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DAY 115: Threewheel burning

There was no way this photo wasn't going to happen.

A TRIKE is not the most inconspicuous of rides. Mine, from Tours on Trike arrives shining like a pre-pud sixpence and draped in tinsel. Perched atop the back seat, I feel like Santa on his sleigh. I must look like him, too, as everyone’s grinning at me. I thought Melburnians were too cool to register surprising sights?

The Chopper 4 is a car/bike hybrid. Powered by a rear-mounted Volkswagon engine, it has a car’s gearbox and brakes, with a motorcycle’s throttle. My tour guide, Alex, is leathered up like a biker (he gets about on a Suzuki in his spare time), and needs a bike licence to drive the machine – yet, he explains, he also needs a car licence to carry passengers.

These ‘threedom machines’ were designed and built by OZ Trikes out near Gosford, NSW, crafting up to 80 a year. The man behind them is Johann Kastner, a German expat who became a paraplegic after a biking accident and wanted to get back on the road, safely.

The trike’s low centre of gravity and 19″ rear tyres make it impossible to tip over, even if you did follow the speedo all the way up to 220 (“that’s a bit optimistic,” Alex admits with a chuckle). So, while being perched up high you feel as though you might take flight at the slightest sight of a loose stone, particularly when hooning over Bolte Bridge, you can try and ‘help’ the driver steer as much as you like with no effect.

While there are a choice of tour routes, a customer can also request their own, with prices starting at $99 per person for an hour. Like all the best guides, Alex imparts his favourite oddities behind the sights as well as the approved historical accounts, communicating through a headset. We take in Flagstaff Gardens (once the highest point in Melbourne, the site of Victoria’s first playground, and home to Melbourne’s oldest corpses), Vic Markets (9000 bodies still lie in the former cemetery after only 1000 were disinterred), contemplate the design faults of the Etihad Stadium and the design curiosities of the Goods Shed and Mission to Seafarers building, and admire the Royal Exhibition Building, erected to host the Melbourne International Exhibition in 1880-1881, which is why a lot of other buildings popped up in these years.

Ned Kelly’s armour is housed on the fourth floor of the State Library, I’m told, while Prohibition-style gangster Squizzy Taylor (he had a squizzy eyelid and walked with a squiz), got up to no good at Trades Hall. He also used to drink in St Kilda’s Village Bell, which comes as no great surprise.

The Squiz.

Keeper? Wouldn’t mind trying out the Grand Prix route.

Categories tourist

DAY 114: Becoming more observant

23 Dec

I’VE often thought that death will be swift and rude, like a 110km/h roo bar of retribution. This is on account of me not being observant.

Ma used to say I live in a dream world (NB if actual Dreamworld would like me to live in it for a day, I’m game), and not much has changed. Occasionally, when meandering into the road* I’m jolted by a vision of myself plastered to the front of a bootscooter’s ute as it thunders down the highway. I’ve got an expression of outrage and a slightly askew skirt.

It’s clear that becoming more observant will have to be a matter of training – not only to ensure long life, but to make the most of it. I start things off by totally observing a bunch of things I’ve never observed before on the way to work. Here:

Who knew these things were on the top of engines?

This reminded me of some of the embassies around Park Lane in London.

My boots look good.

This was in the air near Etihad Stadium. Forgot to observe why. However, according to the internet, the Indian philosopher J. Krishnamurti once remarked that observing without evaluating is the highest form of human intelligence.

Another reason I love my town.

Have observed this would be a perfect tree to climb when not wearing a tight skirt.

* This is why I should get my licence – walking’s far too dangerous.

Keeper? I did step blindly into the road a few times to take the pics, but this will improve with time.

Categories desk slave day, personality facelift, tourist

DAY 113: Updating my vocabulary

22 Dec

How to describe good things.

“AWESOME,” opined my learned friend, as he leant handsomely upon the bar, “would refer to a star going supernova.” He stroked his beard. ” THAT’S awesome.”

To give you some background colour, I had just that minute described his mate’s stand-up routine as “awesome” – which was disproportionately generous, but which seemed polite, considering the comic was standing beside me.

He’s quite right, though. I need to tone down “awesome” by several gigajoules. I ask people on Facebook for their thoughts, and they suggest:

* Grouse (too Victorian)
* Youf (too skater)
* Mintox (only Perthians know of this)
* Killer
* Cosmic
* Power
* Splendid/Marvellous/Brilliant (I use the latter two quite a lot, but I suspect they might be irritating)
* Tops (too twee)
* Fully sick
* Bonza (too ridiculous coming from an English)

And at school we said “skill” and “ace”. I’m partial to “skill”, but when I first started using it my brother told me it means the inside of a sheep’s bum. I’ve been looking for confirmation of this online, but none so far.

