Just keep swimming

Only our second day here and already Dillan's trying to get me back into silly triathlon type things! The 'Stroke and Stride' series is apparently New Zealand's most popular swim/run race series (which begs the question how many nutters are there in this tiny country of around four million people who actually enjoy this sort of thing!) You can read all about it here.

Dillan's doing really quite well, having got points in all the races so far this season and is in the top ten in his age group, so could be in with a chance of getting a top five placing. This race was a 500m swim followed by a 5km run, and was Dillan's last race before his Ironman down in Taupo on 1st March.

Dillan had a really good race- despite getting swum over in the melee at the start (a hazard of mass-start swims) he had his best 5km run ever and his best overall time of the series. Nat and I in the meantime sat on the beach and cheered him on while enjoing the evening sunshine :-)

The countdown has begun

Well, we're almost there! Two days to go and we'll be on a plane somewhere between here and New Zealand.

I picked Nat up from Heathrow yesterday morning after she'd flown back from Dubai, and we got the last few details of our application sorted out before sending it off by special delivery. Finding an envelope big enough was interesting as we had a wad of papers about two inches thick to send back, but it went off and was delivered today (I checked online- I like that you can do that!).

So now it's just a case of waiting to see how long they take to process it. At the moment the Immigration New Zealand website says the London branch is working with a three and a half month backlog, so it could be a while! On the other hand, if I can get a job offer they'll put our application to the front of the queue and it should be done in a month or so, so here's hoping.

In the meantime, we have a flight at 14:25 on Saturday from Heathrow to Auckland via Los Angeles. We're going that way as we get twice the normal luggage allowance (46 Kg each) so we're taking our bikes in great big padded bags so we can get straight into the healthy lifestyle and start enjoying ourselves. My sisters Jane and Helen are meeting us with their families at the airport to see us off, so that will be really nice, though I'm sure a tear or two will be shed.

We're not looking forward to the 24+ hours flight, but Air New Zealand are supposed to be good, so hopefully it wont be too horrible! I always hate the headphones on planes, and the fact that you have to turn the volume up so high that you deafen yourself just to be able to hear the films, so we both have a pair of little earphones that also block out the noise. You can pay a fortune for similar things, but I found some Koss Spark Plugs for £9 and they get good reviews, so we'll see how we get on. I'll put an update on here to say if they're any good.

Well, that's about it for now. Popping down to Brighton tomorrow to take a few bits and pieces down for Nat's family and check on our redirected post, then back to do a final pack and reshuffle of our bags, then a good night's sleep before the flight on Saturday... watch this space :-)

It's addictive this blogging stuff!

Look, see, I've already managed to add a pretty picture to the title. That's the snow covered mountains at Kaikoura where they come down to meet the sea- a stunning place- genuinely breathtaking. Nat and I went there when we visited NZ before, and got up before dawn so we could go and watch the sunrise from the seal colony.

The picture in the title was taken that morning, and the colours are for real. I took a series of pictures, just hand-holding the camera and panning across the horizon, then stitched them together on the PC at home, but that's all the editing that was done.

It would be an amazing place to live, with the sea and the mountains and the seals and whales, but it's in the South island so a bit nippy. We're planning on being the Northern end of the North island, around Auckland, where even the middle of winter is relatively mild. Still, there are plenty of beatiful places to visit in the North island too, so hopefully we'll be making the most of it and getting out and about a bit, which will give us lots to write about on here.

Just starting out

Well, after three and a bit months we finally got our invitation to apply (ITA) for emmigration to New Zealand! Very exciting but pretty scary too. I'm just going through all the paperwork and then we should get the application in by the end of the week.

We're both going to be a long, long way from our families and friends, so I though I'd give this blogging thing a try and see what all the fuss is about. Maybe it'll be a nice way to stay in touch with people and let them know what's going on in our lives and how we're doing.

Or maybe I won't have the self-discipline to actually post anything here and everyone will think we've disappeared! Maybe Nat will post stuff instead- she's good like that, much better than me, but I guess if I don't give it a try I'll never know, so here goes... post number one!