Easter Break – One Week

6 weeks of stress and they gave us a one week break from uni so I went home with the intention of doing a bunch of things to take advantage of this free time. It went something like this…

Sunday: Go Karts
I owed Brendan for his birthday back in January and we decided we’d try out Fastlane Karting after seeing the signs when we were last heading to Oran Park for the V8′s. It was a bit of a drive out there, never been to Minto or anywhere near it before. We’d previously been on the Eastern Creek Karts and The Butterfly Farm Karts so we had some experience. The main attraction to Fastlane was the price, almost half the cost of Eastern Creek.

We kitted up with hairnets and helmets and hit the track. It didn’t take long to realise how rough the track was. I’m certain that we had wheels off the ground as we hit some of the bumps. Brendan flogged me in the first session, managed 38 second laps while I was around the 40 mark. Apparently the staff lap times are around 37 with the record being a 35.9 so we were pushing pretty hard. It was possible to get the karts sliding going too fast into the corners but it wasn’t the fastest technique for racing. We had a break between sessions to realise how tense we were. Hanging on to the wheel as the kart is bouncing around really takes it out of your arms. The second session was a bit different as Brendan had a slower kart. To make things interesting I kept slowing down so we could go two karts wide around some of the corners. This led us coming real close to hitting the tyre barriers and we nudged each other a few times.

Fastlane Karting was pretty cool, heaps more relaxed than Eastern Creek and much cheaper. The track really makes you work hard and we could barely walk afterwards. I ended up bruising my hip and back whilst Brendan bruised up his elbow against the seat.

Monday: Lazy Day
I had planned to do the Woodford to Glenbrook ride but after the battering from Go Karts I decided it was best to rest and catch up on shows. My awesome shows include…

chuckterminatorscrubs30rock… as well as Nitro Circus but I couldn’t find a fancy icon on mediaicons.org to match.

Tuesday: Night Photography
I spent an hour or so flicking through photos on deviantart and got some inspiration to try some night photography with the focus on light trails. I went to Penrith thinking that there would be plenty of traffic but it turned out to be a quiet night apart from the bums getting free coffee.

IMGP0434.jpg
IMGP0440.jpg
IMGP0446.jpg
IMGP0464.jpg

On the way home I stopped at the bridge that crosses the highway at Glenbrook then again at Blaxland and got some more impressive results.

IMGP0468.jpg
IMGP0469.jpg
IMGP0474.jpg
IMGP0479.jpg

Continue reading

BMXTRIX Videos

I found these still lying around on my computer and figured I might as well put them up.

Get the Flash Player to see the wordTube Media Player.

Ride: Mount Portal Lookout

Glenbrook NP

For the first ride of ’09 we decided to head into Glenbrook National Park in search of a lookout. Pete found Mount Portal lookout overlooking the Nepean River on Google Maps and we decided to give it a crack. We rode from Pete’s place at Mount Riverview down to Glenbrook National Park. The ride down into the causeway is bloody steep and bloody fast…

A great opportunity for a bit of a rest and some photos at the causeway.

10-01-09_1806.jpg
10-01-09_1810.jpg

After walking up the bigarse hill on the other side we came to a junction in the road and headed towards Euroka Clearing.

10-01-09_1823.jpg
10-01-09_1838.jpg

Another junction in the road. Right was the road to Euroka and Left was the road we took. This lead us to Tunnel View Lookout and Mount Portal Lookout. We had to walk the bikes up another massive hill to get to the lookout. We were actually looking down onto Glenbrook and the train line. The vew was quite amazing at Tunnel View, Glenbrook creek was below us.

Tunnel View Lookout.jpg
10-01-09_1848.jpg
10-01-09_1850.jpg
10-01-09_1852.jpg

A quick ride down the track took us to the Mount Portal Lookout which overlooks the Nepean River and looking east over Penrith. The city skyline was visible on the horizon. There was a gate and sign for abseilers access to the cliff face. A good rest helped by some snakes gave us a little boost to start the trek back home.

Mount Portal Lookout.jpg
10-01-09_1907.jpg
10-01-09_1857.jpg

Instead of taking the road back to the causeway, Pete spotted a single track which looked like it was heading in the same direction. We chanced it and decided to ride it. The track turned out to have a heap of steps which made it very interesting going down.

10-01-09_2023.jpg
10-01-09_2008.jpg
10-01-09_2003.jpg
10-01-09_1945.jpg

The road back up to the gates of the park sucked so we ended up walking that. By time we made the gates the sun was beginning to set.