beer, bikes, babys, bbq's, and boats

It was a long week of teaching and finely the long weekend came, New Zealands labor day weekend (and went just as fast...).  It started with my weekly badminton and pub trip to the Pig and Whistle.  This was really good as I am finely getting better at the game, well not losing as badly.  This is even more important because I got invited to a tournament on friday october 29th and hope to not be last.  The pub was packed with bicyclists as there was a national BMX championship, and the fixed gear world championship; the crazy costumes these people came up with were ridiculous!  On saturday I went for a half marathon run through the redwoods and checked out part of the fixed gear track, then watched everybody get ready for the start.    That afternoon we BBQ with friends and family of my stay family. 
The reason this has "babys" in the title is that every person at the BBQ was a parent and there were kids from all ages at the BBQ.  It seems that every second of every day there is a baby around, I am almost thinking that I should put this down on a resume of some sort.   The subliminal teaching of child care...
Eligible Man RESUME
single male, athletic, working vehicle, can cook and do laundry
Qualified with: new born to 3 year old, knowledge of diaper changing, lactation problems, sleep problems, crawling/walking/language teaching....

Sunday the most interesting thing that happened was we went to a craft fair and bought some cheap used books.  Monday today was a most eventful day!

Today I went to my friend Dans house and ate pancakes with him and his wife and then...borrowed his Ducati 916 Superbike.  Imagine he let me borrow it for the day...needless to say I had an amazing morning of dogging in and out of traffic trying to keep my speed above 100mph!   The rest of the day was suntanning and fishing around the lake Tarawara with a great trip to hotwater beach.  Hot water beach is a thermal pool that is 20 meters from the beach.  We pulled the boat into the beach, BBQ'ed some burgers then jumped into the hot pool; after roasting from the hotpool we climbed the rocks next to the beach and did a bit of cliff diving (this lake is so deep it is scary, just 2 meters off the bank  and you can't even see the bottom or touch it with dive and full breath).  Unfortunately we didn't catch any fish but I got a great tan and had a wonderful day. 

Posing before a crazy ride!

mmmm sexy italian engineering