. Call in a pro roofer for a $50 to $100 eval. A plumbing vent stack usually is flashed with a rubber collar -- called a boot -- that may crack or loosen over time. They’ll wear out before your roof does, so make sure they’re in good shape. A pro roofer will charge $75 to $150 to replace a boot, depending on how steep your roof is. #7 Direct Your Drainage Take a close look at the soil around your foundation and make sure it slopes away from your house at least 6 vertical inches over 10 feet. That way, you’ll keep water from soaking the soils around your foundation, which could lead to cracks and leaks. Be sure soil doesn’t touch your siding. #8 Check Your Furnace Schedule an appointment with a heating and cooling pro to get your heating system checked and tuned up for the coming heating season. You’ll pay $50 to $100 for a checkup. An annual maintenance contract ensures you’re at the top of the list for checks and shaves 20% off the cost of a single visit. Change your furnace filters, too. This is a job you should do every two months anyway, but if you haven’t, now’s the time. If your HVAC includes a built-in humidifier, make sure the contractor replaces that filter. #9 Prune Plants Late fall is the best time to prune plants and trees -- when the summer growth cycle is over. Your goal is to keep limbs and branches at least 3 feet from your house so moisture won’t drip onto roofing and siding, and to prevent damage to your house exterior during high winds. #10 Give Your Fireplace a Once-Over To make sure your fireplace is safe, grab a flashlight and look up inside your fireplace flue to make sure the damper opens and closes properly. Open the damper and look up into the flue to make sure it’s free of birds’ nests, branches and leaves, or other obstructions. You should see daylight at the top of the chimney. Check the firebox for cracked or missing bricks and mortar. If you spot any damage, order a professional fireplace and chimney inspection. An inspection costs $79 to $500. You fireplace flue should be cleaned of creosote buildup every other year. A professional chimney sweep will charge $150 to $250 for the service. #HomeMaintenance #fallMaintenance These tips were found on Houselogic & being shared to you by Manies Construction

[themurphyzone]

Organized Chaos

 First time writing Amanda! Some ship tease between Milo and Amanda, but nothing heavy. 

“Amanda, please let me design the yearbooks! I’m begging you!” Chad tearfully knelt, grasping the hem of Amanda’s magenta jacket. He looked up with wide, pleading eyes. “I need this!”

“Chad, designing the yearbooks is not supposed to be fun. It requires the utmost diligence, attention to detail, and extreme patience when you inevitably have to use the library computers that haven’t been replaced since 1992,” Amanda replied, carefully pulling her jacket out of Chad’s hands. “May I ask you why you need this?”

“Extra credit for English,” Chad said, standing up. “I got an F on the last persuasive essay. Nobody told me I couldn’t write about Mr. Drako’s vampirism.”

Amanda sighed. If there was a new conspiracy theory in town, Chad was usually the first to start panicking about it. Like the rest of her peers, she usually ignored his theories. There were enough crazy shenanigans with Milo around. 

“Just because Mr. Drako has family in Romania does not mean-” 

“Watch out! Runaway robot from the engineering club!” 

Speak of the sweatervest. Amanda braced herself. She had only planned for 20 minutes worth of Murphy’s Law on Thursdays. Amanda mentally calculated the amount of time it took to clean up the expired milk at lunch and the fire extinguisher malfunction in Ms. Camilichec’s class. Ate through approximately twelve minutes worth of time I set aside for these disasters. Ay caballo, if this mishap goes over eight minutes I’ll have to cut down on the time I set aside for reorganizing my binder. 

A silver, badly made, 5 foot robot hurtled down the hallway, smoke pouring from a small pipe on its back. One lightbulb eye shone brightly, but the other had fallen out of the socket. Crude wheels left skid marks behind. People scrambled to get out of the way, ducking into nearby classrooms and climbing on top of the lockers to avoid it. Although they had taken cover underneath a flight of stairs, Chad had ducked behind Amanda, shaking nervously. 

“Chad, if you stop using me as a meat shield, I promise I’ll work something out with the yearbook committee,” Amanda offered. 

“You will? I owe you my life!” Chad exclaimed. “I will do anything you say from now on, my lady.” 

“The robot is a good starting place,” Amanda suggested, shifting uncomfortably at being addressed as ‘my lady’. 

“The mission begins,” Chad stepped into the open corridor, spreading his arms wide in the pathway of the robot. His face scrunched up in determination. “YOU SHALL NOT-”

Amanda flinched, covering her eyes. There was a horrible screech as flesh and metal collided. When she looked back, the robot was still careening down the hallway as if nothing had happened. Chad wasn’t so lucky, collapsing on his back.

