When you can have sing-song around the piano – or in Paul’s case – howling around the piano.

This is a funny poem Lynda’s workmate wrote for her on toilet paper! Keep and eye on the blog as we will be blogging our bike ride as often as we can.

Lynda, Lynda, on ya bike
Pedal power, that’s what I like.
Six weeks away without you,
John, what the fuck will you do?

To see you gone we’ll all be sorry,
The company’s in good hands
Don’t you worry.

Think of work, day & night
Like the Tui ad says,
“Yeah right.”

Biking for miles day after day,
That’s good for ya health or
So they say.

The rolling hills
The green green grass
Those mimi stops
That sore, tired arse.

Those aching thighs
Those scrapes & cuts.
If you were a man
Think of his nuts.

Isolations, roads & trees
Send us a postcard
If you please.

Wide open spaces,
Waterfalls,
Think of these guys
When nature calls.

Keep an eye on all those foreign men
Along your way
Please don’t let them lead you astray.

If you run out of money
Hey, that’s no sin,
Just get on the phone
And dial up Lyn.

Watch out for all that
Foreign food.
Those herbs & spices can be crude.

Beware of all those funny bits.
Take this poem if you get the shits.

Biker’s rash, tumbles & falls,
At least you won’t get
Itchy balls.

You’ll soon be back
With stories to tell
Takes heaps of photos and
Keep very well,

So have a great time
This is a must.
From all ya mates
At Lifestyle Trust.

By Andrew Rea
28 May 2009

Tonight Mike’s ingredients are:

Steak
Artichokes
Mushroom
Potato
Onion

I wonder what he will do

On Sunday we jumped on our bikes for the first time in over 5 months and cycled 40 kms of steep hills to Swanage and back. It wasn’t actually too hard and we both think our daily walk/run up Paku has made us quite fit. Mike also had the camera and big lens on and I still had trouble keeping up with him in places (yes I am admitting this ex-smoking, ex-exercise-phobe is actually fitter than me!).

The Swanage Pier:

Old Harry Rocks

Eating egg sandwiches and enjoying the view:

Ninas painting:

Eating egg sandwich in front of Ninas painting:

There are more people on the beach here on this chilly day than there is on Tairua beach in the height of the summer season:

Masterchef night has started at our place. This is a Wednesday night thing where we buy a set of ingredients for the other person to cook something with them. There are just few rules.

1. We can buy no more than 5 ingredients
2. We can spend no more than £5
3. At least one ingredient has to be something we have never cooked before.
4. Pantry items are allowed (e.g. spices, garlic, stuff like that)

Anyway we thought this would be a bit of fun to try cooking new things.

Last night it was Mikes turn. I was nice to him and bought him these simple ingredients for his first attempt.

Chicken drumsticks
Mushrooms
Cous Cous (We have never used this in cooking before)
Rocket

And he came up with this – it’s not the best photo, but it was yummy and very tasty.

Here is Mikes recipe:

Mike talking now

I decided to make my version of ‘Spicy Chicken Couscous’

Ingredients

couscous
olive oil
1 chopped onion
chicken drumsticks
sliced almonds
curry paste
mixed fruit mix
1or 2 Coronas

I prepared the couscous by adding 150mls of boiling mushroom stock (well, water from soaking some porchini mushrooms from the night before). This I left to cool for later on.

Having discovered we had no curry paste I had to make my own.

Ingredients

1 chopped onion
2 cloves garlic
some oil
squeeze of lemon juice
2 tspn ground cumin
1 tspn ground turmeric
1 tspn freshly ground black pepper

These were all put into the food blender and blitzed untill they resembled a rough paste. If I had been orgainised I should have made the paste before the couscous and also made the couscous while the chicken was cooking. Oh well thats the benefit of hindsight.

Method

1. I softly cooked the chopped onion in a pan (2-3 minutes)
2. Then added the flesh from the chicken thighs and cooked for about 10 mins until tender and no longer raw.
3. Then the sliced almonds and curry paste were added and cooked for a further minute.
3. This was then removed from the heat and the couscous and mixed fruit stirred in.

The dinner plate was dressed with the rocket and the spicey chicken and couscous served was then added.

The Coronas were used for lubrication during the cooking and are an optional item that can be replaced with a glass or 2 of wine.

Bon apertite Jo.

