Desert Safari Bollocks Part 1

It is cool how no matter what your country is blessed with in terms of natural resources the locals will invent a way to use them to get money out of tourists. Take New Zealand. As a country we are fully onto this. Our rivers are full of high-speed thrill seekers in jet boats and the wimps can go by raft. We’re blessed with tall bush covered mountains. So what did we do? Build bridges between them and push people off attached to thick rubber bands. We also have millions of acres of grassy hills. In the 70,s a few visionaries tried to take advantage of this with grass skiing. Never really took off. But in the 90’s a kiwi invented a big plastic ball you could climb into and roll down the hill in. Brilliant. In Cambodia, entrepreneurs want to offer tourists the chance to go digging for antique landmines. Hey, you work with what you’ve got.
In the UAE it’s sand. Lots of it, so it was natural that he tourist operators would look here for their inspiration. The Desert Safari is the classic UAE tourist trip. A work conference lunch buffet of sand themed delights.
First stop was the Camel Farm. Lucky we had a guide because if we hadn’t been told we were at a camel farm we might have mistaken it for simply a herd of camels standing near a couple of old sheds in the desert. There weren’t a lot of fences, but I don’t think camels have a lot of motivation for doing anything. Camels are a lot like dodgem cars at the Easter Show. If you take your foot off the accelerator and hop out they just kind of roll to a stop. The highlight of the camel farm stop was watching two camels doing their bit to boost the herd numbers. Ever wondered how a daddy camel climbs aboard mummy camel with her big bloody hump sticking up into his chest? With great difficulty and a lot of moaning and groaning it turns out. If someone in the porn industry ever makes a film for the hard of hearing they should record two copulating camels and use that as the soundtrack. I can’t imagine that getting it on in front of 18 Russians, two Germans and 4 kiwis is anyone’s idea of fun. Even if it was a threesome. The third party was the young guy (presumably young because the old guys pulled rank and made him do it). You know how those special forces troops hide near a target and guide the missile fired from the plane in with a laser pointer? Well this guy had a similar job. He had to guide the Camels ‘missile’ into the ‘target’. But instead of a laser pointer, he had to use his hands.

From the Farm of Fornication we were taken deeper into the desert for Sand Hooning. If you ever see a white second hand 4 wheel drive for sale and it turns out it was used in desert safaris. Don’t buy it. They get thrashed. The highly trained men behind the wheel make those vehicles do things and go places you suspect cars aren’t meant to go. I say highly trained because sitting in the back belted in and trying not to smash my head in the roof I was really hoping that our driver was highly trained.
There are no road marking out in the desert. They tried once but the wind kept blowing the sand away and it was just a big waste of spray paint. We traveled in a convoy of 4. We were second which meant we got to see the 4 by 4 in front of us go straight off the top of super steep sand dunes and then with the sound of the screams of the middle aged German lady filling our truck I got to turn and watch the group behind us roll down in our tracks. Imagine 7 mice in an empty beer can. 2 German mice, 4 kiwi mice and an Indian driver mouse. For the purposes of this analogy the beer can is one of those big super sized ones that used to be popular in the early 80s in Australia. Now imagine that can is tossed into the surf at Raglan. That was kind of what it felt like.

The desert safari is a precision operation, timed to the second, which I think the Germans really appreciated. We skidded to a stop at the top of a particularly large dune just in time to watch the sun set and from there it was on to part 3. The Desert Camp.

Stay tuned for the exciting wrap up of the Vegas Desert Safari. But I am off to the Dubai 7’s for 2 intensive days of booze and something else……. Oh yeah, rugby. So it might be a few days till I get back here.

Righto.

Speed Wump.

