Thursday, January 18, 2007

A Good Day and a Great Night

Sport Boy is fully recovered from last night's ordeal, he slept soundly and has been as bright as a button all day. He opted not to go to swimming lessons today in case the water aggravated his eyes again and triggered another incident. He thinks that the disturbance to his vision may have triggered his panic. We spent the afternoon riding into and around town. I wanted a basket for my bike to help with the junk mail delivery (I got one but it's performance was not entirely staisfactory, the weight causes it to bend down and become very unwieldy, it needs a support underneath but I haven't found anything to do the job yet). I also wanted a new seat as the original was a pain in the bum, literally! While we were there Sport Boy found a cool new red helmet which I agreed to get for him. Anything that encourages them to wear a helmet is fine by me, I see so many kids not wearing them. I know they're not comfortable, but death and head injury is way worse for those who crash without a skid lid. His friend Sam came over for a little while, they played with the rabbits and shot hoops. Then we had to race down to the jetty beach for volleyball. With my support and encouragement he has gone into business, renting himself out as a ballboy. And he was fully booked on his first night in business, earning $6, $2 a game. I know that's not much to you and me, but to a 9 year old it was pretty cool, and he had a lot of fun in the process, even getting a couple of rounds of applause for his energetic and spectacular exploits as he saved several balls from ending up in the ocean. We then had to finish the junk mail round which meant working until after dark which he didn't enjoy, BUT, we had a huge highlight while we were riding around. As we delivered in one street a man asked us if we'd seen the comet? We turned around and their in the sky was the most spectacular sight, a bright ball of light with a huge tail of firey light trailing behind it, clearly visible to the naked eye and even more impressive through the binoculars the man leant us. It was fantastic, a truly awesome sight. We'd tried unsuccessfully the previous two nights, and tonight the cloud cover was low on the horizon again so I hadn't expected to see it, but it was there and it was magnificent. If you didn't or haven't seen it, try and get a look at it tomorrow night, it is amazing, and is apparently the clearest view of a comet ever witnessed!

2 comments:

Zaac said...

awesome pics of the comet!!! i remember want to see one a few years back but it being thunderstorms all nite, shame, o well, the chance may come again!!
on the subject of helmets, i crashed a motorbike without one and would definitely recomend them!! the doctor said i was "very lucky" =]

Marcus said...

Agreed but just so you don't attribute me any undue credit, these are not my photos, I found them on a web page after a Google search.