I like driving in my car… Beep beep! Beep beep!

I went and did an Advanced Defensive Driving course today in an attempt to stop feeling so total paranoid and phobic about being in a car and like… having to drive on the road with hundreds of fuckwits who seem determined to try and kill me.  It feels like every time I get in the car since the accident last November I am flinching at shadows and freaking out when anyone gets too close to me or does something stupid.  I even hurled abuse at a poor hapless teenage Pizza Hut delivery driver who ignorantly cut us off in traffic!  So off to defensive driving course for me…. and it was fantastic.  I went through the Anchor Driving School that operates at the Mt Cotton Training facility and they put us through a whole pile of driving scenarios.

There was a timed obstacle course where they get you drive your car through all carefully placed witches hats to see how well you navigate the various obstacles.  I had some problems with this as I tend to rely heavily on my mirrors (twisting my neck/back around isn’t great).  I probably could have done this better in my old Rav4 as I am far more familiar with it’s size etc than I am with the new car so far.

Then we did Emergency Wet Braking which the Swift handled so easily until they pulled the ABS fuse out to disable the ABS so you can feel the difference and understand exactly how much better the car knows how to brake than you do!  Then it was onto Wet Evasive Braking which is done at 60kmph, 70kmph and 80kmph and it was scary to see how much longer the braking distance is over just 10kmph faster.

We also did Wet Emergency Lane Changes which was heaps of fun.  They get you to barrel down a hill at around 80kmph or so and then ram on your brakes as hard as you can while steering sharp left and then right before coming to a complete stop.  Some cars totally lost it doing this and they spun out all over the place but my little Swift handles like it’s on rails when all the safety features are turned on it managed to perform the manoeuvre at just shy of 100kmph… which was about 15kmph faster than any other vehicle there.

We also did a Drink Driving Simulator Exercise where they put some ‘drunk goggles’ on you that simulate the altered perception you have when you’re drunk and all you have to do is wear them walk to your car open the car door and get the engine running.  Which ought be dead simple but so many people had huge trouble even walking around the car let alone getting into it.  It was hilarious to watch everyone stumbling about trying to give it a go.

After that it was on to  Skid Pan Training!!!!  Woo-hoo!  I was apprehensive at first but this was absolutely the most fun you can have in a car without prophylactics!!!  The aim is to make you cognizant of how your car handles when it’s out of control so they’re trying to teach you at what point your car will skid and how to regain control without understeering or oversteering.  So we spent a few hours throwing the cars around on the skip pan which is made of a specially slippery base that they then douse in a bit of diesel to make it slicker and if that weren’t enough it was pissing down rain most of the day!  A lot of cars were all over the shop but it was actually quite difficult to make my Swift slide out.  Even with the ESP turned off, doing nearly 20kms over the allowable speed limit on the skid pan AND pulling handbrakies as I hooked into the turns… the Swift barely slid at all.  It sticks to the road like glue and goes exactly where you point it.

All up it was a really good day despite the pouring rain and it’s a shame that this sort of thing isn’t a compulsory requirement for people to get their license.
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This’ll be the day that I die….

I’ve got a disc of MP3s in my car that has a whole pile of random favourite songs on it.  One of which is American Pie – the Don McLean version not the nasty arse Madonna one.  Angel who I think has maybe heard the song about three or four times has decided it’s one of his favourite songs too and strangely enough seems to be able to sing along to most of it…. which is rather impressive for a little guy 🙂

I have a few old memories that pop up whenever I hear it.  One… my first boyfriend’s Mum (who’s name was Dixie) told me it was on the radio when she gave birth to A1 (said boyfriend) back in 1972 so I often think of him when I hear it.

The other memory that usually comes to mind was from my first trip to Europe back in 1995.  We were in Rome and had been sight seeing for the day… taking in the Vatican, St Peter’s, the Colosseum, the Spanish Steps and the lion sculpture (you know the one Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck put their hands into in Roman Holiday).  At the end of our sightseeing we were being picked up by our fantastic double decker bus ‘Freckle’ and the bus was late and we were waiting under a ledge of a building near our pick up point in the pouring rain.

Half the people on our bus were standing around grumbling about the rain and bitching and moaning about the driver keeping us waiting… but there was a group of us who had had a great day out, checked out all the fabulous art, saw the ceiling of the Sistene Chapel, visited the ossuary of the Capuchini monks, watched the Pope out in the forecourt of the Vatican give a blessing to a bunch of foreign priests, got into St Peter’s when it was dead empty of people which was unreal, walked across the Ponte St Angelo, climbed St Peter’s cuppola and admired the view…. all that AND ate more gelato than we should!!! 

View from the cuppola at the Vatican

What does all this have to do with American Pie you might ask?  Well those of us who fell in the latter category of packs waiting for the bus were standing in the pouring rain singing American Pie at the top of our voices and laughing like idiots as we kept trying to remember the lyrics and largely failing miserably  🙂  

Good times…. good times.  Luckily most of the locals would have taken us for Sepos!! 🙂
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Coffee still sucks.

Did a silly ‘what coffee are you’ blogthing and strangely enough there wasn’t a single question where you could definitively state that you hate coffee so I ended up being French Vanilla Coffee for some bizarre reason.  Sometimes these questionnaire thingys are rather accurate and I wonder if they’re designed by bored psychology students or something.

You’re a French vanilla cappuccino!

Ooh… somebody’s wearing their classy pants. You’re not extravagant or show-offy, but you appreciate having nice things, like a designer mug instead of a disposable to-go cup. You’re calm and confident, so you’d be perfectly comfortable ordering coffee at a sidewalk cafe in Paris or at a restaurant that’s so fancy they don’t even put the prices on the menu. No matter where you go, you won’t let anyone intimidate you — you demand respect.

Hold the refried beans!

Went to dinner tonight at a little Mexican restaurant in Bulimba and was pleasantly surprised with the food.  There’s not a lot of choice in our general area for Mexican so we’ve probably ended up at Montezuma’s more often than they deserve.  The place we went to last night was called ‘La Quinta Mexican Cafe y Bar’ on Oxford Street and it was fantastic.  Dodgy quasi-Mexican decor but the food more than made up for it.

We had some delicious tapas for starters, fajitas for mains and some really yummy deserts – Mexican doughnuts for me and Chocolate Nachos for Yale…. yes Chocolate Nachos!  They were thin/flat nacho shapped chocolate sweet biscuits served with hot chocolate fudge and cream and ice cream and even though I’m not normally one for chocolate, I tried a bit and they were really good.

I’m definitely going back there again….. I wonder if they’d let us hold a Tequila Party there!  🙂


Angel’s first Tequila Party c2003.

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