Boats, bikes and brand new electric vehicles

Apologies for the delay in getting this blog out. Things have been busy here as everyone frantically makes the most of a summer that has been late in coming.

The weekend after our Gisborne-sun-filled adventure we embarked on a Wellington-rain-soaked expedition. This went only as far as the harbour, where we competed in the annual Wellington Dragon Boat Festival.

We were motley crew, made up of different shapes, sizes, fitness levels, tolerances to alcohol, and abilities to bring baked goods to the team tent. Our races went increasingly well as the day went on, and we were ‘stoked’ (a phrase much more common in New Zealand than the UK, presumably because of their love of wood-burning fires) to finish with a Personal Best time of 1m25s.

Green Machine

This was only half a second behind the podium finishers, teams who had trained all year round and travelled from as far afield as Australia. We, on the other hand, had trained as an incomplete team eight times and had barely dragged ourselves there from the Terrace (after an exhausting night of cheese and Jurassic Park at Tim and Sophie’s).

Last ones standing from Green Machine

We celebrated our moral victory with some drinks. Then celebrated Richard’s 30th birthday with some more drinks. Then tried some dancing. Then went to sleep.

Sunday of that weekend was spent recovering from our physical and non-temperance exertions. Eating some of Richard’s birthday cake helped.

The following weekend started off more sedately. I embraced my inner swat and headed to the library on Saturday, stopping off briefly at work to embrace my inner plumber and help resolve a slight flooding issue – NEVER put coffee grinds down the sink.

I rendezvoused with Dora and her mum for the postscript of lunch with Uncle Douglas, then we jumped in the golden bullet and shot up the newly-built Kapiti Expressway to Marton. We enjoyed every one of the nine minutes knocked off our journey time.

Carefully prepared race packs are given out

Once we arrived at Trish and Andrew’s farm near Marton we were swept up in a storm of preparations for the Rotary Marton Pedal for Pleasure cycle event the following day. A hundred packed race bags, one banner and three sponsor signs later we got an early night ahead of race day.

Dora kept up with Trish's cycling crew

As someone who doesn’t know the name of the ‘clippy shoe things’ and thinks a ‘peloton’ is a migratory bird, I felt fully qualified to enter the 80km race. Dora stuck sensibly to the 40km. The distance seemed immaterial, however, given the amount of scenery to distract us from the gnawing muscle ache.

Come the finish line, burgers and hot dogs were dispensed and we enjoyed a prize giving that reflected well on the charitable nature of the local businesses and Andrew's organisation. Indeed, only three of the 100+ entrants didn’t win one of the many prizes on offer. Once the biggest prize of all had been dispensed (a Lazy Boy worth £800, or £700 pre-Brexit), we decanted to friends of the Shands for afternoon tea, cake and beer.

After a fond farewell we shot back down to Wellington. Dora obviously felt she hadn’t travelled enough, however, since during both weeks she was at large in New Zealand in an electric car.

[Dora] With New Zealand’s electricity generation sitting at around 85% from renewable resources (wind and water), driving an electric car makes a lot of environmental sense, as well as being a lot cheaper to run. The company I work for owns and runs major hydro stations and wind farms in NZ and retails electricity, but making electricity tangible and relevant to people is tricky. Enter the electric car or “EV”, a special night rate for EV owners, installation of free public charging infrastructure, a pledge that our corporate fleet will be 50% electric by 2018, and a PR stunt involving one epic electric road trip.

Hanging out in the hire car while the EV filmed

Hence in total I’ve spent 7 working days driving and “minding” the branded car with two colleagues, whilst it’s filmed in various locations to highlight our other good works (community, customers, sponsorships). It’s ostensibly being driven by the face of our adverts, Jeremy Wells, from Auckland to Invercargill. Actually it’s being driven by three snack-fuelled twenty-something comms and marketing professionals with the PlugShare app and Google maps.

The charging infrastructure is varied across NZ and I am now confident I know more about EV plugs, chargers, charging times and how to drive over hills on low charge than anyone else in the country. We’ve charged up in at the Auckland museum, a substation in the Waikato, a Christchurch shopping mall, a Timaru Holiday Park unit and a car dealership in Gore. We’ve still got the Wellington to Blenheim leg of the trip to go.