It is the little ideas that can make a big difference. There was this guy who worked for coke and he came up with a tiny change in the design of the can that meant each one used a fraction less aluminum. Saved the company millions.
Well, I have come up with the equivalent for the roading industry concerning the matter of speed restrictions. It is simple, and when you read it you will think either A. That is genius I wish I had thought of that. Or B. That guy has too much time on his hands.
Why a speed bump? Why not a Speed wump. A speed hump is a hump and speed wump is a dip. But I called it wump because it sounds catchier.
With a speed hump you have to add stuff. With a speed wump, you take it away.
And that ‘s it. A simple idea that cuts down on road building costs. Mother nature has been doing it for years. A speed wump is just a series of potholes in a line.
Good news for major cities with roading systems that are outdated, over used and under funded. That must be about every city on the planet.
Well, I am off to patent my incredible new road safety device, but first I need to make sure I haven’t ripped the name off from a Doctor Suess book.

2 more things I am going to do when I rule the world

The first is set aside huge amounts of money for the research and development of the technology to make 2-minute noodles in 1 minute. Or less. Less would be good, but I will be happy with 1 minute.
The other thing I am going to do is make it a law that toilet doors have to open the opposite way to other doors.
You think about it. You go to use a public toilet and as you enter you push the door inward. When you come out you have to grab the door handle and pull. It should be the other way round. When you go in you don’t care if you touch the door handle. You are going to wash your hands in a few moments anyway. It’s coming out you don’t really want to have to touch anything. If everyone washed their hands it wouldn’t matter, but they don’t, so it does. Now I am not getting all Howard Hughes on your arse. I’m no germ freak, but it just makes sense doesn’t it? If you, with your freshly washed hands could push the door with your elbow, you wouldn’t have to risk coming in contact with a poohey print or a wee wee drip. Ever wash your hands for an extra few seconds just so the guy at the basin beside you can head to the door first and you can whip through with him? Well when I rule the planet and the Loo Law takes effect that move will become a thing of the past. Happy toileting everyone.

My daughter has a tail

It’s true. I have a photo to prove it. It was taken moments after she was born. Those surgery lights are great when it comes to photography and the shot turned out brilliantly.
There she is lying on the table where they take them to wipe all the blood off and cut the cord and there growing out of her back just above her arse is a brown fury tail about a foot long. A wildlife expert might identify the tail as being very similar to that of a baby leopard, and they’d be right. In terms of size and angle the leopard’s tail was the best one for photo shopping onto the picture of my daughter. I even left some of the spots on it to make it look kind of freaky.
I haven’t shown my daughter the photo yet. I’m saving it. Saving it for the day she comes to me asking for money. Not 10 bucks for magazine or 25 bucks to go to the movies. I’m talking about the big, pocket burning requests that come with the teenage years. “Dad I need X hundred dollars for a new top.’ ‘Dad, I want a nose job like Jenny from next door.’ ‘Dad, I need a car’. That’s when the Photoshop pic will come into play.
It will work something like this.

Me - “Honey, I’m sorry. You deserve that new top/ nose job/ car, but I just can’t afford it. Your operation cleaned me and your mother out.’
Frankie - ‘What operation?’
M - …….. uncomfortable silence…….. ‘I didn’t really want to have to tell you this, but I guess you are old enough to know. You were born with a tail.’
F - ‘A tail! What kind of tail?’
M - ‘A long brown one, with little dots on it. A bit like a baby leopard’s tail actually.’
….. stunned silence. ‘Here’s a photo I took. ‘
F - ‘I don’t remember…. I mean.. where is it. I don’t have a tail.’
M - ‘No. You wouldn’t remember. We had it removed days after you were born. We paid to fly in a vet from a South African Wildlife Park to perform the operation.’
F - ‘A vet?’
M - ‘We had to. None of the doctors knew how to deal with tails. None of them were prepared to operate on a …….’
F- ‘A what?’
M – ‘……a…….. a freak. They said it would ruin their careers. So as you can imagine it was expensive. The vet insisted flying first class and it costs us all the money we had set aside to be able to give you the things you would want in the future like that new top/ nose job/ car.

Impressed? Well I am considering making this service available to parents around the globe. Send me a picture of your kid as a newborn and my Photoshop experts will work their magic. You don’t have to go with animal parts. We can keep it human. How about a third ear on their forehead? Or invent your own freaky feature. My staff at ‘Make Kids Cost Less’ are standing by.