Last days (part two of three)

The evening kicked off with Sensei Rick taking the Tauranga boys to an exclusive, traditional restaurant to say thank you on behalf of Auckland University Judo. (The club, till that point, had failed to buy any beers and it can only be regarded as miraculous that anyone from the club found their wallet to contribute at all).
[Richard looking happy considering he has a fractured shoulder]

[Clayton, with a broken rib, and Bob, with very little skin left...You have to wonder why Tauranga folk are so fragile]

From what I gather the restaurant specialty was a very special chicken broth or near equivalent. I think there was a reasonable amount of Saki had too.
[Carl]

When we encountered team Tauranga (just outside K’s as we were leaving) they were falling out of the Taxi. They were also semi-coherently talking about Samurai ways and the future of NZ Judo. Sensei Rick had, apparently, been inspirational.

We all headed off to an English pub. On the way we banged into Conan and his son (they guy who broke Clayton’s rib) who we had encountered several days earlier on the mat. Given they were Muslims they declined to have a drink with us.

The pub was much like the archetypal English pub the world over – boring. Kong lobbied to go to Sam and Dave's. For the sake of a public record I’ll say that no one else wanted to go.

Before long we were parting with a cover-charge and getting the full pat-down and metal detector wave-over. Sam and Dave’s was expensive and the music questionable. There were, however, some interesting people. There was the French exchange students, who were fun to interact with. There was also one Japanese girl who had come up from Osaka for the night. She had lived the previous year in Cambridge and had spent her time riding horses.

[Here is a PG-rated photo of some bikini clad women who look nothing like the girl who lived in Cambridge or the French exchange students. I don't really have a valid excuse for posting it other than I’ve got no other photos at this point. All the photo takers were at home in bed]

At this juncture this record becomes slightly more suspect than usual. Somehow we got back to the English pub. Hilarity ensued and we got thrown out because someone from Tauranga took exception to a gaijin Bono-wannabe. So it was back to Sam and Dave’s. Here it was not much better. Before long one Dorklander and one Tauranga-ite were expelled for unknown reasons. The others...who knows...

Coming soon: Home, the resplendent alps, and final thank-you's.