“Pass...” Chad groaned, before losing consciousness. 

Amanda awkwardly approached him. “It was a good try,” she murmured. 

“Yippi-ki-i-ay, robot!” Milo yelled, twirling several lassos above his head as he rushed down the hall. “Amanda?” he said in surprise. The minor distraction was enough to lose control of the lassos, and several coils rained down on top of them. Milo raised his arm, and Amanda felt a loop tighten on her waist and jerk her forward. She crashed into Milo, who let out a grunt as his back knocked against the lockers. 

At least they were still standing. 

“Sorry about that, Amanda,” Milo laughed nervously. “Usually I’m pretty good with lassos.”

“It’s all right,” Amanda said, checking to make sure there was nothing else in the area that could possibly hurt them. “Don’t you have a robot to catch?”

“About that,” Amanda’s eyes widened when she realized she could feel Milo’s fingers wiggling against hers. She looked down in horror, straining to free her arms from the coils around their waists. “Well, there’s a lot of benefits to being stuck together by failed lassos. None come to mind right now, but I’m sure there’s gotta be one somewhere.” 

I’m in the splatter zone, I’m in the splatter zone, Amanda took a deep breath, straining not to let the dam burst. She was trapped with Milo! Not only that, but now her schedule was completely screwed up! That binder wasn’t going to magically reorganize itself! Inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale, you’ll get out of this eventually. Eventually. Probably not in the next five minutes. But eventually is better than never, right?

“Amanda, if you need to scream to let off steam, I don’t mind,” Milo said, reading her thoughts. “I’d offer you a paper bag, but I can’t reach my backpack right now.” 

“I-I’m fine,” Amanda breathed heavily. “I don’t need to vocalize my inner frustrations and demise.” 

“You sure?” Milo asked in concern. 

“N-no, you’re right,” Amanda admitted. “I-I do.” 

Amanda felt Milo stiffen, his body erect and eyes squeezed shut in preparation. “Just let it out. You’ll feel a lot better.” he said.  

“Okay,” Amanda nodded, inhaling sharply. Then a scream erupted from her throat, her pent-up frustrations let loose for all the school to hear. Yearbooks, dumb computers, my schedule, the binder! Argh! she internally wailed. 

After several seconds, her scream died off and she gasped for air. “Sorry, Milo,” she said, grinning awkwardly. “But you were right about letting off steam.” 

Milo’s cowlick had flopped over at some point during her scream. “Are you kidding?” he laughed. “You have some really strong lungs, Amanda! I haven’t heard anyone scream like that since Melissa and I rode Greased Thunder! We should go to Lard World sometime!” 

“Haha, lard and rollercoasters really aren’t my thing,” she giggled, respecting Melissa even more for going on such a dangerous ride with Milo. “And I don’t think anyone’s ever complimented my lungs before.” 

“Well, what’s not to like? We wouldn’t be alive without them! Unless we were fish, or mermaids,” Milo said. 

“Milo, did you catch the robot? I would’ve been here sooner but a certain someone just had to dawdle in music class!” Melissa wasted no time, opening the flap on Milo’s backpack. She dug around to find a can of cheese spray, glaring at Zack. 

“I wasn’t dawdling,” Zack retorted. “I stayed behind to help clean up the spit the brass section left.”

“You see? Dawdling,” Melissa replied. 

Amanda blinked. “Don’t you have a pocket knife? Or scissors?”

“No, I was trying to lasso the robot but it backfired. And pocket knives are against school rules, but I do have a neat Swiss Army one at home,” Milo said. 

“Came in pretty useful during the Woodpecker Incident,” Melissa commented. 

“And nobody’s going to address that Chad’s unconscious?” Zack gestured to Chad’s body. “How did this happen anyway?”

“The robot ran him over,” Amanda explained. “Those treads won’t be easy to wash out.” 

“Robot?” Zack raised an eyebrow. 

“Yeah, that was my bad,” Milo chuckled sheepishly. “I do have all-purpose bleach that can rinse out orange juice, oil, and pterodactyl blood though. I’ll just let him borrow it for a while. Melissa, if you’d please?” 

Melissa’s entire arm vanished into the backpack as she felt around. “Got it!” she exclaimed, holding up a container of bleach. She placed the bleach next to Chad, and attached a sticky note with a hastily-scribbled explanation on it. 

“Mr. Drako has this period off. We got lucky,” Zack sighed. “Let’s get you two free.”