I think I will go bonza. Ridicule is nothing to be scared of.

Expressing mild approval.

When responding to reasonable suggestions or signing off a blah conversation, I am likely to respond with “cool”, like a baby boomer trying to be HIP. I used a thesaurus for this one and found: okay.

Expressing disapproval.

My “bollocks”, I notice, have turned to “bullshit” after spending some years in Australia. Yet another example of Americanism blighting this big brown land. I’m going to go true blue with pig’s arse.

Expressing surprise.

I’ve had “stripe me pink” and “stone the crows” suggested – and my grandmother used to exclaim “Gordon Bennett” – but I see nothing wrong with my default fuck me dead.

Saying hello and goodbye.

When bidding people farewell, I invariably say, “seeya” – or “seeya later” if I have no intention of ever seeing them again. However, I notice that seeya’s natural counterpart, “wotcha”, seems to have been lost along the wayside. Let’s bring back wotcha and retain seeya. The universe is aligned once more.

Keeper? Yes. But will update again in six months.

Comments 2 Comments
Categories desk slave day, personality facelift

DAY 112: Rehearsing for my NYE super-task

21 Dec

THIS is my wig. Everything else is hush hush.

Keeper? Well… it’s the one and only rehearsal.

Separated at birth?

Categories idiocy

DAY 111: Having terrible things done to my head, then getting some badass tools

20 Dec

I AM feeling very glum today, knowing that I will be obliged to make a big joke at having failed my driving test again.

After being shown the door at Vic Roads, I decide to detour to Bendigo Marketplace where I might drift aimlessly and find something new to do; now that ‘Acing my driving test’ is no longer today’s headline.

A sign for Chinese acupressure massages draws me in. I like massages. They’re all soft and soothing, and the head ones make me want to roll over.

Not this one. Tissues, sinews, muscles, fat… nothing gets in the way of this dude’s digits in his mission to grind my bones into a fine powder. I feel like I’m being filleted like a fish by his elbows, knuckles and any other pointy appendage, and he works over my spinal cord Wolf Creek-style.

The head massage is worse. I slice my fingernails into my palms as he literally punches me about the skull, sculpts me a new fontanelle, tries to separate my head from my neck with his thumbs, and comes close to gouging out my eyes as he mulches the sockets.

By the time I’ve handed over my twenty-five bucks I’m even tenser, but I get the inspired idea of buying some badass tools. Tools are great – they get stuff done in the country, and at times like this you can bash the crap out of things. Plus I’ve been meaning to practise my axe / pickaxe / sledgehammer swing so that I can help Keith properly on the railroads.

At a hardware store I buy a hammer, an axe and a wrecking bar, which, between them, should be able to destroy anything. When I go to pay for the haul, the bloke refers to my “little wrecking bar” – a phrase that could deflate anyone’s balloon.

“I suppose it’s how you use it that counts, isn’t it?” I put to him.

“It’s a lady’s bar,” he retorts.

Anyway, off to vent some spleen – being very mindful of my non-steel-capped-tootsies.

Keeper? The smashing, not the massaging.

Comments 2 Comments
Categories body bothering, manly skills, physical death risk, pmt, social death risk

DAY 110: Sketching burlesque ladies

19 Dec

THIS lunchtime at the Order of Melbourne, cocktails are being served while the aptly named Dolores Daiquiri takes to the stage in scarlet corset with feather plumage fans and strikes a cheesecake pose. Around 20 or so men and women start scribbling in sketchpads, some with their own watercolours and pastels. This is serious stuff.

Natalie and I scratch enthusiastically on scraps of paper, and fortunately no one descends upon us and bellows, “Ha! Imposters!”

As a glamorous DJ spins ‘Smokey Joe’s Cafe’ and ‘One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer’, we’re urged to eat biscuits and candy canes, until there are crumbs all over my depiction of Dolores’ perfect ski-jump nose.

Keeper? Yes.

Comments 1 Comment
Categories specialist skills

DAY 109: White knuckling in the St Kilda Spinner Jet Boat

18 Dec

I DON’T think he’d appreciate this, but our skipper Darren cuts a bit of an Irwin figure. It’s the bounding around in kid-like shorts, the glee at other people’s alarm, and the impish way he stalks danger, then flips it on its back… or near enough.

