Tomorrow

Tomorrow i go back to Timaru. I am not entirely sure how I will be able to leave and what i will think of myself when i do.

Fox is my very good friend and we have had a very tough year where we relied on each other a lot at different times. I am positive that he will miss me very much as I know he enjoys my company as I do his.

I have been so proud of his bravery over the last two days. He coped so well with the long car journey and he has met everything at the new house with an admirable attitude. He is truely a role model for me and I shall honor him by meeting my new experiences with bravery.

Being here is the best option for him right now as the grounds here are awesome and just what I have been promising him for a few years and he will have company during the day which he does not get with me and increasingly now he has not had my company in the evenings either.

Of course he does not know all this. He will just know I have gone and that he needs to stay.

i do not know how I will be able to walk into the house in Timaru tomorrow night…i will need to be brave.

Nelson

Nelson is sunny.

Nelson has a new cat and no Craig.

Will be home in a few days and I will tell you all about riding around on a flash fast bike and the fact that xmas went from just another day ending in y to something magical!

Where Has Shine Been?

It has been a hectic time - I have had to make some heart rending decisions lately and i also finished up work (last day was SAD!) now I have a few days to get busy packing… except I have another distraction.

This whole try something new thing has kicked in full force in the most perfect way!

I am seeing someone. Someone REAL - not an imaginary online person who is not here and I use my imagination to fill in the blanks of who they are - a REAL person, who is actually here and I can see his facial expressions and feel his touches and understand his meanings and such. it is a new thing for me and it is all delightfully easy and relaxing.

He is gentle and calm. He is caring and handsome. He is funny and sweet. He is supportive, emotionally strong and knows how to handle me. He is a great daddy. He likes salt and vinegar chips. He likes fly fishing. He likes to communicate. He likes me.

I am not at all sure what this is all about for either of us but it is truely lovely.

Reading the Newspaper

In my classroom we get the newspaper every day. I don’t usually get time to read it. A few mornigns ago I read the frotn page.

Tourist bashed on Saturday night down at the Bay (about two mins walk from my house). Apparently two teens jumped a guy form behind and bashed him and he ended up in hospital. The two teens then moved onto bash another man from behind ON MY STREET.

This made me pretty uncomfortable as you can imagine…

Then the next day their names were in the paper…guess who…

*sad*

Did I mention

JONNY WON!!!!!!!!!
And not just a win…
a DOUBLE WIN!

It really was a GREAT and exciting race and I am not just saying that coz I am obviously now thinking this is the BEST A1GP race I ever saw…
There was lots of action - passing, great passing, spinning off track, the worst rain ever, two tyre changes, main players droppign out and JONNY LEADING and being passed by NICO and then having to go in and change tyres then and passing Jonny again… SO THRILLING! Needless to say I DID stay up til after one and it was worth every second!
I am so proud of Jonny and so excited for him! Amazing amazing!!

Congrats to the Black Beauty team and I am even more excited about the next race which is here in NZ - on my NEW island!
Oh, and as an aside… playing on the flying fox on the adventure playground with the class when you haven’t done it since you were a kid is not a good idea if you plan on having the use of your arms for the rest of the day…

