Meet Justin Beaver. He has a story to tell so read on.

I started the day slightly grumpy due to lack of sleep. This was made worse by the arrival of rain and the increase in the river level which meant that I couldn't go ahead with safely doing the planned commissioning activities for the day. One frustration lead to another so by 4 PM I decided to go for a drive to clear my head and get some shots for my blip using the excuse that I needed to get some petrol anyway. So off I went and scouted the landscape for some potential images. The ACT landscape never failed to lift my spirit so by the time I arrived at the servo I was smiling and visualizing my next image for my Dreamland series. Loaded up my tank and even had a quick chat with the Indian guy behind the counter. Funny guy that man. One day he'll try to convince me to buy his frozen sandwiches and the next day discuss about the advantages of mixing races and that they produce the most beautiful kids. Anyway, I digress.

So I left the servo and knew exactly where to pull over to get the shot for the day when 2 mins later I noticed the car wasn't accelerating to more than 60kph! I could feel there was something wrong with the car so pulled over. The engine then died on me and it wouldn't start! There I was in the middle of nowhere scratching my head clueless of what was going on. Now, I love driving cars but never learned the maintenance side of it. In my years of driving, i've never had a car breakdown on me. What were all those bright symbols lighting up on the dashboard?! Was it the battery? Maybe it ran out of water? Took me a good 2 mins sitting there when suddenly, ting! Light bulb moment, OH MY GAWD! What if??????????

I took out the receipt from the servo and because my head was up in the clouds visualizing my blip, I actually filled the tank with f@&$$?! DIESEL!!!!!! You' re freakin KIDDING ME?!?!?! So there I was somewhere between ACT and NSW where the closest shop was the servo 3 mins drive down the road manned only by 1 funny Indian guy. The job site was about 10 mins away but I was hesitant about calling for help since I knew i'd never hear the end of it!!!! 2 more mins of racking my brain for a brilliant fix when the cloud opened up and started pouring down with rain. Like I had a choice? Called a colleague and confessed my most wonderful accomplishment to date. He picked me up and we called the road side assistance to collect the car. Got back to my desk and found this odd looking beaver sitting on top of my lappy with a tag naming him as Justin Beaver. For a minute I thought "aw.... how sweet, the boys are giving me an early going away present!". Ha! That was wishful thinking on my part. I should've known better!

JBeaver is the award you get when you make a big stuff up Get it, stuff toy = stuff up? Whoever thought of that was a genius! Lol! Of course, I was laughing my arse off from embarrassment and I learned that this grad engineer did the same thing 3 months ago and is now glad to pass on the baton to me. Now I know why he was nicknamed Diesel. So there you go folks, seems like i've been christened, albeit unwillingly, Diesel 2.

Lesson learned: Stop bloody thinking about photography when you should be paying attention to other stuff!

Alternative lesson: Quit your job so you don't end up in the middle of nowhere where the fuel pumps all look the same and the only way to know if it's unleaded or diesel is to read the small label on it! Then you can spend all your days thinking about your next shot!

All in all, the day ended with a laugh. I'm able to laugh at my stupidity because it was a rental car. Thank goodness for that! Now to see if i'll get shit from my boss tomorrow, after all the company is paying for the insurance. Oh well......

So did I eventually get the shot you ask? No I did not and JB I think deserves this horror honor anyway. :)

Hope you all had a better day than me! :)