Milo and Amanda attempted to walk, only to stumble as their legs knocked against each other. They shuffled along carefully for several feet, before sending pleading looks to Melissa and Zack. “I’ll take Amanda,” Melissa rested a hand on Amanda’s shoulder, giving it a reassuring squeeze. 

Zack hesitated, his hand hovering uncertainly over Milo as he tried to figure out a good position. “I don’t bite,” Milo said. 

“You don’t, but there are plenty of things that could come out of the vents that would,” Zack finally settled for the strap of Milo’s backpack. 

The other students waved casually to them as they passed by. If anybody else thought anything was strange about this situation, they didn’t let it show. After what felt like an eternity, the quartet finally reached Mr. Drako’s classroom.

“Watch your step. It’s gonna be dark in there,” Melissa cautioned before knocking on the door. 

“Ow, just a minute!” the group flinched as they heard several loud crashes coming from the other side and a cat screeching. “Agnes, get out of the coffins!” 

“Should we ask what the coffins are for or not?” Zack asked. 

“Maybe he sleeps in them,” Milo suggested. “Or it could be for a reenactment.”

“What sort of reenactment would involve coffins?” Melissa asked.  

“Recreating the Egyptian embalming process is the only one I can think of,” Milo mused. “Like how they pulled out the brain through the nose. Or removed most of the internal organs except the heart and treated them with chemicals. And-”

“Milo, I’m just going to warn you right now that I have a delicate stomach,” Amanda gagged, feeling queasy at the thought of treating dead people. 

“Sorry,” Milo said. “But the entire process is pretty cool. And I had a distant relative affected by the Mummy’s Curse once.” 

“Really?” Zack gasped.

“Yup!” Milo nodded. “Turns out she was faking it the entire time. She got kicked out of the sideshow after that.” 

“Oh. I thought you were going to say she died from it,” Zack looked slightly disappointed, as if he had been expecting a better story.

Before Milo could reply, the door opened. Mr. Drako’s tie was askew, and he was wiping his forehead with a cloth. “What can I help you with?” he asked. 

“There was an accident with the robot from the engineering club,” Amanda explained. “Milo was trying to catch it with a lasso, but we got tangled up instead.” 

“And Chad got run over by the robot,” Melissa added. 

“Robot treads are hard to wash out,” Mr. Drako said, shaking his head in sympathy. “Well, come in! I’ll see what I can do about your predicament. Sorry about the mess, I was trying to set up the coffins for a lesson on Ancient Egypt and Agnes keeps climbing in when I’m trying to close them.” 

Mr. Drako’s classroom always had low lighting, but Amanda had never noticed how creepy it actually was until all the chairs had been replaced by coffins. A black cat with amber eyes perched on the teacher’s desk, looking extremely smug. 

“I thought Agnes was your ex-wife,” Zack ran a finger across the cover of a coffin, then carefully wiped the dust on the underside of a desk.

“She is,” Mr. Drako replied. “She named the cat. Never had that much creativity, I’m afraid.” He held up a blunt pair of safety scissors, frowning. “This is the only pair of scissors I have. Of course it’s no good.”

“Normally I’d be asking how the district was able to pay for thirty coffins and not be able to provide us with basic school supplies, but I learned from the Acadecamathalon to never ask those sorts of questions again,” Melissa said. 

“Oh, the district didn’t pay for them,” Mr. Drako said, oblivious to the alarmed faces of his students. Amanda now had a mental image of their teacher raiding an ancient castle for corpses. She immediately switched to thinking of fuzzy, playful puppies and making color-coded schedules. 

Milo was the first to recover from that piece of information. “Yeah. We’re just going to digress now. We were planning to use the mouse that lived in this classroom. And we brought cheese spray!” 

Melissa hesitated. “Maybe someone should take Agnes out of the room first. You don’t want her eating your only hope of freedom.” 

“I wouldn’t say the mouse is our only hope of freedom,” Milo shrugged. “I have tools at home for this. Or we could call your dad, Melissa. Or use one of Mrs. Underwood’s surgical instruments.” 

“I do not want any scalpels or needles near me unless I am actually in a hospital, please,” Amanda warned. 

Mr. Drako found some catnip in a drawer and tickled Agnes’ nose with it, attempting to entice her. Her tail twitched, but she didn’t budge. “Not the catnip type, huh?” Zack asked dryly. 

“Doesn’t look like it,” Mr. Drako replied. “Let’s go Ag-AH! Get her off! Get her off!” She sprang at his face when he tried to pick her up, hissing angrily. 

