Rythmn n Vines aftermath

The new year was suddenly upon us. I spent the first night of 2012 holed up in a motel in Napier with son Mike, daughter Justine and of course the indomitable Major in a studio with a queen bed and a trundle bed to accomodate the four of us!

We'd left my sister's house at Wairoa and headed north to Gisborne to pick up Mike from Rythmn n Vines (every mother's nightmare) music fest with plans to head home to the Bay of Plenty via the Waioeka gorge and Whakatane.

We got less than 5 minutes down the highway toward home, in line with the 25,000 other concert survivors who were going our way, when two drivers going the opposite way to us signalled us to turn back. Now our line wasn't moving and theirs was, so we turned back and sure enough before long we heard on the radio about a couple of big accidents on the highway ahead of us - Road now closed due to accidents & major flooding!

Now the only other highway out of town took us back south to Wairoa where we had come from but we didn't want to go back to my sister's - we'd said all those sad goodbyes, and see you sometime in the future farewells - so we carried on right by her house and headed south to Napier, arriving there in the evening. We'd been travelling all day, so Major was understandably car crazed, he had definately had enough of the car (and we'd had enough of Uncle's BO and fumes - 4 days camping & concert leftovers wasn't pleasant).

Justine, bless her heart and ability with smart phone, found us one of the last available rooms in Napier. The city was bursting at the seams with all those other bedraggled Rythmn n Vines survivors who couldn't get home for the same reason as us and who were all now stranded many hundreds of kms in the wrong direction, desperately looking for a place to stay.

What a cool adventure it turned out to be. I've got tons more to write about it.

However, it was the photo above, taken at the motel, that decided my BIG goal for the year.

I finally realised it was time to begin some kind of weight loss journey - MY weight loss journey. My goal is to loose 40kg and so far I've lost a little over 11kg and I feel FANTASTIC, I'm even on the way to getting fit and I can swim lots of lengths. I can scarcely believe it and I look forward to sharing my challenges and triumphs with you. Stay tuned.