Indonesia Quals A1GP

Running commentary as I watch this half hour quals highlights…
Just watching the quals now - Jonny is up again this week and I just heard he hasn’t had much time in the car due to the fact one of our rookies (Chris) CRASHED our car during practise!!! (repairs keeping Jonny outta the car …)
At this stage of the quals Jonny doesn’t even feature - I don’t think he has been out at all yet.
ok, Jonny comes out.
And already Jonny has pulled a good time lol! (2nd GBR i think) If he’s on fire there is NO way I am going to bed at a reasonable time for work tomorrow! (coverage here between 1030pm and 1 am heeheh)
Ads! grrrrrrrhehhihihihhgrrrrr It’s ok, i can use this time to try and find a pic of the crash!
Ok, back on, no pic of crash yet and here’s Jonny. He’s on used tyres. Right out and clipping the grass on that pesky turn four.
While Jonny is zooming about Alex Young has spun off the track.
Lap time for Jonny - second still and Germany liek 7th. Hmmmm - he’s doing another lap now on new tyres so let’s see how he goes (while he is going around NZ comes back out).
Ok this is more liek it… he’s fastest by a fraction.
Hmm, I am suspicious that the race is actually finished I better be careful looking for pics on the site in case I see something I really shouldn’t see yet!
WOW, Jonny is 3/4 of a sec up on Germany at the split this round! But he lost time on the last segment - if he keeps on liek this he will get pole again loL!
ooo Mexico up to third.
Here’s Jonny again..*watches intently*
He’s ahead at the spilt again!
GOOOOOOOOOOOO YES!!!!! And fastest indivdual lap too! (third race in a row he’s set fastest individual lap in quals…)
France is still out but he is not in a good position to take pole off us - my bet is he can’t but he will leap some places by the looks.
Germany is out now, he’s keen, slipping corners a tad! and he stays in second.
GBR now and Robbie Kerr could move up from his current third position! GOOOOOO Robbie (good luck! seems to be over driving a bit in his keeness - OH! he got second pole!
let’s hope Jonny can take it all the way tonight! I AM SO EXCITED NOW!!!! Not long until Taupo too - I wonder who gets the honours there, Matt or Jonny? and WHERE WILL I BE?!! coz that Friday, Sat and Sunday we get LIVE coverage on channel three!!

A1 Team New Zealand’s Jonny Reid has snatched pole position for the Gudang Garam A1GP Sentul, Indonesia Sprint race with a last-gasp flying lap in the dying minutes of Qualifying. Reid’s aggregate time was just 0.034secs quicker than Great Britain’s Robbie Kerr, who also moved up in the last minute to secure second position from Germany’s Nico Hülkenberg for Sunday’s 15-lap race.

Source

Flushed Away

aka No Slugs were a-salted during this film
it occurred to me yesterday that OF COURSE I had to go and see this film even though all the trailers and stuff I have seen about it haven’t made me want to.
I HAD to go - it’s Aardman!
And having now seen it I have to say the only two things that is wrong with it are that it did not hook me into the characters at the start and at the start there was what I consider to be a big continuity issue. it wasn’t ’til half way through that I actually started to enjoy it - which is a shame as it is really quite good, kinda.
It has great animation and is put together well. it is also kinda weird in a way I have not experienced before - or perhaps this was just the underlying concept that I was watching rats in a sewer and i was quite wary that I woudl see a big poop floating about at any moment. it certainly takes toilet humour in a totally literal direction!
I am wondering if Aardman has an NZ somehow connected to this film as there was a weird appearance of a New Zealand map at one point that had me perplexed coz I couldn’t figure out WHY there would be a NZ map with connections to the anatomy of a  squirrel (I think it was a squirrel, I was distracted by the bizarre  appearance of a NZ map) at this point (or any other actually) of this film.
The film is riddled with visual sound effects  gags - which in themselves are hilarious and blend well with the Aardman tradition for the teeniest of detail that makes their films stand up well under repeat viewings. There is also a lot of slapstick - which I couldn’t help but laugh at.
There are also some pop culture references which flash by in almost bizarre ways so keep your eyes peeled.
I really enjoyed Jean Reno as Le Frog - I have a long standing connection with his acting and voice since he appeared in a film I have been fond of for too many years to remember now! Andy Serkis did a good job as Spike.
Overall the story just didn’t grip me - I am not sure if I was in the wrong mood or if I just got off to a bad viewing start with the continuity and the non connection with the chars. Not sure what it was really as it did seem to have all the elements that should have made it a good film. I couldn’t get an idea of it’s kid appeal as I was in a practically empty cinema (as I liek it).
I’d love to hear what others think. It’s certainly no Wallace and Gromit but then I am definitely biased in that regard - it is uniquely Aardman however and has many of the trademark Aardman delights. It’s good to see them trying something different and I hope this works out for them. As much as I LOVE the stopmotion - it’s going to be increasingly difficult for them to make it pay off for them with the nature of that medium and until they can figure out a way around that ( and cross fingers that SOMEONE does) they need to get their bucks somehow coz the alternative is to pack up shop and split up I guess…

