Old Farts

For this I'm indebted to Stephen Fry (but then, aren't we all).

Jeanne Louise Calment, born in Arles, France in 1875, attributed her remarkable longevity to the consumption and application to her skin of olive oil. On her 121st birthday she said "I only have one wrinkle
and I'm sitting on it".

Of the notary public, Andre-Francois Raffray, who purchased her apartment, promising to pay $500 per month until Jeanne died, she said "In life, one sometimes makes bad deals" By the time he died in December 1995 he had paid twice the market value of the apartment. Jeanne died in 1997.

Compared to Li Ching-Yuen, however, Jeanne Calmet was but a spring chicken when she shuffled off. Wikipedia writes: "... in 1930, Professor Wu Chung-chieh of the University of Chengdu discovered Imperial Chinese government records from 1827, congratulating one Li Ching-Yuen on his 150th birthday, and further documents later congratulating him on his 200th birthday in 1877. In 1928, a New York Times correspondent wrote that many of the old men in Li's neighborhood asserted that their grandfathers knew him when they were boys, and that he at that time was a grown man."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li_Ching-Yuen

Mullumbimby Gotcha

Excerpts from a series of emails...

The corner I crashed on is South of Mullum. I am sure of that, because the ambulance arrived from the North. Not hilly road, just level, perhaps following river flats. Hilly slopes just off the road on the west side. Unimportant now... but I remember everything. I can still remember threatening the ambulance officer with a ‘gotcha’ if he cut my riding boots off. Ah. Happy memories.

The hilly slopes would be Coorabel Ridge, most likely, and that sounds more like Myocum Rd than the highway.. and what's a "gotcha". A mate of mine runs the hospital these days, and has taken up motorcycling again after a long break.

Definitely the Highway, as it was then anyway. Just two lane road. I was on my way from Brisbane to Glen Innes with a mate on a Tiger 100, intending to head inland from Grafton.

The ‘gotcha’? ho ho ho,

It comes from an old golf story.

An amateur bets Arnold Palmer that he can beat him over 18 holes of golf so long as he gets 5 strokes start and two ‘gotchas”.

Arnold Palmer doesn’t know what a ‘gotcha’ is either, but hey, the guys an amateur. He will be easy to beat, so Arnold accepts the bet.

After 6 holes Arnold Palmer has made up the 5 strokes start and reckons he has it made, but when he is putting on the 7th, the amateur comes up behind him and without warning shouts ‘gotcha’ and reaches between Arnold's legs and administers a violent ‘gotcha”. ( do I have to be more explicit?)

For the rest of the round Arnold Palmer’s putting goes to pieces because he’s waiting for the second gotcha. The amateur wins.

Okay…. So the ambulanceman pulls out a big knife and prepares to cut off my expensive (and hand made) motorcycle boots, so I show him my hand in a claw grip and offer him a gotcha if he came any
closer with the knife. He couldn’t concentrate for laughing, which is how I saved my boots.


You want memories? They aren’t always funny. I was in the next bed in Brisbane General when Sandy Macrae and Monty Petrola (look them up) were brought in to hospital. Monty died the next night.
The nurses took turns sitting by his bed trying to will him to live. “Come on Monty, fight it. You can do it” ….for hours.

Article on Sandy Macrae

You won’t find me criticizing nurses.

Sandy discharged himself from hospital against doctor’s advice and used to come to outpatients on his Vincent with one arm in a sling, his wife on the back reaching round to operate the clutch.

I thought he was a bit crazy, but when I got out I was riding a mates bike with my leg in a full cast up above the waist, and the leg propped up on the crash bar out front.

I had to be very careful when I stopped to fall over to the left.

Cheers Grant

Crop Circles - Latest Theory

I was having trouble deciphering email headers and ended up reading all sorts of geeky stuff about timestamps and routing etc which really made my head spin, but that's not the real story here. I came upon a really neat tool for analyzing said headers at http://headertool.apelord.com/ which led me to http://apelord.com/ who writes:

"Dear Apelord,

Are crop circles created by aliens? What is your opinion on the movie "Signs"?

Carl Blandford

Dearest Carl,

Your first question, however, demands a serious and thoughtful answer. There are many theories regarding crop circles. Some people, as you suggest, are firmly convinced that crop circles are created by extra-terrestrials in an attempt to communicate with humans. Some believe they are created by plasma vortexes. Skeptics argue that all crop circles are created by pranksters, pointing to numerous hoaxes and the absurdity of (the) idea that intelligent creatures choose to communicate through agricultural vandalism. A very small percentage of people believe that they are created by hideous mole men for their monstrous religious rituals. This turns out to be the correct theory. "