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How quickly the "world" can change. Every body doing what everybody does and then came COVID 19 and put the skids under us all. At the moment your intrepid gypsies are hanging at home and will be here for a while.
But what have we been up to leading up to this lockdown point, well if you remember back we flew back from LA and spent a couple of weeks in Parkerville then it was back to 3 puddles for xmas
Really truly is Santa coming
Hey I didn't mean he was coming straight away
Getting close now though.
Now we will pause for a minute. The beautiful lady on the right is my favourite girlfriend and Chonny's Aunty Hellen. She is one crazy lady, an amazing cook, but then I am biased here cause she was always baking cookies for for me. She was always smiling and whatever shit life threw at her, and it threw some heavy shit, she just smiled and said "well I woke up this morning so all is good". Hellen got to have xmas with us all and then the shit finally caught up with her. After a battle with cancer she passed away on the 18th March 2020. RIP Girl.
Now when a boily builds a kids play set well you need some heavy shit to get it sorted.
But we have our next sit coming up so time to give Tig a good clean up and we head to Fremantle for the new year for a couple of weeks
Yep got the granma/Isabelle nod of approval.
Wee ones trying on new school uniforms
Our puppies are Meadow (above) and Cassie (left) whom we have looked after before and we love looking after them.
As is becoming the norm now, a loaf of bread hot out of the oven
and a jigsaw of course, but this jigsaw has a twist.
Pre organised, the dog wash man turned up to work his magic and work it he did, all clean, nails trimmed and smelling fresh as daisies. He was very good and he kept talking to the puppies all the time and kept them calm. Was pretty to watch
An organised ride with the TRWA crew was on the agenda
Now one good thing about sitting for family is there are no problems with family coming to stay. Down into Fremantle cbd
Down to the beach for some fun
Beached mermaids and the puzzle starting to take shape
Another day down town and in the park, who's the king of the climbing castle then hey Miss B
Back at the house and a game of 8 ball is the order of the day
And the last piece of the puzzle goes in
Last night for the family so while mum and dad are out to a concert we took the wee ones up to Kings Park to see the Perth city lights
One thing we love about Fremantle is the ample free bike parking all over the place. Pity Perth cbd could not follow suit. Mind you though this is fairly early, another hour and all the bike parks are full.
Caught up with good mates Gav and Jess at the Surfing Lizard, good coffee, good food, great company with lots of laughs.
Another day and another coffee, this time at Dome on the waters edge. Pog and Tup checking out my coffee to make sure it was ok for me, thanks guys
Tent set up, caravan set up, yep reckon its time for some serious relaxing
Our time is up in Fremantle and Pog is chaffing at the bit to get back on the road, so back to 3 Puddles we go.
Australia Day weekend coming up which is Diana's birthday as well so a camping trip to Jurian Bay is the order of the weekend. Pog and Tup seem happy to be back in the tent. it's been a while.
Happy birthday Granma
A fantastic weekend relaxing and now we are off again, first stop is for coffee, of course, then onto Bridgetown, not to house sit but to spend some good times with mad mates Paul and Pearl
On the way down Tig did a few funny wiggles, now I knew the front tyre was buggard but the amount of buggard, so I discovered was quite large. The picture doesn't show it real well but the casing on the left hand side of the tread has collapsed. We were incredibly lucky we didn't have a blow out. A few phone calls and found a bike shop close by and got a new one fitted. Core blimey what a difference a tyre makes, it was like putting power steering on it.
A dam down the road and the puppies love it
There is a large green eyed monster in the pic, a bitey bastard of a march fly and there were plenty of them about.
Time out for a coffee at the Pickle & O in Nannup, great little laneway coffee shop, but there was murder most foul. We are sitting enjoying our coffee and some thing started screaming, it was a quite horrific noise and was coming from above us. I was intrigued and Diana was about to run away. Turns out it was a King Skink who grabbed a frog out of the guttering for his lunch.
Another day another ride, this time with P & P to Mushroom @ No.61 in Balingup. A mushroom pie and and coffee. The coffee was good and the pie was superb.
