“What do these items have in common?”, you may well ask. I’ll tell you later.I know you should avoid cliches like the plague, but Queensland is beautiful one day, perfect the next. That described yesterday at the beach. Perfect temperature, beautiful sunshine, light breeze, gentle waves that were easy to catch, warm water, low tide causing a 20 metre flat mirror surface to the water and hardly anyone there at 8.30 am.
One of the great benefits of belonging to a secret society composed of divers or diverse members you can get a great aggregation of expertise – even when you don’t want it – but when you do, it can bring great joy to your life. Or at least ease some of the misery of this nasty, brutish and short existence.
I experienced near tragedy recently when my Christmas-present, assembled with much contumely, barbecue stopped working properly. Sure it started up OK but with hardly any gas pressure. I replaced the gas cylinder with a full one – unnecessary because it didn’t solve the problem, and was then stuck. Being a little mechanical, I figured out that it was probably a blockage or problem with the gas regulator(clue1). A little experimentation ruled out the blockage option, but then I was stuck as I have no idea how a regulator works, and there doesn’t appear to be any way to take it apart.
So there we were on the way back from our perfect SMB morning. Br Flounder (clue2) was desperately trying to nap in the back seat of Br Eel’s upmarket limo when I posed this quandary. Br Flounder likes a challenge and brought out his imaginary well-chewed pencil and writing pad. A few moments later he postulated, “There’s a diapragm in the regulator that sometimes become stuck. Why don’t you try hitting the regulator a few times – with a spoon (clue3), not a hammer.”
The conversation then degenerated into solving one of the minor conundra, “How come Spitfire pilots were able to shoot through their propellors?” Br Flounder brushed that aside deftly – “the pilot’s trigger was only the actuating mechanism, the firing was controlled though the position of the engine cam shafts” yada yada…..
BTW – the spoon worked and I now have a fully functioning BBQ. More BBQ stories to come.
Filed under: Random Stuff
