I had a great weekend on the water, myself and a small group camped at Mangaweka, and did a trip down the Rangitikei finishing at the campsite, then on Sunday we did the blue pools section of the Tongariro. A great weekend, no swims, and one successful unplanned roll.
As I said in the survey, my preference is for a more broad aerospace community, as topics like Starlink, Google Loon etc also affect NZ, and I'd like the opportunity to talk about them as well.
Starlink, in particular, has the ability to massively change how we do things in the outdoors, the ability to have cell service anywhere will make staying in touch, checking weather etc possible without forking out a few hundred dollars for an Inreach.
Considering some of the absolute boats that came out in the nineties, including the 80 and 100 series land cruisers, I wouldn't be surprised if the average size of our road fleet has actually shrunk.
The length of a typical Hilux, for example, has increased by 100mm, and width by 150mm. Hardly a colossal increase in size.
My experience with Kmart is most of the merchandise will be in the landfill in a few weeks, just the cheapest, minimum viability crap you could possibly imagine. The stores are also a disaster in terms of layout, usually messy, and the checkouts are in a stupid place. I hate going there.
My point is, they're nearly twice the weight of some small hatchbacks, and if one runs into you, you're in a far worse position than an equivalent ICE vehicle.
This was my weekend on the water, Makara to Titahi Bay Sunday, and a Kapiti circumnavigation Monday.
Both were great trips, and we were very lucky with the weather.