Mind Boggling Mawhinneys

Behind the Myths

At the Mythbusters show with Chris Thomson. 

The other night at dinner, I was asked what I wanted for father's day.  Predictably it would seem,  I responded by stating the negative.  That I did not want stuff. Stuff takes up space and clutters my life.   Immediatly felt oops wrong answer as a child was dispatched to the kitchen to get my present.  Sigh of releaf as present turned out to be two tickets to the Behind the Myths tour. 

The show comes complete with Adam and Jamie. 

unfortunately nothing exploded on stage.  A bit of interesting physics and plenty of tempting stuff to try at home - blowing up hot water heater seems like a good one. 

Adam did I nice little sermon along the lines that the sound of failure is the sound of learning a new skill.  The other fun thing they did was use a high speed camera to bring out detail that can not be seen in real time.

Church & Flashpoint 31-8-2014

Today was Flashpoint Sunday.  Flashpoint is a children's church service that Megan and I run on the last Sunday of each month.

We start in "Big Church" and then decamp after about 20 minutes for the hall where Flashoint is held.  The church congregation had Peter on guitar and Megan on Piano to start with and then just Peter because we seem to have a shortage of organists.  Anyone want to donate one?

Megan posed the question "What do you need to be a student?"
The kids contributed suggestions including needing a teacher, a computer and a brain.  (There were others).  Then she moved on to getting the kids to think about the criteria for a worker.


We linked this through to cooking that to cook you need the ingredients and then on to the science

experiment where we had an objective and the objective was to blow the lid off the Milo tin.  I had two lots of ingredients.  Flour, Baking soda, vinegar and water.  Now we all know that you need baking soda and vinegar for this to work but both flour and baking soda are white powder and water and vinegar are both clear liquid.  So we did an experiment which of course failed at first because it was flour and water.   One small child sensibly pointed out that we could try the flour with vinegar since at that stage we actually did not know which was which.  When we finally worked out the correct ingredients the lid popped off.

Jemma read the story.  The story is traditionally read by Paul who was away.  Jemma put her own spin on it.  Firstly she hid the book and there had to be a bit of seeking.  This required Alex to lift Finny up to reach it.  Then when Jemma was reading she added some dramatic sound effects.

Bestbrook

This weekend we went to Bestbrook.  Bestbrook is sort of a farm stay on the Warwick side of Cunningham's Gap.  I was initially apprehensive about the plan because I thought the place would be an over organised sort of cross between a farm stay and Sea World.  In my view it is effectively a glorified private camp ground with horse riding.  Not really a farm.

BGS Open Day

2014 BGS Open Day

Chris and Dan both had duties at open day.
10:30am ish we left Bestbrook and drove to Brisbane.  First port of call was home.  Showered and looked at the list of stuff that we had been texed.

Mattresses from the sofa bed.
fire wood.
socks & walking pants for Megan.
More coffee pods.
AA batteries
Dog.
Toaster
White cardboard.
Shoes for Jemma.
Flour, eggs -> makes pancakes.
Bacon & Eggs.

With the kids in uniform we proceeded to BGS.

First up was Dan.  Singing in the un-auditioned un-changed voices choir.  He is front row right hand side.

After Dan had finished singing, we bought hamburgers from the Rowing Support Group then on to the Centenary Hall.  There were a number of extra curricular activities  on display - Sailing & Rowing among them.  The rowers had 8 ergos set up and connected to a video projector.  Kids were doing 100m races.  Every now and then one of the rowing students would join in and whip the pants off them.

Then they set up a challenge between the grade 10, grade 11 and grade 12 students.  A 2k race run like a relay.  Each participant would row 250m.  To facilitate fast changeovers the kids did not use the shoes.  Rather they had two students who would grab the rowers feet and hold them onto the foot stretcher.  When a rower got to the end of their stage, they would roll off onto the floor and the next rower would jump on.  The foot holders would grab their feet, they would grab the handle and pull for all they were worth.

It was a worthy competition.  The grade 10 students were in front for quite a while.  The grade 12's were only 4 to 6 seconds behind.  The grade 11 students 16seconds behind.  Then in the final 500, the grade 10's faded.  The grade 12's powered ahead and won by a healthy margin and the grade 10 and 11 were pretty much a dead heat.

After rowing we went to the art show.  Very impressive.  Pieces were all $2500 plus.  The art was very impressive.

On the way out we walked past the infamous lab 13.  It now has a new number PH101.  I guess the evidence of a bloated over paid middle management department of change management for the sake of change.

Labyrinth

Megan laid out a "Labyrinth".  a set of ropes on the ground that marked out a path from the outside to the middle.  In the middle was a rock with a cross on it.  At the entrance, you picked a piece of paper with a meditation outlined on it.

Sometimes the path is narrow.
They are just lines on the ground.  I could just step over them. They are like many of the constraints on my life.  For one person a guide for another an impenetrable barrier.

Gods cross in the middle.  I can see it from the outside. As I walk the path I can turn and see the cross.  When I reach the cross I can look 360 and see the beautiful world around me.

A child dribbles a soccer ball across. Not recognizing the lines. Not respecting the rules they represent.

The lines make the trip seem long. If the rules wern't there I could get in and out much quicker.