Melissa and Zack rushed to help dislodge Agnes, while she snapped at them irritably. Melissa retracted her hand, barely avoiding a clawed paw. After several seconds Zack managed to find a good grip on Agnes, and pulled her off. She swiped at the air and thrashed in his arms,fur bristling. 

“I’m glad Bast doesn’t act like that,” Amanda relaxed, not realizing that she had tensed up earlier. 

“You named your cat after an Egyptian goddess? That’s so cool!” Milo exclaimed. 

Amanda blushed at the compliment. “I had a mythology phase when I was little.” She watched as Mr. Drako began applying ointment to the scratches on his face. At least they weren’t that deep. 

“Guys, what do I do now?” Zack asked nervously. His hand brushed the back of Agnes’ ear who quieted instantly from her yowling. “Um, good kitty?” She started nuzzling his neck, purring. “I guess nobody knew about her secret spot.” 

“I’ll say,” Melissa snapped a photo with her phone. 

“You better not be posting that to social media,” Zack continued to scratch Agnes’ head. 

Melissa smirked. “I won’t. Kitties are popular on the net though. You’d be an insta-star for the next half hour.” 

“Zack, you’re like a cat whisperer! But getting back to business, can you distract her while Melissa uses the cheese spray and lures out the mouse?” Milo asked. 

“Okay, I’ll be in the back,” Zack retreated to a distant corner, cooing softly to Agnes the entire time. 

“I’ve never seen Agnes so complacent before. My ex-wife trained her, after all,” Mr. Drako remarked. 

Which probably explains a lot, Amanda thought. She winced as Melissa carefully sprayed the cheese smell on the rope, silently hoping she wouldn’t come away smelling like dairy. 

“We’re just using the standard cheddar one,” Milo explained, sensing her discomfort. “For rodents that are four feet and above, an aged spray works better.” Amanda pulled a face. “We’ve never been in a situation where we needed to use it though.” 

“There was that one time with the rhesus monkeys where we had to ward them off with Limburger cheese,” Melissa wrinkled her nose in disgust, spraying a trail to the mouse hole behind the teacher’s desk. “Done.” She capped the spray, placing it in Milo’s backpack. “Everyone quiet.” 

Amanda worried that Agnes was going to eat the mouse before they could get out, but so far Zack was doing a great job of blocking her view and providing a distraction. Two minutes passed, and a snout finally poked out from the hole. Finally, a gray mouse emerged, following the scent trail to Amanda and Milo. Milo snickered as the mouse climbed up his leg, nibbling at the rope around his waist. Bits of rope fell to the floor. Once Milo’s hands were free, he began to gently tug at the rope that was restraining Amanda’s hands.

She looked away. Suddenly the temperature was rising. My schedule after I get home, she thought. Research okapis for my science project, email members of the Yearbook Committee, hour break for showering and eating, find a way to stop blushing. Why can’t I stop blushing? Why does being around Milo cause everything to be so unpredictable? 

She had to admit, sometimes unpredictability wasn’t a horrible thing. Order and Chaos balanced the world. Without Order, Chaos would destroy and consume everything in its path. Without Chaos, Order would be too rigid and life would no longer have its mysterious charm. 

“Amanda, the rope’s gone,” Milo held up the now useless rope. “I’ll have to get another replacement. Thanks, mouse!” Milo waved to the rodent as it scampered back to its hole. 

She hadn’t realized she was free from the restraints. “Thanks,” she gave him a weak smile, unsure of what to say now. Breathing deeply, she continued. “After school lets out, do you want to go to the store and find some more rope together? The least I can do is pay for it after everything that happened today.” 

“You don’t need to-” Milo’s mouth gaped opened like a fish. “What about your schedule? I know you like everything precise and ordered.”

“My normal schedule for Thursday has been off since 3rd period today,” Amanda shrugged. “Give me ten to fifteen minutes and I can plan accordingly for this outing and the rest of the day. Melissa and Zack can come too if they want.”

“I’m sorry if I messed up your schedule. I didn’t-” Amanda cut him off.

“You didn’t mean to,” she smiled. “I know. And it’s alright. I need a break from all this rigidness.” 

“Well, in that case I’ll accept!” Milo perked up instantly. “You wanna go Melissa?” 

Melissa winked at Amanda. “I just remembered I procrastinated on an essay. I’ll have to finish it when I get home.” Somehow Amanda knew there was more to that excuse, though she couldn’t quite place it.

“That’s too bad,” Milo said in sympathy, turning to the corner where Zack and Agnes sat. “Zack, do you wanna come to the store with Amanda and me after school?” he shouted.

