Oh, hey. A blog? I have one of those?

It's been a while. And perhaps a few of you have actually successfully completed reading the novel which is the post previous to this. Though if you haven't, if I was you, I'd wait for the movie.

There are a million things I could post here that have occured in the last 3 or so months. It'd be a very long post, and I'd be bored of it before even you were. I won't, go that far back, for even if I wanted to, it's mostly a vague cognitive mess of engines, beers and hilarity that you-had-to-be-there for. So lets stick to the last fort-night instead.

Now to get you up to speed, on a couple of things. I bought a boat. About 4 metres long, 70s era speedboat, very cheap. Now, boats aren't usually my thing. However, my recently retired dad was constantly in my ear complaining about being bored out of his mind. Apparently you work your entire life the worst possible thing you can do is retire. It's boring. Of course, being retirees him and my mum do the caravan thing. This is also apparently shit boring, so the idea is to drive until you don't recognise anything. Set up a camp. Talk to other bored old people about this thing you just towed 4000 kilometres ("It's a custom built 2003 Millard, built on an 1986 chassis, they are stronger you see, with pop-up roof - 6 foot high ceiling - air-con...", and so on). Once you are bored with that watch DVDs or TV on your flat screen. The things are kitted out with just about everything you can think of. I'm not sure the parents actually enjoy it, or they just need something to do that badly. Either way, they spend a stupid amount on their campers (they have two, and they decided against buying a Coaster).

So, anyway, when they aren't holding up traffic on some busy interstate, they've got even less to do. And my old man, decided that fishing would be a good start. A mate of mine had a boat laying about that he didn't use any more as he had moved overseas. He destroyed the motor, though I never quite worked out what he did. Something about water going everywhere, and he had to paddle home. So, I got the boat cheap. And I borrowed a tiny 20hp motor so he could do his fishing. Before I dropped it off I took it out for a run up the Brisbane river. It went alright with the 20. Just started to pull the nose out of the water with me in the back on the tiller. Still, way too slow. I judged it needed to be twice as fast. And fluid dynamics 101 tells us that to go twice as fast you need four times the force. Or in this case: horses. 80 horse power? Lets round it to 85.

I dropped off the boat at the parents, and left it to him to play with. I figured he'd be able to fix a few things up like get the cable steer and so forth working. I think he took it out once, decided fishing was actually quite boring and found something better to do. Though he did agree that it needed more power. Except the number he came up with was significantly lower than mine. Naturally.

Probably even more naturally, I didn't listen. Ebay came to the rescue, and I found a suitable motor for cheap. I felt it was a pretty good deal, which is to say I have spent more on a night on the town and regretted it less.

There's no such thing as a free lunch though, and the retrieval required collecting it from the Gold Coast. Wouldn't be a drama, I just needed a couple of people to help lift it. Anyone who's lifted an outboard of significant power by themselves would know that you can't. They are ridiculously heavy, even if they don't look it. And this one was a V4.

I convinced a mate who was driving down to Lismore to make a detour. No dramas there. No more than a 30 minute hold up, really. So, I dusted off (or rather defoliated) the Pajero which hadn't been used in weeks. Its in a truly horrible way right now. If you owned a pet that made noises like it does rolling down hills in gear you'd take it out the back with your rifle. Turning corners at speed, unnerving at the best of times, is now done to the sound Trent Reznor's earlier work. The banging that is produced is comforting in a way, but only because when it stops it will be worse. The tailshaft unis have enough slack in them that at low speeds they act like spokie-dokies everytime they complete a half rotation. And the noise they produce when you get on the throttle is quite unpleasant, imagine it as hearing the noise made by a drunk girl falling off a bar stool at the Regatta and her head meeting the floor. Though not the same note, the cringe your wear is the same, and the looks you get from pedestrians is one of concern for your well-being.

My initial concern at the sheer number of demerit points I was going to get hit by was outdone by the new concern I wouldn't even make it that far. Yet, somehow it surprised me. It made it to South Port without a hitch. So, we pull up to the house and park and Jason comes up to the car window.

"Yeah... I think I broke ... something."