Unconditional Love

if you love something
set it free

if it comes back,
it’s yours

if it doesn’t
it never was…

Walk Away

CRP (Cheese Related Post)

HEY! Who finally got some of this for my local store and didn’t tell me!?!

CHEESE!

Indonesia A1GP (yes, it’s that time again!)

Indonesia this weekend - looks liek some of the drivers have been out having a little bit of quad bike fun!

A group of drivers including championship leader Nico Hülkenberg, New Zealand’s Jonny Reid and Great Britain’s Oliver Jarvis, were taken out to a plantation in the Sukabumi area south of the circuit for a quad bike ride through the jungle.
What was supposed to be a slow ride to enjoy the scenery and give the drivers a taste of the beautiful Indonesian landscape quickly, and perhaps inevitably, degenerated into a fast sprint. Drivers tried to get their all-terrain vehicles to leap over the jumps, balance on two wheels and arrive at the finish first.
Check out our exclusive photo gallery to get the inside line on the activity. We must stress that no drivers were harmed in the making of this film.

Court Over and Done

It’s been hanging over my head for about a year now and it’s finally practically over.
Today I attended the hearing/tribunal/court session (depending on where you live) for the insurance claim that I am contesting re:The House Fire that occurred when Oddboy was here.
It has been real stressful and has dragged on through cancellations, no shows (by the insurance company), threatening letters (also from the insurance company) etc etc.
I was actually feeling ok and not really nervous today until I got in there and things got bad fast.
I feel kinda blindsided by the system as you can imagine.
I wrote a whole bunch more but in reality it is not necessary to post it here so I deleted it. I didn’t start the fire, I was not negligent nor did I intend damge to the property. In fact I took every measure of care available to me.
It’s out of my hands now and that’s how it is.
On a totally unrelated note, that whole don’t go running after you have had hot spicy food thing also applies to weight training…

OMG

I know I don’t usually post at 3:30 AM, especially on a week night and I am loathe to push my Cars review down so soon…but something STRANGE and UNUSUAL has happened!
My cat came in yarking and woke me and I couldn’t get back to sleep so I grudgingly decided I would go to the toilet and as I got to the hallway door I stopped dead in my tracks and immediately knew something was afoot!
There was this weird eerie yellow glow coming in ALL the windows.
I bravely looked out the nearest one (brave coz, you know, ALIENS!)
and there was SNOW… thick thick snow. Fallin’ as I looked.
Now it HAD been raining and raining when I went to bed and I suddenly remembered the weirdie clouds I saw on my way home from visiting friends up the street yesterday afternoon - but you must understand that the last time we had snow was liek four years ago and that was more than we’d had in the previous four years AND it wasn’t on the ground for longer than a winkling after it stopped snowing.
This is THICK. This is unheard of in my town. I swear there must be four inches out there, no joke!
I went out there in a hurriedly put on thin layer of very insubstantial PYJAMAS with camera in hand.

This pic is from my sheltered front step.

Then I heard the cracking! Branches so heavily laid down with suddenly snow that they are breaking like toothpicks! I had to go VERY low to get along my path onto the street (where of course I had to go look!).
I swear it was just like when the first child goes out into Narnia from the wardrobe! It’s much deeper out on the street. It was stupifying!
I had to walk down the street some just to fully take it in. As I was walking I could hear other branches cracking down the street and in other blocks. No other noise at all. If this keeps up or even stays as it is now (fingers crossed) I will be the only one able to get to work tomorrow (and that’s just coz I live next door to school!)
I took some other pics but it’s too dark in them to see anything so you’ll have to wait til morning. I sure hope it stays, kids all around town will be awestruck as most of them will have never seen snow on the ground and I know they won’t believe me!

