16/12/12: Kaimoana

Danny and I went out for another swim round by Wahine Memorial Park, near Moa Point. 

Danny managed to get some kai.  These are the tasty friends below.  Then Danny cooked them and we ate them and they were delicious!  Thanks, tasty friends!  You were appreciated.

Note:  we did not eat the seaweed.

15/12/12: Bottle flu, and my friends play cricket.

I woke up with a pretty severe bottle flu after having a bit too much fun the night before at a super-villain themed party.  For some reason I'd stayed up partying till about 4.30 in the morning.  The sky was starting to get light on the walk home.  Ugh.

It was now 2:30pm and I was still in bed.  I got a text from Danny that he was going in to bat soon so I hightailed it to Ian Galloway Park in Wilton to see the action.  I'd already missed Eamonn batting, but I was able to see Danny's innings.    

 Danny's forward defensive stroke.

Some variety of cut shot.

This was me the night before at about 4:30am.  Ugh.

14/12/12: Shifting an Organ, and Morrissey.

As I mentioned in my last post, John is leaving Wellington.  I am going to miss him.  Not only is John an amazing multi-instrumentalist (Drums, Guitar, Bass, Keys - anything else you throw at him), he is also a wonderful person.  Perhaps it's his unique sense of humour.

On this day John was moving his things out of his flat.  He asked me to help him move some of his possessions out to Chris-and-Emma's place in Titahi Bay where it could stay till he was able to move it to Dunedin.

It was mainly this organ
that he needed help with.

We borrowed Jim-and-Claire's car (towbar), and got a trailer.  We also had Jim-and-Claire's dog Tui with us for the fun.

That evening, Logan and I attended the Morrissey concert at the Town Hall.  It was a religious experience. 

He played for 90 minutes.  Amongst the set of his solo stuff were six Smiths songs (Shoplifters of the World Unite, How Soon is Now, I Know it's Over, Please Please Please let me Get What I Want, Meat is Murder, and Still Ill).  Significant tingles occurred in the vicinity of my spine during I Know it's Over.

13/12/12: Snorkeling Twice

It's amazing how I don't look at all like a dork in this photo.  I just look nothing like a dork.

Snorkeling with a wetsuit is amazing.  For most of the year the water around Wellington is too cold to swim in without a wetsuit. Since I've never had a wetsuit, I have not been able to swim in the water around Wellington for most of the year.

Wetsuits are a bit of a catch 22.  They are expensive, which means I'm not going to buy one unless I know how awesome they are to wear.  But if I don't buy one then I'll never know how awesome they are.  Is that a catch 22?  I think so, but tell me if it isn't.  I think it's a catch 22 which I've made a meal of explaining.

The way to go is to borrow a friend's wetsuit, which I did.  Twice.  In one day.  Two different friends. Things are better in twos.

Snorkeling around the rocks of the south coast is great.  I found it to be a very peaceful experience.  It felt like I was on a drug trip and I'll explain why.  Under the water there is a lot of sea plants growing on the rocks.  It's kind of like floating through a garden.  Fish swim in and out and around the plants and they are kind of like the birds in the underwater garden.  It's like another world.  I think I'm going to buy a wetsuit. Thanks to John for giving me a go in his wetsuit in the afternoon, and thanks to Danny for the evening wetsuit lendage.

This is John. He's leaving Wellington.  I'll miss John.

12/12/12: Big Walk

This was originally going to be a review of an app called MapMyHike, but will not be any more.

I downloaded the aforementioned app and decided to go on a whopper walk to test it out.  Basically, it maps where you've been using GPS and gives you all sorts of statistics about our walk, such as graphing the ups and downs, and telling you how many calories you burn.

This was all awesome until my phone ran out of battery four hours into my walk.   DOH!

Anywho, here's a map of my walk that I made on google maps:

The walk started up near the Brooklyn wind turbine, continued south over the hills to the old war bunkers above Red Rocks, down to Red Rocks, around the coast to Owhiro Bay, up Happy Valley to Brooklyn and back to the car.    It was a total of 23km and I knocked it off in four and a half hours.

I was buggered by the end.

Here are some photos:

I wasn't really able to take much more than that due to the whole phone running out of battery thing.

11/12/12: Driving and op-shopping.

This is a short one.  Basically, I had a fabulous time doing a bunch of op-shopping in Wanganui and then op-shopped my way down to Wellington.  If you're passing by Foxton during the day and you have some spare time, I recommend looking around the main street. Awesome second-hand shops.

I got back to Wellington in time for band practice, but actually, it was more drink practice since it was such nice weather out.  Then as I was walking home from Newtown (half cut), I stopped in and bought myself some groceries from the new Countdown.  I was impressed that I had been able to go into a place that sells cigarettes while drunk and not buy cigarettes.  Go me!

Atene Skyline Track, Whanganui National Park

This happened on Monday.  I had the day free to try out my boots and I was told about this day-walk by one of the nice ladies at the iSite in Wanganui.  She warned be that there was a lot of uphill climbing   and added: "but that should be no problem for a young fit man like you."

"Fit."  Hmm.  We would see about that.

Anyway, here's the walk.  It's supposed to take between 6 - 8 hours.  It climbs up to the Atene ridge and then along it.  The geographical interest is the loop of old river bed.  You see, what happened was that the Whanganui used to go through this valley and then it found a quicker way to get to where it was going by punching through a hill.  That means now theres a dry river bed in the shape of a horse shoe and my walk was going to give all sorts of views of it.  Anyway, here's the walk:

And here are some pictures from the walk.  I must have brought all my vintage cameras with me.

This character was snuffling around me as I was putting on my boots at the start of the track.

There were a lot of wild goats.  Big ones, little ones, middle-sized ones.  One time I walked around a corner of the track and there was a mummy goat and a baby goat.  The mummy goat looked terrified to see me but the baby goat came bounding right up to me, bleating like a maniac.  Being me, I got freaked out that the mummy goat was going to come and smash me to protect the baby goat so I jumped into a tree.  "Go away baby goat!"  I yelled at it.  

This isn't the baby goat from the story, but it is an equally baby goat.

The panorama below shows the old river path. It's now farmland.

I got back to the car only five and a half hours after I left it.  That's quicker than the 6-8 hours they said it would take.  I am fit!!