“We do have a light bulb burned out in the living room. Maybe I-” Zack’s eyes widened when he looked over to the side. Milo didn’t notice, but Amanda followed his gaze to Melissa, who was making wild gestures and shaking her head. She stopped and cleared her throat when she spotted Amanda staring at her, rubbing her arms casually. “Uh, maybe I should take the time to actually look at the box they came in even though it’s probably with a bunch of other stuff in the attic so I don’t accidentally buy the wrong model or watts! If I buy the wrong one, then we could have a power failure and the wi-fi would go out and that would be awful!” Zack gave an unconvincing smile. He let go of Agnes, who pawed at his shoes and meowed unhappily. 

“Guess it’s just you and me!” Milo turned to Amanda, grinning from ear to ear.  

Amanda nodded. “Do you want to help me make the schedule? You can help me decide on the colors.”

“Hold on a second, you two,” Melissa gave them a time-out signal. “Has anybody seen Mr. Drako? He just disappeared on us.” 

They looked around, unable to find a trace of their teacher. A snore sounded from a coffin in the front. Milo lifted the cover and peered inside. “He’s asleep,” he said. “Do you think these coffins are more comfortable than they look?” 

“Who knows?” Melissa replied. 

“Let’s go,” Amanda tugged on Milo’s arm. “Before the library gets up and walks away.” 

“Technically the library can’t get up and walk away,” Milo said as they exited the classroom. “Unless it’s secretly a robot.” 

“There’s a lot of potential outcomes if the library was secretly a robot,” Amanda said, smiling softly. 

Murphy’s Law was unpredictable. And sometimes a little chaos and the element of surprise were exactly what she needed. 

[jakebraque-blog]

I can see your house from up here.

​One tyre, one wheel bearing, one CV joint, one shattered engine cooling fan, ending in a slashed radiator core (which for unrelated reasons also copped a sheared off side mounting plate, that we then bodged up with tie wire). The bearings got an emergency patch up just North of Bramwell Station and thankfully made it to Weipa where we could sort it properly. The CV got ignored (we did most of the Overland Telegraph Track in HI-2, hoping it wouldn’t explode). The radiator got bogged up with Bars-leaks and the fan got cut back into a roughly balanced profile with a cordless angle grinder (and our fearless bush mechanic got a blob of superheated plastic melted into his foot). The tyre was only a simple pop-off and clean-out type job, just packed up with mud when we crossed Gunshot creek. Oh and there was a broken spotty we stuck back on with gaffer tape. It’s hardly worth mentioning really.

So yeah, we conquered the mighty cape. With a shitload of help from our 9 carloads of new friends. Props to them for towing us up out of Palm creek at the very start of the tele track. To Shan’s Dad for basically being our mobile daycare service whenever the camp was getting set up or packed up. To Scott for being on hand with the Bars-leaks when I looked under the car and saw green shit dripping out of our radiator at Elliot Falls. There was no way in hell we’d have made it without everyone else there.

And a trip worth doing, it certainly is. We started off with a 4 day stay at the Mount Carbine caravan park, where they’ll let you leave your van all pro bono publico and shit, so long as you stay a day before you leave to do the cape and a day when you get back (because the roads north of Cooktown will shake a caravan right out into its component molecules). Mount Carbine’s dry as some very dusty old balls, there being some kind of freaky weather thing happening there where the Great Dividing Range makes all the clouds go around it in a ten kay radius. Which is grouse if you’ve just driven up from the Whitsunday coast and haven’t packed your awning away dry in weeks due to this rainforesty bullshit everywhere. A full day of actual sunshine in their old converted mining camp will straight up scour all the tropical mould off your shit.

Once we’d spent what felt like weeks unpacking and repacking and forgetting to put the wheel bearing greaser in before we left, we parked the van up in a corner, locked and chocked her and headed for the coast. Our group was heading up toward the big rendezvous at Cooktown from down in Victoria and the first one we met was Shan’s Dad, in Wonga beach. Beers were cracked, greetings exchanged and much attention was lavished upon the grandchild while we made camp at the incredibly overpriced caravan park. Like, seriously, it’s 35 bucks for a tent site and the baby bath they provide is an open-air laundry sink with the hot tap removed and rendered unusable (unless you happen to have a Leatherman handy). I really must remember to post that shitty review on Wikicamps.

Onward from there, we hit the Bloomfield track and railed it all the way up to the Lion’s Den hotel. The Bloomfield’s a pretty way to travel, with some steep-arse hills (one of the camper trailer rigs had to get towed over one bit), but it’s not what you’d call four wheel driving. We passed a couple of backpackers doing it in a Hiace halfway up.

