I was spending the weekend at my parent’s place in Southern NSW, but they had headed off to Melbourne early on Sunday morning for my Dad’s high school reunion. Meanwhile, my brother and I were still at home. I tried to start my car to leave, and realise I’d left the headlights on, grr, thereby flattening the battery.

We managed to find some jumper leads (note to self – buy jumper leads), and went to jump start the car. I’d never actually connected the leads myself before to jump start anything, neither had Bryden – but he had gotten a lesson in how to do it just a few weeks ago, so we figured we should be able to manage (positive to positive, etc etc, what could go wrong). There are sparks – we decided that was ok. But then there was some smoke. Oops. We ran into the house and ask the internet what to do. Found lots of wonderful stories about sparks igniting things and exploding batteries. But worked out what we were doing was right – we wandered back out to the cars to try and work out what went wrong… and spot our silly mistake oops, the terminals are the other way round in my car, and we’d connected positive to negative. Lots of oops.

We got things fixed up, started my car, left both car and ute running, everything seemed good – I checked the things that could have been affected by the smoking region… everything seems to work still. So that’s alright. But after a while, I decided to turn the car off and see if it will start again. No. We try jump starting again. Nope, battery won’t do anything.

I resigned myself to leaving my car behind and catching the coach/train back to Melbourne (meaning I’ll get home at 8 in the night instead of 2 or 3 in the afternoon, and get to spend some quality time with bogans on the way). However, we came up with a cunning plan – the battery in the Mazda is about the same size … yes, the same size, but as we discovered when we tried to hook it up, it has different terminals. Curses. So, new plan – call the NRMA and see if they’ll come and bring me a new battery and fix my car. The man comes from Narrandera with a new battery, and my car works again, hooray!

Once there was a duck named Duck Duck, not William Duck or John Duck but just plain Duck Duck. One day when Duck Duck was going for a walk he found a mirror. It was broken but Duck Duck didn’t no know. Duck Duck looked in the mirror there was a hen behind the mirror Duck Duck thought the hen was him. Duck Duck ran crying to his mother and said I’m a Hen mummy I’m a Hen. Duck Duck’s mother comphorted comforted him and said there there Duck Duck. Duck Duck was glad when his mother went over and showed him it was broken.

When I get home I go inside to watch Mr Squiggle Then Astro Boy. Sometimes after that I go to play with the pups or Bryden. When we were stripping [harvesting rice] I had to stay at my Grandmothers.

I present you now with the first gathered evidence for the existence of the majestic cheese-eating rainbow-striped orange-belted gallic-crested homosapiens. It is suspected that it is the only one of it’s species in existence. However, observations have suggested that it has found a mate now, and therefore may be able to produce offspring at some time in the future, thereby allowing the breed to continue. We can only hope that the future of this eccentric species of animal can be assured in such a fashion.

(And after all, it has such a beautiful plummage doesn’t it)

Sometimes I have my window open at home, and I think to myself: “Why does this place smell like a brewery?”.

And then I realise that it’s probably just the fact that I live next door to a brewery.

So, up at 5.40am to drive to Alex’s so we can pack up the car and head off to Lysterfield Lake Park, site of the Kathmandu Maximum Adventure Race (I’m a bit dubious about their claim of ‘maximum’ adventure – there was a reasonable proportion of adventure, but room for improvement). A cold and mizzly Spring morning, fog hangs above the lake as we huddle around inflating the two-person kayaks.

The race starts with a sprint for the kayaks – a sprint for the kayak that we actually inflated rather than one of the others, as some of the teams competing didn’t seem to have much of a clue, despite assistance offered. Plunge into the water, jump into the kayak, and we discover that these things aren’t exactly a pleasure to paddle – hauling them through the flat water feels like paddling through mud. Only two checkpoints to collect on the lake, and thankfully we’re one of the first teams out, so we’re not stuck queuing. Back to the transition area, we collect our bikes and cycle off, away and then uphill. We drop our bikes at the second transition area, and run to checkpoint five, then do our best to run back up the hill to collect our bikes. From there we have six checkpoints to collect in any order we choose. Muddy and hilly, we do this section in the opposite order to a lot of other people, but it seems to work well.

Finally back to the main transition area, and we drop our bikes and joyfully head out to collect a kayak again. We could have chosen more wisely, the front seat has almost totally deflated. Oh well, we’ve started paddling now, it’ll do. I get Alex to wedge his feet against my back so I’ve at least got some support. And the wind has picked up. Oh what fun. We have more problems synchronising, as we’re both feeling a bit tired now, but finally get a rhythm together. Two more checkpoints down, and we head back through transition for the final run leg. Six checkpoints to collect in this section, which is about 5km of running… jogging… fast walking. We collude with another team to find a checkpoint at a ‘creek junction’ in an area with one creek and no junction marked on the map, but in reality with a whole nest of little creeks in the area. We run back towards the main transition area, and finish line. Alex requires some persuasion – I try grabbing a stick, so we can both hang on to it and keep the same pace. The stick fails. I start running behind him poking him with it. We reach the finish line, uneventfully, and look for the food – it’s a rather meagre BBQ. They have half a dozen vegie burgers to provide for the 150 or so racers competing. And they weren’t even cooked yet. I decide to leave them for any proper vegetarians who might need food. Rogaine catering is so much better than this (for a much lower entry fee) – even Teva series catering is better (yes, the importance of post-event food cannot be underestimated – the best thing possibly being the toasted cheese sandwich with added veggie burger, coleslaw, onion and tomato sauce). We come fourth in the mixed category, and win no prizes. We wash off the mud, and move on.