Waimea Menz Shed Bike Ride Marsden Valley

G'day Sheddies.

Attempt #2
Last weeks email out to the members got stuck in the shed computer, hopefully this week we will manage to email this notification out. Have update the date, the rest is the same as last week.

Our next ride will be this Wednesday the 23rd August 2017, as usual leaving after smoko from the Shed at 10.20am.
Destination Marsden Valley up to the start of the Barnicoat Track.
Lunch will be somewhere in Stoke, either at Squires or the Bakery Cafe.
I picked Wednesday as the weather is ok, later in the week rain is predicted.

Our last ride to Brightwater via the River Road Stop Bank was successful with an increasing number of men with Mens Shed Waimea hi-vis vests a total of 7 Sheddies started,

From the left (quick march) 

Barry, Brian??, John, Dave, Jimu 

(kneeling because his prayers for fine weather were answered) 

Colin and Roger......with tail end Ian charlie to come!

Ps Roger don't know all the blokes names, will do better next time, 

I'm lucky I can remember mine!

Tail end charlie caught us up in River Road. He takes up so much road, he's a traffic hazard all on his own!

We stopped to admire the steel gate in River road my father had made out of scrap steel ex Anchor Dorman, just as I was telling the story, my father showed up in his ever present form... a little Fantail which fluttered in and out.
Some took the easier route off grass along the tarseal and gravel road (I believe) and therefore won the race to Brightwater. Barry, Colin and Jimu came in a not too shabby second.

Once again we made another sort of impromptu shed visit to Dave Meier's shed to view recent purchases and builds.

 Here is Dave with his new sweet little welder, complete with special extremely hi tec splatter spray in the form of Vaseline and Rice Bran oil.

 His self made linisher cost "absolutely nothing"...that's zilch.....zero...nowt!

And does a fabulous job producing sawdust too!

 It runs so sweetly ... even the dust is good for your sweet tooth.

He has more machinery stacked into this little shed than you can shake a stick at

Well that's what Menz Sheds are for....right!

 This is the start of and reason for the little welder purchase. 

 Dave is scratching his head saying 

"I wonder where I can get interesting little bits of scrap steel from?"

Brian?? says, I don't know, my back hurts,....

Kowhai Barry says I've got some scrap steel in me pockets you can have!

In the spirit of mens sheds, everything is open for jocularity, and chattabillity, which continued with more chat-an-billi-tea down the road at HQ Cafe.

Safely returning back to the shed well before smoko, we all survived to ride again, so see you all this Wednesday.

Weather permit applied for, still waiting for downloading on wednesday morning, bloody red tape!

Cheers
Jimu
The Social Committee.

Greymouth and Christchurch

Greymouth & Christchurch...final update Trip 31 April 2017

We were going to go to Golden Bay, and decided the weather was better on the Coast, after a late start we motored down to the NZMCA beach parkup at Westport, preferring to park with a sea view. The Kawatiri River Trail is right there and we partook, very easy peasy. I rode the big uni down the beach, the sand was soft in places making hard work out of it!
The next day we headed down to Greymouth stopping at Truemans Track, which is about 11kms north of Punakaiki, which is always a good spot for photography.
Our favoured park in Greymouth is on the Cobden Wharf, fabulous views and seas to look out on!
The surf was up and a few hardy West Coasters were into it....

The surf club has commissioned this seat to remember the two members
 who belonged to that surf club who died in the Pike River Mine Disaster.

We checked out the Memorial to the 29 men who died in the Pike River mine disaster.
A very sobering experience with their personal mementos on display.

A quick lazy weekend round trip of 640 kms.

One week later we headed down to Christchurch, stopping to break the journey at Hanmer Springs.
I went on the Easy Rider mountain bike trail, up near Jollies pass, very enjoyable it was too!

Christchurch is still in a state of construction in so many places. 

The Square is still very quiet, mainly tourists about.

Such a sad looking end to the iconic Christchurch Cathedral. 

I have no idea what an Invercargill tram is doing in Central Christchurch?

I can remember when this building was buzzing with artists studios
 and there was an extremely busy cafe to the left of the main door.
Now it's only the Information Centre, which is quite busy!

We drove out to Lyttleton and parked at Naval Point, plenty of room out there,
 and it's well known by the Juicy and Wicked vans people.

The local Waka ama group had a huge practise session in the late afternoon.

Here we are biking from Allendale along the coast to Governers Bay and had coffees in the She Cafe.

Back in central Christchurch, this is Columbo Street

 new buildings everywhere and trendy too!

Bike hire in central Christchurch.

What a really good idea and excellent for tourists.
 The city now has many more bike lanes.
The cars and buses are very courteous to bikes.

I visited a friend out at Halswell, in a lovely new house.

Here is his slightly used but in perfect condition saw stool.

What's the problem...it still works!

We parked up at New Brighton's North Beach at the end of Bower Avenue

 on the edge of the Bottle Lake Forest Park. Which had lots of mountain bike and walking tracks.
I rode the trails before dawn, in frosty weather wanting to see (and did) the sunrise rise out of the sea, but I got disorientated under the trees and somewhat lost.
A 30 minute ride turned into 2 hours before I got back for breakfast.

Below is evidence of the earthquake activity.

