s e v e n i s a j o u r n e y

Once again we managed to pack our weekend with enough activities such that waking up this morning was quite a task.

Most of our SCA-friends were off at Crown Tourney up in Auckland this weekend. We had decided not to attend as we had consumed all our vacation-time an travel-money in various trips over the last 3 months (back to the States and alpaca hunting). I was also not keen on fighting in crown due to the unacceptable risk of winning. Not because I am any great fighter, but because I fight with wacky-weapons. A good sword-and-shield wielder can defeat me without much problem- once they learn my style. But my first few swings can be surprising, and in a tourney where you only need a single kill in each round, that novelty raises the risk of doing well. I was very glad to hear that Sir Ulf, our local knight, did quite well making it into the final-4.

Friday night we got together with Geoff, Beth and Mikhail to watch another disk of Rah Xephon. Once again the evening ended with a mighty “huh?” With 4 disks to go, we maintain the (possibly vain) hope that it will all eventually make sense.

Saturday we drove up to Palmerston North (about 2 hours north in the Manawatu) to hit the A&P show. We chatted with many friends among the alpaca people, and once again ran into the blacksmith and his wife who travel the country in their house truck. Really nice and fun people, now if we could only rememebr their names! We should be seeing them in January again (Jousting event), if not sooner. Guess we will have to ask, and then write down the answers! We have been meeting so many people over the last 12 months that names tend to get lost in the shuffle.

When we got home that evening it was still light (yah lengthening days!), so we decided to use that time wisely. I would continue to chainsaw-up some particularly big gorse plants while Tam worked with halter-training Jim. We released the camelids from their paddock, and they went galloping up the driveway- to the cats total dismay as they had followed us down the driveway and had to go rocketing back up to get away from the horrible demons chasing them! After training we brought them back down, but they were still really worked up. Jim ducked under the tape into the small side-paddock that had the horses. No surprise, moments later he was being chased by the horses. When he made it back into the paddock with Oak and Pointer they were all on a big adrenaline rush. Pointer, in a fit of stupid exuberance, gave Jim a little chest-butt. Jim would not let this challenge to his dominance stand, and for the next 10 minutes a madcap chase around the paddock ensued. Those critters are both nimble and fast, and by the end all three had passed their cardiovascular stress-test!

Sunday we decided to make our way up to Staglands, a little wildlife park about 45 minutes north of here. It is located along the Akaterawa road, which connects Upper Hutt and the Kapiti Coast. This is a 30 km long little winding 1-lane mountain road. We ended up coming in from the long (22 km) Kapiti Coast side. The four of us (we had dragged along Helene and Dayna) had a good fright when a big silver SUV came whipping around a blind corner at speed. There was a long second of screaming/cursing/gasping as the SUV locked its brakes and came right at us. Thankfully the Echo is small, and we could just barely fit in the gap between the SUV and the cliff-edge. Good way to get the heart going! I can hope that the SUV driver SLOWED DOWN after the incident, but that would be excessive optimism on my part.

And this morning I got news that our two girls in Cantebury (Victoria and Princess Cariboo) are being loaded on a transporter tonight. They should arrive at our place some time mid-day tomorrow. Very exciting!