Week 39 & 40- What also floats on water?

I had to get up early on Wednesday morning to move Fitree’s car as we had left it in a 18:00-08:00 zone. As I walked to the car I was able to take in some of the damage from the storm. There were big branches and half trees down, along with bits of metal from buildings and a whole load of water. I moved the car to the far side of the Domain and then began to walk home. As I set off, the heavens opened and I quickly became completely soaked. Thankfully, I was able to talk to Charlotte (my friend from last semester) over the phone. Admittedly, I did have to cup my hands around my earphones in my ears to hear her over the howling wind and rain. I have since decided to go and visit here in Washington this coming July. I hopped back into bed to warm up, before I ended up walking back to the car to bring it to our flat to unload the rest of our gear and to leave to go do a shop. We thought it'd be a good idea to make use of the car to carry several weeks’ worth of food. At the Pak n Save I bumped into three separate frisbee players (clearly a popular time to shop if you throw a plastic disc around). We bought some nice bread for lunch before unloading back at the flat. Before I went to leave the car at the Domain, again, I had to jump start another woman’s car. I walked home to have our lunch and then Marlene and I gave the car a clean and dropped it back to Fitree.

I’ve combined this shortened week with the following week because I spent the vast majority of it avoiding the rain, writing and studying. There were a few breaks from the monotony of study. Harry returned from Vietnam on Wednesday evening so he came over for dinner on Thursday after I had run in the Domain. Ulysse cooked polenta and we had a great time sharing photos and videos from our trips. He joined us again for dinner on Friday when we had potato and chilli. On Saturday evening I attended the Groot awards evening where we awarded our best players, club members and spirited players. It was a fun evening and we watched the second Guardians of the Galaxy film after (a character in the film is the inspiration for the team name). I was glad of the work I did over the few days before going back to university as it was a very hectic week back.

In class on Monday morning I ploughed through my lectures and then in the afternoon I cycled to have my MRI. When I arrived, there was a pick-up truck in the carpark with an entire head of a stag in the back, in full view. I thought it was a rather ominous thing to bring to a medical centre but I ventured in without fear. I got into my medical gown and was slid into the machine. The whole process took about half an hour but I fell asleep during so it felt like no time at all. I was able to walk out afterwards as the whole thing was covered by public health. As I had to change the date of my MRI for my travels the week before, my review with the doctor had also been moved but instead of a week it was an entire month. I was a little displeased with this so I rang the doctor’s office and managed to get an appointment for two weeks later, only I would have to take the train to get there. After the scan, I did my running in the Domain before Harry joined us for our Monday night meal. He helped me make a curry and it was a significant improvement on our camping version!

I was pretty much head in the books for the next two days. Apart from having lunch with Marlene on Tuesday, I spent the day in class and studying for my fluids test on Wednesday morning. Wednesday was comprised of seven straight hours. I had my test at 10:00 after my first lecture and it went reasonably well. At 11:00 I had control systems with a new lecturer. He had a handout for everyone with a question to do on one side and a sudoku on the other. I may have spent the latter half of the lecture playing sudoku. I skipped half of my next lecture so that I could grab some lunch and ate it with some random people sitting at a bench. I caught the latter half of my lecture before I had a three hour lab where I was looking at the microstructures of different metals. I have had more riveting labs before. Once home, I spent the evening preparing for my test on Aluminium and Steel on Thursday evening.

There was uproar on Thursday morning. Five of my family of seven rubber ducks had disappeared from their home in the bathroom. Marlene tried to tell me she had thrown them out the window or put them in the elevator but I suspected that this was merely a ruse. I didn’t have time to search too long or hard for the ducks as I had to go to the physio. We looked at the MRI and it was all clear according to the radiologist. This was interesting news to take as it showed that my leg was healed but it didn’t explain the pain. I had to promise not to tell the doctor I had seen it though. I got some study in for my test before going to a tutorial and heading home. As soon as I stepped in the door I found the mysterious missing ducks on my food shelf. My test went reasonably well that evening, though I did make up a couple of answers and I’m hoping the examiner has a sense of humour. To cap off the day Marlene, Ulysse and I watched the film ‘Call me by your name’. It wasn’t my favourite film but the others enjoyed it.

