Celebrating Positives (offset of the Gripes Thread)

[nomadpete]

21 hours ago, octave said:

My positive today was a walk we did up Flinders Peak. 

Nice pics, Octave.

 

Looks like the view from my bedroom window

[willedoo]

An old work mate has cancer and I haven't seen him since late last year. I've been meaning to ring him for a while but didn't know what to expect considering how sick he looked last time I saw him. Anyway, he rang me yesterday and he sounded great, just like his old self. It was the chemo making him sick last time I saw him he told me. His wife has cancer as well and both have been on chemo and have had a lot of success with it. They're both doing well and are back to fairly normal lives, so good news.

[facthunter]

Good News.  Nev

[willedoo]

Yes, it is. He's a good bloke, a Kiwi originally and a machinist by trade. I used to do volunteer work with him at our local air museum. They sold their house in a hinterland town to move into a unit near the hospital, so between that and the health issues, he sold off all his workshop equipment. I bought most of it, a lathe, mill, bench grinders, steel welding bench, a press and heaps of other stuff. Being a machinist his lathe came with a lot of extras, a keyless chuck and heaps of tooling he'd made plus a lot of rounds in steel and ali for turning.

[Litespeed]

Which means you have all the gear to build that rat bike

[octave]

I wasn't sure where to post this.    For Victorians from today until July 31 there is a a 20% rebate available on your last year's vehicle registration.  I have just registered, and I am expecting $139.

 

One slight problem is that the website (Services Vitoria) is being overwhelmed and can be hard to log on to.  For some reason, I just sailed through without any problems.  It is not a huge sum of money but worth the effort.

[facthunter]

When you are on the Age Pension every bit helps. My vehicle Mileages has halved anyhow.  Nev

[octave]

One thing I use social media for is as a diary. Some people keep a written diary, but I am far too lazy for that, so it is mainly pictures and videos.  Most mornings, I will be presented with memories from 1, 2, or more years ago, which is nice because I usually only post good events.

 

This video came up today from 3 years ago.  It was on a rail trail that we ride fairly regularly.  The rail line, which is only 16km long, is used by a couple of tourist trains. One of these serves a three-course meal and has live music.   Whenever I see this train, I will usually take a pic or two, but after a while, all the pics look the same. On this occasion, I thought about how I could video this from a unique angle.

 

I think I may have posted this video before, but I think interesting enough for another airing.

 

 

 

[nomadpete]

Thanks for sharing, Octave. Unfortunately I could only play the first bit, we do have slow internet in the remote south! Good perspective. Keep up the exercise - once you lose fitness, it's almost impossible to get it back.

[nomadpete]

Finally got to see the rest of your clip. How long did you have to lie there on your back, waiting for the train?

[onetrack]

Aaarrrgghh!! Does anyone else hate those video shots where a monstrous machine passes over the top of the camera? Watching it, I feel like I'm tied to the railroad tracks!

My innate fear must come from the nightmares I had as a child, where I used to dream about being stuck to the ground, and a big tip truck backed up to me, and dumped its load of sand on top of me! I'd wake up in shock and fear, and probably crying out, too. It was terrifying as a youngster. I have no idea what caused me to have such terrifying nightmares.

[facthunter]

As a small young thing I dreamed of falling from a great height OR Having no clothes on with people around.  Nev

[nomadpete]

Where is Freud when you need him?

I went yhrough a falling nightmare phase, later on I grew out of it - I'd dream of falling, then i dreamt that I could swoop out of the fall and fly over the houses.

[facthunter]

Freud is about SEX. Nev

[octave]

I still have the classic flying and naked in public dreams from time to time. I think as a consequence of being an RAAF musician (I left 36 years ago) I still occasionally have a dream where I am getting ready for a performance and I can't find an item of my uniform (which would have been a big deal at the time).  Often, I will have something in my wardrobe that resembles the required uniform but is somehow different. 

 

A related dream is that I am somehow about to go on stage for a play or musical, and I realise that I don't know the lines.

 

Dreams about flying (in a plane) also plague me from time to time. I am usually renting the club's plane, but I can't seem to get everything ready in time, and the light is fading, or the weather is deteriorating. 

 

[pmccarthy]

In my thirties I used to dream I was flying a light plane from Paris to London then realise that my licence had expired, I would wake up in a panic. When I got my licence back the dream went away. If Freud is about sex, you know what to do.

[willedoo]

6 hours ago, octave said:

I think I may have posted this video before, but I think interesting enough for another airing.

Thanks octave, that brings back a lot of childhood memories. As a kid I had mates who lived in the local small town and I sometimes stayed with them on weekends and got to do town kid stuff. A few of our activities involved the steam trains that were the common train back then. The rail bridge had a small nook in the concrete abutment directly below the train line, so two or three of us could squeeze in there and watch the trains go over our heads only inches way. It was exciting stuff, a lot of anticipation when we heard the noise and vibration  of the train coming, and then totally cacking ourselves as it passed overhead. Sometimes we got burnt a bit but that was ok, it was all good fun until we eventually got busted. When the train drivers were shunting wagons on the spur line they would let us ride up with them in the loco and work the brake lever and stuff like that.

[willedoo]

Those were the days when we still rode on the sheep's back as the saying goes. My main memories of that town were the steam trains and the yellow Western Transport B-model Mack semis hauling wool bales in from the west. That and being able to consume as many free lemonade spiders as I could handle as my mates parents owned the local cafe.

[facthunter]

 A pound a Lb it was for Merino fleece. Rolls Royces abounded in Places like Tamworth and Cocky's all had Planes to fly around in. I flew some Blokes out to Burren Junction to Set up the Wheat silos there in the 60's from Rutherford. ( West Maitland). They were of Concrete and probably still there. Nev

[willedoo]

I nearly died when I was 16 working on building concrete wheat silos. I'd put my age up, you were supposed to be 18 minimum to get a job there. They were four silos joined together and the working platform raised up as the concrete walls grew in height, a bit like a big extrusion machine. Concrete trucks would dump into a hopper which went up an elevator to the top where labourers with wheelbarrows would wheel it to the formwork rim. There wasn't much in the way of concrete pumps back then. It gives me the shivers when I think of the workplace safety standard back then. The only thing to stop you falling off the scaffold was a handrail made of tomato stakes cobb and co.'d together with tie wire. Pure luck it held up when I fell against it; it was about an 80 foot drop to the bottom at that stage. On the thread topic of positives, I made a lot of money for a 16 year old, had a big adventure and got to keep the hard hat at the end of the job.

[willedoo]

52 minutes ago, facthunter said:

A pound a Lb it was for Merino fleece.

Nev, that would have been a license to print money when you think of the relative value of a pound (currency) back then.

[facthunter]

700 Quid built a good House. Mind you It wasn't nearly as grandiose as what we want now.  NO air conditioning or Insulation. A fireplace was it.. No garages. Maybe we expect too Much these days?  Nev