See'ya in a months time.

[Gumby]

Hey Harry,
If you are heading south and going near Nelson, try and stay here for a night or three:

http://wheelhouse.nelson.co.nz/wheelhouse.html

It's brilliant (and VERY romantic. nudge nudge wink wink)

[Studley 2436]

Harry there's nothing wrong with the Focus other than being a ford, must be your missus has you drunk on love and you can't see straight

Studley

[Harry72]

Im back!

Yep stevo I had my suspicions with that focus... and there's nothing wrong with fords! when we got over on the sth island(after braving 4.5m swirls on the ferry... they canceled the next ferry after swirls went to 9m's!)we obtained another focus after a Holden Viva saga, the front tyres on this other had been changed from the Goodyear Eagles to Bridgestone potenza's it handled much better. The potenza's were lower profile than the eagles so it didnt feel like the tyres were rolling over under high corner speed and generaly had way more grip.

The Holden(daewo actualy)Viva saga, we changed cars when we went from the sth to the nth island to save paying for its transport fee on the ferry.
They(buget)gave us a Holden Viva instead of a Focus, same class car apparently???
So off we went in this 500km old Viva, we needed to get to Nelson to see the museum of Wearable Art about 120k's away.
The route to Nelson from Picton is very hilly which shows the Viva's real well designed potential, they have no mid or low end power its all top end as in 5000rpm+ just the thing for heavy traffic on very hilly roads. Trucks and camper vans were beepin at me up hills... with the Viva's accelerator pedal at 3/4 throttle!
So the only way to keep up speed was to hold it flat chat and revving all the way to 7000rpm... sure it went well like this but its pointless because you end up "up the ass" of the vehicle infront and then its back to no acceleration again so plant the foot again hit the brake plant the foot hit the brake plant the foot hit the brake!!!
We ended up using 3/4 of a tank of fuel to do 240ks, the focus in the same conditions would use about a 1/3 of a tank.
The next day(we stayed at Picton, nice town)before leaving we went back to the buget office and complained, they said the Focus and Viva were the same, the smart ass operator went on to tell me that the focus and Viva were both 1.8ltrs and had no cruise control as they are base models... I said yep... all focus's in the sth hemisphere are 2ltrs and have cruise standard his reply was ohhhh(not a smarty now are you mate LOL ) They didnt have any more cars at all so he rang around and one had just been checked in at the next town... we'll take it I said!

[Studley 2436]

Geeze Harry you gave me a fright when you said you had suspicions about the focus. I thought you were talking about my photos *LOL*

Got to see your inlaws on friday evening and started to show them the 1100 or so images that made it onto the DVD. They didn't manage to make it through. I think Joe had a bad back and all he wanted was to get to the hotel put his feet up and relax.

So anyway is NZ still there or did you upend it and tip it into the ocean lost forever? Got some pictures to show you when you have a chance

Studley

[Harry72]

Pictures yep got about 1500 of them!(processing them now... gunna take weeks )

[Studley 2436]

Harry I was talking about the photos you paid me to take for you.

I feel pretty much like there are some good ones there sort of stuff that makes the bride get all teary again. Maybe I should get the slideshow in the post to you.

Studley