“I reckon I could sink this if I kept trying,” he says to one fella, who’s expressing distaste at the sedate pace we’re leaving the marina. “We’ll see how cocky we are after a few waves.”

As soon as he guns the thing, we start smacking down on the water like it’s solid concrete. Like, eight tonnes of fuckin’ metal on solid concrete. My legs fly up in the air and drum back down again.

“Oh my god, the boat’s going to break up,” I think; but “ARGH!” comes out instead.

Darren spins around in his seat so that he’s straddling the back of it, chair dancer-style, and starts chatting to us about the specs of the boat: two 360hp engines that spit put 1300l/s; each weighing one tonne…

Problem is, the boat’s still going at around 30 knots. And he’s not looking. Not even peeking.

He beams in delight at our startled faces, then turns back around and spins the steering wheel violently so that we’re in a 270 degree skid which threatens to flip us onto the roof, but somehow doesn’t. The sea turns on its side, though.

“Physics,” I keep thinking to myself vaguely, as the aluminium construction is explained to us over a blasting Nova soundtrack. “Physics has me safe.” Meanwhile, a sick bag gets passed back.

Darren used to manage an indoor cricket team, but wound up buying the $420k spinner from a mate, who built it from scratch. There are only three in existence, all in Australia. He once jumped the boat three metres, but he’ll try not to do it again. “I knew I could open my eyes again when everyone cheered,” he says. After he’d picked himself up off the floor.

“The police divers don’t like it when I get too close,” he continues, slamming us down on another wave so that my vertebrae give a sharp scream of disapproval. “But I reckon if I make a big enough splash they won’t be able to see what I’m doing.”

Thirty minutes in, a shudder of white knuckle fatigue seems to be running through those on board every time we hit a wave sideways on and jump over it. Can it be we’re all piking?

“This is where we quietly cruise in and pretend we’re responsible members of the boating community,” patters Darren, tucking the boat back into the marina at a gentle crawl. There’s palpable relief. “We’ve just been out for tea and biscuits.”

Keeper? Sure, why not.

Categories physical death risk

DAY 108: Entering a mosh pit stone cold sober

17 Dec

These young men demonstrate the correct way to safely enter a fray.

I’VE got fond memories of mosh pits and flying lemming-like from stages, particularly of having a salty pash with a young Glaswegian sporting a wilting green mohican at a Rollins Band show; in the eye of a storm of blurred elbows. I lost him when I had to find my mum outside.

Today, though, I’m braving a mosh pit stone cold sober. It’s not really by choice. My cohort, of Day Three, has already screamed at Chris Cheney of The Living End, abused the door chick and bounced off several walls, so when she heads off down front of the Reverend Horton Heat’s pit, I feel obliged to stand guard.

Within minutes of the gig starting, someone has launched a beer over my head that I’m convinced is meant for my enthusiastic friend. Oblivious, she loses herself in the melee of elderly bequiffed men and staunch Betty Pagers. It’s a fairly polite melee though. Nobody takes their shirt off, although there are a few blokes in sweat-soaked singlets around the edges who take advantage of a sudden surge to do their own peculiar body-contact dance.

A girl with a mohican and a dog collar grabs my young charge and starts jumping up and down with her, which marks the fourth mohican I’ve seen in two days. They’re perfect for eye-gouging in pits, HOWEVER, this girl has soaped her long hair up without having the regulation shaved sides. This is completely unacceptable, and I’m tempted to tap her on the shoulder and let her know. I would have rather DIED than do that at her age, and I’d have deserved it. Youth of today, grumble grumble…

Keeper? Down front IS more enjoyable than up back, yes. How did I forget this over the centuries? Next time will attempt a salty pash in a mosh pit stone cold sober.

Categories idiocy

DAY 107: Discovering, and claiming, my own beach

16 Dec

AS a kid I’d spend long car journeys and bedtimes – and then dreams themselves – plotting escape routes. Starting at the family home, or school, I’d map out the windows to jump from (this came in handy later in my teenage years), the neighbouring walls to climb and hedges to hide under, until reaching somewhere I wouldn’t be discovered, for a while at least.

It’s a bit of a stretch of the imagination to bestow Westport Reserve in a little-loved stretch of Port Phillip Bay as my own private Idah-oh, but appealingly, it’s just me and the lapping of the rubbish against the shore. I will plant a flag and rename it.

Keeper: Might keep looking. The ideal hidey-hole would have a cave and secret tunnel.