Christmas Tree Pick-Up

Bringing the Christmas Tree Home

Christmas is sneaking up on us with just 20 days to go!  It got me thinking about the Christmas tree.  My son has struggled to find any decent wild pine in his area or any pine that he can pinch a branch off for his Christmas tree this year.  Instead, his go to for this year has been a glitzy artificial $12 tree from Kmart, not that great for the environment.  Yes, it looks pretty cool, flashes and changes colour, showing off the star on top nicely, but there is fun lost in this plastic answer to what is a quintessential feature of Christmas.  There is, however, fun to be had making the effort to go out and choose a real tree.  Yes, that tangible, fragrance, with real leaves, real bark, and real spiders.  This is the classic scent of Christmas that matches the delicious ham and turkey, custard and Christmas pudding, way better than any fake alternative.

All around the more populated areas of Australia there are numerous places that sell gorgeous live Christmas trees.  From Tomalong Christmas Tree Farm, in New South Wales; to Chrissy Trees 4 You, in Queensland; to Adelaide Hills Christmas Trees, in South Australia; to Sunbury Christmas Tree Farm, in Victoria; to Santa’s Shaped Christmas Tree, in ACT; to Christmas Trees of Wanneroo, in Western Australia; or to Richmond Christmas Tree Farm, in Tasmania – these are just some of the places you can visit for bringing that perfect look and smell of Christmas back home for Christmas.  Now is the time to head out and find that tree to decorate.  Most places will offer a delivery service, but you can also do a pick-up of your own.  Picking the tree up yourself is the most entertaining way of getting the tree and taking the kids/family/friends with you makes for an enjoyable and often humorous excursion.

This leads me to answering the question: how does one best bring a Christmas tree home?  I mean they can be up to 12 ft tall, fat, and even a bit cumbersome.  If you do have a trailer or a ute, then these vehicles are the best for an easy diy for Christmas tree collection.  Take a rope or a tie down to make sure the tree is properly secured for the homeward journey.

But what about if you don’t have trailer, a ute, or even a truck or van?  Well, the next best thing is to secure the tree to the roof of your car.  If your car comes equipped with the roof rack, then you’re good to go.  If you don’t have a roof rack, then you can pop a soft sheet over the roof of your car and position the tree on top before tying it down using tie downs.  The tie downs can be anchored by lowering the windows enough for you to fasten the ends of the tie down to the grab handles inside the car or even on the lip protruding from the top of the door – if there is one.  Just make sure that you are legal and that the tree doesn’t have too much of an overhang past the ends of our vehicle.

The other thing to keep in mind is that your field of vision can’t be blocked.  Placing the tree trunk end at the front end of the car and the top of the tree pointing rearwards ensures that, as you travel back home, the wind drags neatly over the tree without whipping against the branches, potentially damaging the tree and the perfect look.

Most everyday hatchbacks, sedans, and wagons are good for carrying up to 75 kg on the roof.  Others can carry more.  SUVs, vans, and dual cab utes can usually handle 100 kg.  However, do check your manufacturers recommendations before trying to put a heavyweight monster on your little Toyota Yaris.  You can shrink the tree by lopping a bit of the bottom off the tree without losing out too much on the perfect shape.

Another way you can transport your freshly cut Christmas tree back to the house is inside the cabin of your car.  If you’re not too prissy about the interior of your sedan or small hatch getting bits in it, and not too dismayed with a 6 ft tree rather than a 12 ft one, then sliding the tree through the front passenger door, over the lowered backrest, and through onto the rear seat is possible.  Of course, a station wagon or hatchback can swallow a tree through the boot space and over the lowered rear seats.  If it’s a sedan, then the top of the tree may need to poke out through the lowered front passenger window, particularly if it’s tall.  Obviously, the smaller the tree, the easier it is for you to get the Christmas tree inside your car to transport home.

With Christmas just around the corner, it’s time to start decorating, and the first thing to go up has to be the tree!

Old Features We’re Happy (Or Maybe Not) to Say Goodbye To

A topic we were talking about the other day was about how the features in the cars we drive today differ from the cars of yesteryear.  It was interesting discussing this subject because it made us more thankful for the newer vehicles that we can drive on the road.  I love classic cars, even cars that were built a couple of decades ago, still believing that there is a place for them on our roads – especially with one or two upgrades that can be carried out on a classic, thus making them fit for today’s purpose.  Here are just a few of the features that were raised:

Cigarette Lighters

A definite feature that we were happy to say goodbye to was the smelly old cigarette lighters, and their companion ash trays which inevitably broke or popped out of their position while travelling.  And what about the burn holes in the seat fabric, the stains, and the stale cigarette smoke smell that got into all the interior fabric of the car?  Saying goodbye to smoking inside cars is a feature that can stay dead and gone in my book.  Vaping isn’t that much healthier either as they add more and more chemicals to the vape.  Just thinking about the health issues that arise with inhaled cigarette smoke in a confined space – let alone for the person who does the lighting up – is enough for me to say “Good riddance”!

