Well I managed to stick with Kel’s crazy diet plan and ended up shedding 7.8kg over the 3 weeks. Not too surprising when it only has about 800 calories a day on it.
Now I’m going to have a couple of weeks of eating normally and then give the super low calorie diet another 3 week stint.
The travel plans are a bit up in the air at the moment. Looks like we’ll be cutting Tom Price and reinstating Kalgoorlie. Looks like we’ll cut Alice Springs/Uluru and Olgas, but will probably get down as far as the devils marbles. There wasn’t much ‘sit and relax’ time and cutting out a week of Alice Springs area will help. That area really needs to be explored properly over a longer time frame anyway. The rest of the trip has been done, just not published yet until I sort out the middle bit a bit better.
*sigh* Then, as the current car is at 160000 kms and has reached the end of the lease I made the mistake of starting to research what the next car would be. So now ‘I want it now!’ and am seeing whether I can get a new lease car started up and delivered by 1/6. The Rexton would do the trip just fine and has already had plenty done to it in preparation. Despite being a bit of an unknown quantity when we got it the Rexton has performed extremely well. It’s got the same power as the replacement, drives well, is very comfortable and has enough toys to keep everybody entertained, is quite capable off road, etc. But, she’s getting on a bit, has the wading depth of a small puddle and spare parts are dicey. The notion of getting stuck out there and waiting on spare parts really doesn’t excite me. Last time I had to get a windscreen it took 2 months to arrive as a special order, lucky the one in it at the time just had a big crack and not smashed. I’m still waiting on replacement hinges and odd parts for the cargo bay… These sort of delay would seriously stuff up our plans. So in theory a new, less exotic vehicle would have a much greater chance of getting back on the road quickly.
Getting it in my hands by 1/6 would give me 1 month to get it hardened up and prepared for the trip. Underbody protection, suspension lift, bullbars, Wiring to suit all the cameras, braking system, dual battery system, CB, tow bar, storage, fridge mount! As well as run it in … really don’t think I’ve got time to swap vehicles at this late stage, but we’ll see.
As far as the van goes it STILL needs the 2 cameras mounted on it. 1 hasn’t arrived yet. I’ve still got to sort out a small box/shield at the front to protect the jerry cans. Might be able to get away with a stone deflector…
Probably this weekend we’ll be stripping out the van and having a trial packing run. This weekend is also the last caravan show before we go. Last chance to buy some useless crap! We’re going anyway though to see if there’s any deals to be had and no doubt some gadget I have to have. There’s no big purchases left to make …
