Well Nug and I set off Sunday morning to collect the Spirit I won on ebay. First things first, the seller Scott was a very nice fellow, and a pleasure to deal with. The game is as described, and while probably a very good buy, does need a lot to make it a really nice game, but I am more than happy with it.
As for the trip, it struck me today how apt it was for the game we were collecting.
It was grey early morning, and we headed first for Nug's "country estate" where we had to stop to whipper snip some grass to keep the CFA at bay. This was not far off the most direct route, and sort of a coincidence. But before getting there, we had to travel through 100 km of really thick, almost pea-soup fog, despite the predictions of a nice day. This stuff was thick, and we had to travel well under the speed limit.
Suddenly the fog ended to blue skies (and I mean suddenly, one moment pea-soup, the next, bright sunny skies and the temp went up a few degrees in metres - spooky!)
Of course the heat kept up for the manual work at Nug's place, and it was particularly hard for me to sit in the car with the air-conditioner on and have to watch him suffering through that. But I came through fine, although Nug lost a few kilos.. ..
As we traveled through the old gold field areas, Nug shared a theory with me about the surrounding hills.. .. I won't discuss it here for fear of scaring younger members, but I did find myself keeping one eye on the countryside from then on..
Met up with Scott, did the stuff we needed to do and headed back.
We thought the odd weather was behind us, but while seeking out the correct route home (GPS was out of date and sent us on a goose-chase) we noticed this incredibly dark cloud formation. Of course we had to make "Spirit" etc jokes, and coupled with the ealier weird fog and Nug's theories I was finding two eyes now in use for the countryside and the sky, and that made it rather hard to drive.
So this guy flashes his headlights at us as we head towards Daylesford. This was a winding road, and very little chance of a speed camera etc, but I slowed anyway. Good thing I did, as there was a veritable river running over the road around the next bend. I was busy wiping off the speed to look around, but Nug said the paddock looked like a lake - but the sky was blue above us. Then another "road river", and a couple of cars on the side of the road worse for wear who must not have had the head light warning we did and did a nose to tail job.
Nug pointed out in the distance what looked like a blanket of water falling from that big thunderhead we'd seen earlier. Oddest thing, looked like say a kilometre wide band of sheet rain. Obviously had passed the area we had driven though, but those rivers were extraordinary, and seemed unlikely from a quick deluge, seemed more like the product of a long-term rain, not some freak storm. it was still 27 degrees outside.. ..
Then we hit that storm. And boy, was it a storm! The rain drops were **massive**! We slowed to about 20 kmh, and I was using the road lines to navigate. Thought of pulling over, but the road sides were swamps, and with a couple of hundred kilos of Gottlieb and Nug with me (well, not so much Nug given he'd sweated himself away with the whipper-snipper) I was worried about getting stuck. And the temperature had dropped to 16 !!
Then just like the fog bank - bang - rain stopped. The road ahead looked like it hadn't seen a shower for weeks, dry dry dry. Very spooky! The temperature was visibly ticking over, in a few kilometres it was up ten degrees to 26.
Now I say the Spirit was with us, keeping us safe despite the odd stuff going on outside. Don't want to know Nug's theory.
Oh, and some pics..
