An Odd But Fun Saturday.

It's been quiet around here, and for that I apologize. I wish I could say it's because I was out and about galavanting around New Zealand being awesome, but sadly it's just the opposite. It's been quiet, boring etc. Work's winding down, a certain malaise brought about by that has made doing anything not so fun.

SO! In order to get out of my funk, I did two things. First off, on Friday, I had the best Kite Surfing session of my life. Everything went perfectly. No gear foul ups, good wind, good friends and a lot of lessons learned. I'm now getting fairly proficient. More about that later.

After that, being as I was still sore from the Friday, Carly and I postponed our plans for camping and instead decided to simply head up the Hutt Valley to the park she'd taken her class camping in February. That was the plan at least, the reality was slightly different.

We had a few errands to run, mostly at the Home Depot equivalent: Bunnings. Problem is that I always get lost when driving in the Hutt. It's a dark spot in my internal GPS. So we end up driving through Upper Hutt, Lower Hutt, parts of Petone etc. all looking for this Bunnings that I've been to probably 5 times in the recent past. All of a sudden, Carly points up the mountain and says: "PICKAPART!" (it took a while for my brain to parse what she was saying).

Our car had been vandelized while we lived in town, someone had broken the passenger side mirror. Being that it's a cheap as chips car, going to a dismantlers to get a new mirror was proving difficult and I certainly wasn't going to pay for a new one. One of the guys in my welding class, a fellow subaru owner, pointed me towards a do it yourself wrecking yard called Pick-a-Part, but I'd never managed to find out where it was. Turns out it was right in front of us.

So Carly and I paid our dollar entrance fee and stepped behind the door to find a HUGE wrecking yard of cars, all lifted off the ground, in various states of damage and completeness. We strolled through the Subby section, found a Legacy Wagon that was the right year and I went to work dismantling the doors while Carly dismantled all the windshield wiper assemblies (ours were looking a bit rusted). Grabbing various bits and pieces along the way, we got all the parts that were broken on our current car. We both felt rather handy and I felt more than a little manly :)

Got to the cash and It turns out the total cost for the mirror, visor, 3 windshield wipers and bits of trim was 41$. I definitely saved at least 200$ for spending 30 minutes there. What a success!

After that, we headed to Kaotoke Regional Park. It was a stunning spot, definitely popular as a walking / pick-nick park, with some nice views, a river system that feeds into the Hutt River and a ton of native trees. It's definitely a very leisurely stroll, but it was a nice way to spend some time together alone. Carly decided to go swimming in the (much to cold) river, given that she had a Rasher (basically a neoprene shirt made like a wetsuit). I had no such luxuries and contented myself with a quick foot soak while watching her play in the water.

Heading back, we stopped for ice cream, I made Lamb Kafta (lebanese ground lamb shish kababs) on the BBQ and we relaxed by watching some TV together.

Simple relaxing pleasures :)