Something had let go in the passenger side front wheel assembly in the 944. A quick inspection and wobble test quickly showed it was catastrophic. The wheel was able to move more than an inch independently of the steering. A wheel bearing had shat itself. Badly. We popped the hub dust cover and there were metal shavings everywhere. Yet somehow it had only just occured. We were only a few hundred metres from the highway off ramp when it went. The driving through the back-streets probably hadn't helped, but compared to what would have happened at highway speeds it was pretty lucky. And we hadn't gone far. Barely a click. It could have been worse in so many ways. 100km later he'd have been in the middle of nowhere with no roadside assistance (Pajero or otherwise). A flatbed driver would be rubbing his hands with glee at the idea of towing a 944 that distance back to Brisbane and the money he'd make doing so. He might even be able to get his teeth fixed.

We collected the outboard, which coincidently was massive. The engine cover by itself was roughly the size of Daniel Thompson's helmet. Give or take, he'd probably find it pinched slightly. What a bargain, though. Then set about finding a car trailer to get the Porsche home. Apparently, on the Gold Coast there are only 2 places that hire trailers within a 20 minute drive of there. One was some bloke who was so paranoid about ball-weights, kerb-weights and braking capacity on the phone that we didn't even bother to drive there. I could picture the look on his face already when the Pajero pulled up. I've seen it a few times.

The other place didn't care so long as the lights worked on the trailer, they probably did, but the lights on the Pajero didn't. So, I lied. It would have been nice if they'd reminded us to un-clip the overrun brakes, but I'll get to that later.

Loading the Porsche on the trailer was a hassle because of how low it was. The chassis rails dragged so we had had to park the Pajero in a school loading zone, drive the Porsche up onto the footpath and try load it that way to minimise the angles. Appropriately the wheel bearings were now making noises that sounded like finger nails down a blackboard. Even with the kerb, it still wasn't enough, so we wound the trailer jockey wheel to its full extends to lift the back of the Pajero up and the back of the trailer down. That had done it, and we attached the Porsche with the only fastenings we had, its own handbrake, the chain around the front cross-member attached to the winch and two old ropes from the back of the Pajero. We some how managed to tie it down with some knots that would have made Lord Baden-Powell weep, but at least they held. And in fairness, being securely attached to the tow-vehicle in this case probably isn't what you'd call safe.

The entire drive home felt like constantly being in the first 10 seconds of a Queensland Government road safety ad. You knew something bad was going to happen, which was inevitably going to end with an impossible amount of carnage and some poor bastard trying to explain to to a police officer what the fuck they were thinking, and everyone learning a harsh lesson in life. Thankfully, it never quite came to that. Not quite. But nearly.

As I said before, we never flicked the lever for the over-run brakes. So the Pajero, which isn't brilliant at stopping in the same way its not brilliant at starting, had the best part of 1800 kilograms pushing from behind, an outboard motor in the back which probably weighs about half that again, and a 1980s Porsche attached with twine, just for good measure.

Then, it started to rain.

You can probably guess what happened next, so I'll just leave you with the bullet points:

• A set of lights
• A lane-splitter, unaware of the Newtonian object behind them
• A green light that apparently looked red to said lane splitter
• Possibly the most loudest 4-wheel lock-up in history, leading almost to a jack-knife
• Five seconds of utter panic
• Two minutes of non-stop swearing
• A greater appreciation of life in general

The rest of the trip was significantly less terrifying, though the brakes did get spongier and spongier. The rain thankfully stopped. When we eventually got back to Brisbane, two things became pretty clear. One, the trailer over-run brakes weren't working. Two, the Pajero brake fluid reservoir was completely empty. Whoops.

Whatever, I was just happy to not be driving it. Such a stupid, dangerous vehicle. So, anyway, back to this boat. I got the motor back to the parents' where the boat lives. Threw the motor on (I had to use a block and tackle). The old man is convinced its too powerful ("You wouldn't want to go wide open with this motor"), which only convinces me its spot on. It's not quite Clarkson, anyway.

I still need to hook up the front-controls, so I can actually steer it. And there's the whole me-being-unlicensed thing. And its still completely possible it'll sink. So I'll need to invest in bilges, probably.

However, the best thing about this motor is that its old enough to not have exhaust baffling of any description. Its loud as hell and the exhaust doesn't exit via the prop like on newer motors. The benefit of all this? It drops stupid flames when you back off on the throttle. Fucking awesome.

Also, I sold the Gemini. Sad-face.

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