Chris Meistre

After two weeks of not doing exercise, we got back on schedule last night.  It’s always strange how easy we will put anything else as more important than doing something that is healthy for us.

We did our Ninjitsu training, or at least a recap of most of the things we’ve done so far.  And luckily we still remember everything.  It felt good doing it again and I know we’ll make a better effort to just carry on the next time we feel we can to take a break.

Taking a break is not a bad thing, but it must be taken at the right time!

For a long time I’ve been wanting to built an aviary in the yard, because we love waking up to the sound of bird chirping in the morning.  It’s also always been very fascinating how each little bird has his/her own personality.

The only things that ever kept me from doing it were that I’m lazy and that it would’ve been too damn expensive to get all the materials.  In December 2008 I found a place that sells second hand wood, and so I decided that this is the right time to get over my laziness.  So for about the a 1/10th of the price I bought all the wood I need, and then went to get all the other materials.

Within about 2 weeks I completed the whole thing and I was quite proud of my handiwork.  I must also mention this is probably the first big diy project I’ve done, so there was quite a few stupid mistake I made, but I can live with that now

Me infront of the aviary with my other babies

I went ahead and bought some birds.  The ones I got were:

• Pair of Quails
• Pair of Diamond Doves
• Pair of Canaries (which has turned out to be most likely 2 males)
• Pair of Lovebirds
• 3 Pairs of Zebra Finches

A couple of weeks later we realised that the Lovebirds weren’t supposed to be in the same cage as the other birds as they kept on attacking them.  A quick solution was made to just buy a smaller cage and keep them in there while I wait for a chance to build another aviary just for them.  So they’ve been living in the house since then, quite loudly I might add.

So far we’ve had the quails lay 6 eggs which are waiting to be hatched out.   The doves have laid two eggs of which one hatched and the other was not fertile.  A week after the dove baby started flying around there were 2 more eggs in their nest.  Both have subsequently hatched.

Doves - first pair of eggs

Doves - second pair of eggs

This week I started to build the second aviary.  It’s going to be a bit smaller.  The main one is 5mx2.5mx2.5m and this one is about 2.5mx1mx1m.

More photos of the birdies are available on http://www.meistre.co.za/gallery2/v/Our+Dogs/The+Birds/

I did my progress test on 16 February 2009, and since then I’ve only done 2 training sessions after that.  It’s been a busy few weeks, but tonight I forced myself to start with week 3 again.  So I should be back on track.

It didn’t feel as bad as I thought it would after not having done it in about 2 weeks.

We’ve also been slipping with the Ninjitsu training.    It’s strange how life can interfere with stuff you really should be doing.

It’s all about kicking yourself in gear and just start doing it, instead of contemplating the whole time why you’re not doing it!

When we started EC Offroad Adventures one of the first events we just knew we were going to do was an all night 4×4 event.  This is something that would put people out of their comfort zone, and see how well they perform under pressure and when they’re tired.

To be honest, while we were doing the planning, we didn’t yet know what the response would be like.  It was a struggle to get people to go on 4×4 trips last year when I organised it for the Algoa Toyota 4×4 Club, but we were pleasantly surprised.  11 vehicles with 31 people attended!

The whole trip report can be read here: http://www.ec-offroad.co.za/trip-reports/baviaanskloof-night-event-2009

We enjoyed setting it up, getting to know more people, seeing everyone enjoy themselves and just running the whole event.  I’m not sure who had more fun, us or the participants!