Gresham Family Exodus

Today we were stuck walking around town with a brochure and a camera. here are the pictures we took. Brenden and Alex.

Originally posted on January 21, 2015, by cruisingrunner

Mangonui is a cute little tourist town. It has a small grocery store, a small liquor store, a couple coffee shops, several restaurants (fish and chips, burgers, Thai, Indian, and Mexican), and an abundance of holiday accommodations. There’s also a small boating community here as evident by the numerous privately owned mooring balls and the small Mangonui Cruisers Club whose windows I peered through this morning before they had opened up for the day. Like the town of Russell, there is a lot of history here. And although Mangonui lacks most of Russell’s charm I can still see it’s draw as a relaxing getaway destination. The people at the visitor information center give you that small town feel and are happy to chat with you about this or that and point you in the direction of whatever interests you. It’s been a nice place to get in some short, leisurely runs, but it would be a tough place to get in a long run without doing laps or running along the highway. I’ve been in many places where I’ve had to do laps, but since coming to New Zealand I’ve been pretty spoiled so far.

Also like Russell, Mangonui has a “Heritage Trail,” which is basically just a self-guided walk about the area to marked historical sites, ranging from 100+ year old re-purposed buildings to views across the harbor of Maori Pa sites. Since we were going to be here a few days, I had what I thought was a great idea for a school project for the boys. Instead of doing their regular daily school work I gave them the option of taking a camera to shore and snapping photos of each of the sites on the Heritage Trail and then making an electronic photo album. They didn’t choose that option in Russell, but if it’s the only alternative to their regular school work I thought maybe they’d bite. Not a chance. They grudgingly chose to do the Heritage Trail, but only after asking me how long the trail was and how many sites there were and figuring out that it would be quite a bit less time than regular school. I tried to pump them up about it. I told them they could be as creative as they wanted with the photos. The ONLY criteria was that each of the heritage sites were captured in a photo. I didn’t care who or what else they might decide to include. They still weren’t biting. They moaned and groaned about how boring it was going to be. Then, I even suggested they take “Little Woof,” one of Brenden’s favorite stuffed animals, and put him in each of the photos. Nope. More moaning and groaning. I couldn’t believe this was less than 24 hours from when I was writing about how great my boys are for stepping up and salvaging a fallen cell phone. As they continued to moan and groan about how boring this would be, I finally just told them that it would only be as boring as they make it. They have the opportunity to make this fun. It’s totally up to them.

As they dinghied off to shore, I was still hopeful, but alas, it was not to be. They came back with boring photos and made a boring photo album with boring captions.

I guess I failed at young teen motivational tactics. But they also failed at wearing down mom, so at least I have that.

-D.

Click here to see their complete boring photo album.

One quiet afternoon, I was just relaxing on the boat.  Then, all of a sudden, I hear a yelp come from outside.  It turns out our friend Camille dropped her phone in the water and needed help diving for it.

Because we were in New Zealand at the time, the water was supposed to be really cold, but when I dove in it was actually refreshing.  We had masks and fins already, so I slipped them on quickly and started diving.  Also, I couldn’t see anything because it was so muddy, and I accidentally slammed into the ground.  Luckily, the ground was soft and didn’t hurt that bad.

After diving with Camille for a little while Alex got out the Huka and we took turns using that.  When I got to use it, it seemed like I was never going to find it.  All I wanted to do was get out and dry off, but I really wanted to know if the phone would still work even though it was sitting on the bottom for an hour.  Then, after all this time, I see it, and so I grab it and shoot to the top.

That night as I lay in bed thinking about what happened earlier that day, I realized that as long as I keep trying, anything is possible.

Originally posted on January 19, 2015, by cruisingrunner

Day before yesterday we did some crew swapping with Iguana (our buddy boat). Tim went with Jack on Iguana on an overnight passage up to Three Kings Island, which is north of North Cape and a notorious fishing spot. Camille stayed with the boys and me on Exodus in a nice protected spot in Mangonui Harbor. There is a cute little tourist town here with a few restaurants and shops and a community cat that keeps them “mice free,” at least according to a little sign on one of the shops.

Yesterday, our friend Briana drove up from Opua to join us for some wine drinking, window shopping, cooking, and general female camaraderie. I joked with Tim before he left that he should take the boys too, since they would be seriously crashing my girlfriend time. It turns out to be a really good thing they were here with us.

After a shore excursion, we were arriving back to Exodus, and as Camille was climbing out of the dinghy I caught a brief visual of her phone teetering at the edge of her pocket. And while I’m yelling, “Your phone! Your phone!” I watch it fall out, splash into the water, and quickly disappear. I had that sick feeling when it really hit me what had happened, but I’m sure I didn’t feel half as sick as Camille did when she realized it was her phone that took the plunge. We called the boys out to quickly get in the water to help find it, and we dropped a GPS waypoint on the chartplotter so that we would maintain a rough idea of where the phone splashed down as Exodus swings about her anchor. Brenden was in the water first. He dove down and came up with a report that it was only about 10 feet deep, and he was yelling for someone to toss him his gloves, because his hands were freezing. You’d think 10 feet would be a piece of cake for them to recover a dropped object, because I think Brenden’s record is 42 feet to salvage a wayward plate. But the problem was the visibility, which was so bad Brenden said he almost hit his face on the bottom.

