A larger post will follow once I get some more time and better internet. However I did go to the beach on Christmas Day.
Then a couple days later I was back!
Looking like I was stranded there.
I was able to get off of that beach and continue south. That tale will be told soon.
Yesterday was Saturday in this part of the world. The be exact it was Saturday December 14th. This was made great by the fact it looked like this:
That bottle you can see in the corner of the shot, that's SUNSCREEN! It was like a great San Diego day, warm, sunny, and breezy.
And with no shortage of meat. BBQ in December is grand.
The local booze hounds were hanging around outside of the brewery down the street from my house.
And nachos here are regularly made with Doritos.
Basically it was a great Saturday. I have high hopes of a few more of these before returning to springtime at home.
As we approach Christmas I realize I've not been doing a good job of keeping up with the blog. Not traveling around has lead to not too many pictures, I see the same thing quite often. However here are a few.
At one point I went to a downhill race.
This was a fun one from work. If you don't take care of your bike bad things can happen. This BB30 crank is no exception.
That's where the bearings were at one point.
I am soon to be featured in a short film about running. A bit of location scouting along a big log.
And found a stick bug in the process as well.
If I want to go home, there is a bus that will take me straight there from downtown Wellington.
Outside of the Nelson airport there is a bike stand to assemble your bike!
This is Gavin, who works at the cafe at iRide, accepting the best biking cafe award from the Wellington bike enthusiast people. There were also a nice variety of snacks at the awards.
But finally, the reason I really think it's almost Christmas is there was a 5 piece brass band from the Salvation Army playing Christmas carols at the grocery store. They must have lost their obnoxious little bells and had to improvise.
Now I'm off to buy some sunscreen for Christmas Day. Someone said it is supposed to be 25. I really hope that's Celsius.
People in Wellington do not mess around when it comes to the commute. Between wild wind and regular rain people are ready for anything. Which is really funny to see on a calm and sunny day like today.
If you are worried people can't see your vest because of the because you're wearing a backpack, here is a great solution. Just make sure to get that XXL vest if you've got a bigger pack.
Just because its not raining doesn't mean you shouldn't have your pack cover on just in case you get hit with a sprinkler. Double points if you color match to your ankle straps.
Just remember to always be prepared.
It is indeed a scary time of year. I have made some moves to become a more settled memeber of New Zealand society. I am now the proud renter of a room of my very own. This has meant that I've been sleeping on my Thermarest for the last few nights, but hopefully that bed situation will be fixed shortly. I also have been enjoying mountain biking so much that I was forced to bite the bullet and purchase a mountain bike.
Its a Specialized Crave Expert. Good value, lots of fun, and perfect for 4 months of use before it gets sold.
And since it has a Shadow Plus rear deraileur, it is fully equipt with the party switch. (Note: this is a term my friend Billy Lewis first used right after the release of this device several years ago. I can't take credit for it's greatness, I just always rememeber to turn it on when it's time to party)
This is a better picture of my mountain bike when I rode it up a trail to the top of a hill. This type of thing can now be an every day occurance.
Case and point: the next day I went on a different mountain bike ride. This time with at least one dude in a tank top. Jay is apparetnly at the cutting edge of mountain bike fashon. This will be cool soon.
And as a man of high fashon likes to shout it from the mountain top. Better yet, from on top of a picnic table.
But when riding in the city, this trail is just down the street from my house. It's important to remember that trail matinence is always important. Thats why they keep this vacum handy at the bottom.
As of today, October 19th, I've been in New Zealand for one month. This seems a bit strange, but at this point I'm just going with the flow. Some of which I have documented in photographs.
Last week, one of my coworkers decided to fry a bunch of NZ fish for me and the other new American coworker to try. I managed to get zero pictures of the fish and only one picture of my coffee mug at the bus stop in the driving rain. The fish was very good. Totally worth waiting for the bus in the rain.
That weekend we went tramping. This was very similar to hiking. I was also informed that Kiwis (the birds, not the people or fruit) are very dumb, however are pretty good at staying away from people. Of the three Kiwis I was with (the people, not the bird or fruit) only one of them had seen a Kiwi (the bird, not the people or fruit) in the wild.