The Lion’s Den is one of the must-sees up around Cooktown. Huge camping area out the back with a river and all. And of course the pub its self is decorated in the timeless outback style of let-everyone-scribble-shit-on-the-walls-and-hang-kooky-stuff-in-the-rafters-if-they-feel-like.

Onward to Cooktown. Cooktown’s ok. If you like that sort of thing. Though based on our admittedly small sample size, the local butchers can’t cryovac shit to save their own arses from the horrible shark attack that would inevitably happen if you took one of their leaky-arse bags out on a boat somewhere. Thanks for all the blood in our engel fuckers. I guess the captain cook museum is pretty cool too.

Heading up from there, you have to track back inland along the road you would have taken in (if you were a huge puuuuussaaaayy!) until you get to Lakeland. From lakeland you head North to Laura and then the dust hole ridden, corrugated, vehicle-destructey fun begins as you hit the Peninsula Developmental road. Or, if you were everyone else in our group, you’d go the way that was apparently planned, up through the national forest. Though if you did that you’d miss out on seeing the Hann river roadhouse. They have a pet emu and sell beer. The emu is kind of vaguely threatening. I highly recommend the experience of watching it freak out your wife for a solid ten minutes, as it slowly stalks her around and around the car while staring at her with its big, googly eyes.

After a solid 2.5 hours of being shaken the shit out of, you’ll arrive at Musgrave. Which is also just a roadhouse/pub/campground. It was at this point that the sprout decided to flip his shit at the prospect of being strapped back into his carseat and forced us into camping for the night. A half hour later, our group arrived from the forest track, asked a bunch of questions about what drugs we were on and then headed for the actual planned stop at the Archer river roadhouse. Catching them up the next day would necessitate a 7:00am start on the road, but that doesn’t happen for a couple of paragraphs, so we can focus elsewhere for the moment.

Musgrave is actually pretty cool. I don’t think there’s such a thing as a powered site in their campground, you just pay your ten bucks or whatever and then go pitch your camp wherever you feel like out by the horseyards. They don’t give a fuck if you light a fire and at 5:30 every arvo the old bloke who runs the show chucks all of the meaty kitchen scraps into what you’ll be quite surprised to learn is a freshwater crocodile infested dam, right next to your campsite. Separated by the flimsiest of three-strand wire fences, that doesn’t even reach within oh, let’s say, freshwater crocodile height of the ground. They’re actually kind of cute. The turtles in there climb all over them to get at the scraps and they don’t even notice. Carnivorous turtles may be the biggest threat brewing in this dam.

Onward from Musgrave (after packing up your tent at sparrowfart) and the road stretches a good 3 hours of travel up to Archer river. This is the really shitty section. Some bits are good but as a rule, if you don’t keep your speed above 80 or so, the corrugations will strike down upon every fibre of your vehicle with great vengeance and furious anger instead of merely being very unpleasant. The regular bitumen overtaking sections are either (and depending on your mood at the time) oases in the desert of cartilage ablating vibrations that wrack your very skeleton, or cruelly placed pauses in your torment that serve to heighten you senses for the redoubled agony to follow. Much like how the Spanish Inquisition would have a breather mid-flogging to let their victims recuperate a bit and maybe tentatively stick their head back out of their power-animal cave for a sec, before starting up with the cat o'nine tails again. This is around about where the radiator mount broke off. I cannot stress enough how much you shouldn’t bring your Festiva up this road.

Next up was Bramwell Station. The northernmost cattle station in all of Australia. They have about 14 acres of campground, a big section you can store caravans and campers on (you know, so you can replace their entirely sheared off spring packs on account of you bringing them up that "road", you doofus) and of course, a pub. The promoter of the whole deal does a big spiel about the station and the land’s history every evening and the place is always jam packed with your fellow nomads and suchlike. Top joint. The lady who owns the station also has the roadhouse at the start of the tele track and the earthmoving company that handles the constant, uphill battle of keeping the road up to Bamaga in technically passable condition. Considering how it’s under water for a big chunk of the year, I’d say they’re doing alright.

So as I said just before (unless that bit got edited out), Brawell Junction roadhouse is where the fabled Overland Telegraph Track begins. A short, meandering few minutes up, you’ll run into the first of the flaming hoops you’ve gotta jump through to make it onto the track. Of the 40 odd people we saw come in for a look at the crossing, about 10 or 15 just poked their heads in, said "nooooope" and then fucked off to the easy road up. And I can’t say I blame them. We took the chicken track and still had to get snatched out up the exit ramp. If you do it exactly right you’ll still come within an inch of stoving in your driver’s side quarter panel. Try to be a hero and you’ll put a spa sized dent in your car.

