The proliferation of cars I see on the road with the My Family Stickers is my pet hate. However the following are some of the wittiest stickers I had seen over the years.

1. I saw it. I wanted it. I cried. I got it. (seen on back of Porsche)
2. Yes it’s fast and no you can’t borrow it
3. This car is like my husband; if it ain’t yours don’t touch it!
4. Only milk and juice come in 2 litres (found on a V8)
5. YES this is my Ute, NO I won’t help you move!
6. 98% of all Fords are still on the road, the other 2% made it home
7. FIAT – Fix It Again Tony
8. LOTUS – Lots Of Trouble, Usually Serious
9. Lord of the Rings (found on an Audi)
10. Do not over take over turning vehicle

This picture landed in my inbox compliments of a friend with an equally dubious sense of humour.

In the beginning, there was Chaos. Darkness covered the earth. After Chaos, five divinities came into being. The divinities were: Gaia (mother Earth), Tartarus (Underworld), Erebus (Darkness that covers underworld), Night (Darkness that covers Earth), and Eros (Love). Erebus and Night had same spare time on their hands, and some hanky panky resulted in offspring (I do not think that birth control was invented then). These were Hemera (Day), Phôs (Light), and (a bouncing set of quintuplets) Doom, Death, Misery, Deceit, and Discord, or as we call it today, Government. Discord later had children of her own, and these were Murder, Slaughter, Battle and Crime. To keep things interesting, she left the father’s name off the birth certificates, as you do.

Gaia and Uranus (Yes, I know all the jokes. No more, please. And I don’t know how he got into this story anyway.) had a bunch of kids. The first three were real monsters with 100 hands and 50 heads each. Not your usual baby beauty pageant contenders, so loved by the US. The next four were almost as bad, giants with one eye in the middle of their forehead (Cyclopes) Jeremias (“Power”, usually resulting in destroyed tyres and or engine), Brontes (Thunderer), Steropes (Lightning flash) and Arges (Shining Guy; if you don’t believe me, look it up). Zeus employed Brontes, Steropes and Arges full time in his forge making thunderbolts. Jeremias had a part time job hosting Top Gear and would join his brothers when things needed blowing up.

As this was the time before television with very little else to do, along came the third generation of gods: the Olympians, as they made their home on Mount Olympus. After, Cronos castrated his father Uranus, and set himself up as the King of Heaven. He then married his sister, the Titan Rhea and had a bunch of kids. Unfortunately Cronos kept eating them. And we thought we were the first ones with fad diets. When Rhea was expecting her sixth child, she grew tired with her husband’s weird dietary choices and smuggled the baby to the island of Crete. To satisfy Cronus’s need to devour his own children, Rhea gave him a baby-sized rock wrapped in a blanket instead. Cronos promptly ate the rock and never gave it another thought. The sixth baby was Aurelius Stiggitus Apexus.  Stig, as he became later known, grew up safely on Crete. The Nymphs gave him milk from magical goat named Amalthea and this is why he is all white.

Gaia’s baby, the monster Jeremias, having destroyed all the tyres and engines available on the Top Gear Track, started to create havoc and stole all the thunder and lightning from Zeus’s forge. But Aurelius Stiggitus Apexus had taken control of thunder and lightning, and shot down Jeremias with his thunderbolt. Jeremias’s hopes of terrorizing the universe were ended, but he still needed a job, so he moved to Sicily, where he supplied the volcanic magma for Mount Etna and became a part-time consultant to the BBC.

And this is how we ended up with the picture above. Either that, or somebody had fun with Photoshop.

Still many, many sleeps to go before my new baby arrives. This unfortunately allows me too much time on my hands to wonder what the colour selection and wheels will look as the package. Add to this the problem that many colours in the showroom do not correctly represents the true colour, great example is the interior of my E Class, I ordered what I thought was grey only to be confronted with a grey so soft it looks off white. Stuck at home recently with bout of flu and being banned from showing my face in the office, well at least until my germs were non-threatening to my co-workers I ventured onto number of websites both official and un-official to play around with the colour selections and wheels available for the AMG. The Mercedes Benz website was about as helpful as HAL9000, “E, I am afraid I can’t allow you to do that.” A thanks guys, White CLA45 AMG with a background in Florida and NY (I am guessing) is NOT what I was after. Car and Driver was a little bit better, but colours look different when photographed in the dark and direct sunlight.

Back to Macintosh to see if they have anything that may give me the overall picture of the options and what they will look like together. So guys, rather than giving me a idiotic watch that tells me how much fuel I have, how about “Design your own car” on your website?

This is one of the emails doing the rounds at present. Long-time friend decided that it may make me laugh, it certainly did. So, I am going to share.

This morning on the motorway, I looked over to my right and there was a Woman in a brand new VW Golf doing 80 kms/ph. Her face next plastered to her rear view mirror putting on her make up whilst driving.

I looked away for a couple of seconds and when I looked back she was halfway over in my lane, still working on her makeup.

As a man I do not frighten easily….

