Day 37

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Didn’t sleep too well, skipped swim session today as the 5:45 alarm didn’t really sit too well, and, besides, its getting quite close to race day and I cant see a 4k swim helping with this weekend. Besides, I needed to get some more sleep!! Emerged a bit later on and today’s agenda was to see if it was possible to get the air conditioning in the car fixed without breaking the bank. Helen called the garage in the morning and we arranged to pop in at 1.30pm. The plan was for them to do a quick compression test to confirm that the system was still pressure tight and, if so, we’d then get the air con re-gassed. They said we’d need to leave the car with them for an hour or so, and we decided to stop at Burger Fuel to get some lunch en route but, when we arrived, we drove straight in and they started work. Sadly, the news was not good. The air con system itself was so old that they didn’t have the correct gear to be able to do the compression testing, and there was also various parts of the system missing, and so, after a 10 minute investigation, it became apparent that there would need to be an outlay of at least $350 just to get the system to a point where they could actually carry out a pressure test, and so we had to accept the fact we’re stuck without air conditioning. It’s a bit frustrating but there is nothing we can do, and we’ve still managed to get a car which, so far, touch wood, seems to be mechanically pretty good, for $950, less than £500. The bad news on the car was offset somewhat by my discovery that the CD player will actually play home made MP3 CD’s, so I now have my entire AC/DC and Metallica collection burnt onto disk so the trip to Taupo tomorrow should be much better.

Following the garage, we went to the Warehouse, where we got a sun screen for the car, along with some clothes for Helen, and then we headed back. Helen headed out to help out at Pippins later in the afternoon and we had a fairly quiet evening in, other than when I tried the CD out in the car 

Maia had her swimming lesson and, amazingly, came back with the swimmer of the week trophy again for the 2nd time in three weeks, quite an achievement! Not a lot of photos today, just not that sort of day. Cloudy today, with sunny spells, but no real rain to speak of.

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