Manual Heating and Cooling System

Older cars had simpler manual switches and dials for heating up or cooling down the interior.  I have to say that these work pretty well when combined with a nicely positioned open window and howling fans.  That said, you could only cool the interior down to what temperature the air outside happened to be, so when the temperature soared to over 30°C, at best, this might be what you could cool the cabin down too.  However, old school heating systems still heated up a cold cabin very easily – on most cars anyway –when heat from the engine could be blasted neatly through to the occupants inside the cabin area.  Old systems are usually less expensive and easier to fix if they do go wrong – like when the fan unit wears out or the vents get blocked.  That said, a cold air conditioning system blowing sweet icy-cold air into a cabin on a sweltering hot day is exceptionally nice and hard to beat!

ABS and ESC

The laws of physics can’t be messed with.  Even a brand new car still has four wheels which can only grip onto the road as much as the pad of rubber that is in contact with the road will allow.  Yes, the fancy ABS and ESC systems are awesome and definitely help save lives, especially in the wet, yet once these systems fail what happens next?

Power steering

Love this one!

Tape deck/CD players

Tapes did have a habit of getting chewed up in the head unit, especially when the favourite songs were played over and over again!  I still like a good CD player.  CD players work really well up until the little laser wears out as or the CD gets far too scratched because it was left on the floor of the car for two months with people accidentally stomping on it, before being rediscovered on car cleaning day.

Alternative Power for Motoring

Electric vehicles, hydrogen-powered vehicles, bio-fuelled vehicles, solar-powered vehicles, and they all have their place on the roads.  The thing I like the most about them is that they lower poisonous emissions like carbon monoxide and nitrous oxides in a congested city environment.  We all like to breathe clean air.  Introduce them gradually, in a way that’s environmentally and ethically sustainable, and affordable for people to buy.  Batteries still need lots of resources to make them, and cars aren’t the only things consuming precious metal for all the electronics and battery sysems.  The tech for capturing harmful emissions from fossil fuels has also improved massively as well.  Classic cars aren’t that hard to convert over to electric, and this could be encouraged and be much less expensive to do, not to mention sustainable.

Safety Ratings

Car safety ratings have improved out of this world!  Thanks to the ongoing work and input of engineers and research, a modern day car is miles safer than an old one – especially if involved in a major accident.  I’m always going to be thankful for seatbelts, airbags, crumple zones, more safety cage rigidity, and crumple zones.  Buy a decent new car today, and it will come fully kitted out with all the latest active accident avoidance technology to keep you (the driver or passenger) safe as well as the other road user(s) around you at the time.

Book Maps

I still love a good paper map in booklet form.  There is something about navigating old school that appeals to the challenge and satisfaction of getting yourself A to B while map-reading.  There is more satisfaction gained by being involved rather than passively letting the GPS do all the work for you.

What have I missed?

Aussie’s Rosco aiming for 1000 mph

Aussie Invader 5R

It might be a bit hard to call it a conventional car but then it’s not really a conventional car in the sense that the Aussie Invader 5R rocket-car looks more plane/rocket in its appearance.  The Aussie Invader 5R rocket-car boasts an insanely long arrow-shaped design with three wheels, large aerodynamic wind deflectors and an engine with close to 150,000 kW!  Yes, that’s correct; you did read that figure correctly.  To put that in perspective, an Aussie V8 Supercar puts out, on average, around 475 kW of power.  Now, if you’ve ever experienced the wonderful roar of these V8s when they blast by around the circuit, then you can understand the aura of such kW potency.  But this Aussie Invader 5R rocket-car makes as much power as 316 of these Aussie V8 Supercars put together! The Aussie Invader 5R rocket-car is powered by a single bi-propellant rocket reportedly capable of producing upwards of 62,000 lbf of thrust.  That’s over four times more than a Boeing 737 jet!

Founder and designer of the new Aussie Invader 5R rocket-car, Rosco McGlashan, has the world’s fastest land speed record in his sights.  He will reportedly be the pilot of the 16-metre long, nine-tonne steel-framed vehicle.  And the target?  The target top speed of 1609 km/h (1000 mph) would be the fastest of any land-going vehicle, ever. And 1000 mph would see it blitz the current land speed record held by the Noble Thrust SSC on a Nevada salt flat in 1997, which averaged 1223.7 km/h and broke the sound barrier while doing so.

