For the second weekend in a row I was in NSW, this time for the WRC Rally Australia. And to be honest, the whole thing was massively underwhelming. I'd never been to a rally event before, certainly not a WRC one, and it might have been partly my fault for watching Group B videos, but I was really expecting to actually see some rally cars.

In reality, they only had 5 or so events with spectator areas (out of something like 35 stages), and those were mostly so far from the action, and behind barricades and temporary fences, that you could barely identify who's car it was let alone cop a Citroen in the face, Group B style.

The only people to get a decent view, besides the officials, were the farmers who setup deckchairs or a couch by their front gate, or in a paddock. They also wouldn't have gotten hassled for drinking beers. Honestly, drinking and motorsport have been going hand in hand since the very start, you nancys.

Really the only time you could see a WRC car up close was during the Super Special Stages through the centre of Murwillumbah. Other than that the best view was on the road sections between stages where they'd stop for roadside repairs or join the queue of traffic to the next stage.

And generally that was the most interesting part of the whole rally from a spectator point of view. Driving between stages, I mean. A gravel road was pretty much an excuse for to make up for the lack of action we'd seen from the rally, with a bit of handbrake entry to a corner. Or mid corner. Or on a straight. Or paddock. Whatever, its always a laugh.

The other thing that kept us amused on the long drives between stages were the anti-rally protesters. I couldn't quite get the gist of what they were protesting, presumably something about the risks to people, wildlife and global warming as a result of cars driving very fast on dirt roads. The Nimbin-based protesters were seemingly unaware of the irony of them driving hundreds of kilometres from their communes, starting fires, spraying painting 30 kilometres of Kyogle Rd with slogans "No Rally", and doing the same to signs, trees and (probably) animals. They also put boulders on the road, threw rocks at cars and apparently tried rolling roadblocks. We never saw it, in fact the hippies we saw looked fairly docile, probably because it was after bong o'clock.

And regarding the nature of the protests, I'd like to claim the moral high ground, but considering the fun I had hurling insults from the car at the "green-loving folk", it might be overstepping it a bit. That said, if the rally was anti-democratic (which is clearly true, because nobody would have voted for the frenchy Loeb), than the drive-by abuse was just part of the democratic process they were trying to establish. Free speech and all that, right?

Besides, the majority of the environmental damage done during the weekend wasn't caused by the rally cars. It was, in fact, caused by us on our way to the local pub from the farm house we were staying at. You see, there was a long and windy road from the farm that looped around the properties in the area and eventually to center town with the pub, or there was a few kilometres of scrub and a few cows if you took a more direct route. The drive was a fair bit slower, and we had to stop a few times to drag trees out of the way, or wait for animals to move. The beers however, were more than worth the effort. It was a typical country pub scene, a lonely drunk bloke at the bar slurred a question in our direction as we entered. I'm not sure what the question was, but if it had been "what time is it?", the answer would have been "about 10:30 in the morning". Yeah.

Not so in with the country pub feel were the fifteen or so hot (and surprisingly sophisticated) girls in black dresses complete with hats and fascinators who walked in 5 minutes later. Though, not surprisingly, they weren't dressed like that for the pub. The town, I should point out, I can't even remember, let alone spell. The fact that there was route for drunks to drive home without driving on gazetted roads I think is brilliant.

Other than the awesome pub, I came home a bit disappointed. I wanted to see more WRC action, but I think I would have enjoyed seeing more of the classics. The Mk1 Ford Escorts, XT Falcons and so forth might not have been the fastest, but they were easily the coolest, though I have no idea why someone would want to drive them at speed on gravel unless they had a death wish. Unfortunately, we had spent too much time at the said pub to see them on the gravel stages (they reversed the order). If I go next time, I'm bringing a couch and a TV and watching from some paddock (near a pub). And I'll use a Koala as a foot stool.

UPDATE:
Apparently my sister was one of the dirty hippies protesting the rally. I think I'll disown her.

I didn't bother with the Skyline all week. I hate having ghettoed fingers at work, and the particular type of grease that seems to cover the engine bay of the car is particularly persistent. It's also as I'm mindful of my neighbours, not that the sound of it running might upset them or anything. Mostly its that they might take it as an opportunity to strike up a conversation.

When Friday rolled around I pulled the battery off the charger, hooked up the terminals, topped up fluids and turned the key. It came to life in that symphony of tappets that tells the story of a car that's not been started in a month. After about 5 seconds there was a crack and the sound of grinding.

I figured the worst, but as it turns out all that had happened was that I had forgotten to put the nuts back on after I removed the engine fan which meant that the fan belt pulley (which also drives the alternator) had come off and had dragged on the water pump housing for a bit. Whoops.