I feel liek I am the only one in the world that knows!

UPDATE: Things are pretty serious. People are advised not to leave their homes. Lots of powerlines are down and arching due to weight of snow. I wandered down to a friend’s place down the road and it looks liek a lot of people will lose spouting and trees. I have a lot of damage in my front yard. My pride and joy Kowhai tree has lost most of it’s branches due to snow weight. I have been out there with my rake trying to knock down as much snow as I can to try and save as much as I can! The snow stopped for a while but has started up again. I went over to work and only my principal was there (he had walked in to check on stuff), I let him use my rake to clear trees as well. School might be shut tomorrow too! I picked up a few things while I was there so I don’t get to far behind.
This is a picture of the path to my front gate…you probably can’t tell but right in the middle of the pic is where my path is all covered with weighted down branches!

Shine sees Cars

Not often I go to a full house screening.
Why? because I don’t have to - a cinema all to myself is about as good as it gets and it gets that way a lot where I live. However I went against this preference for Cars because sometimes, just SOMETIMES it’s great to see a film with a cinema full of it’s target audience.
I wasn’t wrong!
Got to see the trailer for Rat.a.too.ee (i wonder where they are going on that one, but that’s for another day…).
Got to see ONE MAN BAND!
- something I have been awaitin’ for since I got hooked on Mark Andrew’s talent when I saw the extras for The Incredibles. One Man Band was lovely! A fine wee tale, well crafted with story and visuals to match.

The strings guy’s shirt was AMAZING! (although this shot doesn’t do it justice at ALL!)
The main feature’s opening sequence was probably lost on the target audience however this kind of sophisticated story telling is the perfect sort of thing for appealing to film connoisseurs, future creative-genuises-(genuii?)-in-the-making and normal everyday movie going plebs alike. Great to note that before this beginning sequence was over I knew that Pixar has yet again taken another leap in computer animation. They consistently raise the bar - it is so mind boggling to think of where they could possibly go next that I only let my mind flick over that thought for a nanosecond then got back into enjoying the multilayering this film offers (and by multilayering I am not just meaning the technical ones I am about to mention!).
The huge array of textures are so well executed but the star is certainly the animation of the metalic surfaces (of the cars for instance). There was such a glorious contrast between the glossy shiny cars stuff and the dusty dirt and rust stuff that it made me hanker for a drink - fantastic! The backgrounds were so finely constructed - especially the sweeping surrounds of Radiator Springs with it’s car bonnet and tail fin land features.

I just know I am gonna have to go again at least once before I purchase the dvd - how much must I have missed! (and not just because of the spoilt little girl next to me whinging because her mum wouldn’t tell me to give up my arm rest - which I actually thought about but decided I deserved it seeing as her and her three sisters and one brother and cellphone-flashing-texting mother took my centre row seat and I decided not to disturb the whole cinema making them move and just took the one on the end - literally a FULL session).
Again I noticed those tell-tale signs that have become a staple of the Pixar feature. The strong use of colours and symbols to represent the “neg” (urban) and “pos”(rural) landscapes (also the juxtiposition of fast pace and slow pace, loud/quiet, to illustrate the same point). The attention to detail in all areas of the animation (which is second only to Aardman in my opinion). Unique and memorable voice casting (even though I have only literally just seen an Owen Wilson film I didn’t register it was actually him until he starts talking to Sally in the court house - this is from Shine who wrecked the Usual Suspects for herself having just seen Seven and recognising a voice I wasn’t meant to in the opening mins). Excellently executed characterization. Well crafted family values message/moral (including a touching tribute to all those now forgotten small towns bypassed by the world’s highways). Other productions might have some of these elements but Pixar has developed this into a uniquely sophisticated trademark style (NB: Aardman/Wallace and Gromit - I need to have a think about this further. Do I think that Aardman is second to Pixar? Or are they apples and oranges? hmmm!)

