Electric Storm

Sometimes I love the awesome power of nature. This truly amazing electric storm passed through Cabarita last night. Natures fireworks in full glory. It was some of the most spectacular lightning I have ever seen. Flashes every few seconds, some forks filling my view of the sky and many seemed to be earthing themselves. Again I was too late to get out there with my camera and actually a bit apprehensive to go up on the headland for fear of being fried. It was seriously that full on. This photo (a 10 second time exposure) was taken in the 5-10 minutes I had before I got hammered by violent wind then rain and mini hail stones. Clearly armageddon was upon us. Shame I couldn't capture the really good forked spider web strikes on camera. Incredibly the whole storm blew by and had gone past us up the coast in about half an hour leaving relative calm and nearly clear sky. Cool.

Wet and dry seat

Tia's stable enough to use her bath seat now. She's enjoying bath time sitting up.

Face plant

Richy dropped by Saturday, no surf, couldn't find a tennis court to play on, so we hit the skate ramp. I lasted about 3 turns before landing on my head. No big deal for a guy like myself with no brains. 3 stitches should at least keep me from bleeding to death.

Ayyyy.

Tia looks pretty cool in her new shades.

Yeah. Thumbs up Yosh.

Koichi's Birthday

Food, beer, table tennis championships and more bouncing babies than you can giggle at all at once. Happy 32 million Koich.

Zoe & Teresa

It was good to see Zoe and Teresa Miller down here. Thanks for the splaydes. See you again soon.

Tia

Learning and growing and playing and growing and...

Birthday Feast

Ayako's birthday Nov 3. Fresh salmon sashimi and tiger prawns. Yumbo!

DC vs Distillation

After including some statistics for jetboats in the previous post it got me to thinking. I'm not really a motor sports person but somehow have been involved in witnessing a fair bit of motor sport recently - stay with me on this one - I conclude, the fact that a jetboat uses 20 litres of fuel in 50 seconds is impressive - sort of, fun - yes. But I think it is rude to the person who spends their money on a hybrid technology motor car for example (to hopefully do something about our suffocating planet), and insulting to the children of the world (or will be by next generation). Have they (the petrol heads) read the news. If that's too convoluted maybe this isn't, read the Stern review summary. Could it be really excessive combustion engines aren't that cutting edge and cool any more?

Right, before you shout "killjoy!", you might want to see this first. If you haven't heard of associations like NEDRA - click here. Imagine how cool it'd be with Indy cars, F1 and jetboats powered by volts instead of burning fuel. They'd be relatively silent and just as fast within a couple of years of manufacturers innovation. Bring it on... remembering consideration to correct battery recycling and renewable electricity production.



In 1982 20 litres in 50 seconds was impressive. I think post year 2000, 336 volts, "Inpira" 12V batteries, Zilla 420 kW controller, is much more impressive. It's all about Amp's baby.

See an Electric Wrightspeed X1 beat a Ferrari, its modified from an Ariel Atom - Top Gear TV test the Ariel Atom

Inland Jetboat Surprise

We went for a nice impromptu little Sunday drive today, to check the surf conditions mostly, down at Hasting Point. On the way back, only a couple of minutes from home, I drove up a rural street to show Ayako where I had explored a few days earlier. It leads off past the local pony club around the back of the hill at Cabarita. There are some really nice properties with horses and cows and open fields, it feels like real deal farm country and very pretty. I bought a big bag of bananas for $2 at an honesty system roadside stall here the other day.
This time just before the bananas we noticed a small helicopter flying low and a bunch of cars parked up a dirt track. Curiosty taking over I drove up the track slowly, with beer and hot chips vendor vans coming into view. This must be a rodeo or a boxcar speedway or something we thought. To our laughing surprise we saw a hill of revheads and a muddy little swamp racecourse at its base. Crikey! Its a bloody jetboat track. Well this was unexpected to say the least. About 5km inland next to a sugar cane field there was this Australian Superboat Championships taking place. We turned up for the finals. Brilliant. I didn't bring my camera, oh well (photos are from the official website). This apparently is one of the premier circuits in the country. It was quite low key with no big signs or fanfare for such a serious event.

"Likened to rally driving on water, the boats can accelerate from 0 to 160km’s in under two seconds while completing 180 degree corners pulling 5-6 G’s similar to those found in a F-111 fighter jet. It is a visual spectacular unseen in any other form of motor sport" to quote www.v8superboats.com.au
"Producing in excess of 900 horsepower. V8 Superboat engines use methanol fuel and have an incredible fuel-burn rate of 20 litres per average run lasting around 50 seconds."

So that was it. 20 minutes or so later we were off continuing our nice little drive in the country, having watched about 5-6 runs and the Australian champ be crowned. So much for pony clubs.