The best laid schemes ? gang aft agley

Cormanus

Administrator
Staff member
Thread starter
Part 1—In which Cormanus remounts the bike


The original map is here

There has been, as they say in the outback, a bit of a dry spell for Cormanus and his CB1100. There are good reasons for it—including a month or so away—but it had left me with a strong feeling that something important was missing from life.

It was with some enthusiasm, then, that I greeted Thursday 1 September when, weather permitting, I could get on the bike for a full day’s ride.

The day dawned glorious, albeit a bit chilly; but that was nothing a considered layering wouldn’t deal with. So I saw my wife off to work, put on the gear, programmed the GPS, climbed on to the CB and headed out the gate.

It was quickly to become clear that the riding gods were not just watching but doing so with a certain sardonic malevolence.

Warning number one was when the Bluetooth dongle that connects my telephone (GPS) and my earphones didn’t quite work. I stopped and fixed it.

Warning number 2 was when I realised I’d neglected to put the AirHawk cushion on the seat—I knew my butt’d be sore if I made it through the day I was planning; but by then I was heading away from home and nothing, but nothing, was going to send me back there.

Warning number 3 came after 35 kms or so down the freeway when I’d turned off to head for the hills. Of course, I was starting to feel much, much better about life. Simple things are good.

I stopped for fuel, paid the bill, walked outside, got on the bike, pressed the starter … whirr, whirr, click. Pressed it again … click.

A bit of history. The bike is a 2011 model. I bought it second hand in September 2013 with 2079 kms on the clock. I’ve had for nearly three years and ridden more than 45,000 kms on it. My recollection is that, in spite of being a 2011 model, it wasn’t purchased new until May 2013. So it was nearly two years old when ostensibly new and is now nearly 5 years old. I’ve not replaced the battery. And I suspect the one making odd noises was original.

A five-year old battery owes me nothing.

While it has been a little temperamental since I got home at the end of July, it had started fine that morning. It had just been run for 30 or so minutes, so it should have been charged. The ‘whirr, whirr, click’ suggested it wasn’t.

So I swore. Got off the bike. Swore. Pushed it up the slight incline, parked it and consulted Google for the nearest Honda dealer. Practised swearing again. Thirteen kms back up the motorway.

Got the gear back on, rolled down the slight hill and jump started the bike. Rode the 13 kms, parked the bike, turned it off, turned it on, pressed the starter … ‘Whirr, whirr, v‑r‑r‑r‑rooooooom!’

Repeat. Same result.

What to do? I’m basically cheap. Why buy a new battery if I don’t really need one? Reflect, Cormanus, reflect … It’s clearly becoming temperamental and I ride a lot on my own; I’d have no hope of pushing it and jumping on to start it on my own on the flat and I can’t always be guaranteed a hill.

I went inside and bought a new battery. The nice young lady came outside and checked to make sure it would fit. It did and I said I’d put in myself. I hadn’t paid, so I offered my keys as surety and said I’d put it in then come and pay. I was offended when she took them without question. Do I look that shifty?

Positive terminal: no problems, although even the tiny extra thickness of the terminal for the battery tender made it a bit of a stretch to get the bolt to bite on the nut. A finger on the nut to lift it a micron or two did the trick.

Negative terminal: ‘clunk!’ The bolt slipped out and into the battery tray.

Disconnect the positive terminal. Remove the battery. Find the bolt.

Repeat.



Drag the bike backwards up a slight incline to a flat bit. Put it on the centre stand.

Try as I might, I could not get the negative terminal connected if I included the terminal for the battery charger. The design of the OEM leads is such that the left hand side of the wee opening that holds the nut is covered by part of the terminal and the finger trick was not possible. I couldn’t find anything slim enough to wedge it. So, when it eventually dawned on me that with a new battery I’d probably manage the day without the charger, I stashed the terminal carefully and connected the battery without it.

Digression: it took a bit of fiddling in the garage the next day to get the charger reconnected. I had to wedge a small cable tie under the nut enough to lift it so the bolt would bite.

I went inside, paid, retrieved my keys and went outside to get going again. I pressed the starter. ‘Whirr … v‑r‑r‑r‑rooooooom!’

At that point I noticed a couple of very excellent second hand bikes for sale.


You’ll notice there are two bikes of great appeal in this shot: to my eye the CB1300 is not as beautiful as the CB1100, but I still carry a torch for one.



