Lou Girardin
27th April 2006, 16:11
The next two days were spent blobbing in beautiful Akaroa, eating too much, moving too little. I had escargot for the first time in years too.
We moved on to ChCh where we spent another two days. we went to the Air Force museum and had a tour of the restoration hangar which was fascinating.The work involved in rebuilding these old planes is amazing.
From ChCh it was up the coast to Kaikura and had the best mussel chowder for lunch, then ran the gauntlet of the Marlborough cops, (including one hiding right behind a parked trailer unit so that he couldn't be seen till you were about 30 metres away) to stay with the Blenheimite for the night. Where we found out that the reason he didn't catch up was that his rear caliper had locked on (just like it did last year - slow learner?), then going through Brightwater he'd struck the same plod that we had, in a silver Commode. Mr Plod would zap you with his rear facing stalker and if you were legal he'd go real slow trying to get you to pass. When that failed he'd pull over then follow from a couple of hundred metres back hoping you'd wind it up a bit. Well, the Bleheimite spotted him from well back, passed at a legal speed and even gave him a wave. Plod pulled over then zapped him from behind, waited for a bit then hit the flashers. He claimed that he'd checked him at 116 km/h. There was no way that the Blenheimite is so stupid as to speed when he knows a cop was right behind him. When he said he'd been doing exactly 100, the cop said "lie as you like".
Which then excascerbated the situation just a little.
The result is one pissant ticket and a lot of paperwork for Plod.
So we commiserated over dinner and far too much vino, but what are friends for?
From there it was over to Nelson to stay with the in-laws, but this time we went over the Wairau Valley. Why is it always cold and miserable at St Arnaud? It does makes coffee taste great though. While we were warming up, a fleet of Jeep Commanders arrived, driven by a bunch of motor journos including Nash's wife, obviously a new model launch in progress.
Then it was a quick squirt through the Golden Downs forest back to Nelson.
On Saturday we decided to check out this old guy we'd been told about at the Air Force museum, a hermit with a collection of WW2 aircraft. We finally found him at Mapua. There was no name on his letterbox, but the wings, dead cars and assorted other stuff scattered around gave him away.
John really is a hermit, and would talk the hind leg off a donkey, but he opened up the shed and there was a complete Mk6 Mosquito, a P51D, P40E, Hudson bomber with their wings off and tonnes of assorted bits and pieces.
A veritable treasure trove of old planes.
The best bit was that he lets you get in and play with them. Eventually, after yakking about old cars and the fixing thereof, we had to go. You have to wonder what's going to happen to all this stuff when he karks it, I hope he's left it all to a good cause.
More soon.
We moved on to ChCh where we spent another two days. we went to the Air Force museum and had a tour of the restoration hangar which was fascinating.The work involved in rebuilding these old planes is amazing.
From ChCh it was up the coast to Kaikura and had the best mussel chowder for lunch, then ran the gauntlet of the Marlborough cops, (including one hiding right behind a parked trailer unit so that he couldn't be seen till you were about 30 metres away) to stay with the Blenheimite for the night. Where we found out that the reason he didn't catch up was that his rear caliper had locked on (just like it did last year - slow learner?), then going through Brightwater he'd struck the same plod that we had, in a silver Commode. Mr Plod would zap you with his rear facing stalker and if you were legal he'd go real slow trying to get you to pass. When that failed he'd pull over then follow from a couple of hundred metres back hoping you'd wind it up a bit. Well, the Bleheimite spotted him from well back, passed at a legal speed and even gave him a wave. Plod pulled over then zapped him from behind, waited for a bit then hit the flashers. He claimed that he'd checked him at 116 km/h. There was no way that the Blenheimite is so stupid as to speed when he knows a cop was right behind him. When he said he'd been doing exactly 100, the cop said "lie as you like".
Which then excascerbated the situation just a little.
The result is one pissant ticket and a lot of paperwork for Plod.
So we commiserated over dinner and far too much vino, but what are friends for?
From there it was over to Nelson to stay with the in-laws, but this time we went over the Wairau Valley. Why is it always cold and miserable at St Arnaud? It does makes coffee taste great though. While we were warming up, a fleet of Jeep Commanders arrived, driven by a bunch of motor journos including Nash's wife, obviously a new model launch in progress.
Then it was a quick squirt through the Golden Downs forest back to Nelson.
On Saturday we decided to check out this old guy we'd been told about at the Air Force museum, a hermit with a collection of WW2 aircraft. We finally found him at Mapua. There was no name on his letterbox, but the wings, dead cars and assorted other stuff scattered around gave him away.
John really is a hermit, and would talk the hind leg off a donkey, but he opened up the shed and there was a complete Mk6 Mosquito, a P51D, P40E, Hudson bomber with their wings off and tonnes of assorted bits and pieces.
A veritable treasure trove of old planes.
The best bit was that he lets you get in and play with them. Eventually, after yakking about old cars and the fixing thereof, we had to go. You have to wonder what's going to happen to all this stuff when he karks it, I hope he's left it all to a good cause.
More soon.