Why and How the Hula?
We love stories.
We love to hear them, collect them, and of course share them.
But with blessed-all time about these days - even in our 'off-season', there's seemingly less and less opportunity to do so. Hence this blog. (I started blogging back when our twin boys were born. Then, life was incredibly industrial - absolutely no time to update whanau (family) all over the world on how the boys/we were doing. Oh, for the heck of it..go see Hoff Family Chronicles if u really must ;))
So, why and how the hula did we start up this business?
We moved to Waiheke from Belgium in October, 2013.
We didn't know what we would do here. We just knew that whatever it was had to make us smile and ensure family-work life was balanced more towards family than work.
We worked thru several ideas:
a-freaking-mazing ice-cream
smoked meats + fish
potential consulting/coaching
re-purposed sailcloth
And I was about to launch one, actually..... until.
Until we spotted a certain orange beach cruiser tandem hauling big time up a hill with smiles on the riders faces like u wouldn't believe. We thought - 'hey! they've got electric bikes here on Waiheke! wicked! - with memories of our too-awesome-for-words trip to Lisbon a couple of years prior...See www.rent-a-fun.com
So we went and found Rob Vassen down Moa Ave, Blackpool and enquired about how much it would cost for our family to travel around the island when Chris' Dad would visit in February.
Now, that seems simple thing to do. But Rob was pretty busy when we got down there to the back of his garden where he'd erected a big tent-come-garage-shelter wherein he housed some 20 electric-assist bikes. So, we had to wait our turn in amongst all the customers lining up to take out one of his bikes - most with bookings.
It was wonderful watching this lovely soul move animatedly among his clients. He was clearly empassioned by his mahi (work). And everyone was SMILING!
Smiling when they walked up the drive.
Smiling even bigger when they whizzed off on the e-bike for the test-run.
And smiling like their face was splitting in half when they came back at the end of the day.
We got to chatting well beyond the intentional 'how much to go out for a day'. Several hours past, by which time we've shared our backgrounds, why we moved here, etc etc life stories, and Rob suggests that maybe we'd like to buy his business.
Well, that was a Friday.
And by the following Monday, we'd agreed to do just that.
All for the love of smiles:)
