Sailing away

Where were we?...oh yes, we were listing all of Rob's minor ailments. Rob has insisted that reference be made to his infected toe (a minor toe - the 'this little
piggy had roast beef toe')and his decision to self medicate with antibiotics...yawn.

Right now we are on the Bluebridge Ferry crossing the Cook Strait after an unpleasant 5 o'clock start this morning. Even Karen wasn't her usual bubbly self, at one point even threatening to harm Sean in absentia - he had made the mistake of leaving his film equipment at our motel while he went partying in Wellington. She wasn't seeing the humour in having more gear to load.

Sean, for his part, is asleep on the floor of said ferry after what sounds like an all nighter - how sweet, we have named him Tiny Dancer.

John is somewhere out on deck (hopefully he hasn't talked the captain into letting him pilot this thing) with the wind once again in his hair.

Forgive us if we take the time to list some of the friends we made along this leg. The list isn't comprehensive as we forget names at times so we hope anyone left out won't be disappointed.

Margaret - our Masterton coffee shop and roadside friend.
The Avanti bike shop fellas in Masterton.
Ross Palmer from SPARC.
Jane, Sam, Brian and the rest of our cycling mates from Lower Hutt.
The judo girls we met on the side of the road - we hope the competition went well on Saturday.
Debs, Tracy, Kirsten and Ivanka from Backup, who met us in Napier with some bubbles as well as getting tires to us.
Kirsten, Paul and Jane for the wonderful breakfast - thank you, thank you, thank you. It was a pleasure to eat Charlotte with you and your beautiful little girls.
Wayne from Fergusson Motel in Waipukerau (sp?) - best motel so far by a country mile (see links of interest).
The cafe in Norsewood for our morning coffee.
Helen from Free Ride'n for getting our tires to Napier.

Anti friends:
Breakers restaurant in Napier for reminding us it is always better to pay a little more for good food. I'll leave it up to you to decide whether we enjoyed their meals or not (clue: yuck, yuck, yukkity yuck).
Our tire.
The policewoman who gave Karen a ticket for driving at 102 kms/hour.

We're happy to say that John was emboldened enough by the sparkling wine coursing through his exhausted body to jump into the treacherous Napier Sea (a body of water extending from the Napier coast out to some undetermined point), though he still had the presence of mind to keep his clothes on - the butt shot will have to wait I'm afraid ladies.

And so, leg 2 is behind us...get it - behind us/butt shot? Oh man, we're cracking up here, falling about the place laughing. Been on the road too long.

Christchurch, here we come. The weather report is favorable for the next few days, even as far as the promise of a tail wind - hallelujah.

We have forgotten to mention that the tandem has been christened the 'Tui' - another pun I'm afraid, with reference to the 2 cyclists of course. The trike has a ball of white fluff under its chin (front of trike) to represent the white thing real Tui's have. Does anyone know the name for this thing?

Bye for now.