All in all it’s another grand Pixar film - in the Pixar tradition; it’s a grand movie not just because the animation is more than a few steps above anything else out there but because Pixar knows how to tell a great story. Pixar never lets their movies hang off fancy animation - they always make sure the story is equally grand (NB: I also believe firmly that this is true of Aardman… certainly where The Curse of the WereRabbit is concerned).
Having said this The Incredibles (the BESTEST Superhero movie EVAH although Batman Begins is pretty close in the superhero movie stakes for Shine!) STILL is my fav animated feature (with Curse of the Were Rabbit a close second, depending on the day because sometimes they swap and change). There are many roads to Rome, as they say, and I am pleased for y’all out there that have grown in appreciation for my fav company through this flick but for me I didn’t bond with the characters here liek I did with The Incredibles. I know Lightning grew and developed and changed throughout the movie but I never developed ‘like’ for him. Sally did nothing for me nor Mater either. I thought I was gonna like Doc but then I didn’t
(The two tyre guys were probably about as close as I got to fav chars).

The colours/environments didn’t grab me as much and the story didn’t get me as much either. In fact there were some bits that made me move about in my seat with tinges of ‘uncomfortable’ - for example the tractor tipping and every time anyone mentions gas/petrol (with the current gas price issue and the ridiculousness of our dependence on this non renewable resource we all know is outdated and bad for us all… but I digress). Although the animation is better in some regards (although each of the Pixar films so far have had a different kind of main animated topic to focus on and in this regard are really apples and oranges) I think that is just the way it is - they learn and improve in regards to animation as a matter of course because they are a dynamic creative company. There also didn’t seem to be as many little aside bits of humour as I was used to in The Incredibles. My really favourite bit was the Car-ization of other Pixar films. About the only area I can think of that it might just inch out Incredibles for me is soundtrack. Good story for Randy Newman’s work. I just didnt’ get as much out of the story. Maybe it was just me.

I don’t want y’all to think I didn’t liek it or am giving it a bad review. It’s ALL good. Comparing Pixar films is really comparing the best to more of the best. Perhaps really the difference for me is a lack of Brad Bird. The Incredibles was really a great story that just happened to be animated. Cars is a story that HAD to be told with animation.

Even if overall I think The Incredibles is just a (teeny tiny weeny) bit better (and that’s not just because superhero families beat Nascar/dry dusty sweeping landscapes for Shine) than this latest offering, this miniscule fact matters not when Pixar films are so far ahead of their nearest competition across the board…this movie in no way tarnishes the love, respect and admiration I have for one of my fav companies! (I am itching right this second to finish this review so I can cozy up on my bed and watch The Incredibles - after all I am monologing!!)
Last note - it was heart warming (and a little wrenching) after the film to be taken by the hand and led by extra footagey tidbits to a touching tribute for Joe Ranft and if I hadn’t wanted to savour my tears I would have responded to the queries about it from behind me with the sad and tragic story behind the tribute…

The only really bad thing was that most people left after this tribute and didn’t stay to the very very VERY end… but that meant I got to enjoy a little bit of Cars all for me on my own in my cinema, just how I like it!
THANKS PIXAR!

Neanderthal DNA

Scientists have recovered DNA from a Neanderthal that lived 100,000 years ago - the oldest human-type DNA so far.
It was extracted from the tooth of a Neanderthal child found in the Scladina cave in the Meuse Basin, Belgium.

