Northern Hemisphere Holiday

I have been very lazy again about posting to my blog. I have a few good excuses and lots of poor ones. I caught the true flu in May and it took a month to get over! Bad timing as I spent most of our 10-day holiday in Australia in bed instead of playing tennis. The weather was warm and sunny so it was a lovely spot to be sick. I didn't take many photos but I did snap one of our daily morning visitors on our balcony.

They are called Rainbow Lorikeets. And on the last day before we went to the airport, we stopped at a boat sale and I saw a boat that my Dad would have loved.

After our return to NZ, I headed off to take care of my grandkids in the US while my son went to a meeting. My 87 year old mother joined us for 10 days and we all had a great time. My 5 year old granddaughter played hookey from preschool for the 2 weeks and we went everywhere: Woodland Zoo, Skymania (trampolines), Funtastic Playtorium (very noisy!), the library, Discovery Park, Lake Washington, the Museum of Flight (the simulated hurricane and sitting in the cocckpit of fighter jets were a hit), swimming at the Lynnwood Pool (great spot with everything a kid could want) and we went to see the movie Finding Dory. My grandson joined us when he wasn't at summer camp.

The carousel at Woodland Zoo

View of Mt Rainier from Discovery Park

While in Seattle, my granddaughter wanted me to knit her a dress. She chose the pattern and the yarn (in her favourite two colours) herself. I made a purse to match and it was a hit.

After Seattle, I went to visit my daughter and her boyfriend in San Francisco and I also visited old friends in the Palo Alto area, where I used to live. I brought the quilt that my daughter and I had designed together and after an emergency visit to a friend's to borrow her sewing machine to add one little quilting seam I missed, taking out all the basting, and washing out all the markings in the bathtub, it was finished. It only took 2 years of the 10 year window my daughter negotiated!

My husband then arrived from NZ and we flew to Toronto where we did a road trip around Ontario for 3 days visiting old friends - so much fun! On the way home we stopped in Kingston where I went to university. We had lunch at Chez Piggy (yum) and drove around my old stomping grounds. I took a photo of the house I used to live in with 7 other girls and another of my great aunt's house where she lived alone. Guess which one is which! 

After that, my kids and grandkids all arrived in Toronto and we went up to Georgian Bay for a week with my sibs and mother. We had perfect weather and the water was 73F, which is super warm for there. The kids had a ball on the lily pad (huge floating mat), a floating trampoline, and riding behind the boat on a 'biscuit'. 

My grandson was quite proud of swimming all the way across the channel on his own!

After 5 1/2 weeks of gallivanting around North America, we had to say good bye and head home to winter, which is really pretty mild in Christchurch. And it's always great to get home. The weather had been warm while we were away and one of our rhododendrons was in full bloom when we got home! 

 But real winter arrived shortly after that and we had a little snow. There's lots of snow in the mountains so the skiers are happy.

April catchup

Well I've been too busy to blog (or to sew much). The autumn is a busy time on a lifestyle block when you grow fruit and vegetables and raise cattle and chooks and try to live off of them. Most of the apples are harvested now and besides tons of applesauce and applejuice, I've tried to make cider. My first batch was just pureed Braeburn apples that had been frozen first and then thawed (presumably to break up the cell walls and release all the juices?). The mixture (with lemon peel and juice added) was left to ferment on its own for about 2 weeks and then bottled. It tasted lovely although I don't think it contains much alcohol. Certainly the bottles aren't looking like they want to explode!

My second batch of cider was supposed to be perfection - straight juice from 1/3 Cox-Orange and 2/3 Braeburn apples (no added water) and I put in cider yeast from Aqua Vitae, a brewing store in town. Well it still didn't bubble much even with the yeast added (maybe because I only had 7L and the pail is huge). After a week, I used a hygrometer to check the alcohol content - zero! I gave it all a stir, which got it bubbling for a day but now, another week later, it's not bubbling at all. So I'm going to have Ross taste it and see what he thinks (anything with alcohol in it doesn't ever taste the greatest to me so I'm a poor judge). If I get the thumbs up from Ross, I'll bottle it.

