It’s been a while since I wrote.
In recent posts, you may recall, I was trying to aid my memory by writing down my history in the grand sport of triathlon.
As well as an aide memoire for me, it seems to have brought back memories for all those people old enough to have been around at the time. For others, it introduced a mysterious world and an approach to sport that’s changed over the decades since.
As someone whose mind is on the present and the future, I’ve found it hard to rekindle enthusiasm for recalling the past when the world is such a busy place and there’s so much going on.
Accordingly, I’ll take a break from history.
Summer brings grandchildren and we’ve had a couple of sessions with the Auckland trio here to stay - alternating with their other grandparents, who live close by.
We had all three for a couple of nights more than a week ago.
As a first world problem, the most energetic, Elsie (10) had a broken arm suffered while snow boarding in Canada just before Christmas.
I don’t mean to be flippant about the injury. The poor girl is suffering from pain, lack of sleep, but most of all from the curtailment of her normal activities.
Last Sunday, my darling Cathie went north to Auckland for ten days to resume her old role as a caregiver while the parents took a break.
Later that day I took delivery of Elsie. It was a day early, as I was taking her for a walk on Tuesday in Nelson Lakes National Park, but it gave us a good stretch of one-to-one time, something that’s hard to come by, but oh-so-satisfying.
We spent Monday scootering, bike riding and generally clocking up a lot of steps - and eating and watching movies, of course.
Tuesday, we were up early. We picked up our friend Maggy and drove on down to the lake for a birthday walk with another friend, Michele.
The plan was that we would get the water taxi to the head of the lake and walk back along the shoreline - a 9km, three-hour stretch through beautiful forest.
You’ll see us all in the photo at the top of the page, as our friendly boatman snapped the beauty spot before we got out of the boat and started walking.
Elsie was instantly captivated by the forest. Those who know the area will recognise her comment that it was the perfect location for filming the Lord of the Rings. Not that it was filmed there, but I wouldn’t have been surprised to see a Hobbit spring from behind a tree at any moment.
Here’s a little video of our walk.
As you’ll see from the video, Lake Rotoiti is long and narrow. It’s the bed of an old glacier, which dredged out a channel, pushing a huge pile of rock and earth ahead of it. That terminal moraine remains, with the lake spreading out on either side, ending in Kerr Bay, where we ended up, and West Bay, at the end of which is the source of the Buller River, which then flows 177km to the sea at Westport. Want to know?
Elsie, Michele, Maggy and Amanda.
When we got to the end, we were joined by another swim friend, Amanda, and the three gals all pulled on wetsuits for a swim in the lake. It was a balmy 18 degrees, so I jumped in bare chested, invigorated by the fresh clarity of the water - such a change from the normal clingy old salt water.
Elsie, as you’ll see had a large plastic apparatus for her arm. It sealed tightly above the cast, sore she was able to frolic around, with the added flotation bonus as her bag filled with air.
It was a glorious swim and we both slept long and deeply that night.
Since then, I’ve been buying myself with projects, of which there are many.
Extra shelves in our entrance foyer to take the overflow of pots has been a priority, so I got on with that one.
I’ve taken on, as a temporary measure, the newsletter of Wall to Wall Gallery. It’s a fun project, although my enthusiasm is boiling over with new ideas for it.
There’s a couple of other new writing projects on the boil too, but more about them another day.
I promise to get back to the triathlon story one day too, but I have a lonely bachelor dinner to cook. Besides, I need to do some sewing on my geriatric denim shorts.
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