Sunday at Lyttleton, we visit the market which was small, rather crafty and arty. 

Our gas ran out (for cooking and water heating) on Saturday night, unfortunately the spare bottle was also empty (dagger looks from the wife).

We had quite a job finding a garage that would fill the smaller 3.5 kg gas bottles, finally after several garages who tried to fill the 3.5 kg, their machine wouldn't fill it! Eventually we found a garage in Blenheim Road, who knew that you have to let out the air in the bottle to allow these types of bottles to be refilled.

Christchurch Botanical Gardens still had a lot of colour

 and a really nice warm cafe. 

I seem to be a tourist attraction, just because of the way I dress

sorry.....I can't help it!

More shots of the city for flavour.

You get the picture?

Spending time out at New Brighton is depressing, this was the only place where I saw buskers.
Must be a message there, I didn't feel like joining them!

The last few blogs have been light on photos to add to the blog because I had a huge clean out, cutting from 12000 down to 5000 photos. Future blogs I intend to keep up to date and therefore will clean up photos to keep my storage of keepers smallish!

It's winter time now, we are prepping the bus with new little upgrades, lots of bike riding and music practice and getting my busking chops and gear up to new levels for our next trips, which will be  early next year with a trip to Dunedin, Central, the Catlins and Invercargill areas on our to do list!

Till then, stay warm, dry and safe.

Cheers
Jimu & Christine

Two Return to the Naki.

Tuesday 21st March

Ok now Christine is back on board

 We motored out to Eastbourne for lunch, I even had a swim in the sea!

We went through Upper Hutt and across to State Highway 1

Such a fab day we stopped to explore Pukerua Bay. 

The view from the top was magnificent. I spotted a good road at the bottom

which led to a sweet little secluded park up.

This fabulous sculpture looks over to Kapiti Island

 and there is a nice rugged walk towards towards the west.

The main road in Foxton is getting some re-furbishments and we stopped to view the town. The windmill was the dream of two Dutch immigrants, Jan Langen and Cor Slobbe. Approximately $1,000,000 was donated from the community to build the windmill and was officially opened in 2003. 

We parked up at Waiinu, which is on the coast and south of Whanganui.

The walk along the black sand beach revealed some lovely photos.

The patterns in the foam along the beach caught my eye.

Then the bubbles,

then these bubbles.

As we headed north towards New Plymouth at Patea I spotted this sign.

"The Teddy Bear No Seabed Mining Protest" is rather unique!

The next stop was Opunaki, the birthplace of the legendary Peter Snell in 1938.

A sweet little town so close to the sea on the Surf Highway.
He ran so far he now lives in America

This is the view of Mt Egmont from Cape Egmont.

And the Lighthouse, still shining at night tho now with a much smaller LED bulb.

We head for the city life in New Plymouth and visit the Len Lye exhibition

 at the Govett Brewster Art Gallery. Certainly a very contemporary building.

Another case of its "All done with Mirrors"

Len's kinetic moving sculptures are most impressive, even with sounds.

Yes a man ahead of his time. 

His individual motto for life was "Individual Happiness Now",

something I try to live up to every day myself.

When you take photos of this sort of thing,

what you see is not what you get!

We stopped in Stratford for the night which had some of the cheapest fish and chips so far in our travels. In the Chinese takeaway in Bridge Street I ordered, then found they don't take plastic so I walked back to the bus to get some cash. When I returned, I spent a couple of minutes juggling in the shop expecting to order and pay, but she came out with my order already done. Really cheap too... three fish, a spring roll and one scoop of chips all came to $9.50

Gladdens a Scotsman heart that does!

We spent a rainy Saturday afternoon in Palmeston North, parked in the Square, rode my unicycle and went to the Digital Rembrant Exhibition at Te Manawa.

Sunday we checked out the local Gardens and a bike ride along the Esplanade and River.

We headed out to the West to park up on the South side of the Rangatikei River,                             

another nice secluded spot across from Scotts Ferry.   

High tide against the river made the water around us rise quickly, but we were never in danger of getting cut off.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     

Heading South now for the ferry back to the South Island

but not before spending time in the Paraparaumu/Raumati areas.

I biked along the Kapiti bike trail where I ended up at Pekapeka Road in super quick time

 as I had a huge back wind pushing me North!

Stopped in Porirua, then checked out Titahi Bay

We headed out towards Seatown and Karaka Bay. 

A photo says it all, it's blokes like this that give us a bad name. 

This is at Plimmerton's Ngatitoa Park, a sweet spot well used and quiet

 apart from sports teams and trains commuting, which I like anyway!

This is out at Owhiro Bay, a super spot on a wild wet windy day. I biked out on the 4wheel track as a far as I could go, returning to the carpark and intending to head out to civilisation to go out for a meal on our last night in the North Island. I had to change a flat rear tyre on the bus in the cold and wet with darkness looming...all character building, and all good fun!

We had some time up our sleeve and parked up at the Bluebridge terminal.

 I rode the uni to Te Papa and back.

That's the end of that North Island trip.

Trip 29 started 19th Jan 2017, finished 29th March.

After a brief rest at home, next we're off for a weekender down in Greymouth

and after that Christchurch and around.

Keep warm and safe.
See you at the next Blog.
Jimu & Christine.