Here are some highlights:

Charging up in Raglan where we had a delish dinner

Seeing Stewart Island from Bluff Hill

Trickle charging (18hrs) at Timaru Top 10 Holiday Park, through the window

Getting into Dunedin with 11km to spare - eek! Visiting the First Church of Otago

Eating a service station pie while charging in Gore; arriving at Hyundai Invercargill - we made it!

Festive memories

While we wait for Dora to fill you in on how our dragon boat competition went (she's in Auckland doing filming... more on this next week), here's a reminder of our fun-and-Greg-and-Becky-filled Christmas and NYE:

The week of culture, media and sport

Last Tuesday I took Dora on her birthday surprise, a Vietnamese-French fusion restaurant and a Kiwi-Shakespearean fusion outdoor play. The former was scrumptious and the latter was hilarious, which was a good job given it was the comedy All’s Well That Ends Well.

Later in the week we continued our cultural streak by heading to the Opera House to see Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado. Nineteenth century humour proved as good as sixteenth century gags, and glossed over the dubious political correctness of some of the themes.

Dora spent her working week doing a two-day comprehensive First Aid course. It was very satisfying to finally learn how to do CPR, de-choke a baby, ring the Poison Hotline NZ and wrap a compression bandage to avoid the bone sticking out of the flesh. Unfortunately the “pen in the neck” solution is never recommended (not for lack of the tutees suggesting it to the tutor).

Come Friday, I donned my Go Pro to get some weekend media footage (coming to a laptop screen near you…soon) and we headed to Gisborne, with Friends Matt and Rich. Dora met her cousin Nic at the airport, whilst the rest of us headed to the Best Restaurant in Gisborne (source: Trip Advisor) for a risky curry before our ultramarathon around Lake Waimarama.

[Dora here] I think I definitely got the better end of the weekend, chilling with Nic, Jo, Jasper and Freddy on their deck, in the garden, at the beach, in the surf, and at the Gisborne cinema showing the O’Neill Surf Film Festival. Nic taught me the basics of surfing on Jo’s longboard on Saturday, but it was really on Sunday, inspired by 4 hours of surf films, that I progressed (to scrambling around and falling off). The few waves caught were very satisfying, and I mostly just loved being in and on the water. Apparently with a four hour session every day for a summer I might get moderately good!

Cheers!

It was awesome to see Jasper and (how he’s grown!) Freddy again. Jasper was particularly impressive on his bike zooming down hills, leading nature-watching activities whilst on the bike ride, climbing the ladder up into the tree and reciting word-for-word the entire Dirty Bertie book to me. Freddy preferred the Noises book, was adept at covering things in sand and finding the hardest bits of duplo to try to fit together, and enjoyed teasing his parents by walking two steps then pausing, grinning and crawling the rest of the way.

[Roger here] Meanwhile, Matt, Rich and I drove to a campsite near the Lake. We caught a five-hour power nap before heading up ‘The Bluff’ to get it out of the way before the heat of the day made running too uncomfortable. Views from the top were breath-taking, partially because of our rapid ascent. 

We cantered down to the lake side and continued through sun-dappled forest and insect-serenaded grass. The hiking /tramping huts provided welcome places to rest and replenish our water. We made good time, completing the three-to-four day 50km walk in 7.5 hours despite the path expectantly detouring up and down a hill at the end to avoid a recent landslip.

We caught a water taxi back, the skipper unimpressed with our feat and instead keen to made us jump in the lake from great heights to see the petrified tree stumps that lie beneath the surface. We obliged, the cool clear waters no doubt aiding our recovery.

Back at camp, we cooked, drank almost two bottles of beer each and promptly fell asleep for ten hours. The next day saw us lazily eat and drive our way to a vineyard for some tastings, before joining Dora, her cousin Nic and his wife Jo, and Jasper and Freddy for a lovely afternoon of lunch, slack-lining and prancing around in the Pacific Ocean.

Me, Rich and Matt caught a flight back to Wellington that evening. Their respective partners Lucy and Laura kindly prepared a barbecue to funnel some protein into our knackered muscles.

Dora joined the next morning, catching a lovely sunrise over Hawkes Bay (Wairarapa and Lake Ferry in the pic though) - we'll be back!

This week we’re doing yet more dragon boating in the lead up to the Wellington Dragon Boat festival on Saturday.