Cattai Ridge and Pitt Town Roads

As I said in my post about the Wisemans Run with the club, I took a nice drive back from the Riverside Oaks Golf club after lunch.

Here are the directions:

1. Come out of the Golf Club, turn right onto O'Briens Rd
2. Turn right onto Wisemans Ferry Rd
3. Turn left onto Halcrows Rd
4. Turn right (fairly sharp turn) onto Cattai Ridge Rd
5. Turn left onto Boundary Rd
6. Turn Left onto Pitt Town Rd
7. Turn Right onto Kenthurst Rd

Here is the map



On a similar note, if I want a fairly short, quick drive, there is a variation on the above, to turn it into more of a loop starting from Dural McDonalds and ending at Kenthurst.

1. From the Macca/KFC carpark, head out to Old Northern Rd
2. Turn left onto Old Northern Rd, heading north
3. Turn right onto Cattai Ridge Rd
4. Turn left onto Boundary Rd
5. Turn Left onto Pitt Town Rd
6. Turn Right onto Kenthurst Rd

Here is the map

HAPPY DRIVING!! :-)

One hundred thousand

My car ticked over 100,000 kms this afternoon. I was able to snap a picture using my camera phone. Time for the BIG service.

Another Wisemans Run

Wow! It's been ages since I last posted! Anyway, I have been on another Wisemans Ferry run. This time it was the monthly run with the MX5 Club of NSW. It has been a while since I have been on a run with the club, so it was good to go and catch up with a few people I haven't seen for a while.

The run this time was in the reverse direction to the Wisemans run we did at the end of last year with the MX5 forum, and there were a few differences in the route.

The route this time was as follows:

1. Start at Rofe Park in Hornsby Heights
2. Turn left out of the car park onto Galston Rd and head toward Hornsby
3. Turn left onto the Pacific Hwy, heading North
4. Follow the Pacific Hwy through Asquith, Mt Colah, Mt Kuringai and Berowra
5. Follow the road onto the Freeway (not the Old Pacific Hwy) headed for Newcastle
6. Take the Calga Interchange exit onto Peats Ridge Rd (Exit for Peats Ridge and Mangrove Mountain - this is just before the Mooney Mooney Bridge)
7. Follow Peats Ridge Rd for a while
8. Turn left onto George Downes Dr headed for Mangrove Mountain
9. Turn left onto Wisemans Ferry Rd at Central Mangrove
10. Follow Wisemans Ferry Rd through to the ferry. You can stop and Spencer for a bite to eat if so desired (this was our morning tea stop, there are toilets there if needed)
11. Cross the ferry into Wisemans Ferry. Once you are off the ferry, this is Old Northern Rd
12. Turn right onto River Rd (before heading up the hill out of the town, also near the Police station)
13. Follow River Rd for a while passing through Leets Vale
14. Turn Sharp left at Cliftonville Rd and follow to the end
15. Turn right onto Wisemans Ferry Rd (different to the previous Wisemans Ferry Rd)
16. Turn right onto O'Briens Rd headed toward the Riverside Oaks Golf Course
17. Turn left into the Riverside Oaks. This is the lunch stop and the end of the run.

Here is a map of the route, for those who are more visual people.

It was a beautiful day. Great weather and lots of cars (about 30). Lunch at the Riverside Oaks was rather nice too. Our convoy of 30 odd cars was stopped at Berowra just before joining the freeway for random breath testing (before 10am). Obviously they couldn't test us all in the limited space they had set aside, so most got waved through and waited down the road for the others to be breath tested. Just a small disruption to the mornings drive.

Spencer, which is the "Hub of the Universe" according to the signs that are there (see link to wikipedia :-P ), is a nice place to stop. It is right on the river. There is not much there, only a general store and some toilets.

As I said in my last post about the Wisemans run, Wisemans Ferry Rd between Mangrove Mountain and Wisemans Ferry is quite rough and bumpy, and there is a section where part of the road is closed for work and there are traffic lights to allow cars to pass.

River Rd is a lovely drive although it is a very narrow and twisty road with many narrow, blind corners. This can prove to be a bit dangerous at times with oncoming traffic. Thankfully each of the times I have driven the road, it has been fairly quiet, and I've only ever seen just a few cars.... until Sunday that is.... there were heaps of cars on Sunday. There must have been another club driving that road on the same day. We came across many old American cars coming in the opposite direction.

The run ended at the Riverside Oaks Golf Course for lunch. We went into the bistro for our meal, which was pre-ordered at the start of the run to allow the bristro to be prepared for an onslaught of people coming in for lunch. I had the beer battered fish and chips. It was rather nice, but similar to all the other places around that do beer battered fish and chips. Other options included hamburgers, chicken burgers and steak sandwiches, which all looked nice when they came out.

On leaving the golf club, I took a few nice back roads on the way back home. I'll post these in a separate post soon.

It was a great day of driving. Great roads, great scenery, and great people. It was good to finally get on another club run, I will have to make sure I go to more in the future.

More Wisemans

Went on a club run on Sunday. Had a great time, no major incidents, but tune in later to find out why the NSW Highway Patrol stopped 30 odd MX5s in convoy. Details will follow.

Wisemans Ferry Run

I've been want to write about this for a while now, but haven't had the time to sit down and get it done. Just before Christmas, the guys from mx5cartalk.com organised to do a drive through Wisemans Ferry. It was on the weekend before Christmas, and we had about 15 cars show up (including a Nissan Skyline).

