The week before last, I changed the cylinder head gasket on it. It's big straight six and its quite old. They call it a Ford Fairlane NA. The cam chain tensioning device is quite simple and reliable, but somehow I'd managed to crush it when I put it back before, and since it was running rough when I'd started it up, I was hoping that was the reason. However, it wasn't it. I wondered if it had jumped a tooth whilst I'd run it without the tensioner working properly (although unlikely)... and tried a series of different positions for the chain....as well as cleaning all the ignition and injection systems before running out of light at the end of the day. Its frustrating when you draw a blank in anything, but especially when your knuckles are damaged from sharp bits of car that they've been rubbing against because the Ford designers, in their infinite wisdom decided to put the distributor so far under the inlet manifold that you need to rip your fingers just to release the clips. Getting the high tension lead on and off the coil is a twenty minute job too as it's buried against the block under a maze of injector bars and manifolds with no room even for a screwdriver to act as a lever.
Whilst I was doing all this, Daile and Sandra were putting some last touches to the rental house, which has been advertised for a couple of weeks, but without any interest so far. We've put it with an estate agent, in the hope that things may get moving. The kids were hanging out with the girls next door in the play room, and they all managed to trash the place, as they always do when they're all together.
I would have liked to carry on with the car today cos I don't like to be beaten, but I'd been invited by the lads at work to go paint balling, and it was an early start in the country about an hour north of here. I borrowed Wayne's sat nav and set off. It was a beautiful morning, clear blue skies and a remnant of mist over the forests.
When I got there, down a long muddy dirt track (great...made me look forward to my trip with Molly to Frazer), most of the other lads were already there and waiting. We made our way to the kiosk windows through which you register and are supplied with overalls, and paint balls (in a pouch) The standard issue is 200 balls. I got mine and made my way to the covered tables where we were putting our kit on.
I quickly realised that most people had considerably more balls than me! I've always suspected this, but never-the-less, it was a bit of a worry under the circumstances so I went back to the queue and got another couple of hundred. You're issued with a complete face mask and not allowed to remove it until you get back to the 'safe' area. This is no joke, these things can really hurt if you cop one at close range...
The gun is basically a hopper and high pressure canister which doubles as a butt. The cannister is at 3000 psi, and the paint balls are about 20mm diameter. You can imagine that they come out with some force .. and as fast as you can pull the trigger.
What you do is divvy up into two teams...in our case of about 50 men each. The teams are set objectives akin to the sort of thing you'd expect to find in combat... like taking a well defended flag or some such. There's cover for you to creep up, but there's a lot of guns looking for you. If you do anything 'heroic' you get absolutely blathered. I tried to be heroic for a couple of games...and then got a whole lot more sneaky.
This is me after the first couple of games.
being a sniper....
This is Jamal, in the background is Andrew.
Ryan, Matt behind...
When you cop one, it can leave a bruise.... I'm currently covered in welts.
This is Rohan. I like this man. Bit pedantic, but really smart.
All these lads work at Moreton Hire bar the lad on the extreme left.
and then the nice dirt track again....
...and some of the evidence. I've got them all down my sides, my back, my legs...
Daile and the girls went to a kids theatre thing on the South Bank in central Brisbane. They
said it was really good. Its about dinosaurs. Here's a link so you can see the idea;
http://www.qtix.com.au/movies/Gondwana/index.htm
Phoebe got up on stage and did some dancing at the dance workshop, and there were making and music workshops too. Then they went off to the art gallery;
http://www.qag.qld.gov.au/kids/activities/sunday_at_the_gallery
and as if that wasn't enough... they went to the state library for;.. 'deadly stories' from our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities in Queensland. Come and join in the circle, bring some snacks, sit back and let yourself get swept away into the Dreamtime! Needless to say, they' re knackered.
I went and did some fence posts this arvo as planned, albeit later than expected.
Josh made contact on Friday night to say that we was about to go to India that night. Earlier in the week, we'd had a skype 'chat' (i.e. the typed conversation) in which he described Bali. He'd decided that he did have enough money to detour via Bali, and apparently it was amazing! He's going well, and is expecting to be INJA for about 3 weeks. I confess that I'm impressed that he's made it thus far, and that I'd assumed that he'd get home sick like I did at that age. He continues to surprise me.
Not a bad weekend all in.
BTW all, I'm always interested to hear from you... I know that I don't e-mail as much as I ought to do, but I sort of spend myself here if you know what I mean, and it means that the updates can feel a bit one way for me. Do please mail me when you read this to let me know what you're up to.
:-)
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