Sports Day Revisited

After Wednesday's wash out, the school rearranged sports day for Thursday and Friday. Diane and I spent the morning watching Imogen compete in the long jump, high jump, shot put, discus and sprint. Imogen was third in the high jump, and claims to have been third in the sprint, although she appears to have been robbed by the referee. It was rather refreshing to see a junior school doing proper sporting events. OK, the shot put was a plastic ball and the discus a rubber ring, but the idea was the same. Also, the whole thing was competitive, with the winners and runners up getting a certificate. All the kids took a turn, and some were much better than others but it's all a contrast to the UK, where the events are a bit limp and the emphasis is on everyone having a go and not on winning. Is it any wonder the UK sucks at sport? Later on we watched Freya doing some of the same events. She was 2nd in 100 metres, 3rd in 50 metres and 3rd in shot put.

This morning, we went back to school to watch Phoebe do her events, and Freya complete the rest of hers. Phoebe was amazing. She was 2nd in the sprint event, 3rd in the cross country (a lap of the school's exterior perimeter, barefoot) and was 4th in the shot put. She finished in the top third of all but two of the events, and scored 16 out of 18 points. Quite an all round athlete.

The whole atmosphere in the school is just great. It's also totally open - you can just walk in off the street and watch the kids do their thing. No one bothers you. There's no paranoia like you get in the UK, where schools are fenced off and you have to be numbered and indexed by the office before you get anywhere near your own children. The openness is perhaps a little worrying, but there does not seem to be any trouble with it. Let's hope the UK style everyone-is-a-pervert mentality does not creep in any time soon.

Another case in point is the play area in the school. Back in the UK, the infant school had to remove its climbing apparatus because it was a matter of an inch or two taller than the "new" "improved" "safety" regulations. Not doing so would have meant the school's liability insurance would be invalid and any child hurting themselves could sue for millions. By contrast, the climbing equipment here is the best part of seven feet tall. Kids are allowed to jump off and use it as they see fit. There is a danger one or two of them might someday come to grief, but no one seems to worry too much. The ACC covers any liability which has the knock on effect of enabling the kids to find their own limits, without having artificial "safe" limits being imposed upon them. As I joked with one of the mothers - if the kid is dumb enough to fall off, it only serves to cleanse the gene pool.

The Mirth Mobile has been developing an annoying squealing noise when braking, and also when being driven on the flat. It's been doing it since I got it. I tried not to worry too much about it figuring it was just the brake pads that needed doing. With all the running back and forward to school over the last couple of days with the windows down, the squealing has become much more noticeable. As I have no excuse for not taking a look now that all my tools (including trolley jack, axle stands and a selection of hammers) have arrived, I jacked it up and took a look. The front pads have loads of wear left, but the rears. Oh my. The weren't quite down to the metal, but there wasn't a lot left.

The reason for the horrible squealing however, was due to a strange metal protuberance, which was scraping on the face of the disk. I'm not entirely sure what this thing is or why it's there, but my guess is that it's a wear indicator and it's supposed to be connected to a wire or something and turn on a light when the pads wear down. The Mirth Mobile has no such wire, so it's completely useless.

The search for new pads was now a priority. Craig mentioned that he'd seen a car parts place on Hewletts road. This turned out to be a branch of SuperCheap Auto. Sadly, they had a computer sez no moment and couldn't seem to find a 1999 Honda Accord 3.0 V6 VTiL in their list of cars, so they directed me down to Repco who were much more accommodating and relieved me of $49.99 in exchange for a set of pads. Now the fun began. Getting the calliper off was a bit awkward, since the pads seemed to have seized on to the disk. Judicious application of a hammer and a bit of leverage saw it pop off. Now for the really fun part, pushing the piston back into the calliper. No amount of pushing, shoving, levering, hammering and swearing seemed to move the damn thing. I took my life in my hands and undid the bleed nipple hoping that this would allow the piston to move. No joy. At least I had escaped without tearing my nipple off. Always best avoided, that one. At this point a bit of googling was called for. It turns out that the Honda Accord has a feature whereby rotating the piston clockwise by means of the very large cross in the back of it screws it back into the calliper. D'oh! Easy peasy once you know. Copious amounts of copper grease was applied and the whole lot shoved back together. The other side should have taken about 10 minutes - sadly one of the calliper mounting bolts rounded off as I tried to undo it. Grrr. I finally managed to get it off with an extra deep 6 sided socket, which I was reluctant to use since it was only a 1/4" drive, and I had to adapt it up to 1/2" to get the leverage on it. Fortunately it didn't snap and I got the bolt out. Pads changed, I put the bolt back in. Naughty, but it tightened up OK and I won't have the Mirth Mobile long enough to merit another set of pads.