This weekend illustrates this, um, nicely.

Thursday's forecast said showers, rain, heavy rain, thunderstorms for the weekend. As there was the annual general meeting scheduled for the Killarney flying club, I had to drive out nevertheless (I'm the secretary). Also, the weekend should have been the first round of the QLD state PG championship series.

Friday: uneventful drive out to Killarney, it's not exactly raining, setup the tent in thickening weather, then enjoy an evening with rain. My new petrol pressure lantern needed two mantles and one total disassembly until I could convince it to work. Meeting for competition purposes would be at 0830 if the weather allowed it, and I set the mobile phone alarm to 0630 for that.

The night had heavy rain but I was snug and dry and slept well. The alarm went off, and it was still raining. I turned it off and slept on, until about 0930 when I wanted to check the time. Which I tried by grabbing my phone, only to realise that the phone is dripping water... Further investigation showed lots of water under the mattress and exactly one 2cm deep puddle in the tent...where I had laid down the phone.

It turns out that I had put the tent up in a slight hollow, and also managed to have the extra groundsheet funnel water to the tent bottom instead of away from it. And the tent, while good, is now about 9 years old and the bottom seams apparently need new seam sealant.

The phone, of course, was literally dead in the water. I thus started the Saturday in a bright and shiny mood, and upon getting most of the water out and crawling outside (it was still raining slightly), Chris gives me the good news: my car has a flat tyre.

The rest of the day was social but cold and wet. I have no skills at poker or blackjack and dropped out early in every game we had that arvo. And it mostly rained on.

Sunday had better weather, I put the spare wheel on the car (the flat was caused by a nicely embedded barbed wire spike), and eventually a competition task was set. But on seeing the first people being chucked around in the air a fair bit my gutlessness told me not to launch. From talking to Geoff it seems that I didn't miss much. And we also didn't hold the club meeting, because not enough of the key members were present.

The tally. Drove 2x 250km for no flying, no meeting, and ended up minus my phone (on which I just had spent $50 for a replacement lcd and a new battery), needing a tyre repair and a new tent. Lovely.