With the hard work done, I went off and had a well deserved Friday afternoon beer.

The next morning I got a sms from Thompson who was attempting to replace his exhaust manifold gasket. He mentioned free beers, and in the spirit of sharing his beers I headed over. As it turns out Nissan had sold him the wrong studs, they looked like the outer studs in the manifold (to hold the turbo on) rather than the head studs. As he worked and I drank, we discussed what we thought of Internet People the first time we met them. The whole thing seemed to boil down to "I thought he was a knob online, then I met him in Real Life and he was an alright bloke, then I got to know him and it turns out he is a knob."

Eventually Thompson managed to get his turbo and exhaust manifold off (in 7 less blog posts than Matty D to boot), but it wasn't all smooth sailing. Half of the head studs were loose, and when they came out so did half the thread. Some had been cross-threaded, or possibly they were the wrong thread pitch. Either way, it wasn't going to be a fun job to fix. I suggested he tap out an oversized thread and use bigger studs, although heli-coils might do the job. I've never used them myself, though, I've seen them used for spark plug threads before on old engines with softened alloy heads. A bigger stud would reduce the chance of them snapping in the future, maybe. I don't know. Whoever reinstalled the head previously did a shitty job of it that's for sure. Forget mechanics, I'd rather blame myself for dodgy work than pay someone to do it. With that and with Thompson in tears at the thought of having to spend the next week or two riding a bus, I went home.

The next day I reattached the water pump pulley, and was going to take the car out of the garage for a few photos. Annoying the clutch pedal went to the floor, but it does that just about every time I don't drive it for more than a couple of weeks. It came good after a few pumps, but there's no fluid being lost anywhere, so its a mystery to me why its doing it. Another problem was that in the process of removing the A/C radiator I had to disconnect a whole bunch of lines. I figured they were all related to the A/C, but stupidly one was the part of the power-steering. So when I started the car it shot ATF across the garage in a comical spasmodic ejection. It made such a mess. As it turns out, I disconnected two lines that form a pointless loop in the power-steering system. Well I say pointless, I presume its supposed to be a simple heat exchanger, but it doesn't look like it'd do much. I probably should have paid a touch more attention when I was ripping things out.

I ended up throwing on a piece of clear PVC pipe I had laying around. It actually looked kinda cool with the oil flowing through it, but I'm pretty sure would fail under any kind of pressure. I'm thinking I'll hook up one of those transmission coolers instead, as I think the old man has one laying around somewhere. It'll serve no purpose at all, but it'll look like it does and radiators do serve a as a handy crumple zone.

I'm really not a fan of euphemisms. I mean hundreds of different names for penis are all well and good, and generally hilarious. That's just being inventive. It's the way people attempt to soften the blow or make people feel better about themselves in that bullshit PC way. That's what shits me to tears.

"Differently-abled" for instance. Differently how? I can walk, they can't. It's not different, its clearly dis. It's a lack of. It's not like I'm not some how disabled from their perspective. They haven't traded in their spinal column for some physical bonus that I don't have. They can't move objects with their minds, or fly, or even see through walls. This isn't the movies, this is real life, and its not fair. Being wheel chair bound has given them no supernatural abilities at all (apologises to Steven Hawking).

In fact, in reality they're just being an inconvenience to the rest of us. Besides getting the best car parks (and those parks always being empty - except when I'm in them), they've also some how managed to get every building built to suit themselves. We wouldn't want them to have to stretch slightly to turn on a light, no, definitely not. So now any new office block, home or whatever that's built now has every door handle, light switch, hell even toilet seat low enough so that someone in a wheel chair can use them effortlessly. That annoying half-crouch you have to do to open a door? Nope, the builder wasn't drunk or freakishly short, its built that way so someone in a wheel chair is not inconvenienced by it. (This is actually true, though the builder might also have been drunk or freakishly short.)

So in summary, the only physical advantage a disabled person (sorry, differently-abled person) has is that shit has been built for them. So next time someone falls out of a wheel chair and you are the only one around, on't help them, because that'd be a real inconvenience for you.

