Nostalgia Drag Meet – 26/02/2006

I love old muscle cars! And I have absolutely had my fill today. Willowbank Raceway was packed with pre-1972 cars from both Australia and the USA. There was over 100 in the ‘Show and Shine’ competition and 75 race competitors, and it was the best day of racing I’ve seen since starting the Chaplaincy work with Dad.

The Willowbank team were running on a skeleton crew today so Dad and I ended up helping on the track (and in the process build relationships with the blokes we were working for). Dad was the ‘water boy’, basically using the hose to leave the start of the track wet so the cars can do their burn out before their run. I kept an eye on the cars doing their burnouts and made sure nothing came off the cars or spilt on the track while they were doing it. So that meant Dad and I were on the start-line all day, and it was fantastic.

I’ve never inhaled so much smoke and been covered in so much rubber; even after showering I’m still picking pieces of rubber off my arms. BUT IT WAS SO MUCH FUN!

Some of the highlights of the day were the twin turbo 351 V8 Mustang, a superchargers 1932 Ford 3 Window Coupe and a 1968 Pontiac Firebird. Unfortunately that Firebird’s day ended in the wall, it was a pretty sickening crash and it destroyed one of the most beautiful cars at the event. The driver was fine and walked away, but it was a horrific crash.

Also on the start line I noticed a 1947 Anglia backfire and the exhaust on the top of the carbie light up. I was able to stop the car before it took off, and the fireman simply blew out the flame and once the car restarted he was still able to do his run.

So I had a great day, and we were also able to build our friendships with the rest of the guys working on the start-line.

**There’s no substitute for cubic inches!**

US Muscle 4x4

Um yeah... is this a waste of a beautiful 1968 Pontiac Firebird? Or a clever and unique idea for a hot rod?

Read more about it at this site here. It seems like a serious muscle car, and a serious 4WD. I think it's slightly weird, but cool at the same time. Tell me what you think?

Anti-road rage

I was driving to work today, and as usual the traffic on Ipswich Road was pretty awful. It took about 20 minutes to travel from Dinmore to Gails where I get off onto the toll road for a relaxing commute down an almost car free road.

I'd sort of been following this guy in a Toyota Camry while stuck on Ipswich Road, and passed him just before I took the toll road exit, which he also took. In the light traffic I was able to reach 100km/h and use my cruise control for a nice easy drive the rest of the way to work. Obviously the guy in the Camry had his cruise control set slightly higher and was catching me consistently over a distance. Another car was speeding and overtook him and me. As this other car was passing me we caught up to truck doing about 80k/h I had to disengage the cruise control and coast until the car passed me, the Camry was also out to over take me and the truck, with a semi trailer coming up behind him.

The guy in the Camry actually slowed down and let me merge in front of him so I didn’t get caught behind the truck doing 75km/h and waiting for the other semi to go past as well. I was able to overtake at 100k’s then move back into the left lane and let the Camry pass me. As he passed he gave a little wave (which I returned) and off he went.

A nice experience of sharing the road, especially when we see so many occurrences of Road Rage these days.

LIVE Camp 06

Well I've just come home from Whitehill's first LIVE Young Adults Camp. What a fantastic weekend. I think there were about 39 of us, and we spent the whole weekend at Luther Heights Campsite at Coolum Beach. It was a beautiful location, overlooking the beach, close enough to walk down, and a short drive from patrolled beaches.

The trip up was a touch stressful, with traffic a nightmare in Brisbane, and then a friend was unlucky enough to be behind a truck when its tyre blew and ran over the steel rim. So we spent quite a while on the side of the highway, making sure the car was drivable and getting all the details off this truckie.

Once we finally got to Luther Heights we realised one other thing... it was extremely hot... and unbearably humid. I haven't felt humidity like that since I was in The Gambia! The whole weekend was an effort to stay out of the heat.

The speaker for the weekend was Scott Vawser from WA. I met Scott on the Youth Vision Melbourne Ministry Tour last year, and he's a fantastic bloke. Scott is also the reason I got more serious about blogging and I regulary check out his blog here.

Scott spoke on the Kingdom of God. He used the "Truman Show" as an example of what Christians can create which he dubbed the 'King-Dome of God'. For those who have seen The Truman Show will know the movie follows the story of a man who has lived his entire life inside a huge dome, being filmed and unknown to himself, become this star of a hit TV show. In so many ways Christians have created their own dome. We have our own world where everything 'bad' and 'ugly' is kept outside our dome, and we never venture outside ourselves.

Scott has some amazing ideas on the Church - not in the sense of the little white building on a hill, but as the body of Christ - and he was able to share and really challenge all of us to live Biblical lives, not just religious lives.

One thing that really hit me was the importance of the truth behind John 13:34 and 35. " A new commandment I give you, love one another, as I have loved you. In this way all men will know that you are my disciples."

We looked at what Jesus' love is all about, things like endless, sacrificial, empowering, life giving, unconditional and non deserving. And in that passage Jesus tells us to love one another just as Jesus loves us. So as Christians we need to love one another just like all the things we listed about Jesus' love. Jesus didn't command us to go out and preach to people, he didn't tell us to run huge outreach events, he told us to love one another. So through un-Believers seeing the way we love one another, this is the greatest witness of all.

It was a new and fresh way to look at the Christian life, and Scotts stories of how he is living in his neighbourhood and creating friendships/relationships and networks of believers and non-believers were an up lifting idea for how we should spend our time instead of sitting inside a religious dome.

I came away challenged, but also refreshed. The camp gave me an opportunity to have some quality alone time with God, and really take stock of where my life is at the moment. The biggest thing for me to realise was that I don't really know where I am at the moment, and I have to spend a lot more time searching God before I can figure that out.

I guess I can use this blog to continue to search myself and express what I'm feeling at times. And hopefully your feedback can help me to continue to search God, and stretch my own faith.

Our praise times on camp also allowed us to truely worship God, and Elise was able to be tender to God's will and lead us in woshiping him honestly and humbly.

So overall it was a special weekend. Full of good fellowship, teaching, challenges and praise and worship.

Myth Busters should see this

Remember the Myth Busters episode where they tested the CD's shattering in the CDROMS? Well we experienced that at work today. One of the new university industrial trainees brought a PC back from a user and was trying to figure out what was wrong with it. When she manually opened the CD ROM she found about a million pieces of CD ROM.

I've heard of it happening, but this is the first time i've seen it. Supposedly the RMP of the drive gets too much for the disk and it just cracks, which at that speed causes it to shatter. Needless to say the CD ROM drive is totalled!

But as the Myth Buster's proved correct, nothing came out of the drive, and nothing else was damaged. Well done boys!