By now a ridiculous amount of riding time had disappeared and the day’s plan would have to be reconsidered. Because I’m more of a [URL=https://cb1100forum.net/threads/65722/]wanderer than a planner, I thought I might as well ride as do anything else while I figured it, so I turned south.

My destination was O’Reilly’s—a rainforest retreat at the top of a mountain in the Lamington National Park in the border ranges. The attraction was twofold: I’d never been there and the road leading up to it looked promising.

A very short section of the road to O’Reilly’s

It was not long before I’d escaped the worst excesses of the built-up area, and in an hour I was at the bottom of the O’Reilly’s road.

It wasn’t long before I was in the country


Leaving Canungra, the town at the start of the O’Reilly’s Road


The start of the O’Reilly’s road

From Canungra up the hill to the O’Reilly’s Rainforest Retreat is about 35 kms and just under an hour’s ride. It’s a great surface, sometimes lacking a centre line; it twists and turns and was not blessed with much traffic that day. The scenery is terrific, although there’s not always a great deal of time to look at it and concentrating on riding.

What can I say? It was really, really good to be back in the saddle on a country road that wound its way somewhere. The cares of the morning fell away.

Some hazards are better avoided. A sidebar: it was only when writing this post and reviewing the photos that I realised I’d lost a bar weight. Is it too embarrassing to admit that I’d spent another day on the bike after this and still hadn’t noticed?


This sign is a wonderfully common sight on the way up the hill




This was one way!



Arriving at O’Reilly’s, where it was a deal cooler than down in the valley, I decided to reward myself with a coffee and an acceptable toasted sandwich.
 
Some days can be trying that's for sure, but a ride usually sorts them for me....and the battery thing just drives you nuts doesn't it? At least with the old acid filled batts you got a little warning they were going down hill. My ST batt was installed Nov 2011. I'm thinking in November just go ahead and buy a new one, even though I am ..um..frugal as well, and hate to replace things if they don't need replacing.

Great pics and narration as always. That Blind Curve Prepare to Stop sign is a new one for me and I sold traffic signs for 25 years.
 
Great pics and report as always, Cormanus. You're a lucky boy. Nice to have a hill nearby to bump the bike with, lots of modern techno to find the dealership, plus a sandwich at the end!
 
Thread starter
Part 2—In which Cormanus has a quick look around

Fortunately, the assumption made earlier about the acceptability of the toasted sandwich was correct. It wasn’t stellar; but ‘ acceptable’ is a suitable adjective. As I ate it and drank my coffee I observed people coming and going from the café. Amongst them was a group of tourists, nearly all of whom had the sort of cameras with lenses so big you wonder how they hold them up. They were talking and I heard snatches of conversation which referred to Tasmania, the state where I grew up. I was a bit intrigued, but kept to myself. As I made my way outside to the sitting area which contained any number of signs imploring visitors NOT to feed the birds, there they were flinging seed about with gay abandon, cameras click-clacking at the visiting parrots. To be fair, one of their number soon pointed to the signs and they stopped. I was grateful to them as I got this shot of a crimson rosella. Red birds: they’re everywhere!



O’Reilly’s is a resort in the middle of a national park. The family has been present there since the early 2oth Century engaged in forestry, tourism and, more recently, but not on this site, wine growing. I recall that, in a former life, I worked briefly with an O’Reilly who rode a Ducatti up and down the hill from here.

Sitting on the site above the café is this replica of a Stinson airliner.



Friday 19 February 1937 was stormy in the afternoon and an identical Stinson crashed in the McPherson Ranges killing four out of seven people aboard. A search failed to find any wreckage.

Seven days later Bernard O’Reilly set out on foot to find the wreckage. He was convinced the plane had gone down in the Lamington National Park. He was right and discovered the wreckage. Amazingly, he discovered two survivors who, not surprisingly, were in serious need of medical attention. Bernard did what he could to make them comfortable and set off for help. He returned the next morning with a doctor and a few of his farmer mates and the survivors were stretchered to safety 11 days after the plane went down.

Of course, this is the stuff of which movies are made and, in 1987 The Riddle of the Stinson was released. To make the movie, a similar Stinson was rescued from the soon-to-be-closed Wangaratta Air Museum and turned into a model of the missing aircraft. The O’Reilly family bought it in 2012 and relocated it to the resort.

The Riddle of the Stinson starred Jack Thompson, an Australian actor who also starred in Clint Eastwood’s Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil alongside the wonderful Kevin Spacey and John Cusak. Thomson’s co-star was Richard Roxburgh who has featured recently on the small screen in a wonderful comedy called Rake.