Another term that really annoys me is "partner". It's annoying because its deliberately ambiguous. It could mean wife, husband, boyfriend, girlfriend, fiancee, your business partner or hell even the person you copy labs notes for in Clinical Physiology pracs (although secretly want to bone). The thing is, whenever someone I've just met mentions "my partner" without further clarification, I always, at least initially, think they mean in the gay way. The very second they say the word, my mind goes "Ohhh....", not that I'm prejudiced or anything, but it's generally not what they meant. So, why is the word used all the time? I get that spouse and fiancee are stupid, and presumably and not-inconsequentially French, words. I wouldn't use them either, but what is so bad with wife or girlfriend or whatever. If they aren't gay, then I can only presume they are trying to avoid terms which might offend people who can't as yet get married. If they are gay then I'm probably going to work it out when they eventually mention their partner's name, unless of course its Chris, and then I'm going to be left to make a very risky judgement call based on the length of their hair and/or the angle of their wrists. And likely, I'll be very wrong.

On the subject of politically incorrect, onto cars with a ridiculous carbon-footprint.

I ordered an eBay radiator for the Skyline during the week, and it arrived on Friday, although with some confusion, as it went to my parents place. Removing the old radiator was actually more annoying than I thought it would be. On the engine side the radiator was rather convex, which meant it fouled on the engine fan, the engine fan also fouled on the radiator shroud, and the radiator shroud fouled on both and everything else in the engine bay. The other problem was that on the other side the A/C radiator was also bent out of shape. In fact was the thing that copped the majority of the impact of the IC piping. I managed to get the radiator shroud off in one piece, and the engine fan was easy enough to get clear. The radiator followed and actually looked surprisingly intact, except for the shape. In fact the only point of failure I could find was the stud part on the bottom end tank which copped the impact. Presumably all the coolant poured out from that point.

The next step was to get remove the A/C radiator. Suprisingly, despite coping a harder hit on the night of the drift practise than even Boxhead did, it still held gas. Obviously the radiator was ruined, and I wasn't going to replace it, but this meant I had to vent the A/C gas. I didn't bother to check what gas it was, so I'm not sure if it was a CFC or what, but regardless its in the atmosphere now. Sorry, Greenpeace. Again.

I threw the new radiator in, which fit as well as you'd expect it to having being welded by Chinese who've never even seen an R32. As I thought the radiator cross member wasn't noticeably bent (this was the first time I'd looked at it since I parked it weeks ago), though the intercooler pipes weren't so lucky.

Next up I had to fit a fan of some sort, the original engine fan was minced on one of the blades, but it was never going to fit with the thicker radiator anyway. I already had a thermofan knocking about, so I attached it to the original radiator shroud and gave it a test fit. The shroud itself fouled on everything it could and I had to hack away the entire section near the power-steering pumps and lines. After that it fitted ok, although clearances are incredibly tight.

A few fiddly things remained, the top radiator hose was too long for the wider radiator, so that had to be cut down to fit. I also needed to grind down the coolant drain plug as it was right up against the power-steering lines. Other, than that it was just a matter of filling the car with fluid and turning the key.

Only problem was the battery was dead flat, naturally.

I woke Sunday morning sore all over.

I probably would have woken up sore on Saturday morning, had I actually woken up sober, or in the morning. I think I woke up in much the same state as I went to sleep, except that it was daylight. Searing daylight. My memory of the night before is ragged and largely discontinuous. Oh hold on... am I thinking of the current state of the hedges outside the Brisbane Convention Centre?

It started all started at the Belgium Beer Cafe. The concept of which seems to be that the only thing larger than the glass the beer comes in is the hole the very same purchase made in your funds for the evening. The ATM there even gets in on the fun by treating the number you enter as your withdrawal amount as more of a guideline than an actual command.

After each drinking a share of beers that taste like things other than beers, we headed to a Korean restaurant and placed an order for a most unusual of the dishes on the menu: chicken, right, but get this, it had been deep fried. Pretty out there dish, to be honest. I mean, who comes up with that shit?

Which the wacky Asian cuisine out of the way, we headed adjacent to the empty bar, proceeded to get a round of drinks. Sometime later the bartender arrived. With the drinks flowing freely (and freely) and Matt having arrived, it got a lot more rowdy. Whatever happened beyond this point is recalled only on what was photographed and recorded on mobile phones, and on CCTV. Tales were told of cars, and of trips to the States and Japan, and a few light-hearted, if terribly slurred, insults were thrown at people not present, and more than a few at those who were present or at the bar (within earshot).

At some point the decision was made to leave, I'm not clear who made the decision, bar staff, members of the party or officers of the law, but we found ourselves making the trek back to South Brisbane. The trip was punctuated with hedging, laughable feats of strength and rambling conversations with probably dangerous strangers, in contrast with the SMSes sent to people not out that night, which were punctuated only with auto-corrected swear words.

I woke the next morning, with waves of nausea crashing down on me like it was Mother Nature taking revenge for the garden torment of the night before. I stumbled to the bathroom, prepared for the worst, but the post-modernity of the bathroom ensemble strangely and almost immediately settled my guts. It was unlikely any painting of my own would have blended with the style, anyway.

