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Three Weddings and a Funeral
I want to tell you about a tale of three astronomers and a Carbon Fibre tube.
The story has 3 heroes and 1 villain.
The cast of characters:
Gary Beal - my friend and mentor, hero - he started all this
Dennis Simmons - an unsung hero
Greg Barlow - an unsung superhero
Myself - (almost) innocent bystander
I'm not sure who the villain is yet!
Gary started all this by offering me the Carbon Fibre tube from his 10" Newtonian, the only problem is that he and the tube are co-located in NZ whilst I'm in Bathurst NSW.
After discarding numerous schemes involving acts of surgery on the tube, we decided that the best course of action would be to ship the tube in one piece. I just found the villain; TNT they wanted to charge an astronomical price (pardon the pun) for shipment and Gary being the cunning fellow he is devised an exceedingly clever plan - we would ship the tube across the Tasman using some poor unsuspecting person to take the tube on board a flight as "luggage".
As luck would have it an old mate of Gary's (Greg Barlow) volunteered to be the brave soul who would attempt the feat. Trouble is Greg was flying to Brisbane which is not real close to Bathurst.
Gary suggested that we should ask the IIS community for help. Yesterday I put up a new thread asking for help and to my utter amazement, I got a reply.
End Part 1 - I've got to go and cook dinner. back in an hour or so.
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