The article then goes on to talk about how Neanderthals were more diverse than “we” thought. You can read it here.
i was waiting for the part where they were gonna clone Neanderthals to put in the cloned mammoth park…

This is odd

This is a flower on one of my cactus plants. This in itself is not odd, in fact it is rather delicate and lovely with it’s pale blending of “pretty” colours.
The thing that is odd is that for the 6 or so years I have had this plant it flowers like clockwork on my birthday in late November. OK, THAT is not odd.. what is ACTUALLY odd is that I took this picture today and not only is it JUNE (and not November) it’s also the beginning of winter.
And furthermore, it is only the ONE bloom…

Ayalon Cave

Prehistoric Cave Discovered;

8 New Species Thrive Inside

HECK! This is a tad bit TOTALLY exciting! Someone must have almost been wetting themselves with exhilaration! Geographically isolated ecosystems are increasingly rare and untouched ones even more so!
The title should really say “At least 8 new species thrive inside” because it is really too soon to know what else is down there.

Quarry workers digging recently in central Israel broke through bedrock and stumbled into an entirely new and unique ecosystem, scientists announced Wednesday. The cavern had been sealed off from the outside world for millions of years.

Of course this unique and special ecosystem is ruined now *sad*. Such is the bittersweet nature of such special discoveries - the downfall and destruction of the beauty of their remoteness to us.

Four of the new species are water-dwelling crustaceans. Four others are land-based invertebrates—creatures without spines.
Also found in the cave were bacteria that serve as the basic food source in the self-contained community. As might be expected of species confined to a pitch-black cavern for millions of years, none of the newly discovered animals had eyes.

No eyes is creepy (e.g so weirdie and distant from what is comfortable to me) - liek that blind wolf spider someone found in a dark lava tunnel in Hawaii a while back. Liek those creepy deep deep DEEP ocean fish you see sometimes. Totally alien. It makes my brain twinkle to think about them!
Interesting final note on this topic (for now!)

Unusually, two of the crustaceans found in the cave are saltwater species. The two others are of a type found in fresh or brackish (slightly salty) water.Today’s Mediterranean Sea is a remnant of the Neotethys ocean basin, which was formed during the Late Triassic and Early Jurassic periods, about 200 million years ago.The current mix of freshwater and saltwater species in Ayalon Cave may be the result of events that occurred when what is now Israel was covered by that ancient sea.

This adds an interesting dimension for my further thoughts…

Lions Gone from Kenya within 2 years?!

Over on Nat Geo I read this today.

“Ten years ago there used to be lions everywhere. You’d hear lions at night, find their tracks during the day. That simply is not true anymore,” said Laurence Frank, a researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, and an expert on African predators.
While the size of southern Kenya’s lion population is difficult to measure, Frank says the giant felines no longer roam where they once did and the current rate of killing is unsustainable. “Within two years the lions will essentially be gone,” he said.
Last month alone, nine lions were found speared to death in and around Kenya’s Amboseli National Park, just north of Tanzania’s Mount Kilimanjaro…

DISTURBING!
It makes what NZ’s Lionman does all the more important (of course he is working hard to conserve lions that don’t even exist in the wild as it is…).
I don’t have anything against centuries old tribal customs of manhood or whatever - but I do believe that in some circumstances education can be useful to provide new avenues and opportunities for changes to some customs which will actually benefit lions and the people. Through the lions the people’s culture can also better be preserved.
It seems a lot to me liek in our modern western society  - the groups of young men trying to outdo each other in their behaviours (e.g. doign stupid dangerous car stuff).

NB: Pictures in article may disturb lion lovers =(
On a more postive note - stay tuned for some VERY exciting LIONMAN news that Shine is currently looking into!!! On her scale of exciting this rates right up at the top!

