Here Be Dragons

To Waikanae

Ah yes. Waikanae.

So after the stag night where I got home at around 0630 I had to be at the airport at 0800 to fly to Wellington. Why? Well to go to Waikanae of course. Why? Waikanae? (Ah this isn't even funny) Well because my Nana was having her 90th birthday gathering there. My parents had gone up on Wednesday (the actual birthday day) but due to my desire to be at said night I didn't go up until Friday morning. My sister flew up on Friday morning, but for some reason left 30 mins before me.

So she waited in Wellington airport, until I arrived. Airport food in Chch is STUPID expensive. Oh yes, it is stupid. But still I was hungry and tired and so forked over about $400 for a small bag of fries, and a cold!? bacon and egg muffin. I did not understand how she could take it right out of the pie warmer device and hand it to me and for it to be so cold. I can only assume she was a magician.

Upon arrival R and I picked up a rental car. From my experience with car rentals they are expensive. (Except when relocating, when they are not) I would have said around $90 a day for a small car. This is about what we paid for the Corolla when TBALC "toured the north," (except they gave us a free upgrade to the starship RAV (exciting news on that front, James has promised to actually transcribe the Captain's log, as opposed to Nic whose just holds it close at night)) which wasn't too bad because it was between three of us, but for one person would suck bad.

However from Budget Car Rentals it only cost $104 for three days. Wang. And that inlcuded unlimited kilometers. So that was good.

Jumped in car and drove north, SH1 is rather wacky between the Airport and the beginning of the motorway, it is left then right then left then right then left then right then upside down, or something. I guess the bypass will fix that if they go through with their plans.

So on to Waikanae.

Arrived earlier than expected as traffic out of Wellington was probably the lightest I've ever seen it. I guess the people that wanted to leave the city for the long weekend had left by the time we were travelling, and the rest were still sitting at home.

My grandmother, my aunt, and my two cousins, as well as the husband of my cousins, and their two children were all present. Which made it (with the four of us in attendance) The entire family on my fathers side. This has never happened before. It has been 10 years since the four of us were all in the North island together and my cousin wasn't married whilst the kids weren't even born. So this is pretty important for my nana.

She seemed pretty cool with it. There were also her sister and her sisters husband in attendance, which was good.

So we ate lunch.

Then we sat around and talked like family do, followed by a short walk by some and general boffening.

Then Dad, R, and I headed to..... El Rancho! Now while only Torshin knows the awsomeness of this place, you should learn. For it is mighty.

OK, not really, but when I was aged three to 15 it was wicked. We used to go there all the time, well once a year and it was HUGE. We wandered around, and man it looked small. Just tiny, I'm not sure why I thought the buildings were that big, but I'm pretty sure it was because I was five, and two story buildings were judged HUGE as I saw things. But it was still pretty cool.

Then we approached the flying fox. Ah, the flying fox. It is the flying fox of ultimate coolness, it is certainly the coolest flying fox I have ever been on, and I go out of my way to go on flying foxes. (Bar the one near Kaiteri that was judged cool but far too expensive)

This ain't no flying fox at the park such as next to Peverel st, that begins at about tow meters off the ground and runs about 25 meters, oh no. This is a MIGHTY flying fox, and as such it has its launch in a tree! Yeah, a massive old tree that has stairs strapped on that takes you up around 15 meters off the ground. Yes. Now that is a launch bay. And it takes you through the branches of trees, and it takes you over a lake (where the "bad boys" used to jump off the flying fox into, when I was younger and too wimpy to do so) and there over some more ground and then terminates at another tree.

Flying fox of POWER.

Has been slighlty shortened now, as the destination tree died. But it is still awsome. I have a photo coming. It is such a long and difficult task to get the fox back to the launch that they use detacable foxes, rather than pulling the one device all the way back up to the start. Which actually would have sucked hard, especially whilst going aroudn the lake. So you take them off and run back to the start.

They are big metal and heavy, but they are worth it.

WANG.

We checked out some other sections of the camp like where I used to ride horses, and assorted playgrounds and stuff.

Then home to bel air.

Dinner was without my cousins family as the kids were tired, nut still left me one cousin, an aunt and grandmother to talk to although Nana is getting somewhat deaf. My sister cooked me tea in trade for me driving to the shops to get the ingredients, whilst the others mostly had left overs.

Crashed into bed very early. Was asleep before all three other members of my family. First time this has occured in a VERY long time.

Got up at seven and had breakfast, said good bye to people and jumped back in the car. Drove to Wellington airport, sorted dad out with the rental car people and hightailed it out of there.

Felt somewhat bad that I was only there for one day. She is ninety and I'm there for lunch? PRetty lame milhouse. However, could not miss batchelor's party and would not miss wedding, so really was not much that could be done.

For all her littleness, she is still rather mighty. She has lived alone (since her husband died), and in the same house in Wanganui since before I was born. Which I think makes her pretty staunch. Righto.

Other

My grandmother, my aunt, and my two cousins, as well as the husband of my cousins, and their two children were all present.

This is hard to say, as the above (the original) implies that my two cousins have one husband between them, as in they share a husband. They don't. But if I was to say the "husband of my cousin" that would be wrong as I had just said that there are two cousins, and to lose one mid sentence would be careless. So I went with the following:

My grandmother, my aunt, my two cousins, as well as one of my cousin's husbands, and their two children were all present.

But even this is not 100% cool, as "one of my cousins' husbands" could be read to imply that my cousin has a selection of husbands to choose from. Which she doesn't.

But it's good enough. Foo.

213 is my theory, and the stars my destination. Every so often I search for it on google, and in excellent news I discovered skippy associated with it. Strangely however Dan had no part in the activities of this skippy. It was strange. Strange. Also very funny. It has today shown up on Fark.

All hail 213.

Edited 20:34 17/2/04 Oops. We used Budget car rentals, not Thrifty. Corrected as necessary.

Posted by luther at February 16, 2004 11:22 PM | TrackBack