Home and back at work.

Hello again,

The travellers have returned to normality and wearily returned to work.

Gavin is back near Eucla wondering if he will ever get to see or work on his sprintcar again.
We were delayed leaving Des Moines due to bad wether in Chicago where we were going to fly to.
Gavin however was flying out to Dallas and on to Los Angelas, as he had a 2 day lay over before his flight, he decided to head out to BR Motorsports shop.
Glen, Annette and I finally got off the ground at 4:30 pm and had managed to change our Chicago to San Fransisco flight so we could still get the 10:00pm flight from San Fransisco to Sydney.
We boarded in Chicago and the door of the plane did not register as locked, we sat for 2 hours while some guy opened and closed the door about 50 times, you would think after a couple he may have worked out that the micro switch was not going to contact and say the door was closed, he had the cleanest set of white gloves hanging from his back pocket, no wonder, he thought maintenance was pressing buttons, finally they called another technician who adjusted the door and we were on our way.
We arrived in San Fransisco and we had missed our connection, no one in the airport could help so we wandered around in a daze, 1am and all flights closed, finally we got an American airlines person who looked up his system and said they were not paying for our accomodation as it was bad weather that caused the delay, after some real bad weather from us he decided that he would change the computer and put maintenance as the reason for the delay, this gave us a room in the Hyatt for the night at least, it is amazing how responsive someone can be if you inform them in a polite manner how you were going to go to Chicago to pick up some nice white gloves and make them brown after returning and performing an exploratory on their rear area.
No seriously they were quite helpfull after we convinced them it was a maintenance delay.
The stop over in San Fran was good, had a chance to get some last minute presents for the good lady, she is not as understanding as some other person in our club, a Doug Esh shirt simply was not going to cut the mustard.
So off into town on Bart went Glen and I, Annette had decided this was to be her sleep in day.
I called Gavin whilst on the train and he informed me he was in Ti heaven, he had found BR Motorsports and he was going to spend up big, the biggest worry was that I had given him some money for parts for me, would he be able to resist temptation and stick to our list? I still do not know the answer to this but the gear is here and I am off to check it out at the home of Mrs Gavin Esh this weekend, Gavin told me how much the gst on the parts was so he must have shopped like a women with a new Gold Visa card.
Back to the story, after buying the last of the "Forgive me for going to America without you " presents Glen and I meandoured down the Fishermans wharf, I had to try the seafood chowder San Fran is supposed to be famous for, it was nice but the Corona was better, we wandered further down the road and came across a HOOTERS, well I had never been in one before and it did say family resteraunt so in we went.
4 hours and many Corona's later we waddled down the road looking for a cab, we had a ball and recommend if you go over any time then San Fran and the fishermans wharf go on your list of to do's.
Finally we were off to the airport, the customs people wanted my case opened, here we go I thought, they have seen all the sprintcar aluminium and Ti parts in my case, but they wanted to go into my other case, must have liked my body spray as that is all that they took out and looked at.
The flight to Sydney was ok, Annette and I had upgrades to business class so we got some good sleep, the 12 or so Coronas I had at Hooters helped.
Finally we hopped on the flight from Sydney to Perth, and wouldn't you know it, the front toilet decided it would flush continuously so we were delayed another hour, 62 hours fron Des Moines to Perth, beats Gavin's record easy.

So folks next year we want about 10 to 20 of us to go, register your interest now so we can book seats and accomodation, send me an email, steve@sjcrushing.com.au, and I promise I will not drive next year.


Steve