The Jennings 3

I have been meaning to link to Steves site for a bit. Over Christmas our roving buddies Steve and Jem came to visit NZ for a few months and graced us with their presence (and presents) for a number of weeks. Steve has written up about his travels in the land of the long white cloud and it makes pretty good reading if you are planning a visit (Mum & Dad). Anyway - CLICK HERE and have a read if you fancy...

I saw a program on TV the other day about a guy that made little metal robots out of old bits of scrap. Sounded like fun, and Buster agreed, so we went to the scarp heap shop to see what we could find. The results can be another post when we have finished but whilst at the shop I lost sight of Buster for 5 mins. No big deal. He then came staggering towards me, arms out stretched saying 'can I get these dad?'. The answer was obviously yes - the lens in them is enough to go star gazing with but Buster has fun wearing them and bouncing off things. I appreciate it wont be doing his eyes any good but for 5 mins a day they have more than paid for themselves already. Lisa can always borrow them as a back up if she looses hers.

A couple of you will know that my most favorite bike in the World cracked recently (in 3 places). Gutted. The first one Andy hooked me up with met a similar demise so even though the NZ distributor replaced it for me I had pretty much lost faith in the build quality of this otherwise sweet machine. So - after a natter with the Mrs I decided to stick the replacement on Trade Me (NZ equivalent of E-bay) and go get something with a bit more pedigree. I have wanted a Yeti ever since Andy got one off a guy for painting his house in the states - it looked ace - so thats what I went for. I've only done 1 decent ride on the beast but it felt good - not massively better than my old one (which is no bad thing) but finish/quality wise it looks like a machine for life.

Buster has been going down to the BMX track since he was about 3 so we figured it was time for his first real race a few weeks back. He was racing in the 4/5/6 yr group so had a fair amount of competition but did great for his first go - the hardest bit was trying to help him balance in the start gate. Anyway - after taking a sneaky short cut in the first race (cant blame the lad) and being relegated to last he got the hang of it and had some good fun despite a few very nearer misses down the first straight - Lisa was feeling the stress. He 'podiumed' one round and eventually ended up 6th overall. He got a cool ribbon and a free chocolate bar - very pleased with himself. Seeing all the little nippers with their huge helemets on ripping round then shaking each others hands at the end was fun. Its winter here now so not much going on but come spring he is up for joining the club and going down each Sunday. As you can imagine I have started him on a strickt regime of protein shakes, bench presses and interval training.