jayneandmarty.com

Had a great time fanging Dad’s MX-5 down the Gt Ocean Road to Apollo Bay this morning.

Dad picked me up from home at 6.15 and we drove the five minutes to our meet-up point opposite Bunnings Waurn Ponds on the Princes Highway, just before the Anglesea turnoff. We were a few minutes early but the 50-strong convoy soon zoomed past and I pulled out to join it. There were a few stops and starts between Waurn Ponds and Anglesea to bunch up the cars and let others join the convoy, but as soon as we cleared Anglesea the proper driving began!

On the section between Point Roadknight and Lorne we were behind an MX-5 who struggled to keep up with the cars in front (she was a bit slow, the cars in front were pretty quick), but it was still fun whipping into corners and letting the car do its thing. I haven’t driven a manual for a while, but the memories of driving my old Mini Cooper repro came flooding back and before long I was up and down the gears, accelerating into the bends and generally having a great time.

After a coffee break at Lorne (where Dad tried a weird self-heating latte that he’d bought - but it didn’t self-heat) we were off again on the section to Apollo Bay. Dad suggested we try to get into the convoy a bit earlier to avoid the slowpokes, so we moved out of the foreshore car park in about 9th or 10th spot, which was almost directly behind the MX-5s with all the racing stripes, fat exhausts and rollcages.

It was clear after about 2km that the gold car in front of us couldn’t keep up with the racers (or didn’t want to), but he was going plenty quick enough himself, thanks very much. It took almost everything I had just to keep up with him around those corners, so I’m glad we weren’t immediately behind the rollcage brigade. It really was quite quick … the car feels like it’s on rails no matter how hard you push it through corners so there’s no need to brake, which is handy as there wasn’t time to. In fact it went around them even better when I accelerated through them, which felt good to me but I’m not sure what Dad thought of it. Before long my arms started hurting and my clutch foot was ready to give up, but then we rounded a corner and were upon Skenes Creek, where the limit dropped back to 60 and we could trundle for the next few kms into Apollo Bay.

All up it was a great experience. I can see why the club members enjoy these runs - the early start means very little else on the road (i.e. in your way) and a real chance to take a very capable car flat out around corners whilst staying within limits on the straights. The top was down on 90% of the MX-5s the whole way (including ours, naturally) and although it was pretty cold at first it was fantastic to zoom along with the wind in our hair. There’s a lot to be said for open-top motoring.

Thanks again Dad, and I’m glad you’re enjoying being part of the club.

(More photos to come when Dad sends me the ones he took on his camera)

…I’m fiddling with the jayneandmarty.com site theme, so watch out for big orange blocks of content this evening.

* 7.47pm: All done. Hope you like it.

** 7.52 Correction: Have to fix some stupid Internet Explorer bugs. Expect more orange blocks for a few minutes.

*** 7.56: Done.

Those following my tweets (just Rob, I think, and even then maybe only via my blog’s sidebar) will have seen that last night I wasn’t happy with 7’s decision to move Lost’s timeslot to 10.30, which is ridiculous as there’s no way anyone will stay up to watch it now. I also ranted about how I thought it was time Jayne and I bought ourselves a PVR (the modern, digital equivalent of a VHS video recorder) so that we could ditch normal telly scheduling altogether and watch what we want, when we want. (Ad-free, too.)

To date we’ve held off buying a PVR because (a) we don’t watch much telly, and (b) the digital tuner/PVR combos are usually $600+. But a friend mentioned to me this morning that Strathfield Car Radio currently has $299 no-brand twin tuner 160gb Standard Def PVRs reduced to $180, which is a nice price, so I went and bought one.

Set up was easy and it works fine. The two tuners means that we can watch something and record something else at the same time, and the electronic program guide means it’s easy to flick through the week’s programs and mark the things we want to record. I reckon it’ll be good.

I guess I’ll report further in a few weeks, when it’s either changed our telly-watching habits for ever or has made no difference……….!

*** Update: we have some sort of remote control interference issue. When I change the volume on our surround sound system the PVR changes channel. Not ideal. Will try to fix tomorrow!