#2 Greymouth Battery Blues.

Monday 8th Jan 2018

On the Cobden Breakwater I went to start the bus and once again the battery was flat, so we got Merlins Auto Electricians out from Greymouth and got jumpstarted and drove back to his workshop.

Roger the auto electrician had a collection of vintage electrical chargers and other related memorabilia, some of which were still in use...as below!

While they were charging up our batteries and working on the bus we took the opportunity to take the Monteiths Brewery tour. This turned out to be pretty average for $25 each, nothing was actually working, no vats in process or bottling machines going, although the samples and being able to drink and pour your own was fun.

A demo of how to pour your own beer...I needed no help in drinking it though!

I spotted this little fully enclosed mobility scooter, built in Oamaru,

owned by Mic a local stone carver...who has only been working stone for 65 years.

An antique collection of soda fountains and bottles from "The Coast"

There must be a very small market for this type of book in Greymouth. 

I'm probably the only person in town interested in this book and I'm too scottish to buy it!

We headed south through Hokitika to park up at one of our favourite spots, Lake Mahinapua.
Rain was following us down the coast making things nice and green.

Plenty to photograph here!

This is spraxus...it pretties up the roadsides on the Coast.

And so we head south towards Haast Pass, still in showery cool weather!

This is blog #2 hopefully now seriously in catchup mode!

Till then...Stay safe and have fun where ever and when ever you can!

Cheers Jimu and Christine.

#1 Leaving Home - 3 Month Southern Trip Jan-Mar 2018

Well we’ve had this trip planned for quite a while, even having friends come from England to look after the house. Planning was seriously affected when I broke 3 fingers in my left hand at the Menz Shed on Nov 17th. Here are a few photos to explain and verify exactly how and what I did.
Two of us Menz Shedders were working cutting some netting making sure our fingers were well out of the way ... however that large metal grey bender (photo below) was on the top shelf and vibrated off thereby breaking my fingers.

And an x rated X-ray photo for Ukulele players

The recovery I’m told will take months, if not years for the bones to solidify and get back to normal. However I was unable to ride unicycles, play saxophones, ukeleles or yoga for the first 6 weeks. However now I’m back chipping away at all my passions, pushing the pain barriers to make sure I get all the muscles & tendons back into shape.


We started the trip off unexpectantly with flat batteries and had to call out the Covi Roadside assistance just to get us jump started and away. We motored onto Murchison still not switching off the engine and stopped for a late lunch at Nina Ni’s cafe in Reefton. We also bought some more art from Ruth Vaega, more little screenprinted little round discs of native birds to go up inside the bus. 

We stopped in Ahaura to get some eggs, and we got talking to the people for a while.  The man's large ramshackle workshop was wide open, looked to be full of character and I immediately stopped to go in and chat to him some more. Brent Foster is his name, he had lived there for 48 years had a business repairing drilling and other farm contracting work with heaps of old machinery lying around. I took photos of his workshop here are a few below.

He has no shortage of bits and pieces...everything has a place and it's already in its place...

....on the floor.

As you can see...big tools for big jobs...both go hand in hand!

Significant Hazards...#5 and #9 are classic.....#10 on the list is a slight understatement!

The man himself Brent Forster, complete with cattle ear tags in his gum boots!

Quite a nice little campground in Ahaura (noted and saved for another trip) which had good reviews in Christine's phone app. We got into Greymouth around 4pm and stocked up with bus supplies, then onto our usual park up at the Cobden Breakwater. The Speedway was on with lots of cars parked, and we thought we would find it hard to park in our best spot, but it was vacant....perfect! After setting up camp and watching the waves for a while I walked down to the Speedway. It had been going for some time and saw a bloke walk out, without having to go through a barrier so I just walked in and took photos for a while.

The view from inside the bus looking out to the Surf club and the pounding sea

is superb. The surf club seat is a memorial to 2 members who were in the Pike River mine disaster and is a favourite local spot to eat fish & chips.

  We went to bed listening to the roaring waves and pondering the events of the first day of 3 months on the road!

The next blog will be getting some help again as the next morning ......

we had flat batteries ......AGAIN!

ARGHHHH!

Cheers from the Southern Roads.

Stay safe and free.

Jimu & Christine

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