Black Spur

School starts on Monday... Yay for me! (Heavily lined with sarcasm).

We did something different for Australia Day (26th of January) this year and head up to visit some friends in Buxton (Past Healesville) which meant driving though the Black Spur... and I was driving. The Black Spur is a narrow road, on the side of the mountain, which has incredibly tight turns and is uphill the whole way (depending on your direction, of course). Those yellow signs warning you of a bend in the road and post an advisory speed limit, which on most roads you can exceed with ease; but not on the Black Spur... When is says 25km/h it means 25km/h, and not a single kilometer over it.

I was heading up the road at a safe speed and taking the corners at the posted limit... even then you could feel the G forces pushing you to the side of the car... hard! At the irregular straight stretches I would speed up to get that extra power for going uphill (in my 1996 Ford Laser). But this wasn't fast enough for some.

A red car was right on my tail the whole time, and I didn't want to speed up for him because the road was just too dangerous... Tough shit, he can wait behind me (because the whole road is just too bloody dangerous to overtake anything, have I told you that yet?). Red car makes the move to pass, accelerates but a silver car in the other lane comes from around the corner ahead.

At the rate of speed that we were both travelling there was no way he could have make it ahead of me... James brakes, red car makes it though... by a mere meter. If I hadn't braked there would have easily been a head-on collision at 120km/h (60km/h + 60 km/h = 120km/h) with the two cars, the driver and passengers of both the red and silver cars would be dead, the people in the car immediately tail-gating the silver one would be a serious condition, as well as the people in the car tail-gating that one (you should have seen them slam their brakes on), the collision would have extended onto our lane and I would be either in the hospital or the morgue today and my the rest of family would be in hospital too... and we would inconvenienced hundred's of people heading out for Australia day, as both lanes would have been blocked for hours.

But that didn't happen... Yay for me! (Without the sarcasm this time).

It reminds us all to be a little more careful when driving on the roads and be aware of the conditions...

Or not... the Porsche Boxster behind originally behind the red car passed me seconds after the above incident. Some people don't learn from other's mistakes and have to make them themselves...