But she scared me so much I dropped my shaver, this knocked my breakfast muffin right out of my other hand. In all the confusion of trying to straighten out the car using my knees against the steering wheel, it knocked my mobile phone away from my ear, which fell into my coffee that I was balancing between my legs, which splashed and burned the most sensitive part of my body. This ruined the phone, soaked my trousers, and disconnected an important call.

Bloody Women Drivers!!

It’s now the end of March, and we are well and truly into autumn. I live on the coast, and fogs are rare for me. They’re usually limited to the Sydney Harbour Bridge top arch, disappearing into a fairy-tale mist. So I had forgotten how thick the fog can be when away from the coastline.

Early in the morning, leaving the main freeway, I was plunged into a surreal foggy world of little visibility and eerie quiet. The closer to Wakefield, the thicker the fog. I nearly missed the turn-off into the main gate of Wakefield Park.

I arrived at Trackschool HQ to find Boz giving Mezzie a final polish and proudly showing me the new exhaust. Must be a boy thing; I did not think there was anything wrong with the original exhaust. However, said new exhaust is now part and parcel of Mezzie, and Boz is much chuffed. All I can say is that it is much louder than the original, and John has had to start to wear a different helmet so that he can hear me apologizing when I screw up on the track. My fellow Trackschool customer was Darren, with a beautiful and very, very red Alfa, quite rightly his pride and joy. By about 9:30 am, the fog lifted for a perfect sunny day.

I was told by Boz that Darren had arrived even earlier than he had. I did not think it was even possible. These guys were in Wakefield Park when I was tossing up whether if I should get up, or push the snooze button on my iPhone. Boz, if this information was to make me feel guilty, sorry mate, it did not work. My timing is perfect: I arrive when the coffee machine is ready in the café.

As usual, the day was huge fun. Boz would be with me on one session, and as soon as this was finished, he would jump into Darren’s Alfa for his session. I think he needs to cut down on sugar; nobody should be that hyper. My confidence improved as the day wore on, even though the last session of the day was not the best. Nevertheless, all things considered, it was still a fabulous day. Darren and Boz were meeting the following day for a more professional race day, but I was happy to head home for more girly pursuits.

Formula 1 season kicked off in Melbourne last weekend. One of the techies from our project was a first-time spectator, and after one weekend, I am happy to report a certain convert. Chaos, Anarchy and Disorder. My job here is done. No, not really, this was nothing to do with me, even though I am being accused anyway.

As expected, in the weeks leading up to the race we had the usual diehards protesting about how much it is costing the Victorian government, and demanding that Albert Park cease to be converted to the race venue for F1, etc., etc. Given the subsidies both the Federal and State Government dish out, I wonder why these people bother.

What was dragged out again was Eccelstone’s forthcoming court case in Europe. Hmm, Eddie Obied springs to mind, as does Joh Bjelke-Peterson, Russ Hinze and few others. So, something about people, glass houses and something to do with throwing stones? We should not be too hasty in pointing fingers as we have enough home-grown offenders. Plus, Bernie has not yet been convicted.

I loved one of the letters to the editor published on Monday 24^th March in the Financial Review. Mr Marcus L’Estrange needed to voice his displeasure at the F1 race and at all of the wrong doings listed in the paragraph above. But a quick search on the internet revealed Marcus has a long and distinguished career in complaining about lots and lots of things. F1 was just the flavour of the moment, or perhaps it was a slow day for Mr L’Estrange.

The irony was that on the opposite page, the Financial Review ran an article on Renee Gracie, a 19-year-old competitor in the Porsche Carrera Cup Series. Let’s hope we hear much more of her in the future. It will be a tough gig, but she certainly sounds like somebody who has the mental attitude to make it to the big time.

This weekend, Sydney hosted an opening game of baseball. The Sydney Cricket Ground was certainly not filled to overflowing from the little I saw on the news, but the traffic around the area was at a gridlock. But hey, I am a big girl, and want to live in the city. So I and the rest of the Sydneysiders just sucked it up.

Formula 1 moved on, the baseball players went home. That is life in a big city, like it or not.

The red plastic, yellow-roofed car driven by toddlers since the late 1970s sitting on the side of the road waiting for the council clean up could have turned into something like this.

A mechanic in Oxfordshire, England, spent over thousand hours converting a Daewoo Matiz into an adult version of the classic toy. The car runs on unleaded fuel, and can go from 0 to 60 in about 17 seconds. The conversion, true to the original, retains the two huge drink holders and the ignition is a big button. Apparently the idea came up during the “Most Driven Type of Car” type of conversations people have after one or two drinks and anything is possible. Whereas most of us forget the exchanges by the morning, this guy ensured that his idea came to fruition, with his brother and a friend. The inventor would like to use his creation to raise money for London’s Great Ormond Street Children’s hospital. What a unique and delightful idea. I hope he raises lots of money. Perhaps Top Gear’s Stig could drive it as a promo. What a combination: Stig, Big Bright Red and Yellow Toy Car. This could cause a few surprises along the road.