All this allows me to segue into a rant. While America is responsible for many an excellent movie and television series, it has saturated the world with millions upon millions of hours of television so crappy it’s hard to understand how anyone could watch it. And yet they appear incapable of watching anything of any quality made by anyone else. My visit to O’Reilly’s lead me to reflect on two recent examples: Rake a brilliant Australian series which the US found necessary to remake starring Greg Kinnear; and Kevin Spacey’s House of Cards, which, while very good, pales in comparison with the English original from which it was copied.

And why, oh why, oh why, did America find it necessary to remake Ricky Gervais’ The Office which for comic genius is comparable only with Cleese’s Fawlty Towers?

Is it because Americans think only they can do anything properly? I have no idea; but I wondered about it as I walked to the car park and the waiting CB, blissfully unaware of what awaited me during the afternoon.
 
I agree with you on "House of Cards". I haven't even bothered to watch the U.S. version as I'm sure it would disappoint.

Where are you from in Tasmania? I've been to Launceston, Strahan, Hobart, and Port Arthur.
 
[q
And why, oh why, oh why, did America find it necessary to remake Ricky Gervais’ The Office which for comic genius is comparable only with Cleese’s Fawlty Towers?

Is it because Americans think only they can do anything properly? I have no idea; but I wondered about it as I walked to the car park and the waiting CB, blissfully unaware of what awaited me during the afternoon.
[/QUOTE]

The worst day of riding is better than time spent in front of a screen watching TV crap.
 
everyone looks shifty to me mate , they might have those cheap $1 chinese keys and take off with a me bloody battery !
so you couldn't attach the charger Neg to the frame anywhere under the seat? and my gosh man your riding on the wrong side of the road ! that is how I got hit by a cab in hong kong in 72 they do the same thing!
BTW one of my favorite bands of all times was " men at work " what ever happened to them ? I would say more but it might be overkill. enjoyed the ride , somehow I think I was there !
 
Wonderful read George and thanks for the parrot photos; seems Australia is blessed with many beautiful parrot species. A gorgeous little parrot, the Carolina Parakeet once graced SE North America but has been extinct for nearly 100 years.

Your take on American movies and TV are spot on. The garbage that passes for entertainment here is a disgrace. With a few exceptions like "The Best Years of Our Lives", there is little to recommend. American TV is a joke.

Wish I could have been on that ride with you.

Where's Tony?
 
Thread starter
postoak_imp said:
Thanks, Cormanus, I enjoyed reading all that.
Thank you.

postoak_imp said:
I agree with you on "House of Cards". I haven't even bothered to watch the U.S. version as I'm sure it would disappoint.

Where are you from in Tasmania? I've been to Launceston, Strahan, Hobart, and Port Arthur.
I grew up in Hobart and lived there much of my adult life. Still have family there and enjoy getting back when I can. I'm hoping to ride there after the Philip Island MotoGP in October.

The ferret_imp said:
Some days can be trying that's for sure, but a ride usually sorts them for me....and the battery thing just drives you nuts doesn't it? At least with the old acid filled batts you got a little warning they were going down hill. My ST batt was installed Nov 2011. I'm thinking in November just go ahead and buy a new one, even though I am ..um..frugal as well, and hate to replace things if they don't need replacing.

Great pics and narration as always. That Blind Curve Prepare to Stop sign is a new one for me and I sold traffic signs for 25 years.
Thanks, Ferret. It's a great sign isn't it? Although I don't think I'd like to meet it on a road with heaps of traffic.

physics-teacher_imp said:
No 'roos in the road?
Mercifully not, physics-teacher. The 'roos are most active at dawn and dusk when sensible motorcyclists avoid riding. They're treacherous like deer.

DAC_imp said:
Great pics and report as always, Cormanus. You're a lucky boy. Nice to have a hill nearby to bump the bike with, lots of modern techno to find the dealership, plus a sandwich at the end!
Thanks. This is still not the end, I fear. I needed more than a sandwich when I got there!

Rocky_imp said:
Great narrative. I really enjoyed that :thumbsup: :thumbsup:
Thanks Rocky.

Haystack_imp said:
[q
And why, oh why, oh why, did America find it necessary to remake Ricky Gervais’ The Office which for comic genius is comparable only with Cleese’s Fawlty Towers?

Is it because Americans think only they can do anything properly? I have no idea; but I wondered about it as I walked to the car park and the waiting CB, blissfully unaware of what awaited me during the afternoon.