Although it's already May, I harvested all of these vegies this morning plus onions. The tomatoes plus some onions and peppers (sweet and hot) from the garden are now tomato puree. And the rest of the hot peppers are in the dehydrator. We're still harvesting parsnips, carrots, pumpkin/winter squash, silverbeet (chard) and I'm hoping the beetroot will get bigger soon. We've had a very warm autumn so far - up to 20-22C many times. But it's been very dry so we are getting desperate for rain. Soon we'll be feeding out hay to the cattle if the rain doesn't come.

Here's a photo I couldn't resist posting. Our dog Daphne found a possum up a gum tree recently and she couldn't resist trying to get to it. Unfortunately she wasn't too sure how to get back down! Ross did manage to save the damsel in distress.

The other fun thing taking me away from sewing this month was a tramping trip in the South Wairarapa on the Tora Coastal Walk. It was 3 days of walking carrying only our water and lunch. The postman delivered our bags to each destination! The food was all prepared for us in the evening and it was delicious. We went with friends plus several of their friends. We had good weather with great views of the sea and the rolling hills. Some native bush but not a lot. It was a private walk mostly through farmers' land.

At the top of The Trig

Doing dead ant exercises to get the lactate out after a lot of uphill walking

Ross managed to find a bulldozer at the top of a hill!

View of our destination at the end of Day 1

A fantail that was following us in the native bush on Day 3

 I have been slowly working on my daughter's quilt and only have 2 strips of the last border left to put on. Hoping to quilt it all before I see her in June, which may be wishful thinking, but fingers crossed I can do it. Here's a sneak preview of one of the 15 different block design/colour combos. More later.

 That's all for now.

Wanaka Triathlon

On Feb 20, my husband Ross, neighbour Jo, and I did a team half Ironman in Wanaka. Fortunately it wasn't 32C like it was at home in Christchurch. When I started the swim, it was 12C, colder than the water! But the water was still pretty cold and there were huge waves as we headed out. Here's a photo of the lake and swim course the day before.

By the second leg, the swells were hitting us broadside but on the 3rd leg, they were helping us. The last leg was straight into the sun. Wish I had found out what landmark to head for as I couldn't see the buoys. I ended up going too far inland and being directed out by a kayaker and then headed too far out so it was a bit of a zigzag at the end. But I managed to do the 1.9+k in 38 minutes, which I was happy with. 

Then Ross hopped on the bike and set out to tackle the winds. He averaged 30k/h on the legs with a tailwind and 20k/h into the headwind. He enjoyed every minute of it - well maybe not the last half hour or so - headwind plus steep hill. It's a very hilly course with gorgeous views such as this one heading back from Glendhu Bay. 

Jo and I were starting to worry about Ross as the time rolled past 3.5 hours. 

90k and 3:45 later, he rolled in looking not much worse than when he started.

So off went Jo on her half marathon that she completed in 2:08 despite rain for the second half. We ran across the finish line with her so I don't have a photo (unless I pay $29 for the official one) but here's one of the weather at the finish.

It was a fun day although I did feel a bit of a fraud when at 9pm I saw some of the Ironman athletes crossing the finish line and I had only raced for 38 minutes! Here we are at home with our participant medals - no podium finish for us.

We came 161 out of 306 in the team division, which isn't bad given there were no age categories so we were competing against people in their 20s and all male teams. Next year?!

The day after the race was warm and sunny and the drive home was beautiful. 

North Queensland, Australia

July 21, 2007

Amy and I are spending a week in Australia (so she can recover from the shock of going from summer in India to winter in Christchurch). It’s been unseasonably cold here for winter but it’s not any colder than Christchurch was last summer! We started in Port Douglas, which is north of Cairns, and went to the outer Great Barrier Reef for scuba diving. I ended up having to snorkel because I had a pneumothorax once. But it was all for the best because Amy got to go with the other certified divers instead of on the intro course with me. And the snorkeling was great because the reef was so shallow. I saw Nemo! And a Moorish Idol plus lots of wrasse and parrot fish. Amy saw a sea turtle and some reef sharks.

