No Gridlock

I think I like it when they close roads around here.

With the Riverside Expressway still closed my bus is only stopping at two stops in the city and one of them just happens to be my stop anyway. With less stops and a different route out of the city I'm getting home ten minutes earlier than normal.

It's actually a little quieter in town too. Most people are doing the right thing and not driving into town unless they really need to, so there's less traffic.

They don't know yet how long it's going to take to get the expressway repaired, or even if they are going to have to replace it.

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A couple of years ago I used to spend most of my spare time at Hempels Aviation at Archerfield Airport. I got my pilot's licence there and became a bit of a hangar rat, helping out around the school and occassionally getting a free ride in the back if someone was going flying.

Hempels used to do banner towing. If you lived in Brisbane then you would have been familiar with the big red biplane towing banners down the river or over the bay. I often used to help put the banners together and therefore ended up in the passenger seat for what was pretty much a free joyflight in an open cockpit. We used to fly at about 500 feet which was actually below the top of most of the buildings in the city.

After 9/11 the government decided they didn't want planes flying down the river close to the highrises so they pulled the authority for it. Barry Hempel, the owner decided there wasn't enough money in it if he couldn't do the river run so he sold the plane to someone in Victoria along with all the banner stuff.

It occurred to me this morning what a great advertising opportunity it would be if Hempels were still doing the banner tows down the river, past the expressway.

I can see the banner now.

"Bunnings Hardware, for all your repair needs"