Chilling

Yeah so long story short, GabSymes, SadSack, BLove and myself piled down to the coast on Sunday for some surfing RandR. I being the fool that I am decided to drive myself and GSymes down in my old soontobereplaced shit bomb of a car. The Car, I would like to point out, was delivered to storage in pristine condition when I left for my SE Asia trip. The radiator (a long running cluster fuck) was working fine, my tires where fine, everything was good. Now that I have it back I'm slowly finding a raft of fucking problems with the goddamn thing. One such problem is that my ugly radiator hassles have risen their ugly head again.

It started on Saturday when I drove to GSymes house. Half way their I look down at the dash to find my temp gauge in the "Holy fuck your car is about to explode" position. FUUUCCCKKKK. I spent 20minutes sitting under a bridge waiting for the car to cool down slightly enough to get me another 5km down the highway. At the Casa Del Symes I topped the bitch up with radiator fluid, oil (it didn't really need it) and everything else I could think of for the trip home. Problem solved I thought.

WRRRRROOOONNNGGGG. As the GSymes and I found out Sunday morning driving down to the Gold Coast. I was just pulling into a BP Maccas stop about half way through the trip when I observed the heat gauge was again in the "Holy fuck" position. What the Fuck says Sizzlord. And thus begins our trip down of stopping every 15min for 15min at servos to spray the engine down with water so that the car doesn't explode. Needless to say I was not impressed.

Fast forward a day and as we're leaving the coast I top everything up again, using the logic that I had a leak or some shit and because I topped the car up Saturday, it was all gone by Sunday, so if I topped it up at the start of the trip, the car would be fine. Wrrrroooonnnggg again Sizz. The car made it 30min into the 1hr10 trip before hitting the "Holy Fuck" position again. I freak out, haul arse off the highway and end up parking in a shady spot of a carpark belonging to some IT firm. After tending to the engine with a nearby hose I had nothing to do except sit back and wait for the car to chill. So I says to myself "Sizzlord if the car is chilling, so should you".

I realised that I had in my possession one iPod, one bag of CCs, one tub of Dip, and a small shopping bag of semi-cold beer. Oh yes children, people coming out of said IT firm were greeted with the magnificent site of a dirty Sizzlord leaning against his busted overheating car, listening to duff, smashing down a beer and munching on CCs and dip while watching traffic. I got a few odd looks but wisely, nobody said a fucking thing.

To tell you the truth the whole thing was actually quite peaceful. I had perfected this kind of "shit happens" calm while travelling in the SE Asia. When things fuck up and you can't really do anything about it, there's no point getting angry. So I just chilled the fuck out instead, it was good. So good in fact I repeated the exercise sans beer about 5 times as I slowly leap frogged my fucking car back to Brisbane. Total travelling time? 3hrs5min. Fucking radiator.

[Edit: The cursed GabSymes appears to have already written about our trip down. But since I went to all the effort of typing out my version of it, you get stuck with the effort of reading it all again. Suckas.]

Chasing Cars

I swear karma is getting some form of perverse pleasure out of getting me to travel in someone else's car. The Wanglor Elite went and had a mini-weekend down at the Loveshack (pictured below) last night, and we invited a few close friends down to share in the revelry. We went down Sunday, partied hard Sunday night, and most of us came back today to revisit the real world where thinking is encouraged and debauchery isn't tolerated in public places.


It was a good night down the coast, and a great way to chillax with some good friends. Oddly enough, my tale revolves not around the destination, but the journey to and from.

I hitched a lift down in Sizzlord's car. Now, the Sizzmobile has developed a nasty habit of overheating. It's falling apart at the seams after four years of hard labour, but thankfully a new Sizzmobile will be on the roads in about a week's time. Ol' Blue has served Sizzlord well, and has been a part of many humourous stories. In this particular case the car decided, in it's infinite wisdom, that halfway towards the Loveshack in the middle of the M1 was the perfect time for it to get a bit hot under the collar.
So out we get, give the car some time to cool down, pour water over the constantly sizzling Sizzmobile's engine block, and pull into every servo we see on the way to replenish our makeshift coolant supplies.

We finally arrived, somehow, 2 hours later at the Loveshack. Not a fun way to start a miniweekend! We decided to start getting our drink on, and and a night of hilarity and fun doth ensued.

The next morning, our lovely friend Ames gave me a lift back into town so I could attend (and I use the term loosely) uni. We're driving along the same M1 heading back, and her car starts shuddering and shaking.

"Ooh, I don't like the sound of this."
"Sounds like a flat, Ames."
"Probably. But look, it's fine now. What was it?"
"Fucks me. Weird though."

Two minutes later, the front right tire literally explodes. Ames to her credit voices a few choice phrases, slows down and pulls off into the median strip. My only outward reaction is to exude an aura of calm so the both of us don't flip out at what quite possibly could have just killed us.

There's a moment of silence in the car, Ames gripping the steering wheel, and me looking at Ames.

"Well, that was interesting," I finally say.

We jump out of the car and check out the tire, and I couldn't help but laugh. The damn thing had just EXPLODED! How random is that? Pieces of the tire are everywhere and the main rubber outer is skewiff around the rim.
With me still giggling, we work together and exchange the remnants of the old tire for the perfectly usable spare in the back. And the weirdest thing about the entire experience was the little thought in the back of my mind that the Sizzmobile fucked up on the way down, and now the Amesmobile had fucked up on the way back.

I fear for the lives of anyone in the third car I get into. Please, think of the children. Don't offer Gabe a lift. It could be your last. Karma is a vengeful elephant.