The worst day of riding is better than time spent in front of a screen watching TV crap.
[/QUOTE]
That is certainly the truth.

use2b_imp said:
everyone looks shifty to me mate , they might have those cheap $1 chinese keys and take off with a me bloody battery !
so you couldn't attach the charger Neg to the frame anywhere under the seat? and my gosh man your riding on the wrong side of the road ! that is how I got hit by a cab in hong kong in 72 they do the same thing!
BTW one of my favorite bands of all times was " men at work " what ever happened to them ? I would say more but it might be overkill. enjoyed the ride , somehow I think I was there !
I'm not saying she wasn't right, but it still hurt.

use2b_imp said:
everyone looks shifty to me mate , they might have those cheap $1 chinese keys and take off with a me bloody battery !
so you couldn't attach the charger Neg to the frame anywhere under the seat? and my gosh man your riding on the wrong side of the road ! that is how I got hit by a cab in hong kong in 72 they do the same thing!
BTW one of my favorite bands of all times was " men at work " what ever happened to them ? I would say more but it might be overkill. enjoyed the ride , somehow I think I was there !
There's a few places around the world that insist on riding on a different side of the road to the US and Europe.

use2b_imp said:
everyone looks shifty to me mate , they might have those cheap $1 chinese keys and take off with a me bloody battery !
so you couldn't attach the charger Neg to the frame anywhere under the seat? and my gosh man your riding on the wrong side of the road ! that is how I got hit by a cab in hong kong in 72 they do the same thing!
BTW one of my favorite bands of all times was " men at work " what ever happened to them ? I would say more but it might be overkill. enjoyed the ride , somehow I think I was there !
Nice pun. It reached all the way down under.

They went the way of all good bands. Colin Hay, the singer and songwriter got into copyright trouble over Down Under which, except by the plaintiffs, is universally thought to suck, at least on the facts. He's still around and performing a mix of old an new stuff. Try—




redbirds_imp said:
Wonderful read George and thanks for the parrot photos; seems Australia is blessed with many beautiful parrot species. A gorgeous little parrot, the Carolina Parakeet once graced SE North America but has been extinct for nearly 100 years.

Your take on American movies and TV are spot on. The garbage that passes for entertainment here is a disgrace. With a few exceptions like "The Best Years of Our Lives", there is little to recommend. American TV is a joke.

Wish I could have been on that ride with you.

Where's Tony?
Thank you. One day I hope you and Sparky will find a way to get down here and go for a ride, although the report on the rest of the day may re-inform your view of the wisdom of riding with me!

redbirds_imp said:
Wonderful read George and thanks for the parrot photos; seems Australia is blessed with many beautiful parrot species. A gorgeous little parrot, the Carolina Parakeet once graced SE North America but has been extinct for nearly 100 years.

Your take on American movies and TV are spot on. The garbage that passes for entertainment here is a disgrace. With a few exceptions like "The Best Years of Our Lives", there is little to recommend. American TV is a joke.

Wish I could have been on that ride with you.

Where's Tony?
Taking a bit of a holiday from the forum I think. I'm looking forward to a bit of a ride with him during October.
 
Great trip report (and rant). There's nothing more fun than a winding mountain road and a CB1100. Also I feel your battery pain. Mine did exactly the same thing on the bike's 2nd birthday (batteries die young in the desert heat). Started up fine for a ride across town, then after the first stop, nothing. Push starting in a flat parking lot in 100+ degree temps wasn't fun.

Regarding the rant, I don't think the remaking of good shows from elsewhere (usually the U.K.) is because Americans think they can do them better. It's really just laziness. It's much easier to recycle a good concept from somewhere else than to come up with a brand new one. Just a few weeks ago I was pointing out to my nephew (a Ricky Gervais fan) how many popular American TV shows of the last decade, actually originated in the U.K. It's a surprising number to most Americans.

I was never a huge fan of Men at Work, but Collin Hay's work has inhabited my MP3 player for many years.

Ride on, Mate!
 
Great piece.

It's cheaper to buy the rights to a tv show/movie than to reverse it, but there's less payback. Remaking a show costs more, but can have a greater return and, also, allows the remake to be more relevant to its intended audience. I'm also sure that there's at least a little "we can do this better" attitude in some of these ventures.
 
Thread starter
Flynrider_imp said:
Great trip report (and rant). There's nothing more fun than a winding mountain road and a CB1100. Also I feel your battery pain. Mine did exactly the same thing on the bike's 2nd birthday (batteries die young in the desert heat). Started up fine for a ride across town, then after the first stop, nothing. Push starting in a flat parking lot in 100+ degree temps wasn't fun.