We are now back in the UK and the weather is lovely and sunny. It’s a little chilly though and shorts and t-shirts are still in my backpack (yes I still haven’t unpacked yet!)

We didn’t get our flight upgrade so we were cram packed in economy right behind the bulkhead seats with all the screaming kids. But for some reason I was so chilled out none of this bothered me. I managed to sleep well and watched a few movies.

Here are some film reviews, bearing in mind that long haul flights are not the best place to review films.

Slumdog Millionaire

This is about a kid who won millionaire and had to justify how he knew all the answers by going through his life history.

Well this has to be the boringest movie I have ever tried to watch. I managed to sit through 10 mins of it when I got bored and switched to something else.

Because of the good reviews I thought I should attempt another 10 mins. Got bored switched to another movie.

Then I even went back for more torture by trying another 10 mins, and finally gave up in disgust.

Mike gave up after the first 5 minutes.

Australia

This film is highly recommended if you are an insomniac. I had the best flight sleep ever as I passed out watching this boring load of crap.

Mike managed to watch the whole thing but also said it was boring and not worth me trying to watch the finish of it.

Marley and Me

Starring Jennifer Aniston and that guy from Armageddon, and some ugly mongrel mutt.

Its about Jennifer and that guy from Armageddon getting married and having this horrible mutt that wont behave. It was more drama than comedy and that guy from Armageddon tried very hard to make it into a soppy movie, but his attempts were almost laughable.

I could not get attached to this dog and if he were mine I would have dumped him on the side of the road years ago, so when he died it was like “get over it you guys, this isn’t even sad”.

Anyway, a rubbish movie in my opinion and not even funny.

Run Fatboy Run

Starring that guy from Spaced and Phoebes russian ex-boyfriend from Friends.

This was about that guy from Spaced leaving his gorgeous bride at the alter, then trying to win her back but she had already moved on with Phoebes russian ex-boyfriend from Friends (who by the way had a really fit bod!)

It was watchable and that’s all I have to say!

We left Whatuwhiwhi and headed for Kaitaia for supplies. We are doing a Tapas dish each tonight (limit of $5 per dish).

We are staying at Ahipara, right on 90 mile beach in a self contained (luxury) apartment for just $180 for the four of us.

We went for a swim and boogie board followed by quad biking along 90 mile beach.

Lynda driving:

Chrissie driving:

And Mike driving:

And the girls on their boogie boards:

Tomorrow we will post photos of Lynda and Chrissie doing their tandem skydive.

Matauri Bay was soooo beautiful we decided to spend the morning there. We went for a snorkel and the water was so clear. We saw loads of big fish and wished we had our rods with us.

This was the beach we camped at Matauri Bay.

We continued on our road trip to Whatawhiwhi, where we found another campsite on the beach. We blew up our inflatable kayak and Lynda and Chrissie hired some kayaks, and we went for a paddle, stopping at some bays for a swim and snorkel.

Another perfect and beautiful spot and I think they are right about “The Winterless Far North”

Here is the beach we stayed at in Whatuwhiwhi

Just a short drive today. We stopped in Russell for a coffee, caught the car ferry, stopped in Pahia for a quick look then stopped around 2pm at a Matauri Bay, which is a gorgeous spot right on the beach. In fact there are two beaches. We just spent the afternoon doing some swimming and boogie boarding and generally just relaxing. Lynda and Chrissie booked a cabin and me and Mike tented.

The first beach

And the other beach:

We vacated our lovely free accommodation in Mangawhai Heads and continued our road trip north. We stopped at a beach for a sand castle competition. We all had 5 minutes to create our works of art for Mike to judge.

Here are the photos and the results:

A Sand Jandal – by Lynda

Sand and Stuff Castle – by Jo

A Paua Shell – by Chrissie

Lynda won first prize for originality, Jo won first prize for prettiness and Chrissie won first prize for water draining efficiency (or something like that!)

We left our works of art behind and headed off down a rugged dirt track to visit a cave.

We then stopped and looked at a big waterfall

Then we headed off to find some beachside accommodation and found a gorgeous spot right on the beach. It looked a little like rain so we decided to take a cabin. Once checked in a lot of screaming happened as it was full of spiders! We got some spray and sprayed the hell out of it but had a rather restless night worrying about spiders.

Unfortunately no one thought to take photos of the bay.