1 July 2011
291578kms, foggy and minus 0.5°C at 14:24.
Quick stop at the Clyde Library because the cross-stitch is finished and so I am going to need something else to do & then into Alexandra for diesel and a quick shop and then out of the valley to sun - apparently it's sunny just up the road - but in reality heading for the West Coast as that's where the weather is meant to be good for the next few days. Mike filled up with 37.8 litres while I went shopping. 14:57 - on our way. Fog lifted just outside Cromwell but back again from Hawea onwards - much higher than at home where it was ground level after this morning's hoar frost. Arrived at Boundary Creek at 16:22 and while Mike set things up I took Roxie for a walk along the beach. (And that's where everything started to go wrong - me taking Roxie while Mike set things up was a break from our normal routine - and it never got right again! But anyway, I get ahead of myself!). When I got back from the walk, Mike is standing beside Maggie with a somewhat perplexed look on his face, and at that point he asks me if I happen to have a standard BSP plug on me. Turns out he had drained the hot water cylinder the other day for frost protection and to check the anode (which is corroding (as it should) but not that bad that it won't last a bit longer) and while he had it out he decided to fix and paint the end as it was showing signs of rust. But, he’d left the anode sitting on the garage bench, and there was just a gaping black hole where the anode should be! Meaning, we couldn’t fill with water!
Oh well, no drama's - we can last until we get to Haast where hopefully someone will have a plug - just means no showers. Good thing is at Boundary Creek DoC kindly provide a tap with drinking water - must be a reason we only got this far today!I had decided to get something different to eat this trip, so I had packed soy sauce (to go with the sushi I made yesterday) and fish sauce (for the Thai chicken stir fry we love) in little Glad containers. Lesson - they may claim they are watertight - but THEY ARE NOT! When I got onto Maggie after filling all I could smell was fish sauce. Thank god the glad containers were in one of our plastic hold-everything-in-place baskets - otherwise the woodwork would have reeked of fish-sauce! But despite that, we smelled fish sauce for the rest of the night – despite the smellies we had going!
Beer o’clock – that’s when we noticed that some of the Speight's cans are dinged- bought last week but Mike didn't notice at the time that it was old packaging - and inside it we now discover are 9 old style cans and 3 of this year’s Coast to Coast cans. When we opened the old style cans – FLAT! This is all going a bit pear-shaped so far. OK we have heaps more non-flat beer so no dramas but still - too many things not going right. And then we saw on the weather forecast that instead of it being nice weather on the coast they are now forecasting cloud for tomorrow (Saturday) and rain on Sunday - so after a very stressful day what with ACC not paying me and Mike being on mornings so he's tired we went to bed having called this trip a write-off and we will head home as soon as we get up tomorrow morning.
2 July 2011
Got home around 10am 2 July 2011 291834kms.
