New Year's camp on Pōnui Island

This past week Martin and I were on Pōnui Island, where we went for Scripture Union Bible Study Camp in January 2022 and 2023.  Scripture Union does four summer camps back to back on Pōnui: New Year's Camp (better known as 'family camp'), camps for the younger and older halves of high school, then Bible Study Camp.  This year we wanted to go with friends from church who have kids, so we were at New Year's Camp - which turned out to be more different from Bible Study Camp than I'd expected.  It was much more of a holiday, with only 3 teaching sessions and one church service - as opposed to 11-ish teaching sessions and 'testimony time' each evening at Bible Study Camp.  Other differences included there being at least one significant 'fun' activity each day (camping out under the stars, a picnic at another bay, a concert, a disco etc) and access to boats was strictly limited to when there was skilled supervision - although you could swim any time you reckoned there was enough water.

It was lovely to be back on Pōnui.  It's such a beautiful place.

What to do with an unrepairable tent?

Back in 2022, I bought a new-to-us tent - it arrived looking in excellent condition, but it quickly became apparent that all the white portions of the fly were perished.  They looked fine, but ripped on very minimal stress, and the rips weren't really mendable due to the fragility of the fabric :-(

I cut it up, and was left with some blue waterproof fabric from the fly, some heavy-duty waterproof fabric from the floor, and a fine mesh from the inner.

What to do with it all?

The year of trusting in God

I've been telling people that 2024 has been, for me, the year of trusting in God.  Of course, that's what every year should be (!), but this year has been different as my capabilities have been so reduced and so unpredictable, and I've had to trust God in that uncertainty.

When I got my concussion back in January I went rapidly downhill over a week or so, to the point where I was only out of bed around 3 hours or so in a day, much of that just sitting in a chair not doing much.  Previously I'd been averaging around 7 1/2 hours in a day and being pretty active within that, both mentally and physically.

Initially I was in survival mode (and not doing very well at all until I started getting help from the concussion service).  I had to drop pretty much all my Just Kai work, although I did manage to organise our annual summer team picnic and, with extensive help from Christine, get out useful Easter recommendations.

Holiday at Shakespear Regional Park

Last Thursday Martin and I headed off for a camping holiday at Shakespear Park.  It was remarkably easy to get there - biked to Avondale train station, train to town, ferry to Gulf Harbour and about 40 min bike to the campsite.  And, whilst I still have a number of concussion symptoms, this was something I can now comfortably achieve :-)

Us Avondale train station with our stuff:

Two concussion milestones

I posted this on Facebook this afternoon, but thought I'd put it up here as well for friends who aren't on there.

I'm celebrating two concussion-recovery goals since last I put anything here:

1. Last week I did a 1h20 walk :-) That was my goal for walking, so I'm no longer doing carefully timed walks with steady increases and can just walk when I actually want to for as long as I want to. Hurrah! When I started with the concussion service I was only doing 7-8 minutes (and before I got help from them there was at least one day when I couldn't even walk from our front door to the fence, which is maybe 10 meters?), so it feels fantastic to be able to do so much now. That was around 9000 steps!

2. Today I did 1h20 on the bus (made up of three separate journeys, but I was walking all the time I wasn't on a bus, so was in motion a smidge over two hours) with fairly minimal nausea. I got home an hour and a half an hour ago and the nausea still hasn't 100% settled BUT I'm encouraged that this means I should be able to manage a trip we have planned in late August. That will involve 30 minutes on the train, a brief break in town, then 50 minutes on the ferry. I think what I did today was a bit more challenging than that (mostly because I kept walking all the time I wasn't on the bus so the nausea had no chance to settle), so I'm pretty confident we can go ahead with our planned trip :-) I'm also hoping to do a 4 hour bus trip in October (Whanganui to Wellington) - that may still take a bit of preparation, but it feels do-able. Hurrah! Only 10 weeks ago I did a 15 minute bus trip and was shocked how nauseous I got, so I'm really pleased by this progress.

I am so happy. Praise God from whom all blessings flow!

The photo above is of a sign by the Lower Albert St bus stops that always amuses me. How many phone calls to the Fire Service were there before that went up??!!

Lastly, the bus trip I did was the entire route of the #18 bus (home to town, town to New Lynn, New Lynn to home). It turns out that that's a very cost-effective way to test your bussing capacity: it was only $4.01 the whole trip - the same as the home to town section of the route costs on it's own!

A good week

Sunday a week ago I had a very low-energy day, but the next day woke up full of beans.  It was my Sabbath, where one of my goals is to do what I feel like - I felt like going for a walk.  I was up to 60 minute walks (in terms of the incremental increases I'm doing for my concussion), so decided to explore part of Great North Rd.  In particular, I'd noticed that a walkway that goes across Oakley Creek appeared to be officially open, and I wanted to see "my" creek :-)

So nice to be in the cool green, even in this cool weather :-)

A little holiday at home

Martin and I were due a 5-day mini break this weekend.  With my ongoing concussion issues, I found the logistics of planning an actual trip away too daunting - plus, the idea of sleeping in a tent didn't much appeal, as I'm still strapping my arm every night to treat an entrapped ulnar nerve.  So we decided on a 'staycation'.  I mostly had the internet off, and didn't use my computer except for a twice-daily concussion exercise that involved watching a video.  We bought in some yummy food, sourced a good book and had a weekend mostly without plans.  It's been really nice :-) 

banana cake for yummy snacks