Rosco McGlashan

Rosco McGlashan would like to set the new record next year once all the Covid palaver is over-and-done-with, and it will likely be set somewhere in the Queensland or Western Australian desert.  Rosco is no stranger to setting speed records; he is already the holder of the Australian land speed record, where in 1994 he clocked 802.6 km/h behind the wheel of a jet-powered predecessor to the Aussie Invader 5R out on the dry salt flats of Lake Gairdner, near Adelaide.  He has, after all, built all of his drag racing, exhibition, and land-speed racing vehicles himself over the years in a shed at his home.

Rosco has accurate computer modelling on the Aussie Invader 5R rocket-car, which suggests that the Aussie Invader 5R rocket-car will have enough power and thrust for launching the car from 0-100 km/h in approximately 1.1 seconds.  It should reach its target of 1000 mph in less than 30 seconds.  Slowing the Aussie Invader 5R rocket-car down is no mean feat and will thus will require a full 13 km of flat desert just to stop it.  A multi-stage deployment of high-speed hydraulic air brakes, mid-speed parachutes, and low-speed disc brakes have been designed to activate progressively to safely bring the vehicle to a halt.

Picking an exact location will depend largely on which organization or individual steps up as the primary sponsor for the effort. As will the practical necessity of having 5 km of flat desert for getting up to speed plus another 13 km to stop it.

Aussie Invader 5R

Iconic Screen Cars That Aren’t 007’s Aston Martin

If you mention iconic screen cars or movie cars, it won’t be long until the Aston Martins driven by the various incarnations of 007 are mentioned. After all, the long-running Bond series or franchise is practically synonymous with the Aston, and there’s debate about which of the Bond cars was the coolest (with a few honourable mentions going to the aquatic Lotus in The Spy Who Loved Me). However, what about all the other movies (and TV series) that have seriously cool sets of wheels? What are some of the other iconic drives, whether they feature in motoring movies or not, that aren’t associated with Bond, James Bond?

Here’s my pick of instantly recognizable cars from the screen, big and little…

Mini Cooper

It carries out the famous chase scene in The Italian Job, it’s Mr Bean’s drive of choice on the small screen and the big screen, it turns up in one of the Bourne movies, and a fleet of them act as the ghosts chasing a giant Pac-Man in Pixels. With the ability to star in thrillers as well as comedy, this makes the beloved Mini a pretty versatile actor.

VW Beetle

OK, how many cars get to star in a movie all of their very own? Or, for that matter, six movies, spanning from the late 1960s through to 2005? And their own TV series? Yes, we’re talking about Herbie the Love Bug, that absolute classic Volkswagen.

DeLorean DMC-12

We may have passed 2015 but the Back To The Future is still a fun watch. If it wasn’t for this movie using the futuristic-looking metallic DeLorean as a time machine, the DeLorean would have been as forgotten as the Geely Rural Nanny but without even the silly name.

Ford Camaro

If you talk to a non-petrolhead about a Ford Camaro, they’re likely to look at you blankly. If you mention the Transformers Bumblebee car, they’ll instantly know what you’re talking about. Bumblebee is so recognizable that it seems unthinkable to have a Ford Camaro that isn’t yellow.

Dodge Charger

If it didn’t feature a Dodge Charger going over a jump, then it wasn’t really a Dukes of Hazzard episode. It’s gathered some controversy about that Confederate flag painted on the roof (let’s face it: a good chunk of us Down Under didn’t realise was the Confederate flag from the US Civil War but just thought of as “The General Lee’s Logo”; we didn’t know who the original General Lee was either). Even if it’s just plain 1970s orange, it’s still instantly recognizable, almost as much as Daisy’s cutoff denim shorts.  Oh yes – it also took centre stage in the first of the Fast and Furious movies (what number are we up to now?).

Pontiac Firebird Trans Am

Another beauty from the 1970s, commonly known as KITT and as much a star of Knight Rider as Michael Knight. It’s not for nothing that a few people of a certain age have opted to have the navigation system of their vehicles talk with this voice. Pontiac really ought to make a limited edition version using modern tech that was just a fantasy in the original series… but not the turbo thruster that practically made the Firebird do suspension-wrecking jumps. A Trans Am also featured in Smokey and the Bandit.

Ford Anglia

This is another vehicle that would have been forgotten by all except a few classic car enthusiasts but was re-introduced to a new generation by the Harry Potter books and films. For you muggles who haven’t read or seen them, the 1962 Ford Anglia belonging to Arthur Weasley was enchanted to fly, turns feral after crashing, then saves Ron and Harry from a tight spot involving giant spiders. People of a certain age are likely to turn to look twice at all light greeny-blue cars of this era just in case it’s a Harry Potter Anglia.