A Family Day Out

Lots of short rides this last week, a few rides up to the water tower in cabba on the youcan, waddle up to Cabba Cycles along the back track, a few dawdles down the track taking the dogs for a run. A trip to do some fishing down the creek, and one loop on the cypress etc

But today didn't involve riding. I took the family, including grubs boyfriend, to Chowan waterhole for a bit of a swim but there was someone there meditating, camping by the look of it, (who didn't even bother doing anything other than turning their head slightly to acknowledge our presence, quite creepy and eerie) so we went off to Hell Holes. The walk down along Middle Ridge Road was pleasant and the return walk took only 3/4 of an hour!

We made it the end without too much difficulty. There we had our lunch and a swim even though there was only a trickle in the creek. The shrubs along the banks are showing a lot of drought stress, if they don't get a few downpours soon they will mostly be dead! Hope a fire doesn't get started there! At 3:30 we began the walk back to the car.

We returned via the old Uncle Toms Pies servo on a now freeway bypassed section of the Pacific Highway consuming a milkshake and quite a lousy pie, wont be doing that again.

A pleasant day all up.

Todays eXtra

Even with today's dust, west wind and lack of humidity there was still some idiots about. Today was a total fire ban in the area with only 25% humidity and high westerly winds at around school's out time this afternoon there was a fire started on the corner of Round Mountain Road and Coast Road in the Cudgera Nature Reserve.... luckily the firees were able to contain it responding with three engines very quickly. (Joy-ann rang me at work in Tweed to let me know).

What else will we see happen over the current school holiday period? Queenslanders, not that I blame them, are already tented up at Hastings Point and there is only another week and a half to go until the N.S.W ones begin!

"Idle hands are the devils workshop"

Chook Pen Reno

Not sure if there is any rally connection but this morning there was a pretty serious accident on Round Mountain Road. Four ambulances and a rescue vehicle raced past west wards. Past the freeway overpass. That's about all I know! but why today? then again why not? Anyway, I'm glad I was caught up with finishing the chook pen renovation, even though it's dad's day. Replacing the white ant/termite eaten plates and trimming the vertical lapped cladding boards to get them out of the scratched up litter. Since the heavy rains earlier this year seems to activated their climbing behaviour. Also re-wove any holes in the netting from falling limbs from last years storms. Only need to repair the acid soil corroded wall netting at ground level in a couple of places and the chooks (day old chicks which are 4 weeks old now)  might just last long enough to lay some "goggies"

Save Hasting Point -Battle Win

The locals have had a breakthrough! The Tweed Shire Council has voted to create/implement a Development Control Plan (DCP), see the Echo Story, the developers and their council sympathisers were out voted by a slim 4-3 margin.

This may not be the end of the war on every natural and cultural environment destructive development in the area but at least it is a small battle victory.  The general idea that more of anything is better than less is something that I disagree with.

I feel a rant coming on....

The idea of sustainability was summed up in the late 70's when I was undertaking a Business Degree at Ku-ring-gai CAE and the theory of the Steady Sate Economy was presented to me! Ah the light was blinding... but the greed is good promoted to the community during the next 30+ years has lead to the economic crisis we find ourselves as a community fast required to deal with. Many of the precepts of a Growth Economy can easily switch to become that of a Shrinking Economy. The magical multipliers work geometrically just as well in both directions!

Both the Federal and State Parliaments are proving themselves incapable of consensual action, even though the economy ship is on the verge of sinking the powers to be are deciding what colour to paint the frigging lifeboats, even though there is no rescue ship close by to save those that can fit in the limited capacity lifeboats.

Remind you of a story you may have heard? Does the Sinking of the White Star Line's Titanic come to mind, not enough lifeboats, a ship said to be unsinkable, musicians playing to placate the passengers while the ship goes down, water to cold to survive in for long, passengers deciding when is the right time to jump ship, passengers thinking the crew will save them they can sit back and be told what to do, not enough life jackets for those that can't fit into the lifeboats, no practice drills in case of emergency, etc... the list of similarities between the economy and the Titanic sinking goes on, definitely neither are or were a boy scout

... ah that's better

Tanked

Last 2 days I have been trying to get the plumbing done on the old 1000 gallon water tank. But as an amature the swearing has been the most successful part of the impression! What a bitch to get the bung out until i realised I needed to get at the nut on the inside of the tank! and that also meant having another arm about 15 feet long with a strong hand on the end!

So the solution was? Maneuver the tank, after emptying it, to a location I could ti it on it's side rotate it until the large Inlet hole was close enough to the ground wiggle inside after propping a pair of Stiltons to the outside nut/bolt securely so that they wouldn't fall off! 

After squeezing myself inside ( with the sides chocked to stop me becoming part of a mixing machine) I stood over the outlet nut and gave a gentle push on the second pair of Stiltsons I had with me, torch secured into my mouth. No worries the nut rotated smooth as though it was brand new, better even! 

Next task is to try to quickly find a 1¼ inch inlet bung supplier! Hopefully before it rains again!

Also been mucking around with a couple of scripts at night ie the Ride Stats Plugin and the Google Feed Reader Linking Widgit.... both were ok after a bit of tweaking of code to work better in Wordpress 2.6.x

Test Wordpress Upgrade

Just spent the last couple of hours planning and implimenting an upgrade of this blogging software scripts. Most things went OK but I have lost all my previous categories and gained something called tags... I will need to research the modifications....

Otherwise all seems to have gone ok! (x-fingers)

Well the only error I found was the htaccess file was not transfered/created so i needed to manually re-create one to allow the permalinks option of removing the

index.php/

from the URL string