Camille was quickly behind Brenden into the water and the two of them tried for a while, but both became discouraged. It was just too hard to search for it while free diving when you had to be right on the bottom to see anything. So, Briana and I became convinced that we needed to get the hookah out it order to find it. Camille wasn’t totally on board that it was worth the effort, since she was the one that already had the first hand experience of trying to find that needle in the haystack, but Briana and I persisted. Especially Briana. She had used our hookah before (at Minerva Reef) so she was willing to be the one to use it. However, Camille is a diver and after a couple of questions about how the hookah works she decided she was comfortable doing it.

The hookah is basically a gas engine that drives a compressor. So, instead of carrying a tank of compressed air on your back like regular scuba diving, when you are using the hookah your air source is at the surface and you are connected to it by a long hose. Alex became a really important part of the process at this point, because I had never set up the hookah before, and because Alex is often Tim’s helper in all sorts of things, it turned out he had a good idea of how to set it up, start it, and operate it. One of Camille’s questions was, “where is the air intake?” since she was rightfully concerned about the possibility of breathing in the engine exhaust fumes. Alex remembered that the flag pole doubles as an air intake pipe so that it’s pulling in air from further away from the engine. So, he got that out and quickly attached it.

The hookah definitely made the search easier, but it was hard to stay on the bottom, so Camille asked for a weight belt. It turned out that Tim took our weight belts with him, which seemed reasonable to me at the time. We had absolutely no intention of doing any diving while he was away. So, Alex dug out one of the weight belts that actually came with the hookah, but then we realized we didn’t have any weights either. So, Briana and I searched around and the only thing we could come up with that would fit in that belt was some galvanized shackles in the linen closet, a.k.a. Tim’s spares locker. It wasn’t much weight, but it helped a little bit. Brenden was very interested in the status of the search and kept an eye on Camille hoping she would come up with the phone. I asked him if he would get in and help some more, and he slowly moped over to grab his gear as if I was forcing him to. I quickly said, “well, you don’t have to, of course.” But I had put the thought back into his brain, and I watched him continue to think about it and go over and test the water again to try and decide what he was going to do. When Camille gave up the search, and I started to tell Alex to shut down the hookah engine, Brenden made it clear he was getting back in for one more go at it. We all cheered him on, and I speculated that he had visions of being the hero dancing around in his head. He was in the water just a few minutes when he came up with a carrot stick that he found on the bottom. We had tossed a bunch of dried out carrot sticks overboard the night before, so we got a chuckle over that find. He kept searching and searching and we were all getting a bit defeated when we saw Brenden’s arm extending out of the water holding the phone. It was such a triumphal moment and we cheered and high fived and joked how Brenden could pretty much name his price for his recovery reward. Chocolate or ice cream? We still aren’t sure what he’ll choose.

Later I asked him what he was thinking, that is, what made him get back in the water and keep looking for it. I sincerely think he was motivated by those visions of being the hero, but he surprised me with his response. He said he was just really curious whether or not the phone would work again. I have no idea if it was a genuine response, but either way, I am pretty happy with it. He wasn’t flashy, and he didn’t play up any drama. And then there’s Alex, who did so much to help us with the entire process. We joked how he had one of those behind the scenes crucial jobs that just doesn’t get any of the glory. He gave a slight grin. No fanfare there, either. They both kept it real. My dad will be proud.

-D.

P.S. We still don’t know if the phone will work. It is made by Caterpillar, and is actually a waterproof phone, but when Camille opened it up, there was still water inside. She dried it out and now it’s still sitting in a container of rice. Hopefully, this will turn out to be a happy ending.

Originally posted on January 8, 2015, by cruisingrunner

After almost two years since leaving home, I made a momentous switch during my run yesterday.

I switched the unit of distance on my Garmin from miles to kilometers.

What!?!

Friends at home might be thinking that is blasphemy while my non-American friends are probably thinking, “Well, it’s about time.”

It was actually an uneventful switch, made without much thought. Basically, I was going for a trail run and the sign said it was 4.3 km to Rainbow Falls, and since the markers were in km, I figured I’d track my progress in km as well. Only after the fact did the significance hit me. I am now officially part of the rest of the world. Soon I’ll rattle off kilometers, kilograms, degrees Celsius, etc., without that awkward pause we Americans usually have as we’re mentally doing to the conversion to our crazy, yet intuitive to us since we grew up with it, system of units.

But in the meantime, while I still DO need to do those conversions in my head, I’ll take advantage of an unforeseen benefit. You see, when the pace shows up as min/km, instantaneously I have no idea how fast I’m really running, because I need to do the conversion first. And after awhile runners mush brain kicks in and I can’t even do the conversion to min/mile to save my life. This means I can’t judge myself for running too slow, even if I want to. And yesterday’s run was most enjoyable. It was along a track (aka trail) from the Kerikeri basin to Rainbow Falls passing Wharepuke falls along the way. The track is well maintained and there aren’t too many steep sections, so it was perfect for a run. The canopy was pretty thick, though, so my Garmin kept losing lock on the GPS satellites. For long section of the track I only got credit for the distance as the crow flies, but I’m trusting the signs: 4.3 km each way.

-D.