OMG! A post! - robert, 09/10/2006, 15:47
Ah yes, that blog thing. What ever did happen to it? I got too damn busy and constantly tired, that's what happened to it. Oh, and my site was down for a month. Oh dear, I really should get this sorted out and start posting again. The thing is, so much has gone on over the past while that I can't possibly find the time to do big write ups for every event. Back on the 23/06/2006 I did start a blog post. It was related to the Highland Cross. I was with RAYNET covering it. Here's how far I got:It only seems to be RAYNET events which get me up early at weekends. This was no problem on Saturday however as there had been bugger all going on all week so I had got enough sleep. RAYNET were covering the walking section of the event, from the start to the bike changeover at Affric Quarry, where I had been for the Affric Duathlon. Willie picked me up at 9:30 and we set off. Andy GM0UDL had some hefty beams pointing our way the whole trip and maintained contact all the way down the A82, into Glen Urquhart and on into Glen Affric. Willie was continuing on to White Cottage while I was being dropped off at Control at the quarry. We arrived to a cup of tea and I joined Norman and Iain in the midge filled control "kabin". By this time the event had long been kicked off and the quarry was buzzing with activity. Norman and Iain had come up the night before to have everything set up in time to be on air early in the morning. The 'net' was working well, although signals from the start checkpoint to the crossband were very weak. Once the first competitor had reached the checkpoint before control, I took a brisk walk 5 minutes up the road to provide an early warning for the bike changeover. Once the first competitor had passed I headed back. We were certainly well fed at the control - cake, sweets and even BBQd sausages.
That was it. It sort of fizzzled out from that point. Here's a quick rundown of some of the events I can remember which have happened since my last proper post: "Rock Ness" Fatboy Slim etc, me getting a car (a Peugeot 306 Dturbo - could have done with it at Rock Ness, but that's another story which should have been told on here, but I never did get round to it so it'll never be told now), Highland Games, the opening of a new music venue - the Ironworks, the Belladrum Festival, big Neilson sailing holiday in Greece (photos not up yet) and of course many road trips and random nights out etc - a lot of them worthy of large blog posts... A lot more than this has happened, it's just not come to mind at the moment. The whole point in this is to document random goings on, if I don't do it at the time, I'll forget what's been going on so I've missed out some good stuff which has been going on, bit of a shame really.
Anyway, let's get the ball rolling again shall we? This weekend might be a place to start! Quite a good weekend I must say. On friday night I did sweet f**k all - I was knackered. I fell asleep quite early and didn't wake till about 10:30 on saturday morning. I had spent the week on little sleep so I was in need of a big sleep. The rest of the day was pretty uneventful until the evening, where I drove down to join the others in a not-so-secret secret car park. I went to pick up Ailie and we all headed down to Urquhart Castle. We headed down to the castle and were confronted by some people who were staying in the castle grounds, planning to do some sort of re-enactment in the morning. They politely told us to pee off. After the rude ejection from the castle (hey it's Scotland for god sake, we can't be done for tresspassing really) we headed to some random (to a lot of us) house where there was a "party" (more a gathering going on). After spending some time here, and Ricky and myself getting bigger and bigger cravings for a Burger King, we left about 3am. Little did we know we wouldn't get a Burger King. I came round a bend on the A82 to find Ricky's Corsa on the opposite side of the road with the hazards on. It came clear Ricky had crashed. He tells me he came round the corner and the back end went out and the car went towards the barrier, he then turned away from the barrier avoiding crashing into it, but couldn't help scrape the car along the barrier. This has trashed the panels all down the offside. The front wing is bashed, the door has a pizza slice hole on it after the barrier grated a slice off - it's now permanently stuck in the barrier, and the rear quarter is also bashed in. This is the problem - this panel can't just be removed like the wings and the doors, it'll have to be hammered out from the inside and filled as needed. This is very expensive... He's lucky he only shaved the barrier and didn't go straight through it. If he'd done that, he'd have ended up in Loch Ness. I guess that's why the barrier is there! Luckily his car was drivable, although it had to be jump started as the hazards ran the battery low (the battery is absolutely crap in that car). He limped back the 6 miles to Inverness with me following behind. I was about 20 seconds behind him when the crash happened, if I'd been closer the whole thing would have been caught on video, as my car is equipped with cameras. I eventually got to bed at 06:00.
Yesterday I went up to the retail park late in the afternoon to get some components from Maplin in order to build a mic pre-amp. Pete joined me and we went to Starbucks before heading into spoons in town. I had the sunday roast, and they gave me a HUGE portion. I completely forgot I'd ordered a treacle sponge too! I managed to eat most of that too! In the evening we went to see Get Cape, Wear Cape, Fly at the Raigmore. After this we headed to hoots for a bit before a token visit to tesco and then Milton of Culloden. After this we went back to where Ricky had crashed on the A82 then went down to the canal side at Dochgarroch before heading home.
Well, this'll do for now, it's a bit random but oh well.
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