Met Kai and Diane for breakfast yesterday at the Maranui Surf and Lifesaving Club.
Excellent spot, views out over Lyall Bay, and you can watch the planes landing at Wellington Airport. Kai and Diane know what they all are:
“That’s a Fokker Trimaran, like the one I train in”
“No, no, the Fokker Trimaran has an inverted poppling nugget. That’s a Boeing Cervix, unless it’s a Sopwith Carbuncle…”
Etc.
I had a fryup, JJ had a heap of pancakes with so much fruit on it that it looked like a hawaiian hat.
After breakfast, we did four geocaches, including one at a monument/mausoleum to Prime Minister someone, who served in the 1920s. Must have done a good job, as it’s a sodding great marble edifice, and it echoes in the same way as a stone circle. Lovely views out over the harbour and a sailing boat, which prompted me to go all ‘I want to go sailing’ -ey. Kai and Diane said they’d be game for getting a yacht for a weekend at some point:
“Do you know what you’re doing though, Ben? Have you got your boat licence or whatever?”
“Yeah, for sure. You need to run the engine at least once a day or the fridge stops working and the beer gets warm.”
Hopefully we’ll be able to sort out a weekend charter when the weather gets a bit warmer. I reckon that would be a good craic; Wellington Harbour looks like a lovely cruising ground, and across the Cook Straight are the Marlborough Sounds, which would be great to see from the sea. 30ft boats seem to come it at around nzd300 a day in the off season, which, split four ways, is pretty reasonable.
Then we dropped Kai off at the flying club, and JJ and I went with Diane to pick up her copy of “Harry Potter and the Recycled Plotline” and have a cup of coffee. Everyone in town was wearing wizard hats, carrying Harry Potter bags, etc.
Kai’s flying club is pretty cool. They have cases of gadgets on display to lure the unwary passerby in, and aeroplanes lying around out the front. It has a “Biggles, Pioneer Air Fighter” meets golf club feel to it, much as I’d imagine airports did back in the 60s, when people still got dressed up to fly.
Spent the evening hanging out at Kai and Diane’s eating pizza and playing Killer Bunnies. It’s a card game of the sort that would appeal to Serena, which will help the Swindon people to understand the sort of thing it is. I enjoyed it enormously and came last. JJ won.
We’re going out for a drink with Diane (but not Kai, who’s away on business) again on Wednesday. Hopefully some of Kirsten, Jenny, and Andy (who has been fitness training like a madman and hasn’t been seen for a while) will come out for a couple of libations as well.
