After ironing out a few small details (like remembering to bring home a power cord for the borrowed computer), we're able to start updating this page regularly, with all the news from our latest adventure in Australia. After a looooonnng flight down from Vancouver (by way of Honolulu and Sydney) I finally arrived in Brisbane on Monday morning.

Crew member Darren Fahy was there at the airport to pick me and nearly 200 lbs. of luggage (gee, lots of heavy clothes, eh?) and transport me down the coast to the race car shop near Surfers Paradise. Here's what I looked like when I stumbled into Ken Lowe's shop on Monday morning. Bloody shocking, eh?

It didn't take long to get stuck into thrashing on the race car (as you can see below) and in the first three days we've made far more progress than in the previous twenty months. At this point, only some plumbing and wiring remains to be done. Plus a bit more welding on the new (and much better looking) headers. Oh, and we've still got to completely disassemble the engine, put in the new rod bearings and check over all the work we did in '99.

We've got a deadline of March 1st to get the car finished to the point where we can fire it up by next weekend. Then it's off to Willowbank for some serious testing and eventually the all-important license passes.... all both of them. It's time to get back to work on the car now, so I'll close off this very short update and get back to it.

We'll try to get the next update done this weekend, and fill in the details on everything that's happened so far, plus a race report from the new eighth-mile track at Warwick. (The feature that night will be Graham Slapp's twin-engined '48 Fiat). Should be worth the drive.