For the last 3 months swine flu has been a punch line in much the same way bird flu was 3 or 4 years ago. The only thing is, it is a fair bit easier to catch. Sharing an aeroplane with an infected seems to do a good job of spreading it. Or a train. Or a footy match.

Thankfully, I don't make a habit of doing those things. Also in my favour, is that it also seems to have a preference for fatties, much like a good mate of mine from school, Simon. Just like Simon, its pretty difficult to feel threatened by it. Even with a goatee.

Unlike Simon though, who was a notorious piker, it was inevitable that it would turn up somewhere. Even so, I was a bit taken aback when it was announced that someone at work had contracted swine flu. The work policy was just to advise people not to come into work. Its a bit of a shame they specified you have to be sick.

The notification didn't specify who, but word around the watercooler spread faster than the disease, and a Facebook status update pretty much gave the game away. The girl who caught it... well, Simon would be proud to call her his own. I'm talking more than a little curvy. Swine flu is endemic to pigs you know, even in humans.

Which, brings me to my next point. What is it with fatties anyway? I mean, we've all had a dare at the pub, but hardly any of us have had the balls to go there. Here's the thing though, given their hideousness, surely they'd be ashamed. Surely they'd attempt to hide from the world, content in the knowledge that a bacon sandwich will never judge them. They don't though, well not all of them.

I'm talking the alpha fatties. Either blind to their condition, or believing that what they call curves, are sexy (when they are more shapeless squiggles, if anything) they exude self confidence like their meals do saturated fats. Shamelessly, they flaunt their forms in outfits that would normally be used to cover a small car, yet some how reveal more flesh than eyes can ever prepared to see. Skin escaping the cloth's grasp like Play-Doh does a clenched fist. And then they start dancing...

So I ask, where does this self confidence come from? Are they naive enough to think that personalities count? Or is it that their expressions of self-consciousness simply can't escape their own gravitational pull? Are chubby chasers so numerous that they can simply throw on a pair of hot pants and a halterneck top and its a sure thing? Or have they taken the belief that girls seen from a distance often look more attractive than they really are, and then taken that to its logical extreme and set about making themselves visible from low earth orbit?

I just don't understand. I also don't understand why a bloke who is otherwise normal, and perfectly capable of better, will just settle for a fatty. Like, "fuck it, this'll do". Try harder. I mean, aren't they supposed to get fat after you put the ring on the finger? You've kinda jumped the gun there a bit, mate. Or is it some messed up idea of loyalty? Yeah, she's hardly likely to cheat on you with your mates when they can't distinguish her from a first grade Rugby Union player. That said you don't sit in the front row of a cinema just so nobody will steal your seat when you go for a leak. Well, I don't anyway.

Speaking of carry excessive weight, after demonstrating my trailer skills on Wednesday I got roped into towing a few vehicles on the weekend. First up was the Pajero. Time (and salt) has not been kind to it, and the starter motor is completely ruined so we had to push and winch it into place which surprisingly was not as difficult as it was expected to be given it was loaded with engine blocks, gearboxes, differentials and god knows what else. In total it probably weighed 3 tonne, but the Disco didn't have any trouble at all moving it across the suburb. Knowledge that'll surely come in handy if I ever ironically end up with a fatty as a girlfriend.

Next up was Gene's (spare) Toyota Sera. Reversing the trailer was a bit more of a challenge, and neighbours were upset when I selfishly left just two car widths for them to drive through on the street, but loading the Sera was a breeze thanks to a gravity assist.

Finally, it was a Daihatsu Mira. With no engine. Or front wheels. It was as easy as it sounds to load onto a trailer. With four of us we were eventually able to man handle it into position and then noisily drag it (via winch) onto the trailer with complete disregard for chassis rails and paint work. Removing it from the trailer at its destination was even worse. With time, light and patience running out and thoughts already on beers afterwards an idea was proposed. The idea being to hook a snatch strap to the front tow point of the Mira, and then to the tow ball of the parked Pajero, and then removing the trailer from beneath it. Pretty simple idea, like pulling a table cloth. Haha yeah, it was that easy. With a few ungodly noises, and the Pajero being dragged backwards despite its handbrake, the Mira finally let go and started sliding down the ramps, half way down it jumped off the ramps, dragged the underbody and crashed onto the ground, thankfully landing the right way up. We laughed.

And then we bought some beers and ordered curries. The curries were rad, they skimped on meat a bit, but the basmati made up for it. So awesome.