So anyway, we did that. Then came the long rolling goat track that switched between scrub and grass, rocks and and forest. You don’t go five minutes without some kind of drastic scenery alteration. Shit’s beautiful up there.

All told, to do the tele track properly you have to tackle about 20 crossings, one or two of which are real drowners. People talk in hushed tones of Nolan’s brook and Gunshot creek. As well they bloody should. Nolan’s is deep enough to have a stand up bath in and Gunshot owns its hardcore reputation all the way. If I was to recount the whole adventure front to back, you’d be bored shitless and I’d slag a bundle of neurons trying to come up with a twentieth synonym for shovelling rocks into a mudhole.

The point is we made it. 4 days later, having camped at Dulhunty, Cockatoo creek, Nolan’s brook and finally making it to the Jardine river and over to Punsand bay. We spent the next few days wandering around, photographing things and such, I hiked to the tip with a grizzly baby on my back and all of our clean washing got rained on for what felt like a week.

We snagged a new radiator for our bus in Bamaga. At a little joint called Cape York Spares and Repairs, just across from the BP. Do not go to this place if you can avoid it. There are other options nearby.

See it’s like this. Our radiator was well shagged at this point. The fan had basically turned into a claymore mine back up the track and the corrugations had sheared off some important bits as well. It looked like one of those mangled shiny things that fall off Optimus Prime when he gets a missile up the robo-colon in act three.

We wound up buggered for a fan but did happen to get sold a brand new OEX radiator that this, ahem, "gentleman" had sitting under one of the giant piles of crap in his rat’s nest of a workshop. He opened the unstapled flap on one end while explaining how it got ordered in for some job or other and then never used. One side of the box had a little hole in it, about the profile of a pack of cards. I took a peep inside, saw a perfectly serviceable core and chalked it up to some bump or other on the transport truck, no big deal. Off we went with our emergency radiator packed carefully onboard. Did you see the foreshadowing? I foreshadowed there. It was all foreshadowey and shit.

Onward to Weipa. You’d think it was shitty except for how it’s kind of ok. Go do the sunset tour. It’s amazing to see saltwater crocodiles all like close by but yet somehow not eating you, even though the guardrail on the boat is super low. And they disappear in two inch deep water, it’s fucked. Good place to buy some new wheel bearings, is Weipa.

Back down to Musgrave, we got to introduce our new friends to the magic of watching some guy in a hat feed very small crocodiles, before parting ways the next day. They went off toward Karumba and we bailed back toward Mt Carbine. Spent a night in Lakeland on the way.

Then the rest and refit. The fan we bought in Weipa turned out to be wrong. Gulf Parts and Spares were totally cool about it. It’s on its way back up for a refund as we speak. It’s the point where our new radiator came out of the box that the fuckery begins.

See it came out with a hole in it. In a spot that lined up quite well with the hole in the box, just turned over on the other side. Some surprise was expressed. A phone call was made. And in two shakes of a bullshit spackled cordless phone, we were informed that absolutely everybody in the workshop remembered how that specific box they dug out from under one of their big heaps of shit along one wall most definitely had no damage when they all absolutely saw it in the workshop. Which wasn’t suspicious as buggery in the slightest.

Now I’m inclined to believe the young parts guy (ie. the poor fucker who’s been left to absorb our hatred since his gutless maggot of a boss started refusing to take our calls, oh look, here’s his number, please don’t, you know, do anything immature with it). Adam’s obviously never laid a spanner on anything more complicated that the axle adjusters of his dirtbike. He would have paid attention to the fiftieth box of fourby-related shit to frieght in on a Tuesday morning like I would have paid attention to something (insert vapid celebrity) said in (seriously, they still print Woman’s Day Magazine? That’s kind of impressive. Wow). But when you’ve got a brand new, excessively ventilated radiator to return and a miserable pack of fucknuckles who say you broke it, not them, "nuh uh, I know are so what am I?" there’s only so much understanding you can field.

Collecting the replacement radiator took a 200km round trip down to Atherton (where the owner of the Natrad both gave us a discount on hearing our story and also insisted on taking the new unit out of the box to show John and I) and ate up a whole day, plus a big chunk of grandkid time for Poppy, who was at this point the only one with a working car. We booked an extra day at Mount Carbine to fit all the repairs in and thankfully got the hot tip about the pies at Mt Carbine servo. Homemade awesomeness. Big ups to Nikki and Darryl for putting us onto that. Plus giving up the office phone and summoning the infernal and ancient magics of the yellow pages tome to guide our radiator related quest (mobile coverage is not so much with the existing there, it’s kind of one of the good points). Hail Mount Carbine Caravan Park! Hail!