The following day, we went to the Rainforest Habitat where they had an aweome display of birds, koalas, kangaroos, wallabies, bats, emus etc from the Australian rainforest. The birds in particular were gorgeous - all sorts of beautiful colors.

For two nights we stayed at the Mossman Gorge B&B. Great spot up on the hills with the most scrumptious breakfast of homemade croissants, fresh fruit, homemade jam and passionfruit butter. At breakfast the first morning, there were tons of birds including two koukaburras.

We took a boat ride on the Daintree River yesterday and saw crocodiles, kingfishers and a green snake. Most of the crocs were juveniles but there was one big mama.

This morning we say a cassowary on the side of the road and then saw it again a few hours later on our way back. We consider ourselves lucky as there are only 1200 left in the wild. They are rather ungainly but regal looking creatures. I showed this photo to the woman taking us on our rainforest walk today and she recognized her as “Big Bertha”. The rainforest is awesome with trees that are hundreds of years old, some growing only a meter every 100 years! There are big blue seed pods called cassowary plums that have to go through a cassowary’s digestive tract before they can germinate. Apparently 37 species of plant require a trip through a cassowary before they can germinate. So that’s why they are worried about the low numbers of cassowaries. The other thing that seems to be essential around here is the mangrove trees. A lot of the fish on the reefs depend on them but I’m darned if I can remember why. Maybe they spawn around them or something. I guess I better look it up!

Mooloolaba

March 2007

Having semi-prepared for it, Ross and I went to Mooloolaba for an Olympic distance triathlon! That’s 1.5k swim, 40k bike, 10k run. Mooloolaba is on the Sunshine Coast in Australia about an hour’s drive north of Brisbane. And what a beautiful place it is! The temperature was about 27C the whole time we were there and it doesn’t cool off much at night so you can sleep with the windows wide open. There are huge white beaches with impressive surf and the water temperature was about 24C! So no wetsuit for the triathlon.

We stayed in an apartment right on the water with Ross’ friend Paddy from Warwick. Friday and Saturday we ran, swam and biked a little and ate a lot! Paddy’s brother and son also did the triathlon and his sister and her husband plus another son came to watch so we had a great cheering section and lots of people to go out for dinner with.

On Saturday, I noticed that there were a series of buoys placed some distance out from the buoys they had set up for the swim course. I asked Ross what they were and he said: shark nets!! It freaked me out a little but I guess I should have just been happy that they put them out. Fortunately, I didn’t think about sharks once during the race. Here’s a photo of where the swim course was. We ran out into the surf, swam parallel to shore out past the breakers and then swam back in.

The triathlon was on Sunday and my wave took off at 6:51am. Fortunately New Zealand is 2 hours later than Queensland at this time of year so it wasn’t too hard to get up at 4. Actually we got up at 5 and barelygot out of the transition area in time because the program said that daylight savings ended in Australia that morning. But they neglected to say that they don’t observe Daylight Savings in Queensland at all so the clocks didn’t change! There were a lot of panicking triathletes trying to get ready in about 2 minutes as a result.

The day was perfect. The surf had been huge the two days before but it was much better on Sunday. And it wasn’t very windy so the bike was fun. They actually closed the main motorway for the race, if you can believe it! So we biked out to the motorway and then did most of the bike portion on an empty highway! It was hot on the run but then some clouds came up, which helped a lot. I enjoyed most of the race except for the first hot part of the run. Despite going easy on the swim and the bike so I’d have something left for the run, I still had to walk up part of one hill. But I did about as well as I deserved given how much I had trained for the race! I was in a new age group because they went by your age at the end of the year. But it appears that only the really good triathletes are still competing by the time they get to my age group. I only managed to beat one person! I would have beat 6 in my old age group.

Ross had a great race. He started 8 minutes after I did and caught up to me at the start of the run. Then he just rocketed and finished 12 minutes before I did (20 minutes faster over all). Paddy was less then a minute behind Ross. At their last triathlon, they were only 12 seconds apart!

So now we are inspired to really get in shape for next season. The New Zealand nationals are this weekend in Wellington but 6 days between races is a little too short so we’re going to give them a pass.

