Labor day weekend (By Mindy)

It is Labor day weekend here! To get it started we headed out to Piha beach which is about 20-30 minutes from here to watch our first Surf competition. It was interesting--and cold! After watching the huge, wild waves tossing and flinging the poor surfers I decided I might not be so interested in surfing anymore. One of the surfers described it as being in a washing machine. The waves were so big that they made the surfers look like tiny dots. I think we enjoyed people watching more than trying to keep up with the tiny dot surfers. A group of guys to our left drew out a rectangle in the sand. The would line up across from each other, yell something and then the team on the far end would try to see how many of them could make to the other end with out getting tackled. It looked like a game I would have LOVED when I was little :) There were also lots of dogs running around that kept us entertained too. We finally froze out because it was just too cloudy, foggy and windy. We strolled up to the booths and I saw the most horrifying sight of my life. There was a line of Porta-loos and everyone was going into them BAREFOOTED!!!!! I'm pretty sure I'm going to have nightmares for a week. All of the food booths smelled heavenly. One was boiling shrimp that were so big I thought it was lobster at first glance. There were also mechanical surf boards set up that kids were taking turns trying to ride. I don't know if I'm just used to mechanical bulls or what, be it seemed really funny to me. We are now contemplating going to look for a new Mexican restaurant we've heard rumors about. We think it is quite a ways away, but at the moment our annoying neighbor boy is blasting his base so loud it is vibrating our house so we may be very glad to leave for a while!