Sometimes I seem to be going backwards. Sometimes when I stop and think,  when I start again I am not sure if I am on the way in or out.

Under Pressure

Dan asked me a question about a science experiment that he is supposed to do tomorrow. The original question was something to do with trying to decide between a music lesson and science lesson. I'm not much good at those sorts of decisions. They involve people.  But when it comes to blowing things up. Well hey that's what is all about. 

 Dads only get a few opportunities to address science issues that arise when the wife is out so I figured "Don't you ever let a chance go by".

Dan showed me the question sheet.  It involved putting 1cm water in a used soft drink can, heating it until the water boiled and then using a pair of tongs, turing it upside down and puting it face down in a tub of water.  Pretty easy hey.  What do you recon happens?   The water in the tub gets sucked up into the can right.

I figured that I had better resist the temptation to simply answer it for him so I though we would do a slight variation on that experiment.  Like whats so exciting about a coke can sucking up some water.  So we got a milo tin and put 1cm water in it and got it boiling on the stove.  Dan took it off the stove and put the lid on.  To speed things up, he sat it in the sink with some cold water.  I figured the seal would be a bit ordinary and we would hear the air being sucked in or maybe the lid would get sucked in.  Then Kabam and we both jumped up and damaged things.  The whole can had collapsed.  Wow.

Then we got a out of date can of beer and sampled the contenets. Ugh that was a mistake.  Poured them down the sink and Dan put in his cm of water and got it boiling on the stove.  Then up turned it into the tub of water and the dam thing was crushed in an instant.  Blast.  Must have been sucked down on the bottom of the tub.

.

Better do it again.  Needed a new can.  Went next door but all the beer was in stubbies.  A phonecall to the Pasco's located cans.  Dan was dispatched and arrived back with 2 more cans.  The experiment was repeated two more times and each time the can was crushed.  I guess maybe the water can't get in fast enough

Chris' 15th Birthday Party

Chris' 15th Birthday party. Small group go-karting at Archerfield. Chris had wanted a rainbow cake and Megan obliged.

We had a "family lunch".  Marcus was working so he was unable to attend.

Dan was dragged out of bed to pose in the photo.  He had some kind of bug.

This is Jo.  Girl Friend.  She is a very nice girl although she would not Kart. 

Creek To Creek Rowing 31km

Our rowing club has embarked on one of those fund raisers where you give money and we do something that almost kills us. I think the idea is that if we don't die we actually live a little longer and possibly do some good elsewhere.

Our club has partnered with the heart foundation.  The link seems to be that we are engaging in and promoting a healthy lifestyle.


This is a link to a page where you can donate money.
https://yourwayforheart.everydayhero.com/au/frankt

WHATS IN A NAME
The event is called the creek to creek. Last year we rowed from Oxley Creek to Breakfast Creek.  This year we rowed from the Centenary Club to our shed at West End. Not sure that I saw a creek at either end.

8:50am Picked up Jeff Clark and headed out to Centenary Rowing Club.  A few minutes later the GPS trailer with our boats arrived.

We unloaded and began to rig the boats.

Nigel (L) and Jeff (R)

Brad wondering why he was the only member of the Shadows present.










12:30 pm we pushed off.
We warmed up by rowing in sixes.  There are of course 8 rowers normally in the boat.  Often we start with either 4 or 6 rowers rowing and the remaining people just keep the boat balanced.  This lets us concentrate on timing and technique without the distraction of the boat tipping from side to side.

Our crew:
1  Mark Allan & Peter Hastie with a swap when pain or death sets in
2  Jeff Clark
3  Bart Phillips
4  Gary Chilcott
5  Nigel Stubbs.
6  Rob Pullar
7 Anthony Conias
8 Frank Thomson
Cox:John Comino
Tinnie driver = John Walker.

A big thanks to people who gave up family commitments to be in the boat.  Especially to Bart who's son ran on with the first 15 for the first time.

SUBS
We were were only 7/8 until last week.  It was concerning me.  I tried to recruit a girl I know who rows but she declined.  Two other fellows were approached and declined.  I sent a text to everyone in our club.  Brad came through with Nigel.  Nigel joined us for a introductory row on Friday before taking to the water on Saturday. 

ROW
Along the way we stopped and swapped Mark out and Peter in.
As we passed Rob's place his wife and daughter arrived in a tinnie with beer.  A very fun distraction.
We continued rowing.  The water was quite rough.  I was having trouble with my finishes.  Not coming out cleanly.  We stopped again at the Rocks at Yeronga and did another Mark - Peter swap and then again at the University Green Bridge.  By then my back side and lower back were very very sore. In agony actually. I stood up in the boat for a necessary stretch.  Note for next time - Practice sitting for hours or bring a cumfy pillow.  We got going again and continued.  Luckily another stop at the West End Ferry.   We finally arrived at home base around 3:30. The last couple of hundred meters Johnny had "Long way to the top" pumping out the speakers.  Something I really enjoyed.

A 3 hr row.  (The best crew took 2 hrs.)

 

This is just past the west end ferry terminal










Back at the shed we had a BBQ.  Incidentally the white bow protruding from the left is a boat rowed by the state high girls.  They had had rowed in the GPS girls regatta at Kawana.  Their boat lives in the same shed as we operate from.  As we were blocking the entrance our guys ended up carrying it in.