There are many benefits of living in a small community, but some deficits. One is access to stores like IKEA selling inexpensive but practical and well designed furniture. On Monday and Tuesday I had to attend a research meeting at Griffith University in Brisbane just up the road from that city's IKEA outlet and I decided to combine the two events.
It would cost my research grant c. $450 to fly me to Brisbane (via Sydney) so I decided to hire a 1 tonne Toyota Hilux truck for the same price and drive it to Brisbane. Indeed, the 5 hour road trip is about the same or even less than the equivalent air trip after adding in all the time waiting in air terminals and getting to the various airports!
After our meeting ended at lunch-time yesterday, I and a colleague (Jim Walmsley), whose son Adam works with IKEA in Brisbane, went to the showroom and bought 16 flatpacks of shelving and other items. I'd done my homework and had the codes and prices of all items, so finding them was easy. Loading them on the truck was more difficult and I needed help from Adam to do that as some of the packs were fiendishly heavy.
After that, it was home James driving a now very heavy vehicle 1000m up several mountains back to Armidale. The vehicle did this willingly and with only one mishap. One of the straps holding the load snapped spectacularly, and I combed the road for a while looking for the remains. This wasn't a freeway but a winding back road I was taking as a short-cut. Fortunately, the other strap held and the weight of the contents ensured they did bounce over the edge. I did the 460km trip in a little over 5 hours, not bad when half the trip was in the dark.
Now I have assemble the contents, but that awaits the weekend.
AS
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