Beverly

Beverly Satire

Cross Country Report Beverly to Woodbridge 27th April 2012.  Rob Wall, www.beverley-soaring.org.au

It looked like a day with no lift, full cloud cover, northerly winds and probable rain.  The day before I had completed my 11th solo flight (in XQD), and felt like a new challenge so I decided to try out my new toy, a very light single seater carbon fibre machine called an “Oppy”.  I set myself an  Assigned Area task to get within a 1000m radius of good food or coffee in three towns: Beverly, York,  The Lakes, and Woodbridge.  I did not lodge a flight note, but informed Harry of my plans.   After an uneventful self launch on 34 at 01.30 UTC  it was a smooth run to Beverly with no wind at all.  The coffee was weak (no detectable lift) so I turned right and headed about 350 toward York following the railway line for navigation.  After 5km it was rough, and the cause seemed to be an undercarriage problem (a common theme lately).  I was able to extract a thorn from the rear tyre without having to land which fixed it.  I was really struggling for lift getting no more than a few mm of altitude an any point.  My average airspeed was between 10 and 20 knots, and  I was finding “Oppy” more physically demanding than the club gliders.  The GPS app on my Android phone was helping me establish position each 30 minutes with no problems.  The York turning went very well as I found good coffee in the main street, and was easily able to get Oppy up the street at low level which would have been hard in say the DG-1000.  The landing options west of York did not look good with a lot of trees, and trucks on the road; best not to think about it.  After some food at “The Lakes” I followed a complex route via Darlington, and descended down to Woodbridge station in the rain. I was very happy with my new machine, and was easily able to fit it on the train back to Fremantle without removing wings, and was home by 6pm.

On a serious note can I thank the hundreds of motorists, who seeing me on a bike gave me lots of room, or slowed down, and curse the two idiots who came within 30cm of me at high speed: a white tray-top with an orange light, and a Transwa bus.  One mistake by either of us and there are 4 more kids with no dad, and a messy windscreen.   Please make room, or, if you can’t,  slow down!.

Collie

We have had an average to good White Water season in Perth this year – see the red trace.

But the real bonus was Shane and the Slalom Committee getting an ‘Agricultural Release’ of  water from Wellington Damn which creates a wonderful, short narrow and technical WW course a few km downstream.  A  2 day training camp and comp was quickly organized and we all loved it.  Demelza capsized about a dozen times and rolled up each time!  Kira did her first roll in anger and Tark  and Liam showed great guts in getting back on the horse after some nasty swims.  We still can’t work out how Tark was the only person to get airborne!  A big thanks to Zlatan and Richard for putting the wires up on Friday, and to the other judges and helpers

Here is a Google map showing the exact location of the start of the course – its the obvious parking and chute on the bottom right.

 

Australia 2011

I have been here all year but you wouldn’t know it from this blog.  We’ve had lots of adventures with the kids, here are some phone pics

Dad accidently broke my arm!

Our first 2 day ride – it was hot

Can’t avoid these in WA

Training at the Swan Canoe club

Demelza after completing a 4 pitch route at the ‘new crag’ at Waychinicup

Waychinicup – I finally got to this bit of rock after looking at it for years

Washing Dishes in Waychinicup

Mountain biking at ‘The Goat Farm’

Bibbulmun Track

Landing at Perth – life was about to change

Kids with mates at The Esplanade

Steve’s Ship

Tark finding some new trails

Walyunga – the kids did well here in comps

Melbourne!

Object D’Art?

Demelza coming 2nd in Dwellingup 15km MTB race

Hulbert St Fiesta Stall

Tark on a 3 day tour near Nannup

Coffee Break

Not another sport?

Alf, king of the playground

The ‘Piles

Typical winter day in Cottesloe

To Facebook or not to Facebook

I sent 8 friends the question – “Do you use facebook” (I have other friends I KNOW use it so I did not ask them).

The responses are interesting:  I got 5 yes, 1 no-reply, 2 considering.

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I have a facebook page, but I don’t access it all that often.  Other people seem to be on it all the time.  It is very easy to use, you can post lots of pics up on it, and you can keep up to date with what other people are doing whenever you want.

The main reservation is that people misuse it like it’s nickname ‘stalkbook’ suggests.  But this is avoided by either not putting anything on there that you wouldn’t want everyone to know!  It is a way of people looking other people up and seeing there life, but you can keep picture galleries ‘private’ which limits who gets access to it to the people you are friends with, and I’m sure you can limit it even further by actually picking who you’d like to be able to see things but I haven’t searched the settings that thoroughly.

I don’t have access to it at work like my email, which is a really good thing because it can be the worlds biggest time waster the amount of stuff, games, things post, what and who to look up etc…

So I say go for it, it’s really easy to use and just keep whatever you put on there simple and things that you don’t mind everyone looking at!  Not too hard really!

Plus you get invitations to things through it and I find this happens a lot more with people like xxxx and his age group, and you won’t get invited via the usual methods…  not because they dont want you to come, it’s just that they assume everyone has a facebook page!

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Yep suck it up and “enjoy” gen me . Lookn forward to seeing you in the hood again mate al good here

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Really useful for keeping in touch with people, especially those who lose their phones and change numbers regularly. People definately overuse it, but that comes down to self discipline.

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Yeah I do use it, it’s probably the main way I keep in touch with people these days. It’s just a few old fossils who still use email

Not sure whether I’d call it “useful”, other than that you can see what people are doing (or want you to see) with fairly minimal effort. Plus I get updates from other stuff like bands, music, authors, software, Android, Perth festival etc so you can keep up to date on that kind of stuff in one place.

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Yeah get on it. It’s free and I’ve pulled quite a few roots through it plus it’s the best way to keep up with what everyone’s up to if it annoys you then don’t sign on as much.

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I did have a facebook page, but the only people that wanted to be my friends were people I once went to high school with and so I killed the page. Whilst had it I mentioned to xxxxx and as I shut mine down she started and still uses hers.

The ‘nickname’ Stalkbook is excellent as I recently read a novel about a serial rapist who used twitter and facebook and really appreciated his next victims telling him where they were going to be at certain times etc.

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Facebook – hmmm….

xxxx has an account, and gossips endlessly – some of it good i’m sure, but lots of chatty bollocks to people she sees all the time anyway..

Have banned kids from it so far, partly safety, but really – i would rather they did not spend their childhood angst-ing over online comms, but get outside doing stuff – they occasionally use xxxx a/c.

Me?  keep thinking i should, mostly from the perspective of “I’m an internet software developer, I should be familiar with all these kinds of things” but no i’ve avoided it.

I’m not really that curious about it – pretty sure i get it.
I already struggle to get 8 billable hours done, without opening up yet another socket.
Maybe i’m just an anti-social git, or maybe i don’t want to sink into a quagmire of endless trivia.

I can see the benefit of widespread personal directory and comms, but as a natural paranoic commie sceptic – we get most of that with email and thats more democratic.

</rant>

one more tip that seems popular around our friends with teen kids – ensure that mum is subscribed as a facebook friend in a way that can see all messages.

Old Favourites…

Its a rainy day here so I am adding some old favourite pics from years back

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Easy Puzzles

You are in a boat, in a small lake. You take a rock out of the boat and throw it in the water. It Sinks. What happens to the level of the water in the Lake? (From Jason)

You are standing in a room looking at a vertical mirror. You can see part of your body. You move a step closer. Can you see more, less, or the same, of your body?.  (From a high school teacher I had)

Finally I think this is the first crossword I have ever done – it took me all day! http://www.guardian.co.uk/crosswords/quick/12483