thebaldgeek

So Freddy goes down to the DMV to see whats needed for us to get our driver license, only, she doesn’t just see about it, she takes her written test, and PASSES!!!!!!!
We are both very excited. She picked me up a copy of the book which I read last night. She is booked in for her driving test May 12th (I think). And she has shown that its all pretty straight forward for us to get our licenses.
Looks like Freddy will get her license before I will. Totally unfair, but very cool.

The Passat, like pretty much most cars over here, gives a little beep from it’s horn when you lock it. You get one little beep when the doors are all locked ok, and you get two beeps when a door is ajar. (Thats two unhappy beeps for you Dan).
This sounds all well good, but the problem you have is when you live in an apartment and there is a near by car park. As people come and go all night, you get this ‘constant’ beeping. It comes in waves. 6pm, when people get home. 8pm when they are back from dinner or renting a movie. 11pm when they get home late. Then it gets hard to tell, but there is a morning shift and night shift wave in there, and then again from about 5am as people leave for work.

This all dove tales into the next generation of motor sports I have come to notice……
The Passat, thankfully, does not have a car alarm, unlike most other cars in America.
People love to set their alarms to a hair trigger…..it’s like; ‘Dude, come and breath on my car, see, you blow on it and the alarm goes off! How cool is that!?’. Well, I’m here to bust his bubble, it aint cool, here is what happens………
Other dudes, dudes with big loud V8’s with grumpy exhausts like to drive though car parks, giving their V8’s a squirt every row they drive down. The noise and vibration sets off first dudes car alarm. So you get this, Blatttttttt, pause, beep beep beep, chirp. You hear them going down the isles of cars and you hear the alarms in stereo as both rows get their alarms triggered. It is sooo the new motor sport over here.
I just wish the finals were not held at 2am!

Another busy weekend.
Friday night it was up to Jason and Brittany’s again. This time we were able to do more than just lay around and talk about how tired we all are…. Jason and I helped the kids with their teen bible study essay and Freddy and Brittany sat on the couch and solved the worlds problems.
Saturday was what the locals call ‘mega sabbath’, its the 2nd sabbath each month. You have spokesman’s club in the morning, then pot luck lunch, then services, then teen bible study, then there is the teen activity. It was a really good day. The club was fantastic, I mean really, really good. The quality of the speeches was fantastic. Some of the guys giving them were 16!!. The evaluations were also really helpful. The table topics were pretty deep and caused a lot of good answers. Then the closing comments by the guy taking the club (its on a roster, so you don’t always have the same guy taking it, what a great idea!) were amazing. In a nut shell he showed how what we learn in club can be applied to our jobs here and now. It was truly excellent.
The teen activity this month was a spaghetti dinner and a DVD. We dropped the kids off and went to dinner with a bunch of friends. It was a Brazilian place, its pretty much a meat fest (heh, it just occurred to me right now how much Gary would love to eat there). You get your plate, and if you are game, you can self serve some salad, or, for the Garys of the world, you just sit. On the table there is a little double ended marker, green on one side, red on the other. While its showing green, they bring meat. All different kinds of meat. Its cooked on swords, and they bring it to your table on the sword, announce what it is, and if you want some, they slice it off right there, you have these little tongs and you grab it. And so it goes until you flip the marker to red. Sit, talk and get hungry for more, then flip the marker, and start again!
From there were picked up the kids and drove to Steve and Karrie’s place. Spent the night there, next day we did some spring cleaning with them, then headed off about 11:30.

The GPS is great, I would truly be lost with out it. There is only one time when I have had trouble with it, and this has happen enough times that I am almost getting ‘relaxed’ about it……. Where freeway interchanges are…… Its a mess, I am going to start taking Freddys camera with us, you need to see it to really get a handle on it…. There are at least 2 freeways, often 3, so you have up to 6 lots of ramps and over passes. Its amazing to look at, almost art. Every one else knows where they are going, and while the signage is pretty good, every now and then me and the GPS totally get it wrong. When you do miss your exit, you really do have to double back and double back and have another go at it…… Reason is, the new freeway you are on, will quickly (just how quickly is the topic of another blog soon) take you in the wrong direction.
The ‘trap’ is, the interchange is so big that you have to drive for a mile or more (2-3k’s) before you get to an off ramp with an on ramp next to it. Then you have to go back though the interchange, find another off and on ramp, then try and get your exit. My record so far is three times. Its a handy dandy way to soak up a solid half hour! Even the kids are not bothered by it any more.
So, two and a bit hours latter, we got home.
It was a busy, but enjoyable weekend.

Went down to the DMV to get my driving permit today ….its pretty much the same permit as the learners in Aust. You have to fill in a form and then wait around a bit, then you go and get your photo taken, I look like a total crim, then into a special little room to take the test.
36 questions and you are allowed to get 6 wrong. Freddy got 5 wrong and I got 2 wrong. Its not so much the questions that are hard, its the way they are worded. I don’t think its an American thing, its more…..well, I would have to guess that its just a government thing.
All up, from walking in to walking out, it took an hour.

Anyway, point is, Freddy has her driving test on the 9th and I am on the 13th of May, so about a month for us. We are both a little nervous, but Im sure that after another month of driving here we will have settled down a lot. The main thing in the test is to watch your speed and check your mirrors a lot.

Gary wrote me a nice email saying how much he is enjoying the bike, it was good to hear how its gone to a good home. I miss it. I think I miss the roads as much as the bike at the moment, there is a lot of traffic here and I have not had time to get out on the back roads here to see what they are like…..not that driving them is going to be as fun or therapeutic as riding the wing on them…. The one plus this place has going for it (that I am yet to enjoy) is that it has mountains. I should be able, once I get to know the roads, be able to get up to the snow in about an hour…… I cant wait to get at 6000 feet in spring and autumn at night and see some stars…. there might be a few things to take photos of even (I just love mountains and views, snow is a triple bonus).

Just to be clear, I am still yet to find anything close to a drinkable port here…..the three bottles we have bought and tried are slowly going down the hatch mixed with lemonade (sprite for the Americans reading this).
(That last paragraph is NOT an excuse for anyone (especially  Gary) to rub in how good the port is in Australia).

Lastly, Toms trip to Jordon has been delayed, its next week now. I still am taking a few calls just the same, spent about 40 minutes with one guy today, a Canadian no less, a Canadian lumberjack even (truly, I am not making this stuff up!!!!…….) Anyway, hes got this machine that builds stud walls, wants to automate it, currently it uses Opto SSR’s (solid state relays) to switch a lot of the motors, but he wants to use Opto PAC controllers to automate it….. pretty interesting project, the press can drive 8×4 inch nails in one hit…..ouch!