Screen time

Screen time. A photo I took back in 2018 but it could be today. Granddaughters Poppy and Scarlett engrossed on their iPads. I am sure we are all sick of screentime but perhaps we should all be grateful that in the time of Covid-19 we had the internet for without it lockdowns would have been even more difficult to take. A Leica Q photo.

Classic road trip

Back this afternoon from a 3 day matesgrüppe Porsche road 1200km trip up the coast and into New England. Fifth year of the trip-same route and accommodation as past years-if it ain't broke don't fix it. Unlike last year the weather was kind to us -cold but brilliant sunshine. Old Porsches love cold, dense air and the heater works well.
Superb driving and a great time was had by all. We flogged the cars and they all performed superbly. Mine gathered a few more stone chips including two on the windscreen. No worries-it's not a garage queen, it's a driver.
The 240kms of the Oxley Highway from Walcha to Wauchope is one of the great driving roads of Australia and there was almost no other traffic. For very long stretches we were totally on our own. The 48km continuous winding section through the gumtree forest down the mountain to Long Flat is truly awesome with bend after bend and sheer drops off the edge into the forest with long stretches without a guard rail. Best not to think about it.
Photo above of my car taken off Uralla -Walcha road in New England high country. The country still looks brown but plenty of water in the dams and creeks and sheep and cattle are back on the pastures.
Photo below the three cars somewhere between Clarence and the Bucketts Way on our way up north on the first day.

James Hunt

It's 27 years to the day that James Hunt died-of a heart attack. He really was a real racing driver of the old school -not one of today's colourless characters who cannot say anything without their PR Manager and their sponsor's PR Managers clearing it first.

Here I am taking beer drinking lessons from James at the Australian GP in Adelaide in 1985.

I met him and downed a few with him prior to this when he won a Formula 5000 race at Winton, Victoria - in Oct 78. I was staying in the same motel as him and the Elfin team and he took over the bar at 7.00pm and was still going strong late into the night when I turned in. All in a day's racing for James.

Those were the days.

Le Mans 24 hour weekend

As I type this the 2020 Le Mans 24 hour race would be about approaching the half way point. The campsite would still be brimming with life and the smell of barbecues, the fun fair would be going full tilt ,the stands would be gardually emptying and the cars would have settled into a rhythm.
Sadly none of this is happening and the action, if you can call, it that is confined to the 24hour virtual sim race.

Some photos from two of my Le Mans races. Above the main straight in early evening of the 2011 race taken from the trackside ferris wheel-a superb vantage point.

Below the victorious Peugeot team led by the winning car driven by David Brabham, Marc Gene and Alexander Wurtz on their final lap. The photograph was taken from the outside of the track at Tetre Rouge. At this point the cars turn onto the Mulsanne Straight.

On the road again-soon?

With rapidly easing restrictions and the all clear to travel in NSW again the early 911 matesgrüppe is looking for a 3 day run up into northern NSW in the next few weeks. The only thing which could put a spanner in the works would be the weather. After the long drought winter is proving to be very wet and cool and early 911s and wet roads are not a happy combination. Here's hoping that we have a few dry days. Cold does not matter but rain does.
I really enjoy these annual road trips. This will be my fourth. Friend Craig and I started them in 2016. I had to miss 2017 as I was in hospital but I was back for the 2018 and 2019 trips. We always travel basically the same roads but they are great driving roads, the cars are great, and the company is great.
Some photos from earlier road trips.

All these photos were taken with my Leica X Vario and all are jpegs as they came out of the camera except for some cropping. As a postscript here's a photo I found on the Australian Zen Garage website of an old fella with a Leica X Vario taking photos of Porsches. Photo by Sam Law.

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Portrait of a very old lady

Portrait of a very old lady. Phoebe - half awake or maybe half asleep-on her absolute favourite place a green mat on the couch last week. Nowadays she spends 99% of her time in this location in a nest of cushions. She only gets up for food and water and calls of nature. She is awake in the evenings when she demands attention when she purrs loudly. Very rarely does she wander upstairs to other rooms. She does go outside onto the deck some evenings but now, in the winter, not for long. Too cold for an old lady.

She is now 20-a ripe old age for a pure bred cat-and she is the oldest cat on the books at the Terrigal Vet hospital. Her age is, not surprisingly, showing. Climbing the stairs is not so easy although sometimes she runs down them too quickly for safety. She has very thick coat and she does not groom it as thoroughly as she used to and knots and mats form. Getting them out is not easy for me or her. Nonetheless she is in surprisingly good shape. She eats really well and is not too fussy although she does have some favourite foods which I suspect she would be content to eat for every meal. I dread the day she is no longer with us. It will be a very sad loss.

To say she is part of the family is an understatement . Yesterday the granddaughters were visiting and she is quite content to let them make a fuss of her. All vigorous stroking and petting accepted without complaint although we did brush her and removed some knots and she soon ran out of patience.

The photo was taken with my Leica X Vario-an ideal cat camera as the tiltable electronic viewfinder( EVF) allows me to get the camera down low and then look down into the viewfinder. The zoom lens is superb. It must be one of the best, if not the best, zoom lens ever made. A big call but use it and I'm sure you'd be convinced.

Hats

I came across this photo taken at the Bathurst 12 hour race in 2015. I had overlooked it previously but I've now noticed the texture of the hats and the interplay of the light and shade and decided that it's worthy of appearing on the blog.
The hat wearers are looking into a pit and the photo was taken from the balcony running along the back of the first floor of the pit complex.
The photo was taken with a Sony a7 which I owned at the time and I was using a beautiful 90mm Zeiss lens which I was using on the Sony with an adapter and focusing manually. I did not like the Sony at all and although the Zeiss lens-originally from a Contax G series- is a superb lens manual focusing was too hard. After this I switched to the Leica X Vario.