There was also a World Cup pro race the same day. That was great fun to watch. There were racers from Australia, NZ, USA, Canada, Japan, Spain, Portugal, China and several other countries. So it was a very competitive field. In the men’s race, an Aussie passed a guy from Spain at the very end, much to the local crowd’s delight.

Houseboat trip on the Backwaters

December 2006

There are lots of little inlets from the ocean along the southern part of the Kerala coastline. We were told that the spits of land were man-made and on one side of them there were large rice paddies. Apparently during the rainy season, there is enough flow into these areas that the water is fresh and the rice can be grown. In the dry season it gets more salty.

We had an idyllic 20-hour houseboat ride through these backwaters from Alleppey. The boats are a range of sizes but ours was about 40-feet long (see photos). The walls and roof are made from woven palm fronds and they are quite striking. We had 3 staff (the driver, the cook and the boss) and we were treated like queens. We sat on the deck in big armchairs, sipping on coconuts full of coconut water. It was quite hot out so we felt very lazy and enjoyed just sitting there reading, playing cribbage and looking at the scenery. The food was unbelievable. Kerala cooking is really delicious with lots of coconut and bananas. The stores in Kerala sell 4 or 5 different types of banana. We bought 3 huge prawns from a fisherman after lunch and had them at dinner.

Our last few days we spent at a fairly touristy beach resort called Varkala, where we could actually put on a bathing suit and not feel self-conscious. We both had come down with colds by this time so it was good timing to be able to veg out for a couple of days. The food here was great too. We sat on top of a cliff and for the equivalent of about US$8 each would have a dinner of curried fish straight from the ocean and warm rice pudding flavoured with cardamom for dessert.

The fisherman at Varkala reminded me of how cheap labour must be in India. They would set out a large fishing net about a mile offshore using boats. Ropes would be attached to each end and brought to shore. About 20 men would pull on each rope for many hours until the net was brought in and the fish collected. We saw another interesting fishing method in Fort Cochin at the start of our vacation. There was a swift current along the shore there so a net was set up with each corner attached to a frame of logs. The center of the frame was attached to a rope and pulley setup with stones attached as a counter balance. When they were ready to pull in the net, the men pulled on the rope with the stones and the frame closed like an umbrella, collecting the fish in one small section of the net.

Western Ghat Mountains aka The Cardamom Hills

November 2006

Amy and I flew from Mumbai to Kochi in Kerala for our 2-week vacation. After a couple of days in Fort Cochin exploring the markets and swimming at a beach, we took a taxi to Munnar in the Western Ghat Mountains. We ended up using taxis a lot as they are really cheap by Western standards (US$40 for a 4-5 hour trip) and much nicer than being crammed into a train or bus. In Munnar we stayed at a small 4-room hotel at the top of a ridge. There was a cooking lesson each night before dinner and we did some great hiking through the surrounding tea and cardamom plantations. We took a 2-hour auto rickshaw ride the last day up to Top Station where there are supposed to be awesome views of the surrounding mountains and the Tamil Nadu plains to the east. It was completely fogged in when we got there unfortunately but then the heavens opened for about 10 minutes while we were at the lookout and we had some great views.

The women here seem to do most of the manual labour. Only women pick tea and only women cook the meals, take care of the kids and do the housekeeping apparently. Not an easy life! But they all look so beautiful with their dark hair and eyes and their beautiful saris.

We also spent a couple of days in Kumily, which is also in the mountains. We did a jungle safari in an elephant and tiger preserve but didn’t manage to see any elephants or tigers! We missed a group of elephants by about 5 minutes but we did hear a bison and we say Nilgiri monkeys and giant squirrels as well as lots of birds. The monkeys are big – maybe 4 ft tall not including their tail – and they sound just like the monkey noises we learn to make as kids! I suppose I should be happy that we didn’t see any tigers but I wasn’t too worried as our guide had seen a tiger 3 times during the 7 years he had been working there.

One highlight of our stay in Kumily was the lizard that ran into the little spice shop Amy and I were in one afternoon. They managed to catch it and the picture I took of it was in the local paper the next day!