We had another ride back to Balingup to have a look at a junk shop there and to have another mushy pie, but we were to late, you want mushy pie you have to get there early
There are some stunning puzzles in the collection
It's amazing what you find, Bridgetown has a jigsaw puzzle museum (google it if you want more info) the puzzle you can see is currently the largest jigsaw in production in the world.
not a puzzle but it made us laugh
That there is a very rare road sign here in WA
More fun and games including coffee at Blackwood Cafe in Nannup and an amazing ride through the country side back to Bridgetown. Without a doubt the best roads we have been on in WA
Now all this frivolous fun and games has to come to an end cause we are here to do some work, main job is to lift this shed up and take the frame out from under it, then put it back on the slab, easy peasy, yeah no. But the intrepid duo of yours truly and Pauly Pauly got our thinking caps on and solutions came flowing and pretty much it all worked, we kept all our fingers in tact and got the shed down on the slab .........sweet as bro.
And the menagerie, has grown. Also we celebrated Mouse the cat's 20th birthday, well done Mouse.
It is time for us to head off again and I know the rear tyre is now also very ratty so a phone call to Bike Tyre City in Perth to book in for a new tyre. No problems for them. Happily recommend them for anything tyre related. Stopped overnight with the gorgeous Marie, new tyre on and then on the road back to 3 puddles.
Breakfast first at North Beach Deli then on the road and what a ride it was. Roadworks before Bindoon where they have taken the bitumen off the road and it is now red dirt dust iron stone. Usually not a problem but just before we got to it, it started to piss down with rain, and then when we got back onto the bitumen it stopped raining. Pulled up in Bindoon to clean our helmet visors and we were covered in mud from headlight to tail light and all parts in between
From there we skirted around the outside of a huge storm and got to Moora for fuel where the lady at the servo told us another storm was coming directly into our path. We hung in for half an hour and then decided to head off. Half hour we were good then it got dark, then it got windy, then it started raining, then it started thundering and lightning was cracking right above us, Visibiity was down to about 20 ft, the wind was blowing like a bastard, branches were coming out of the trees and I was hanging onto the bike as hard as I could. We were able to pull up on the lee side of a building which stopped the wind but it was still raining, sat for 10 minutes then moved up the road to some shelter and sat it out for another 20 minutes.
Finally got on our way again, the weather cleared, we warmed up and we dried out, only to ride into a dust storm, for the next hour, clearing just as we got home to Three Springs. As you can now imagine, we were a mess by the time we got off the bike and we were absolutely knackered. It was a crazy ride and as weird as it sounds it was good fun, certainly not a boring ride hahaha
wee ones happy to see us
Down to the workshop as I want to get the wee trailer working. New tyre, mud guard fitted, lights all fitted, time for a test run
Problem #1 shows up. The hitch on the left side (tow bar) has to much flex in it.
Redesign the hitch and it works ok. 2 problems now though is the coupling is way to heavy and believe it or not there is quite a bit of movement in the uni joint, have another idea which hopefully will solve the lot.
ran out of time so could not get trailer registered as we are off to our next house sit, coffee at GinGin of course then onto Tapping for a resit with our favourite basset Honey
Only a short one this time but being as we were near a virus hot spot and we had to go to the shops for supplies we decided to put ourselves into 2 weeks isolation on our return to 3 puddles just to be on the safe side, ready to roll with all the essentials. Luckily we had bought a jigsaw puzzle while we were in Perth so that came in very handy.
What the hell, no paper on the roll and the dogs eaten the last roll nooooooooooooo!!!!!!
last piece going in. A cool puzzle to do while in lock down
So there you have it folks, the latest from this pair of crazies, we have had lots of fun along the way and will continue to live life to the full, well as much as we can, we are looking forward to the future, what ever it may be.
Our 2 weeks are up, we are fit and healthy and the wee ones were very happy when they could finally give us cuddles and we were able to come home.
As all of our house sits have been cancelled and the tight travel restrictions here in WA at the moment it will be fairly quiet. We will enjoy home time with the wee ones, I am doing some overdue maintenance on Tigger. Hopefully rebuild the trailer hitch and get it registered and when we can, we will back on the road. We have people wanting us to house sit for them but at present no plans can be made.
So folks, in these strange and fascinating times, take care, wash your hands, no kissing strangers and enjoy your life to the max.
Love from the gypsies and the kids that never argue. xxx
11/04/20
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