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Would anyone like some cake?
Jan. 20th, 2013 11:47 pmIt was a good idea at midnight, it was a lovely lunchy snack, even an OK idea after dinner when I wanted a sweetie, but now I have 3/4 of a cake remaining and it is just looking at me.
In related news, I went down to Sydney Park today to use their new outdoor gym stuff: I have the WORST upper body strength known to humankind. And I swear it is more difficult to run 200m than to cycle 20km. Hence my unwillingness to eat 3/4 of a cake, it will be easier to lift myself if I do not contain cake!
Good news from the world of sailing, Alain Delord has been rescued! He was sailing solo round-the-world when his boat lost its mast and he had to abandon ship in a life raft about 500km south of Tasmania. He had good safety equipment and did all the right things, but it was still a question of if, not when, he could be rescued. Happily, air rescue was able to drop additional survival gear down to him, even though he was too far from the coast for a helicopter rescue, and the MV Orion was able to brave rough seas and pick him up this afternoon.
The MV Orion is a cruise ship, with specialist crew on board as it does the Antarctic route frequently, and the ship itself can get into trouble quite aside from random French in peril (we do get a lot of random French in peril down this way, I call it the La Perouse Effect), so all those passengers would have had an extra adventure as part of their trip. And since the ship's stabilisers had to be turned off to get close to the life raft and launch their Zodiacs, they can legitimately talk about doing it old school and rough!
Finally and unrelatedly, did you know that the Union troops in the American Civil War had a balloon unit? An actual Aerial Corps in which people went up in balloons and spied out the enemy while the Southerners shot at them! I learned this while watching a documentary about Pancho Barnes, an early woman aviator who was herself amazing, but whose grandfather was one of the balloonists. It's madly brilliant!
In related news, I went down to Sydney Park today to use their new outdoor gym stuff: I have the WORST upper body strength known to humankind. And I swear it is more difficult to run 200m than to cycle 20km. Hence my unwillingness to eat 3/4 of a cake, it will be easier to lift myself if I do not contain cake!
Good news from the world of sailing, Alain Delord has been rescued! He was sailing solo round-the-world when his boat lost its mast and he had to abandon ship in a life raft about 500km south of Tasmania. He had good safety equipment and did all the right things, but it was still a question of if, not when, he could be rescued. Happily, air rescue was able to drop additional survival gear down to him, even though he was too far from the coast for a helicopter rescue, and the MV Orion was able to brave rough seas and pick him up this afternoon.
The MV Orion is a cruise ship, with specialist crew on board as it does the Antarctic route frequently, and the ship itself can get into trouble quite aside from random French in peril (we do get a lot of random French in peril down this way, I call it the La Perouse Effect), so all those passengers would have had an extra adventure as part of their trip. And since the ship's stabilisers had to be turned off to get close to the life raft and launch their Zodiacs, they can legitimately talk about doing it old school and rough!
Finally and unrelatedly, did you know that the Union troops in the American Civil War had a balloon unit? An actual Aerial Corps in which people went up in balloons and spied out the enemy while the Southerners shot at them! I learned this while watching a documentary about Pancho Barnes, an early woman aviator who was herself amazing, but whose grandfather was one of the balloonists. It's madly brilliant!
