First major weekend away part 2....

So in my excitement at the TECT All Terrain Park I completely forgot to get the camera out!
We drove through to the mountain bike area and we had a nice blat around the Grade 2 Uno track. Brenda found it a bit interesting as it was the first time she had been on the bike since they had done the Otago Rail Trail 4 1/2 years ago!

TECT Park with mountain bike tracks in red dotted lines

Once that was complete, Roger and I went on the Grade 3 Keruru track, I blatted around having to walk up three hills, third when I dropped my chain, but it was a good sweat going round. Roger was pretty well done by the time he got in, not too long after me!

We lunched and watched a couple of families arrive and head off onto various tracks. 

Next time I'll go over the river and head up to the bigger tracks again. Problem is that you go down a huge hill and up the other side to get there and back! Ahh well by the time I return, I should be much fitter.

We then drove back towards Tauranga and headed down to Fergusson Park, where we spent the night after a lovely walk along the foreshore towards town.

Fredrock and Dragons' Rest at Fergusson Park

Looking good on the foreshore

On our walk

The mount at low tide!

We watched numerous people with their kite surfing rigs getting ready in the park, flying their kites then walking across to the water, picking up their boards and heading off over the harbour. They then reversed the process and walked their kites back to the park thus not letting their kites get wet or dirty, quite good exercise.

Had a great time watching an 8-9 year old with his dad, learning to control the kite on the land. Dad was hanging on to the back of his harness but every so often the youngster would take off towards the sky with only dad anchoring him to earth!

A lovely day and a great dinner was had. In the morning we went our separate ways, Roger and Brenda heading towards home base and I headed over to Te Puke.

One of the things that was happening in the background was that I had broken one of the vent covers on the roof of Fredrock Cafe and had put a call out over the motor home forum as I could not find the manufacturer.  Within minutes I had had a couple of replies, one telling me that the manufacturer had be bought out by another one and that there was difficulty in getting spares for older parts. One nice man though private messaged me to say that he had replaced one similar to mine and had the bits and depending what I had broken I could have the part I needed. It turns out that he had blown the motor so the vent cover was still available. He then said that I could have it for no charge. I was blown away by this and when I met up with him in Te Puke on Saturday morning, he wouldn't accept anything in payment telling me to "help someone out in the future".  I told him I certainly would pass it forward.

 So from there I headed off to Rotorua thinking I would lunch down by the lake, have a bit of a blat around the mountain bike park and then either stay the night or head off to Walton.

On arriving in Rotovegus, I was blown away and cursed myself for forgetting that we were in the midst of the school holidays, couldn't get a park within a km of the waterfront and when I got out to the mtb park there were hundreds of people there for an open weekend! .... moving right along....

I then decided to head off back to home base, arriving around 3pm.

While driving back I made the decision that I really enjoy driving The Fredrock Cafe. It handles well and gets loads of interesting looks.

The following morning Roger and I repaired the vent, greased up the mechanism and also checked and greased the rear one as well.

From there I started to dig up the lawn, looking for gophers... 

One of the things that we have decided to do at home base is to erect a small shed for me to do some pottery work in while I am at home base. For this to happen I decided that it would be good to have a permanent power supply to the main shed and to power the kiln in the small shed. We had got a good quote and as we had decided to go ahead, part of the deal was that we would dig the trench, so I laid down a sting line and started digging holes. I used a post hoe borer and made around 20 holes in the lawn, close together and then Brenda followed taking out the bits between, creating a trench 600mm deep for the laying of the cables.

Gophers!

Moving towards the shed

Then on Monday Roger and I greased the bus!  Using our wonderful ramps folded up I drove up on them giving me enough room to comfortably get under the bus and grease up all the linkages that needed to be greased. Again, with the right tools the job is easy! Thanks for your direction and experience Roger!

So a huge weekend (actually more like a week!) and now back to work for a rest!