Regarding the rant, I don't think the remaking of good shows from elsewhere (usually the U.K.) is because Americans think they can do them better. It's really just laziness. It's much easier to recycle a good concept from somewhere else than to come up with a brand new one. Just a few weeks ago I was pointing out to my nephew (a Ricky Gervais fan) how many popular American TV shows of the last decade, actually originated in the U.K. It's a surprising number to most Americans.

I was never a huge fan of Men at Work, but Collin Hay's work has inhabited my MP3 player for many years.

Ride on, Mate!
Thank you. I, too, have become a big Colin Hay fan. I recently came across Are you looking at me which I'm really enjoying.

EmptySea_imp said:
Great piece.

It's cheaper to buy the rights to a tv show/movie than to reverse it, but there's less payback. Remaking a show costs more, but can have a greater return and, also, allows the remake to be more relevant to its intended audience. I'm also sure that there's at least a little "we can do this better" attitude in some of these ventures.
Thank you.
 
Thread starter
Part 3—In which Cormanus survives a poor choice and makes it home

Reaching the car park, I got back into my riding gear. The bike started without pain, meaning I could move on from the battery saga, and I rode out avoiding a very large waste disposal truck busily emptying the sort of remote storage areas with which it’s better not to come in contact.

The morning, while not a disaster by any means, had not gone according to plan and I’d had lunch where I’d expected to have morning tea. Clearly the afternoon’s ride would have to be curtailed. What to do?

When planning the ride I’d discovered Duck Creek Road on the map. It would take me down from O’Reilly’s north-west rather than north into a valley close to where I could scoot across the Queensland-New South Wales border on one of my favourite roads and then head home. A bit of research had shown it was a dirt road. That wasn’t a problem: I don’t mind a bit of dirt riding, but I wasn’t completely sure of its condition and, at that time, I thought it might be a bit slow compared to retracing my steps and then heading south. Now, however, I could amuse myself with a bit of dirt and then make my way home.

At about that point in my musings I came to the start of Duck Creek Road.





I sat there for a bit, deciding whether to retrace my steps or try the dirt.

Having decided it hadn’t rained properly for ages and that if it started to deteriorate, I could turn around and come back, I set off into the bush.

Duck Creek Road is one of those roads finished by community effort rather than by government or local government; but, so is the Lions Road which I’ve travelled a number of times.


I like the idea of a do-it-yourself road

It’s a pretty enough road, with some great views:









And so it continued for a time. There was the odd rough patch, but ways around them and the CB was handling it all with aplomb. Two 4WDs came up behind me and I pulled over to let them past. The bloke in the front one yelled out the window, ‘Right mate?’. ‘Yes,” I replied, and they went on their way.

It’s said that if you put a frog in a pot of cold water and bring it to the boil, it doesn’t really notice the change in temperature and is cooked without great display of suffering. I’ve not put it to the test, but I now have a sense of what it might feel like. There was a moment when it dawned on me that, not only was the condition of Duck Creek Road getting worse, but turning around and heading back was no longer a serious option.

I was, you might say, cooked! That feeling of prickly heat you get when you know you’ve overreached yourself and wonder how on earth you’re going to get out of it erupted in my jacket for the first of a number of occasions.






Sections like these became more common and the paths through them became more difficult to negotiate. The road was also becoming steeper. I’d find myself stopping to work out the way through a section and then hoping that I could get my foot up and the brakes properly engaged in time to make it. The angle plus gravel plus narrowness of path plus the odd large rock made it a much trickier road than I want to ride on a bike as large and heavy as the CB1100.

The worst moment came when, half way down a steep section I came to a closed gate. It occurred to me that the blokes in the 4WDs might have closed it deliberately, but I quickly dismissed such an uncharitable thought. There was no way around it and to get through it, I had to turn the CB around so I could park it, get off, open the gate, turn around again, get through the gate, turn around to park, close the gate and then, finally turn around to keep going.

I turned to park to open the gate and thought I was stuck. The road surface wasn’t bad at that point, but my front wheel was right against the bank on one side with a slight ditch just behind it. I couldn’t for the life of me push the bike up the back side of the ditch enough to be able to turn it. I was worried that using the motor to see-saw my way through would eventually shoot me out of the ditch too fast and I’d come off when I tried to stop. Nor could I get off without putting the bike down which I simply was not going to do unless gravity, mishap or exhaustion forced me to it. I tried three or four times, pausing to rest between. I was too concerned even to curse. Eventually I managed to get just far enough away from the bank to be able to turn, just clear a rock and get back up the hill.