More on Earth Race

The day after Ryan spoke at school I went down to “tour” the boat first hand. If you can actually call a visit to a pointed cupboard a ‘tour”! it was drizzling and I had slip on shoes…I am glad I took Sarah coz I sure don’t think I would have been getting on it if she hadn’t leapt down there like a bunny! (thanks Sarah!)
So pleased I went! It was an experience. I was sure I was gonna end up in the drink…

As you can see in the bigger version of this pic, it was QUITE the drop from the green netted platform onto the deck of Earthrace. That and the rain and the fact the boat (or the pier I was standing on which is what it FELT like!) was moving about 1.5 metres to my left, then doing the same to my right…well, let’s just say I made good use of the kind young man standing there.
The actual time on the boat was kinda a blur coz , well there isn’t much to see and plus I was still reliving the fact I had actually got ONTO the boat and was already planning what a nightmare it was gonna be to get off it. I briefly pondered stowing away to avoid the debacle that I assumed getting off was gonna be but considering the claustophobia I was already having combined withthe motion sickness in a calm port… well let’s just say that getting off was probably the lesser of two evils. Apparently there WAS a toilet, near the entrance. Apparently there was a galley (complete with a triangle bottomed custom made fridge). I do remember seeing the beds. Four of them but room for 8. Although why on earth there woudl be 8 is beyond me seeing as there is only standing room for 5 people…
This is a bed (the small long thin thing under the orange light there).Yes. They REALLY are that narrow and thin looking (that is not me in the photo btw).
The deal is four crew will travel on the boat for the race. They will sleep two at a time for two hours. There really isn’t enough room for the four of them to be awake all at once.
Earthrace can carry about 11 tonnes of biofuel. The tanks are horizontal under the main carriage area of the boat. They will stop at (I think) 11 ports along the way for fill ups. They have to travel as close to the line of the equator as they can. There will not be showering on the boat and I imagine that it will be the most hottest stinkiest cabin ever! If it is cold out at sea they will have to shut the boat up which will make it hot inside and stinky and if it is hot they will of course be HOT and stinky. Either way, it’s gonna be hot and stinky!
In this next pic you can see Pete (the Captain) out in the RAIN on the slippery nothing to hold onto bow, doing something. Behind him you can see the only windows - they are the ones that the pilot looks out of and I have to say that when I sat in the Captain’s chair I could not see out of them unless I stood up so I am not sure how THAT all works! I certainly could not for the life of me imagine being at all able to cope out at sea in big waves having any idea where I was or what I was doing.

All in all the boat is like the Anti-Tardis, like the cupboard in Narnia, except it gets narrower and kinda ends in a point and there is nothing behind the coats…

Earthrace

Today I had the opportunity to meet Ryan Heron from the Earth Race Team!
He is the documentary filmaker guy on the team (he’s also an offshore medic - which is an interesting skill to have and a useful one considering he is soon to be spending a LOT of time on a uniquely designed boat with three other chaps way out in the middle of the big blue wobbly thing!)

This is the boat that runs on BIODIESEL *applaudes*. They are currently doing a port to port tour doing talks and such to promote the BIODIESEL cause in the build up to their attempt to beat the round the world record (currently 75 days).
The boat design is pretty darn flashy! It has a wave piercing hull which is part of the overall “be really good at going fast in rough open sea” thing. I would get SO sick. Well, I might get sick if I could actually move around the boat without thinking about being way out at sea miles from land…*shudders* (Shine is unabashedly a land lubber, totally happy to admit she has a strong irrational fear of deep water)

Ryan rocked!! Standing up answering question after question today from a big group of 9 - 11 year olds. He was tireless! Even after half and hour of questions about food and toilets and showers and NOT one about BIODIESEL! LOL! (I soon fixed that by whispering to one of my students a hint on a question I thought would be VERY popular with Ryan, and it was coz it won her a spot prize!).
In a way I guess it is nice that the kids were not at weirded out that this boat runs on VEGETABLE OIL! An indication of the acceptance of ideas outside the square. I was super excited we had the visit and I got to talk to my kids about biodiesel afterwards (Shine loves biodiesel).
Now if someone would just sponsor my car to be biodiesel friendly I would be ALL SET!
Just like Ben Harper - I believe in a Better Way…