A quick recap of my week on Waiheke once I got past the first night jet lag.

 

The top priority was getting Bongo registered and inspected for it’s semi-annual WoF. Since we bought it in January, they were due just after I arrived. I’d done the registration over the Internet before I left and the sticker was waiting when I got to Mark’s, as he is providing my NZ address. Unfortunately, in my tiredness, I managed to chuck it out with the junk mail and didn’t notice it was missing until after the weekly trash pickup. A trip to the Post Office and all was well.

 

The Waiheke WoF Shop, where we had had all of our auto work done and had all the previous WoF inspections, couldn’t take the Bongo until the following Wednesday, 10 days away. This was a bit of a quandary, I knew that there would be no problems there, as they had done much work for us, but I didn’t want to stay on Waiheke that long. Tom suggested Marster’s Motors, so off I went and it passed with no problems.

 

Tom & Christiane were quite gracious in putting me up for five days. I was at least a little useful, helping Tom get his new TV moved and working and figuring out why the VCR wasn’t recording.

 

They had Mark over on Monday evening for dinner and brought me along to dinner Ken & Anna’s on Wednesday. Ken & Anna are long time friends of T & C, but I’ve only met them at other functions. They have a home on three acres overlooking Onetangi and the Coromandel to the north and the vineyards along Stoney Ridge to the south. Prime Waheke property, and they’ve been there for about 30 years.

 

I dropped by to see Pieter and Bonnie on the Monday. He is also a school teacher and she is the high school librarian. I’d brought him and Russell bottles of rum, Puerto Rican and Jamaican, respectively, as they have a taste for such. Russell, who is a best mate of Pieter, stopped in while I was there, so they had to do several rounds of comparative taste testing. They invited us both back for dinner on Tuesday and a good time was had by all.

 

On Friday, I went to lunch at the RSA with Tom and some other aquantainces, John McGregor, Joe Routledge, and Dave Johnson. They get together weekly to play pool. It used to be at Tom’s house, but his pool table was sold with the house. I’d invited Tom & Christiane out to dinner at Ajadz, the local Indian restaurant, to thank them for having me as a guest, but at Tom’s urging, three for dinner turned into seven, but it was good anyway.

 

And then it was time to be off.