A great part of living in a land without lawsuits is that you can have a bridge that says "4 people max" and it's okay.
Down by the river.
We were headed more in that direction.
I was also informed about an hour into this tramping adventure that there would be a river crossing. This quickly explained why I was the only person not wearing shorts.
Owen's phone, which we used briefly for GPS was not working too well. If you pried the back off and removed the battery, you could get it to turn off.
Lunch! Including a peanut butter chocolate bar that was quite delicious.
More lunchtime pics from the top of Mt. Matthews. Which is supposed to be the highest peak in the Wellington area. I think it's 981 meters or something.
A bit further down, but still a really cool area. You can see Wellington on the bay in the background.
After the tramping, actually a couple of days later, we had a pretty great windstorm. I'm told this was above average even for this very Windy City. I almost got knocked over walking home a few times. Some of which looked like the video above. I took it about 100 meters from my house.
Today looked a lot like this. It was the first sunny day in a while so we took advantage. This actually started as Wayne and I riding around and then we ran into Kirk and Mike (please note all of us work in the same place) so we rode some singletrack and looked at stuff. I should also point out that this is about 40 minutes via trails from my new house I'm moving into next week and likely will be on my after work ride.
We even ran into an Emu farm.
And hopefully soon I'll be better at mountain biking.
I'm continuing to settle in in my new home in the Southern Hemisphere. And while I haven't ventured much outside of Wellington, I have been enjoying riding around town when I'm not working.
This is just one example of a trail I can ride on my way home from work. IN THE CITY! No need to drive, or even make a special trip, just ride some trail after work. It's been wonderful.
This does lead to some mud on the bike, also on me sometimes, but totally worth the extra cleaning.
When I stopped by the shop on Saturday to go for a ride there were a ton of cyclists having coffee at the cafe pre/post ride. It's very cool to see the cycling community out in force. Hopefully some of them are in need of bike fixing.
Then once again out into the woods. This is Wayne, who is in town for the season from Denver. iRide is now up to three American employees. We are taking over the country, one bike shop at a time.
This is a picture of a leaf. Or maybe several leaves. The plant life here is very cool and differs depending on where you are. At the mountain bike park in town there is a distinctly jungle look about the place. So far I've seen zero panthers though, which I suppose is a good thing for my continued survival.
Today's ride involved some trail but also a lot of gravel road and some pavement. Oh, and a really really strong headwind all the way back to Wellington. I am writing this in a semi haze from just not having any energy left. Good ride and some great views of the water.
While cyclocross season rages on back home, here we are entering the summer, i've been told, so cross has wrapped up for the year. However since I have been loaned a cross bike and there is tons of sweet singletrack that is very doable on a cross bike, I'm keeping the American cross season alive in New Zealand.
At one of the high points of my ride today I stopped to have a snack and enjoy the view. I've been experimenting with these rice cakes that people have been telling me so much about. The verdict: they're really good, really cheap, and perfect for a long day on the bike.
You could also see the wind farm. I'm not sure where they plant the wind, but it does seem to grow quite well here.
Wind turbine up close. The man in the blue sweatshirt is a grown person. These things are big.
This is a view from the highest point of the day, the Haikori Lookout. The zoom in portion is about where my office is, to the left of the stadium.
After a bit over three hours on the bike, including lots of climbing, I felt like some basketball shorts and a beer was the way to round out my afternoon.
The "Double Trouble" also comes with sweet 3D glasses to read the label.
And now it's nap time.
I made it to Kiwiland. Life is good here. The coffee is really really good. Also there are lots of wooded areas in Wellington which mean that you can kind of go hiking whenever you feel like it. No driving required.
So on Sunday I decided to go for a walk in the woods.
And walk to the top of this hill. The views are pretty incredible.
This was the brief moment of blue sky I saw on Sunday. For the most part it was wet and windy. It felt like home.
This is a better panoramic view. Also quite windy and you can see/hear. I was almost worried that I would get blown off of the top of this hill, which probably wouldn't have happened, but decided to go down anyway.
On the way home I ran into this giant tree. Then I saw it's signage:
Thats a very old tree.
When I said before you can go hiking whenever, it includes on my way to work. Yesterday's walk in included some sun.
Springtime is a good time.
