Saturday, February 25, 2006
What really happened...plus the local eatery
Here's the local eatery a few minutes from our house. We like McDonald's (aka Maccas in Oz) a lot more over here. Notice the yummy and low fat baguettes. I haven't tried the McOz, but Jim has. He's not a big fan of the slice of beetroot that comes on it. Most of the McDonalds also have a McCafe in them. It is actually a decent looking coffe / dessert place.
Now for the rest of the story...For those of you who are wondering what really happened in the last entry with the power steering fluid and broken wrenches; here's the answer. Earlier in the week while we were driving around town we noticed the power steering making noise. Jim bought some power steering fluid and added it. That seemed to fix the problem.
The following weekend we were headed to the triathlon in Caloundra (about an hours drive north of here). Jim also had a 4-5 bike ride scheduled for that day as part of his training plan. He left northern Brisbane on his bike and I drove the car ahead of him to a designated meeting spot. The plan was for me to leapfrog ahead of him, but not too far in case he had bike trouble.
As I was driving along I noticed the noise returning in the power steering. I stopped at a gas station and bought the first bottle of steering that you see in the photo. When Jim caught up with me we added the fluid and he continued on. As I drove away from the parking spot I noticed a sizeable puddle of what appeared to be fresh fluid. I drove just ahead of Jim and stopped at the next gas station. He stopped there with his bike to have a closer look. It was then when we realized it wasn't just a slow leak. The fluid was rapidly leaking out the bottom.
As we were standing there with the hood open, pondering what to do a hippie/biker guy came over to see if we needed help. I had already been next door to an auto store (kind of like NAPA) and they informed me that all the garages / car repair places close at noon on Saturdays. The hippie guy told Jim it looked as though the pressure sensor thing that is attached to the steering rack was leaking. He said that is a common thing to happen. He figured the auto store next door would have one. Sure enough, they did for $45.
Next question was how to get the old one off and the new one in. We only had bike tools with us and the tools used to change the tire. The salesman at the store showed us to the rack with the $15-$30 wrenches (for an individual wrench that is). Ouch! After looking around a bit more we found a sale bin full of odds and ends tools. In there was a pack of five standard wrenches that had fallen out of the pack and were scattered throughout the bin. We found the 9/16 and ask them if we could buy it. In the end they sold it to us for $2. As we were paying a "mobile mechanic" guy told us we'd never it get the sensor thing in and out with that wrench as it was too long. Guess he was off the clock, because he had a prime opportunity to make some money off us!
Jim gave it a good attempt anyways since that is all we had. After about a half our of trying, he remembered seeing a hacksaw for $8 in the sale bin. We bought that and began to saw the end of the wrench off, but in the process broke the hacksaw blade - bummer we thought we had it figured out! Luckily the wrench was cut enough that, with some prying using the box end of the tire iron, it broke the rest of the way. That was all Jim needed, a shorter wrench and a lot of patience. He successfully got the leaky one out and put the new one in. I bought the second bottle of steering fluid and we filled it back up. It's been running like a charm since! All in all it was a 2 hour delay. Jim did a great job ad libbing in the parking lot - guess it paid off to marry an engineer after all!!
Saturday, February 18, 2006
What Happened Here!?
For those of you who like puzzles (and even those who don't), here's one for you to work on. The items in these top two photos are all related somehow and used in a sequence. Can anyone identify all the objects, figure out in what order they were used and why those particular objects were used? Bonus points for anyone who notices anything unusual about the objects. Note: the two photos are exactly the same, just filling up the page is all.The story starts with us leaving Brisbane and heading to the triathlon in Caloundra last weekend. Jim left on his bike, me in the car. We'd love to hear how you think the story ends (if it does really end)...
On an unrelated note, the following picture is of Jim preparing to deliver his resume to a few businesses in hopes of landing some employment. We are still waiting on my tax file number, which in turn lets us apply for the Australian Business Number for Teamlean. That is the company what Jim will operate his bike fitting business under. Once that gets taken care of, he can begin working more on that business. In the meantime, he has gotten some good leads on potential jobs. He will know more next week once he visits with those employers a bit more.