The route was as follows:

1. Start at Rofe Park in Hornsby Heights
2. Turn right out of the Rofe Park car park onto Galston Rd and head towards Galston Gorge
3. Proceed through the Gorge, veer left at the top as you come out of the Gorge
4. Drive through Galston, past the shops
5. Turn right at the roundabout after the shops on to Mid-Dural Rd and follow to the end
6. Turn right onto Old Northern Road and head north towards Wisemans Ferry
7. Drive right to the end of Old Northern Rd going past the shops and pub in Wisemans
8. Cross the car ferry at the end of Old Northern Rd
9. Turn right onto Wisemans Ferry Rd as you drive of the ferry
10. Follow Wisemans Ferry Rd all the way to Central Mangrove (it is a fair distance)
11. At Central Mangrove (the next big crossroads after the ferry) turn right onto George Downes Drive
12. Turn right onto Peats Ridge Rd
13. Follow this under the F3 Freeway and turn right onto the Pacific Hwy, then turn left onto the Pacific Hwy (otherwise you end up on the freeway)
14. Follow this until you reach Pie in the Sky at Cowan (at the top of the hill after you come up from Brooklyn)

Click here for the map of this route on Google Maps.

The drive is a good one. It isn't too long, only a couple of hundred kms round trip, and it only takes about 3 hours to complete. There are good winding, twisting driving roads and some nice scenery. The most picturesque part of the drive is along Wisemans Ferry Rd, from Wisemans through Spencer and up towards Mangrove Mountain. The road here runs alongside the Hawkesbury River for a while and makes its way through some small country towns. The problem here is that the road in this stretch (Wisemans - Central Mangrove) is not all that great. The surface is bumpy, uneven and has many small potholes that upset the car. The road is also very narrow in some sections, but there are very few cars that use it most of the time.... until you run 15 odd MX5's along there :-P

Of course, there is the run along the Old Pac to finish up the run. Ahhhh.... the Old Pac is a great piece of road. Lots of twists and turns and undulating ups and downs. It is a nice drive, but with a speed limit of 60km/h for the vast majority of the way, it is a little slow. You can always stop for a pie at Pie in the Sky too :-)

I have done this run on a number of occasions in both the MX5 and my previous car in both directions. It is always a nice drive and usually free from traffic for the most part.

HDR Photography

The other week a friend and I went out to take a few photos and create a HDR (High Dynamic Range) photo. My friend is a photographer with W&B Automotive Photography. This outing was inspired by this thread over at mx5cartalk.com that was talking about HDR photography.

So Andrew and I headed out on a Wednesday night a couple of weeks ago and found an empty car park where we could take some photos. Basically the idea with shooting for a HDR photo is to take a photo at the correct exposure and then bracket that with a couple of photos that are over exposed and a couple that are under exposed, generally changing the exposure by 1 stop at a time.

Once you have your photos with multiple different exposures, you can then use software to blend the photos and create the final product. A common piece of software used for HDR is Photomatix. Below is the final result. Thanks Andrew!

Windows 7

Recently Microsoft released the Beta version of Windows 7, the next Windows operating system. I got my hands on a copy of said operating system and last night installed it on one of my machines. The PC in question is one that I have recently built up to use for "playing" and studying for Microsoft certifications. It has 4GB RAM, 1TB HDD, Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 and GeForce 9500GT. I plan to run up numerous virtual machines on this PC as I study for the above mentions Microsoft certifications.

So, I installed Windows 7. The install was very smooth, there were no problems at all. It looks pretty much the same as the install process for Windows Vista. Afterwards, I was left with some unknown devices, but I was able to quickly and easily install the drivers for these devices from the disk that came with my motherboard. Boot time is very quick.... a lot quicker that Vista on the same PC.

I have only used it briefly as yet, but I must say that it ran flawlessly (this may have to do with the amount of RAM and the speed of my CPU). I had a bit of a look around and the interface and all the settings are very similar to what was in Windows Vista. The taskbar is different and there are icons for Internet Explorer, Windows Explorer and Media Player that are like the "Quick Launch" toolbar in previous versions of Windows. However, when you open one of these programs, the icon also doubles as the taskbar button for that application, so when you click on it again you get your already opened window. Other applications that are opened get similar looking icons in the taskbar, which then makes it look like there are more icons in your quick launch. If you have an application open, the icon in the taskbar gets a box outlines around it that seems to indicate that the program is running, and when you hover the mouse over the icon, a preview window pops up with an image of what is in the application currently. It is a bit hard to explain, but I will post up some screen shots for those who are interested sometime in the next week when I get more time to explore.

Another thing I have noticed is the absence of the Windows Sidebar that was introduced in Vista. Instead, you can still have your "gadgets", like the clock, CPU meter, Slide show etc, straight on the desktop, and not in the Sidebar.

Internet Explorer 8 is also included in Windows 7. I used it a bit last night and it has some new "interesting" features that I have yet to completely use and understand. Being a Firefox user, I'm sure that it will take a lot of convincing for me to go back to using IE. Also included is Media Player 12. This look rather different, and I don't really like the new look/design of it, so I hope it is a work in progress that will be changed shortly.

Now I know that this is beta software, and there is likely to be bit and pieces that don't function or are missing all together, but still I'm impressed with what I see. I will continue to use Windows 7 and see what I think as I get used to it more. So far I'm liking what I see. I just hope that Microsoft don't screw it up between now and the release to market which is supposedly sometime next year.