Yet another alternative as supplied by friend. So for the sake of anonymity, lets call her Julie.

The year was 1888. Bertha Benz, born in 1849, was 39 years old and had just learned how to drive. Her husband Karl was the eternal tinkerer, and refused to promote his invention. We are talking about the first petroleum car. Karl patented his Motorwagen in 1886. There is a general agreement that this was the ancestor of the modern cars we drive today. What I love about this story is that it was Bertha’s money that funded the design of this prototype. Other inventors of this time had attached an internal combustion engine to a horse carriage, but Karl made the first vehicle designed for an engine. He had three prototypes, and it was the third one Bertha borrowed for her now legendary trip. Think about it. There were no roads as we know them today, and no petrol stations. She had to plan her trip around towns that had apothecary (chemist) shops where she could buy ligroin, a petroleum distillate sold at the time as a solvent and cleaning product.

Karl suffered from depression, and despite the fact that he had three prototypes, being an overwhelming perfectionist, he continued to tinker with his babies, not wanting to promote them until they were absolutely perfect. Bertha was not only the money that bank-rolled Karl, but also a shrewd business woman who understood that if people got to see these cars in action, it would result in success for the fledgling Benz Company.

In a moment of blind faith, she planned her trip to visit her mother some 50 km away. She set out early in the morning and enlisted the help of her teenage sons. Before dawn, they rolled down the driveway so that Karl would not hear them, and set off for Pforzheim. In Wiesloch they stopped at a pharmacy to refuel, making this the very first petrol station. In Bruchsal Bertha had to find a blacksmith to repair a snapped drive chain. In Bauschlott she had a cobbler replace the leather on the brake shoe, making her the inventor of brake pads. Somewhere along the route, she used her hatpin to clear a clogged fuel line and insulated a short-circuited wire with material from her garter.  At another point her boys and few locals pushed the car up a hill since the 2.5 horsepower engine could not make it. She arrived in Pforzheim the same day after dusk. This was lucky, as the car did not have headlights. She informed her husband of their success.

She became an immediate sensation.  People lined the road on her return trip, some fascinated, others frightened by the hissing and spitting horseless carriage.  But the automobile had proved itself to be safe. The rest, as they say, is history.

If Bertha had not had her “screw it, I’m doing this” moment, years later, Karl would have still been tinkering with prototype number whatever. The combustion engine with all its faults would have failed anyway and we could have been driving around in carriages pulled by unicorns.

Driving on Sunday to catch up with friends, this vision appeared not far away from where I live, and for once I was grateful for having an iPhone. I stopped and pulled a U-turn to ensure I was not seeing things. The industrial-sized roll of Gladwrap needed to wrap up the entire ute and the various tool boxes seemed to defy logic. I am still wondering how long it took the poor sod to unwrap his car. Given the time it takes me to find the end of the plastic wrap on my daily newspaper delivery, I do not envy him. I suspect that a Stanley knife was used. I just dread to think what happened if the Stanley knife was inside one of the wrapped tool boxes.

But I am glad to know that the continuing legacy of playing tricks on your friends is in good hands. It’s a natural progression from picking up the old Mini and turning it around to face the opposite direction, or bribing crane drivers to lift your mate’s car on to the top floor of a construction site. The crowning glory was the time we resprayed a uni mate’s 1960s ute, which he’d purchased for $200 and a case of beer. It was a vast improvement on the purchased car, as it had a different colour on each panel. The only glitch was that we sprayed it mauve. What can I say… the local hardware store had a sale on spray cans that nobody wanted. If I remember correctly, “somebody” forgot to mask the headlights, and we may in our enthusiasm have sprayed over them, as well as the blinkers and a few other vital parts. However, this problem was fixed in the first downpour when most of the “detailing” simply peeled off.

According to Grant Agnew, people who use public transport are forced to pay every time they get on a bus or train or ferry, whilst “entitled” car users simply hop into their cars and use the roads for free. Wow, I did not realise how good I have it. Thank you, Andrew, for pointing this out to me. For a moment there I had totally forgotten the tolls I and very other driver pay for using roads long paid for (i.e., Sydney Harbour Bridge). Then there is the car registration, insurance, the taxes I pay every time I fill up my car with petrol, the taxes I pay when I park, and my own taxes that subsidise the public transport you use. Do you think that the price of your bus ticket goes anywhere near keeping the roads maintained?

Whilst we are on the subject of us “entitled” road users, think on this. We have been taxed and taxed again and again whilst our prospective governments have promised that these taxes will make public transport better, the roads safer, blah, blah, blah… only here we are, years later, public transport fixed, well, “fixed” by the NSW government in a way no sane person can understand, roads remain clogged and the speed limit in the Sydney CBD will be reduced to 40 km per hour. This will be a huge improvement for all of us drivers who travel into the CBD because the best we ever manage is about 10 km per hour if we are lucky. The Cross City Tunnel is a puzzle for all us drivers, because if there is an accident on the bridge, we need to drive half way to Double Bay to enter it, so we just give up and stay in the grid lock. It sort of defeats the purpose.