Road trips and adventures
Road trip to Bathurst for the 100 years of Triumph, day 1.
Road Trip to Bathurst for the 100 years of Triumph, days 2 and 3.
Road Trip to Bathurst for 100 years of Triumph, day 4, the trip home
Road Trip to Port Macquarie, August 2023. Day One, Friday 11th .
I have been wonting to go to an Amsag Rally for some time but between the virus, bad weather, cancellations, and many other things it just has not happened. But the stars finally aligned and I found myself driving to Port Macquarie, all the way on the freeway, not a very interesting way to get somewhere but quick. If the old Triumph was going I would have gone via a more scenic route but I did not like the idea of driving the Subaru on dirt roads so it was boredom and the freeway. Driving a modern car on a freeway has some advantages, it was quick, it was quite but give me an old Triumph on a back road any day. Driving the old Triumph means a cold draft on my accelerator foot, it mean lots of noise (rattles, wind noise), and not to forget the smell of petrol and burning oil (in the morning and afternoon), but give me the old Triumph and day. At least you know you’re alive after driving a Triumph all day. Any way a little over three and a half hours latter and I’m in a Motel in Port Macquarie.
Jim Pope
Road Trip to Port Macquarie, August 2023. Day Two, Saturday 12th .
I left the Motel at 7.30am heading for spectator point one. The first car was due at 9.10am but I needed to be there with enough time to set up cameras. The spectator points was at what could be described as a cross road, sort off. I set up two cameras before the spectator point and two after it; I would film with a five camera from the spectator point. It was hard to find somewhere to put the cameras as there was a lot of long grass and most of the cameras were set up on small tripods, only about 200 mm high. I put two cameras on a stump which gave them some hight but I had to change the other two cameras to larger tripods due to the grass. With 65 cars at two minute intervals, it would take some time for all the cars to go through. Much to my surprise the cameras were still recording after all the cars had gone passed. I then headed to spectator point two about twenty minutes away. The first car was due at 1.20pm so like the first point I was there about an hour before giving me time to get set up. Again I put two cameras before the point and two after, I then set up a fifth camera at the spectator point as by this time my knees and back could not take another two hours of camera work so I just sat there and let the cameras do there thing. Again it was hard to find somewhere to put the cameras due to the long grass, oh well. One camera had a luck escape as one competitor spun out and only just missed the camera. I have not looked at the film yet but hopefully I will end up with a close up the cars back wheel. After all the cars had been through I head to the service park to film the crews arriving at the finish. My goodness things have changed since I competed, back in my day most crews drove the car to and from the event and if they had a service grew it was just a mate with some tools in his boot. Now 99 percent of the cars were transported on car trailers and the service crews were all set up some with trucks etc. It was a hard day on the knees and back so I did not get as much filming done as I had hoped oh well. After the service park it was back to Port Macquarie, some pain killers and the motel.
Jim Pope
Road Trip to Port Macquarie, August 2023. Day Three, Sunday 13th .
Just the drive home on that boring freeway was all that was left of this mini road trip. I used 12 cameras to film the event plus the still camera as well as three Go Pro cameras to film me travelling so that’s 16 cameras to down load. Eight of the cameras were old standard definition cameras which record in a format that the current editing program will not recognise so they will have to be down loaded into my old editing program and then rendered which will change the format making the footage usable. Neither of the editing programs will recognise two of the cameras so they have to be put through a converting program, which is very slow, two to three hours per camera. All in all it will take days before I can start editing all the footage into something watch able.
Jim Pope
Road Trip to Port Macquarie to film the Bago Rally