The CB pointing uphill as I walked back from opening the gate.

I thought about leaving the gate open, but years of school holidays mucking about on farms had drummed into me that you always leave a gate as you find it, so I didn’t.

There was another moment of stopping to negotiate a rough and slippery passage where I thought there was a good chance either the CB or I or both of us would hurtle over the edge of the road into an uncertain period of being airborne. We made it and not terribly long afterwards, I came to a gate at the end of the road.



The surface improved; but, better than that, it was only a few minutes until I was again on a sealed road which took me to the outskirts of Beaudesert. It may have been one of the best rides of my life. As the relief of having made it intact through an act of remarkable stupidity surged through my veins and the narrow, largely deserted, country road with its generally good surface unwound before me, I settled the bike at the speed limit and thoroughly enjoyed myself.

The ride home was pleasantly uneventful.

Ride4now, if you’re reading, it must have been the Gremlin Bell that brought me through. There was the odd scrape underneath on the way down, but it survived. Thank you.

I wouldn’t have enjoyed that road much on a dirt bike. I know in my bones I’m not a good enough rider. It was ambitious, shall we say, to ride it on a CB1100, although it rose to the occasion with aplomb. I’m sure its excellent front brakes applied often and gently were one of the factors in my getting through safely.

On the up side, I didn’t fall off; I did have yet another memorable day on the CB. And, in the road from Canungra to O’Reilly’s, I discovered another great riding road.

Some days after these events, and quite coincidentally, I read a post on the Australian Netrider forum in which the writer offered the opinion that, … a dirt bike is like a dildo. Anything can be one if you're brave enough. Or stupid enough, I guess!

Should you want to read the ride report in which that observation is contained, it’s here. The writer’s not a bad story teller and it has a funny, if not terribly savoury episode involving a curious egg which has a neat dénouement towards the end.

And then, when I was writing this report, I came across Django’s [URL=https://cb1100forum.net/threads/66113/]post about his plans for next year which led me to the aptly named site [url=http://www.dangerousroads.org/]Dangerous Roads. Had I known about and consulted the site it would have told me simply: Duck Creek Road is a gravel road located in the Lamington National Park, on the Queensland/New South Wales border in Australia.
The road is 15,4 kilometers long. The unpaved sections of the road can be impassable when wet. (see [url=http://www.dangerousroads.org/australia-and-oceania/australia/3981-duck-creek-road.html]here).

I probably would still have been an idiot and ridden it!
 
That was one rough looking road. You are my hero!

In my younger days I was suckered into trying some similar roads on a heavy street bike and always ended up with some scraped metal and plastic to show for it. Nowadays when pavement turns to unknown dirt, I surrender and turn around. I'll settle for exploring vicariously through you, my friend. :D Good on 'ya!
 
Thread starter
noroomtomove_imp said:
Its time to confess your on the payroll of the Australian Tourism Commission!

Good read.

Regards
Thank you. About 10 years ago, I had a brief association with Tourism Queensland, but that's as near as I've got.

Flynrider_imp said:
That was one rough looking road. You are my hero!

In my younger days I was suckered into trying some similar roads on a heavy street bike and always ended up with some scraped metal and plastic to show for it. Nowadays when pavement turns to unknown dirt, I surrender and turn around. I'll settle for exploring vicariously through you, my friend. :D Good on 'ya!
I hope never to offer such a vicarious experience.

Co-incidentally, this afternoon I read a synopsis for the film Grimsby:

Quote:Nobby (Sacha Baron Cohen), a sweet but dimwitted English football hooligan, reunites with his long-lost brother Sebastian (Mark Strong), a deadly MI6 agent, to prevent a massive global terror attack and prove that behind every great spy is an embarrassing sibling. Nobby has everything a man from Grimsby could want, including 11 children and the most gorgeous girlfriend in the northeast of England (Rebel Wilson). There's only one thing missing: his little brother, Sebastian, who Nobby has spent 28 years searching for after they were separated as kids. Nobby sets off to reunite with Sebastian, unaware that not only is his brother MI6's deadliest assassin, but he's just uncovered plans for an imminent global terrorist attack. On the run and wrongfully accused, Sebastian realizes that if he is going to save the world, he will need the help of its biggest idiot.
I feel a little like Nobby!
 
Back
Top