Grandad's photos

Off to Hamilton for the day to check out a race car for sale. We had lunch on the riverbank which has some nice features. The Waipa Delta is against the wharf, about ready to leave for its lunch time struggle up river. The paddle wheels are dummies, the boat has two diesels driving propellors.


The old gunboat Rangiriri retired from service in 1889 and was placed on the riverbank in 1982 to rust away quietly.


The park has a Spitfire, I think this has come from Te Rapa Airbase which is now a shopping centre. It's a late Mark with the clipped wing tips.

Then off to look at the race car, which I bought. Ugly Brute will be on the market just as soon as we finish digging up its history. This is a 1960's Special, named the Orchid (not a Lotus - get it?). It has a 1500 cc pre-crossflow Ford engine, 4 speed box, Herald front suspension & discs, Cortina rear diff and 5-link suspension. The body is fibreglass Buckler. It drives, but needs some finishing, painting & wiring. It came with extensive race history paperwork. Funny - the guy I bought it off is brother-in-law of Ron Jones, my high school mate who had guinea pigs, motor trolleys and a father that used to throw radio valves at us as we biked away from his electrical shop.

Kristina, Wayne, Natasha, Emily & Rhys left today for a new life in Australia. Some more kids pictures on Nana Julie's blog. We will miss them all.



Their plane taxied out about 20 minutes late and took off for Melbourne, into the rain.

Meanwhile, we watched a few planes doing their thing...





This 777 gets loaded up and departs just ahead of the rain coming in across the sea.



Virgin Blue 737-800 high performance, with the wing tiplets, just like this one from Air Pacific.

We bought a couple of kid-powered torches for the grand-kids yesterday from the $2 shop, thought you might like to read the operating instructions. :-) (Click on the image to see a bigger one.)

"This is a genuine ground floor opportunity to shape a front line field force with sixteen levels of commission structure".

The other pictures that David took at our family Christmas are at Nana Julie's Blog.

The boy was very wriggley and didn't want to hold a teddy. In fact he wanted my camera.

Here's the pics from my angiogram. You can see the heart arteries are all in good shape. As my ECG had shown up LBBB (left branch bundle block) they were expecting to find artery problems feeding blood to that part of the heart. It's an easy procedure for the patient, a valium tablet and a tube poked in the arm (or the groin) artery. There's no sensation of the tube going up to the heart where they inject an x-ray opaque dye, giving the pictures above instantly.

The valium made me a bit sleepy afterwards and I fell asleep reading 'Scientific American' for a while. I will be back for a discussion with the specialist about it in a week's time and look forward to getting my race licence back. I'm very impressed with the team at Ascot, I must say.




Here's a pic of what they don't want to see (from someone else!) of an artery restriction.

Te Onepu Hillclimb



On another subject, I bought some prints from the Hawkes Bay Te Onepu hillclimb, from www.racepics.co.nz This one appealed to me. I wonder why three wheelers never caught on?

Nice breezy day at the end of Orakei Wharf. A Flying Fifteen scoots out to their start line. This one is fflying cloud. They all have ff in their names. A couple of guys called Noel and Alex used to sail these, and invented the Noelex 22 with the identical rig. Look at that rolled up headsail!



And Soren Larsen takes a few landlubbers out for a day of square rigging.



Great fun in a 14 footer, out on the trapeze - until you hit the wind shadow off Orakei Wharf - but these guys kept it together. This is a 29er class yacht.