Well, what a drive for the boys, they left Palmerston North 10th Feb 5.30am and made it to Ashburton around 6.00pm thanks heaps to  Murray & Marie (Champs Aunt and Uncle) for putting the boys up for the night and organising a great BBQ it was really appreciated. Onto invercargill in the morning, arriving around 3.30pm off to the pub.

Qualifiying on Friday the 12th.  Had a practice everything was all good.  Running 19″ tyres managed to get 2nd in the first heat, 3rd in the second heat, 2nd in the third heat finding no grip with the 19″ tyres put a 17″ tyre on the back for the last heat and won that heat so qualifying over.

New Zealand Finals Saturday had long discussions with the team as to what tyres too run, decided to go with the 17″ tyres.  Got a 1st in the first heat, 3rd in the second heat, 1st in the third heat, after this heat put a brand new tyre on to finish 2nd in the fourth heat and in the running for a podium finish.  After the fourth heat damm near wrecked a $300 tyre struggling for traction.  Final heat got 3rd to finish 4th equal.  Big Up’s to Tony as it was only 4 1/2 weeks before that he lost his finger.

Thanks to Ray & Dawn at the Tower Motor Lodge for putting up with the noise and also giving us the use of their shed it was much appreciated.

Left Monday morning 7 of us (Handbag, Rowena, Jaxon, Champ, Tony, Debs and the Blow up Doll called Cuzin curtousy of Phil Kirk and Stu Priest) to go to Catlins to have a look, wow very pretty scenery and we found a place called Jacks Blowhole so of course it was a must see.

Onto Balclutha for the night where we found an old lady with a doll sort of like ours – very weird hers wasn’t a blow up but it looked like a real person and she was all buckled into the seat and everything – dada lang dang dang dang hee hee.

From Balclutha we passed through Clinton then onto Gorrrrrrrrrrrrrrrre had to get cuzin to have a photo of course.  Then onto Te Anau, what a stunning place, had fish & chips for tea (yuck there was only 1 place to get fish and chips and they only could do 1 scoop at a time)

We went to Manapouri Power station which was great, ferry ride to the station then a 2k\m bus ride underground which was very cool.

Off to Queenstown for a couple of days to stay with Champs cousins Kath and Steve, great people they live in Glenorchy such a beautifull place.  They were great hosts and awesome people and thank you guys so much for letting us stay.  John,Jaxon and me decided to do the Gondola and then Jaxon and John Went down the luge together (Jaxon did want to go by himself but dad would’nt let him lol).  The next morning before we left Queenstown for cromwell Kath organised us to all go on the shotover river, what a rush, great fun with Jaxon judging which was the better 360.

After that we went off to Arrowtown to have a look around, very quaint little place.  We also stopped at Kingston before getting to cromwell.  Got to Cromwell and met up with Spud & Phillippa 39p and all went out to tea and a really nice pub with excellent food and good humour.

Saturday morning of the racing at cromwell we decided to go to Wanaka to The aviation muesum and also Puzzle world.  Highly recommend puzzle world, heaps of fun to be had.

Well finally racing for the GP at Cromwell. John and Tony won 4 out of 5 races easily then they had the finals, what a dust ball, as spectators we couldn’t see the bikes until they were pretty much in front of us as the track didn’t get watered and the dust was horrendous.  So obviously if we couldn’t see much you can guess the guys in the final’s didn’t see much either so John and Tony were a consistant 4th for the GP’s as well.

Just as a matter of interest total travel K\m 3750.

Written by Rowena

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