Favoritist solstice present ever!

Thanks Ren! You know me better than I do! Now this is how you spell fun! Ok, so the initial classroom stuff - all about the mechanics of driving, accelerating , braking, how to shift  and so on, although very necessary, wasn't quite so exciting.  If I hadn't been so nervous, I'd have probably been able to remember some of that wealth of info that Allen was attempting to pack into my tiny brain.  Eventually it was time to suit up in our flame retardant protective gear.... scuse me? flames? no one said anthing about flames! Now I'm just a tiny bit more nervous... and then someone casually mentions, by the way each of these cars cost ......so try to stay on the track, ok?   

 



Seriously? why did you have to tell me that? I'm beginning to wonder if this was such a good idea, but no time to fret, here is your car - get in.  Now you're too busy to worry what with figuring out the harness and making sure the cockpit is properly fitted to you and that you put the steering wheel on propery and what guages are where and how they work and...oooh, no signal lights - that ought to make things easier! Time to start your engines!

...an just like that, there's no time for any thought other than the driving, straight into the first straitaway where you can get all the way to 5th gear -which by the way is really fast! ....and thats a really sharp turn coming up so pick your line, break hard and fast, downshift  into the turn -4th, 3rd, 2nd - and then accelerate out -3rd, 4th- while picking your line through the next turn and repeat, and repeat and repeat.... and all to soon you're being called in. 

...those little cars have a lot more acceleration

than you'd expect - makes them hard to catch!



 ....and of course 

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It has been awhile.... Holland

 Since it is time to revive this blog as it worked so well in the past, (athough I hadn't quite realize how much time has passed...) I will start by picking up some of the missed events over the past few years. (This post is mainly to remind myself how to make this work and the new functions that are now provided.)

Anyway, Holland.....
At this point I'm not going to try to remember in detail what went on that far back, but I can say for sure that I got the better deal on this trip.

Ren had to work a lot of the time and I didn't!

We stayed in Den Haag (The Hague)and did a bunch of day trips out to the nearby towns, cities and country.

On a nice summers day the beach
really gets lively!





...5 years later....does this train station
 look familiar to anyone?



If you look closely you'll be able to
figure out what is going on here.

The days all blend into oneanother

well. as fun as working and making a living is, traveling is more so.... so with that in mind - we're confirmed for Amsterdam in a week! stay tuned. woohoooo!!
And of course, remembering my last posting, (and learning from it) we've upgraded to the front of the bus, and with no connections it's only a 9 hour flight - should pass in the blink of an eye!

Day32-35 - Auckland /HongKong /Home

Day 32-3333 - OMG! Do not, I repeat, DO NOT do multi legs of long flights back-to-back! Airplanes are not for sleeping. 50 hours and no sleep later, we finally managed some shuteye. ....next time I will plan for a slow return with some time for sleep in between.

Day30-31 - Russell

Day30-31 - Well, well, who'd of thought! Actually, we decided we wanted a better look at the house on the water that we saw 2 weeks back, so here we are, and yes we did, and no, it was not decisive. but given the right price and a load of work.... Anyway, the weather was so good that we decided to just stay and chill and be tourists for a day, but Russell is small and here is only so much 'touristy' you can do, so we let a realtor show us around for a couple of hours...

Day29 – Auckland

Day 29 – Got up early and cleaned out the camper as it has to go back today. Long drive back to Auckland, long wait while we swapped camper for car and then we went to the North Shore (Takapuna) to try to jog J’s memory by visiting the campsite we stayed at way back… it was different, but enough similar stuff such as the ice cream shop to work! The people there weren’t as nice as years ago, so we didn’t stay, but as we write this we don’t know exactly where we are going… just popped into the library to send this to you, as you are always on our minds… must find food and coffee, so tata for now!

sorry, no photos, as the computer won't allow that sort of thing...

Day28 - Waitomo

Day 28 - Ha! fooled you! You thought we were headed North didn't you? Well we went south - way south! ...to Waitomo for the famous Glow worm caves. Well, as luck would have it, it rained all night and all day here so the caves were partially flooded - water was too high to safely run the boats through...bugger! we thus opted for the caves that were just opened a year ago - turned out to be a good choice as we were able to see the worms up close and even got to see the various stages of development, including the adult flys mating...and for those of you that passed Bio30, yup, glow worms are really maggots....uh-huh, 'tis true! They do look like worms however, so the ancients that named them can be forgiven as Bio30 was not part of their curriculum. While on a catwalk in the caves we looked way down to the river below and saw people riding inner tubes (wearing wetsuits and helmet lights) through the caves...guess what we are doing next time we get here?!
Forgot to buy groceries so had to go out for dinner. Waitomo has a permanent population of 37 and on a Sunday there is only one place to eat, so over we went. Not a bad place ...Pizza joint attached to the YHA... wondered however why the sirloin steak was cheaper than the fish and chips and pizza...so we ordered 2 steaks and thus never found out why... Was quite good, but like all restaurant fare, somewhat expensive compared to what we are used to.