So where does this epically disjointed tale leave us now? Uh, Mount Isa actually. Look it’s taken like a week to write this, I left out a bunch of stuff, there’s obviously been about eight different mindsets at work etcetera. Kind of not looking forward to the editing process really.

We’re heading Darwinward, to find the holy grail of places we might like to settle down in. Everyone I know who moves there never comes back. I can practically hear the Barra calling.

Some other things’ve also happened since then but it turns out that travel blogging as a parent is like that old Greek thought experiment where the arrow almost hits the tortoise, but then the tortoise moves a bit but then the arrow also catches up a bit but then the tortoise moves a little bit more but then the arrow also moves a bit more and oh my god I’m so tired, seriously how how are my lungs and stuff still working shdhfhufudhfhfoiwgsdjdnf

[middleeastcoastnonsense]

Peanuts & Cracker Jack

Should you ever find yourself in the fourth dimension and a broad asks you to ask her out to a Mariners game, you should probably do it. The Mariners are a baseball team that plays in Seattle. I don't assume everyone knows sports, for all I know, you searched for a story about bats. Now you're salty because that is the only time that I will mention the animal. The majority of this story focuses on a kids game played while watching a kids game. Here's a little boring background: business takes me to sports towns every so often for small talk and bullshit. These trips can be a week or two at a time and sometimes I know people. This was one of those cases. As opening Chess moves go, I didn't see it coming. A goodbye after a casual lunch turned into, "ask me to see a ballgame this weekend, if you're still in town?" "Do you want to see a game?" My question was more out of curiosity than an open invitation. "Yeah! In two days Seattle plays Oakland. Let's go that evening." "Alright." And that was that. I didn't expect her as an engineer to be so excitable about baseball. When it comes to people's careers, I tend to think in stereotypes. Like, engineers get psyched about dams, stockers enjoy stacking, etc. I let her know the next afternoon that I had the tickets. "Nothing special," I said while describing the location. We'd be down the third base line in the second deck, fairly close to third. "I'm not far from the park, want to meet at the front gate?" She agreed. Not long after the call I remembered an old snapback hat I brought on my trip. It was from when I was a kid and Ken Griffey Jr got me interested in the sport. I wore it around backwards for years, playing in it. It was stained with fun memories and worn by the weather, but mostly sweat and hat cleaner. I was going to use it as a prop during a meeting, but the thought of cheapening it didn't sit right. I met her outside the ballpark wearing my ill fitting, sweat and dirt-stained cap. Once she could establish a line of sight, her face continued to light up as she could recognize the state of what rested on my head. "That thing!" She couldn't help but point, no matter how impolite it may have looked, she wanted it. "It's gross!! Please let me have it!!" Before even finishing the command disguised as a request, she had reached to remove it and adjusted the size. Her behavior didn't surprise me, she has always been a bit of an oddball but what came next at the ticket office was new. "Thank you, sir. Here are your tickets, you were upgraded to new seats. The section can be found on the top right. Enjoy the game!" "I've only been here twice," I questioned. "Are you sure this-?" "What are you doing!?" I felt a pinching tug on my arm. "This is awesome, lets go!" It was awesome. About ten rows or so away from the center of the third base line, we were lined up with every pitch. I could basically smell the grass, which unsurprisingly in this part of the country, is particularly gorgeous. Maybe it was just the dimming daylight of the evening, but there seemed to be a touch of cerulean in the brilliance of the emerald field. I don't know how or what strings she pulled to manage this switcheroo, but I doubt it was a reward associated with my card, and no one at the office knew when or if I'd step out on my trip between trips. The game was basically over after 4 innings. There were no extra innings, we got no foul balls, but we ate oversized food and chuckled like children at obnoxious quips for not long enough. "We gotta do this again, sometime!" She shouted from her car window after dropping me at my hotel. Her windows were rolled up, and she was still clearly buzzed on the festivities of the night. Her ears were probably buzzing, too. After coming down from the high a few days later, I remembered she didn't give back my damn hat. "Hey," I called sheepishly. "Can I get my hat back? I'm leaving in a few hours." "Nope. Catch up next time you're in town, yeah? Byyee!" The words practically machine-gunned out of her mouth. *Click*