Oxford and Cambridge Boatrace...Boat Hits Bridge....

Hi Everyone, I hope you are doing as well as possible..

Due to a lot of time on my hands lately, (Not through choice...more about that soon) I have been collecting quite a bit of stuff to blog....

So for starters, The World Famous "Boat Race"...
Well, you have two choices, stay somewhere comfortable with everything at hand and watch it on television, or make your way through a quarter of a million people lined along both banks of the river, overflowing from vastly overpriced beer tents and bars and equally expensive food traps. All this with limited toilet facilities and nowhere to sit, all for a limited view and about two minutes of the two competing boats fleeting past, followed by a flotilla of boats....WoW!!! ok, if you have never done it before...
So there I am sitting at home, Cyder in hand etc., watching Cambridge sadly lose :-( when I hear that there is a problem at Hammersmith Bridge and a boat is stuck under it,
Voom, I`m over there like a shot, the incident only 500 metres from where I live...

There`s this very big (longer than a bus) party type boat that went to turn around at the bridge and somehow seems to have got stuck in reverse gear and jammed it`s rear end under the bridge with the high tide flowing in. The front end then caught the tide and swung round stuffing more of the boat under the bridge, with the water level rising, more and more of the superstructure of the top deck was getting squashed. This with 8 passengers who were taken off by the "Special Police Boat Squad" or the "lifeboat service" depending on which radio report that you listen to...Hmmm has now drawn a big crowd of onlookers.
After lots of different boats arrive, they throw ropes over and haul the vessel out from under the bridge, to a great big cheer from the onlookers.

As a result the bridge is closed to all traffic for at least 3 days due to the Bank Holidays just in case it is unsafe, bwahaha! All that would have happened to the bridge is scratched paint, as it is made of huge steel girders and the canopies on the boat that were going crunch are only 1 inch aluminum framework with a bit of woodwork and glass...
But it will be interesting to see how much the bill will come to....I think that someone is going to make a few bob out of this ;-D
Stuck Boat
The Harbour Master arrives
Then the Old Bill turn up
Everyone else joins the party
Roping it in
It`s Out
Underway

I then go up to the road level, just in time to see a bus driving away and a huddle of transport yellow vests gathered around the left side entrance to the bridge...it turns out that this bus with passengers went through the cordon just as the tape was going up and went to go over the bridge, A Copper sees it and jumps in front of it with arms waving to block it`s way...Ooops the bus swerved to miss him and crashed into the bollard at the entrance to the bridge...luckily no one was hurt.
Hammersmith Bridge shut again
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My health is not too good and it looks like not much can be done to make it better..Cervical Spondylosis...if anyone knows of other people who have it, can you let me know how they go about getting through an average day and any forums/groups for advice, and no offence, but whatever you think, I don`t need Religion in any shape or form, thanks.
I am very pi**ed of with our wonderful "NHS" but that is another story which I working on....
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I have had a lot of time to myself at home and decided to get some of my projects together, one of which is convert my "AmbiCom" PC wireless card to a homemade extension antenna to work in my Ipaq handheld, this was sucessful but sorry no pictures of the build up, as my mind was too focussed on building it, but here are a couple of pictures of it completed, it took 5 hours to work out how to do it, a couple more scavenging for bits and a couple more to build it....the result...A half wave antenna kicking out around 5 or 6 Db gain :-)
The Bits
It Works
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Well thats it for now with a promise of more to come soon.
Thank you for reading.
Yours
The Reverend Rat +:-)