Don't forget to solve the puzzle and the story....leave your guesses below! The winner may be eligible for some (number of nights negotiable) free nights lodging in Upper Mount Gravatt, Brisbane, Queensland (should they end up in the neighborhood).Tuesday, February 14, 2006
Caloundra Tri
Mieke and I did our second triathlons down under over the weekend. This one was 400m swim, 15k bike and 4k run. Mieke is now two for two on completing triathlons. We met a number of first-timers at the race and Mieke found she was no longer the least experienced - she is officially a seasoned competitor now! Mieke survived the swim (two for two) and wasn't the last one out of the water (yeah!). Once on the bike, she screamed past loads of slow
pokes at like 110kph (or something like that). Check the photos - what a machine! Then it was time to run, she went out with her game face - but mumbled something to me about wanting to walk on her way past. But there would be no walking, in fact she felt better over the run and ran faster on the second half. In the end she finished 12th out of 33 in her age group and had the 5th fastest bike split in her age-group.
pokes at like 110kph (or something like that). Check the photos - what a machine! Then it was time to run, she went out with her game face - but mumbled something to me about wanting to walk on her way past. But there would be no walking, in fact she felt better over the run and ran faster on the second half. In the end she finished 12th out of 33 in her age group and had the 5th fastest bike split in her age-group. My race on the other hand was a bit of a bust. I raced open again and found myself struggling on the swim. I'm just a bit short on speed - not much - but was probably way short on aggressiveness. I think in order to make it work in the open category, you need to be super aggressive and brutal to get and hold a good position. Like the last race, I came out at the back of the group. I half expected this, so I ran hard through transition and took off hammering on the bike. I was able to pull from the back of the group all the way up to the lead pack. It is supposed to be a non-drafting event, but in the open nobody follows that rule. Coming into the second transition I was right with the lead guys. Then we started running. This is where my race went bust - I got a massive side cramp that wouldn't go away. My belly was feeling a bit heavy before the start from the cheap supermarket muesli bars I had for breakfast. I usually have a PowerBar before a race, but those are like $3-4 each over here and we've been too cheap to buy any. The side cramp had me walking shortly and I struggled through the rest of the run. It was a long 4k. On the bright side though, I did post the fastest bike split of the day, so that was cool. Someday I'll run well too. The guy that won (Matt Hopper) ran a 12:07 for 4k which works out to like 4:53 per mile. He is a pro was ranked around 4oth in the world last year.
So back to training, the next race is the Luke Harrop Memorial on the Gold Coast on March 5th. Check out the results here: Caloundra Results.
Monday, February 06, 2006
Follow up on parking
As I was saying in the last entry, Jim and I are learning about the parking signs here. We are learning the hard way. Since Steve and Ann visited from Spearfish, we've been the unlucky recipients of two parking tickets. The first one was for $120, but we talked to the ticket guy as he was printing it out. He said we were lucky, as he was just about to call a tow truck when Jim came running up to him. The metered parking area apparently becomes a clearway after 4pm. The ticket man was actually really friendly and said if he hadn't already printed it he would have just let us leave and that we should call the number on back and tell them we are new to town, etc. Jim did that and they said to send a letter explaining why we should not have to pay the full charge, or any charge for that matter. The letter will go in the mail today. In it Jim says, "I spoke with the officer and found him very helpful in explaining the parking signs"; a good way to suck up to the traffic police!I think we're stuck with the second ticket for $60. Jim had been parking there for the last few weeks to do an early Saturday morning bike ride with a tri group. People were always parked there to bike or run early (5:45am) on Saturdays on a little side street. But I guess that's not legal either.
We should have it all figured out by the time any of you come to visit!
Sunday, February 05, 2006
Our living room
Here's a photo of our living room. The girl pictured isn't our kid, but rather Aspen from Spearfish. She and her parents (Steve and Ann) stayed with us a few nights on either side of their diving trip to Airlie Beach.Steve found out how hard it was to find parking in downtown Brisbane without getting a ticket. We've been learning how to better understand the parking signs since. More information to follow...
Thursday, February 02, 2006
Jim gets approved to work!
The first photo is of "B" Block - the business school building where I have all my classes. Photo 2 is of downtown apartments near the university.Today Jim and I went to the Immigration Department and got visa labels put in our passports approving us to work. Lucky for Jim, he got approved to work full time! Unfortunately I'm restricted to 20 hours per week, though I'm currently inclined to work zero - school takes up enough time. Jim was a bit disappointed that he wasn't also restricted to only 20 hours, that way he would have had an excuse to only work part time.
Actually, he has registered his business name of TeamLean so we can operate it here. We are waiting for our tax file numbers so he can get an Australian Business Number and open a business bank account here. As soon as that happens, he'll be ready to start fitting people on their bikes. That'll make me happy, no more Ramen Noodles!
