Claire's 30th!

Oh, no, sorry - by the calendar it is, but Claire was clinging to her 20s by stating her actual time of birth in the UK, therefore she wasn't 30 until 3:30am on the 19th... "Desparation" springs to mind.

Unfortunately the 18th (which I thought was Claire's big day) was fairly domesticated, with washing and sorting. We dropped our bikes off at Avanti who agreed to respoke Humprey's wheel for free. I was anticipating a bit of a fight in this respect, so that was a relief.

We went for a good 36 minute run around and up one tree hill which really blew the cobwebs away! It was great to get running again after all this cycling but I think we must have had some deep set fatigue as legs felt like lead.

After a bit of a rush we met Tim & Cindy at the wharf ready for a Waiheke adventure! I (rather noisily) opened our Lindaur on the boat which made for a great start to the weekend. Our hostel, the Herekua Lodge was really nice, set in woodland. Before heading out for dinner we got chatting to a Mauri guy from Dunedin who played Brazillian drums!

We had a great, relaxed dinner at Vino Vino. It was unbelievably windy until we pulled the window covers down. We were a bit noisy but it was brilliant to let our hair down with Tim and Cindy. We had a spaced out waiter who completely admitted his ineptitude, but led to us laughing a lot! We enjoyed some sort of local Waiheke wine (the grapes were from Marlborough) from Kennedy Point.

Our walk home was fun, through a forest track in total darkness. Our camera light came to the rescue. Bed before midnight for Claire and I, but Tim was embarking on a chess session with our Mauri friend, neither of whom were particularly sober!