On Friday morning I had my last lecture with two of my lecturers before returning home to play some bridge and investigate buying some better camping gear. I enjoyed lunch with Marlene before I bought bread and fruit and went running in the domain with a new-found confidence that my leg was not injured. I decided to test out a new placebo type treatment where I just constantly tell myself that I’m not actually sore. We went up Mount Eden with Harry to watch the sunset. Harry had made a small picnic for us and Ulysse brought tea. I managed to burn my tongue on the tea and felt very foolish. On our way back in the dark we tried to see how many people we could fit on a zip line before watching another film ‘The boat that Rocked’ which was a little more light hearted.

I was collected by Jasmine (a senior member of the Kayak club) at 06:30 on Saturday morning to go to the gear shed as I was going to be spending the weekend rafting and kayaking. When we were about 10min away from the river we got a call asking if we had the paddles as none had been packed. We did not. Thankfully we were able to borrow some from the commercial rafting company and we were good to go. We were rafting Kaituna river near Rotorua. After descending two small waterfalls, including a weir, we came to ‘two-tier’ which, at 7m, is the highest commercially rafted waterfall in the world. We managed to keep the raft upright but we lost our guide, Justus, and Maddie. To make the whole thing even more dramatic, Marayke had blood streaming from her nose and a massive grin on her face. We got our lost paddlers back to the boat and pulled them in. All seemed fine. Then, as Maddie tried to stand up she dislocated her knee. Thankfully it relocated but she was in a lot of pain. Jasmine took control of the situation, splinted her leg with a paddle and sat her across the middle. While Jasmine tried to support Maddie, Justus, Marayke and I had to try paddle the raft down the rest of the grade four as smoothly as possible. Despite the drama, I enjoyed the teamwork in a crisis. We managed to get her down and carried her to the car to bring her to hospital.

We then shuttled the rafts back to the top, with a raft, a kayak and Kaz (amazing kayaker) all on the roof of Justus’ car. Having lost some of our paddlers we only sent one raft down the second time. On this occasion we managed to flip the raft going over the first waterfall and were stuck in the plunge pool, unable to flip the raft. This meant that we had to go over the next waterfall sitting on the underside of the upturned raft. We headed off over and it worked remarkably well! Probably the smoothest of all the runs. We managed to flip at two-tier again but thankfully no more injuries. Back at the top we stopped for nachos (I had a wrap with peanut butter, tuna and crisps). After we had picked up Jasmine from the hospital we went to Justus’ house in Tauranga where he made pizza for us all. It was a very chilled evening with about 12 of us staying.

Jasmine, Marayke and I decided that we would climb Mount Maunganui on Sunday morning to catch the sunrise. It was an early start but definitely worth it for the views. Once down again, we decided to have an early morning swim. I didn’t bring any swim gear with me so I stripped off and hopped in. It was quite chilly but also refreshing. As I was getting out, a woman decided to walk between me and my clothes and I could see she was trying hard not to look at me stumbling out of the water. Back at Justus’ we had homemade waffles for breakfast before heading to the river. Everyone else was doing either the grade four or grade three sections so I had fun trying to climb into the start of the grade two section carrying my kayak. Once there I did a successful run of the grade two (it felt like the biggest and hardest section I’d ever paddled) before carrying my boat back up to the get in. There I spent most of the morning practicing my skills, trying to eddy in and out and ferry glide. It was definitely challenging at first and I felt I got a good appreciation of the whole river, both under and above the water. This meant I did get to practice my roll many times so I’m more confident in it. I was extremely tired by early afternoon which didn’t help my final run down the grade two. I tried to get into an eddy, missed it and ended up heading down the rapid backwards. I flipped pretty quickly but managed to get myself upright again. I was still facing backwards and up on a rock, however. There was a repeat performance as I flipped again but I couldn’t manage to get myself upright and had a swim. I was a little frustrated with myself as this meant that the more experienced kayakers had to help me sort it out.

On our way home we stopped to have ‘real fruit ice cream’ which was vanilla ice cream with bits of frozen fruit blended in. We then took a detour to Hamilton where I was treated to dinner with Marayke’s parents. They are wonderful people and extremely hospitable. I felt like a king as I was treated to a steak dinner at the drop of a hat. They also had a pet bird that was free to fly around the house. It was a little odd at first but much better than it being in a cage the whole time. My first sighting of it was when it flew out of a room and landed on Marayke’s hair. I was home pretty late but absolutely delighted with myself.

You can see some of the photos and the video from the weekend here.