When you are new to a town, you have to continually make an effort. Although people are really nice, they will not come and find you, you have to go and find them. I was lying in bed listening to the rain hammering down on the tin roof, wind howling, and thinking ‘I don’t want to go running this morning, there’s only Sarah, I’ll just stay here!!
Then I thought for a minute, Sarah made an effort to welcome me last week, when I joined the running group from the local tri-club at the end of my first week here. She stayed back and showed me the trails, despite my very slow pace comparatively She invited me round for coffee and she also saved me a map from orienteering the next day (which I missed because I underestimated the distance cycling to Bluff!) so I felt it my duty to get my butt off the bed and actually make an effort here. Sarah’s hospitality was the only reason why I got out of bed at 6:30am this morning. I felt I owed it to her.
She did make me laugh, she said the winds and the rain weren’t too bad, and what was I worried about!!
We went running round Sandy point. I need to be more used to ever changing terrain, because the run went from meadow to pine forest to steep stairs up and down hills. Sarah scampered up and down the trails, Winnie the dog in tow, making me feel like a really unfit lard ass! She brought her 13 year old son with her, who was out on his first run in preparation to get fir for the rugby season. Even he began to leave me behind towards the end of the run! I am grateful that I made the effort though, and grateful to Sarah for being so patient (and her son too!!)
Here are some photos, but it was way too wet for me to take them so these are some I found on the internet afterwards.
How can you get bored when there is so many tracks like these around? Everyone round here makes me feel really unfit though!
A funny thing happened last night.
I was sitting right here, in the library where I normally am to blog, and bell went, to indicate the library was closing. I got up to go, and just outside in the foyer reading a book was Geoff: he was a British Guy who got on the plane at London, we got chatting, he went all the way to Invercargill on the same flights, and turns out he lives here. We hadn’t exchanged numbers at the time, but he did recognise me, and we popped next door for a drink. I was telling him how a girl called Amy, (introduced to me via work) knew Helen, the Aussie chinese Kiwi we had also both spoken to on the plane, and he laughed. You don’t need 6 degrees of separation in Invercargill, one or two will do!!
Melanie Magowan 