Today a good friend of ours died while reffing George’s football game. Rod was only mid 50′s. A real shock for us all. We feel so sad for the wife and son he’s left behind.

I don’t really subscribe to the idea of treating each day as if it’s our last, but I do think we should really ‘live’ each day and live for the moment as you just don’t know what’s around the corner.

Dream your dreams and work towards your goals for sure, but let’s not waste today. I’m sure that’s what Rod did and what he’d be saying now.

Rest in peace Rod.

Drive the Col de Turini in a 60′s Mini Cooper S

I love driving (reasonably) fast on twisty turny roads and I love mini’s. So nothing could be better than driving the Cold de Turini in an original Mini Cooper S.

Col de Turini is a mountain pass situated in south of France in the Alps and is more than 1 mile above sea level. It’s about 20 miles long and has over 34 challenging hairpin bends. Acclaimed as one of the most exciting drives on this planet, it also forms part of the WRC Monte Carlo Rally.

Click to enlarge
The Col de Turini was partly responsible for the Mini’s rise to fame as it was the epic Monte Carlo Rally win from racing legend Paddy Hopkirk on this very road that made the Mini not only a rally legend but a cult motoring icon.

The Col de Turini pass was also featured in the first episode of Top Gear series 10, when Hammond, May and that other nob went in search of the best driving road in the world.

I must do this before I die, and hopefully not die doing it

I’ve been wanting to do a classic restoration project for a while and get into the fixie thing. So, a few months ago I bought an old Colnago Super on TradeMe with the aim of getting it stripped right down and do the whole nine yards including re-chroming of forks and polishing all the bits. Anyway, after a few months of being flat out at work and the old Colnago gathering dust by the day, I came to the sad conclusion that it just ain’t gonna happen.

So I flicked the old Colnago off on TradeMe, at a rather big loss, and then soon after found that Colnago have released a 2010 Super retro fixie – bloody awesome. So, as I speak, I have one sitting with my name on it in Scotty Browns – deposit paid – and selling shit like crazy on TradeMe to get the thing.

While the new 2010 Super is a bloody awesome bike, it’s still needs that bit extra. My plan is to use the bike as a base that I can ride straight away and over time by some old NOS Campagnolo parts to turn it into something REALLY special.

So here’s my plan…

How sweet will this be? It’s gonna take a while to get the bits together, some are quite rare and hard to come by, especially the Sheriff Stars. But it’s going to be nice to see it evolve but have an awesome bike to ride to and from work every day.

Devastating Samoa Tsunami Kills 110

The realities of the vulnerability of the region that we live in has just struck quite close to home when a massive undersea earthquake triggered a tsunami that has devastated Samoa and Tonga and taken may lives with it.

At the time of writing this article, some 110 people have died and many more injured. Watching the footage on the news tonight has really struck me with how close to home this all is, in more ways than one. The remnants of the Tsunami tidal wave did hit NZ without any damage, but there’s many Samoan and Tongan families who live here in NZ and lost loved ones.

The pictures of the once beautiful Island are devastating. Whole villages wiped out. Peoples homes and possessions taken a lifetime to build, all gone. When you look the photo below, it’s quite clear that this wasn’t that far from home.

For the first time that I can recall in the 10 years that I’ve lived in here, the magnitude 8.0 quake resulted in a ‘National Warning Tsunami Threat to NZ’. A bit scary.

My heart goes out to all those in the region who have lost loved ones and are now picking up the pieces and trying to rebuild their lives.

Here I was, like, going out for some lunch, like, and was, like, walking behind these twenty somethings, like, and, like, couldn’t help getting kinda irritated, like, at the banter going to-and-fro between them, like. Almost every bloody other word, like, was ‘like’.

It’s almost *like* the younger generation are completely incapable of, like, ………..pauses. I think most of the Gen Y’s do it, but for some it’s like a fricken habit on steroids.

If I ever start, like, doing this can someone please hit me around the face with a large fish – PLEASE!

Have I become I wine heathen?

Here I am, taken my time to choose a bottle of wine to go with my regular Friday night pizza, finally settling on a bottle of Pinot that looks half decent for my budget. I then find myself putting the bottle back because it (wait for it) has a cork!

At the time I thought nothing of it, but now it’s had time to simmer, I now wonder what the heck has happened to me. I’m a man of simple tastes and I relish the ‘experience’ of things. For example a short black is far more satisfying when you’ve ground the beans, filled the portafilter and seen it through to the final brew.

I used to have a similar experience with pulling a cork, and even enjoyed using the more complex method of using a proper Pulltaps corkscrew that posh waiters use. For me it was all part of the experience.

So have I become a wine heathen? Well, after a bit of Googling, the story that I’m gonna stick to from here on is that screw caps have a near zero chance of the wine being corked and are more environmentally pc. I’m sure that’s what I was thinking at the time

Kia ora

Welcome to my new blog and my first blog post.

So here’s the low down on what you can expect. From time to time I feel the need write about something. It may be something I feel passionate about, it may be something I found interesting and think others may too.

Right now, Spring has just arrived so now seemed a good time to start. So here I go.

Please fee free to leave comments.