urban penguinista April 26, 2006  

I biked home tonight behind a Hostile Cyclist. I first spotted him as I was waiting for the lights to change, just outside the Railway station at about 5:10pm. He was riding through the crowd of people jaywalking across the road (hey, it's rush hour, it's gonna happen), screaming abuse and yelling at people to get out of his way. I looked at the bloke waiting on his bike next to me and said "Dude needs to calm down." "Yeah," he replied, "he's not gonna get home too relaxed." And neither did I: he rode along the Old Hutt Road, the same way I do, yelling at all the pedestrians with the temerity to be on the section of footpath with a bicycle painted on it (which means it's a shared use path, so they're legit). He was doing about the same pace as me. Which meant that I got a huge amount of shit, because these pedestrians had all had the experience of being yelled at by some dork who zoomed past, stewing for a minute and thinking "I shoulda said...", and deciding to give the next cyclist who went past a piece of their mind. This cyclist was invariably me. I've never heard such language. One of the less fun commuting moments.

There's a surprising amount of wildlife around the Wellington CBD. Quite apart from the fact that you're only a couple of kilometers from the Karori Sanctuary, the fact that pods of dolphins come into the harbour pretty regularly, and that time a few years ago that a couple of Southern Right Whales had a wander around Oriental Bay, the waterfront has more wildlife than you'd expect. And it's not just sprats and rats, either; I've seen adult stingrays cruising along just under the water's surface next to Frank Kitts Park, and the other night (while taking a romantic walk along the waterfront) we saw not one but two urban penguins. One was just under the footbridge by the lagoon - it was zipping back and forth, feeding off the plentiful sprats that school down there. We didn't get a really good look at it, as it was mainly keeping out of the light. The other was on Oriental Parade, about 200m past Grass St. This wee lad was right by the seawall - we sat on the wall and watched him paddling around about 3m below us. He was swimming around the rocks, occasionally hopping out and waddling around on the beach, and generally behaving unconcernedly. Although we couldn't see colour, he was pretty definitely a Little Blue Penguin. When you think about it, the harbour is nice and sheltered, there are a number of good (human-inaccessible) nesting sites (under boardwalks, etc), and there are a lot of fish. I think we'll be seeing more of these urban penguins in the next couple of years.

Walked the Southern Walkway on Monday. A nice wee trip. We took it relatively easy and knocked it off in a shade over 4 hours, including frequent stops for lunch, snacks, etc. The city council says that the track is well marked: they are lying. Especially at the Oriental Bay end of things, there are a lot of confusing paths - we ended up going off course, saying "stuff it", and walking up on the road up to the Mt Vic lookout and rejoining the walkway there. After that it was pretty straightforward. It was a very nice wee walk. Although I've spent about half my life living outside it, I regard Wellington as my home city. I know it reasonably well. So it was interesting to be walking paths that I'd never been on (despite having lived very close), and seeing views of Wellington that I'd never seen (such as across Berhampore from Mt Albert trig point). I'd recommend the walk if you've got a few hours that you're not doing much with, and fancy getting some impressive views (and getting to cut around the Zoo perimeter fence, allowing free glances into the Zebras, African Wild Dogs, and Hamadrayas Baboons).

In contrast, the track through Belmont Regional Park up the Korokoro valley is impossible to get wrong. OK, it's a slightly different proposition: the Southern Walkway is along a ridgeline in the middle of a major capital city, passing within metres of some of NZ's most expensive real estate and criss-crossed with a variety of tracks, monuments, notable gardens, and the zoo. The track up Korokoro valley, in contrast, is at the bottom of a steep-sided river valley, technically on the edge of two cities (Wellington City and Hutt City), and has basically two directions: forward and back. None of this 'do we turn here?' confusion: your choices are limited to going on, turning back, or jumping into the river. Good walk though. Looks like it'd also be a good ride: we did the walk on Saturday (with Rebecca in the backpack) and met about four groups of mountain bikers. The trail is bike-legal, and is pretty much entirely singletrack. That said, there's a couple of sections that I'd be nervous about riding - mainly the high-consequence stuff, with blind corners, 30ft drops, and no room to maneuvre. You'd probably survive a fall, though.

Actually, Wellington's trig points make a good basis for walks/rides per se. We're about ten minutes' walk (straight up!) from the Newlands trig point, which has stunning 360 degree views around the entire harbour, up the Hutt Valley, and across to Mt Kaukau. Since trig points have to be highly visible (so they can be sighted for triangulations), they tend to be in tall, inaccessible places with excellent views. Next step is probably to have a crack at Belmont trig - it's in the middle of the regional park, is both walkable and bike-legal, and looks like a good wee ride.

Pet annoyances: Excel 2003's automatic hyperlink mechanism (as accessed via Insert > Hyperlink) automatically converts an entered absolute path into a relative path. This is highly annoying, as it breaks the links if you move the excel spreadsheet around. I have found no way to turn this behaviour off. The only alternative is to manually insert a HYPERLINK function in the cell. It works, but it's annoying to have to sidestep the internal function.

another life goal checked off April 23, 2006  

According to reliable sources, I am an attention-seeking idiot. I thought the picture I give on this site was more "obsessive cyclist and proud father". Clearly I need to reposition myself against my core demographics.

random wellington moment April 22, 2006  

We had a family trip to the library this morning. I took Rebecca into the kids section, while Heather went off and looked at Books Without Pictures. We ensconced ourselves in the age-appropriate section, and commenced looking at books. After about five minutes, Rebecca grabbed a book with a farmyard-esque cover and loudly demanded "Old MacDonald book!" Out of the next aisle popped a stunningly gorgeous wee cherub, about Rebecca's age, ash blonde hair up in bunches, who declaimed "E I E I O!" loudly. Followed shortly by her father. "Crikey - hello Conal," I said, "this must be wee Tamon, then?". In the way of things, I ended up meeting my ex-partner's brother for the first time in about 8 years because our children share the same taste in literature. Bienvenue a Nouvelle-Zealande.

chemical dreams, alchemical days April 20, 2006  

Had an awkward moment today. I was going for a lunchtime walk, cutting through Kelburn Park. This is a smallish green area on a steep slope in the central city - think small paths through medium greenery on a steep slope, so you basically have to stick to the path unless your chosen method of travel involves plummeting uncontrollably down a muddy slope with branches ripping your clothes. But a nice place for a wee walk. I walked onto one of the paths just behind a young woman. After about thirty seconds, she stopped to examine her shoe. Fine, I've seen this before: it's an isolated place, no obvious escape routes, she's by herself, there's a strange man walking along behind her - it's a sensible precaution to stop for a minute and let the stranger pass her so she can see what I'm doing. Fine, not a problem. I walk on a bit. And then my shoelace comes untied.

Damn.

So now I'm faced with the choice of either walking along with my shoelace untied, feeling like a prize idiot, or of crouching down and re-tying the lace while desperately attempting to look like this isn't just some obvious ploy to get back behind the young woman. I briefly considered tying my shoelace while saying something like "I'm not a dangerous pervert, you know!", but nothing makes you look so much like a dangerous pervert as denying that you are one, apropos of nothing. To be safe, I went for the compromise solution, and hopped on my left leg while bending over and tying my shoelace on the go. OK, I couldn't see where I was going, and ended up hopping head-first into a tree, but I think I projected a sufficiently nonthreatening image.

the sound of the crowd April 19, 2006  

When I was a student, the drinking age was 20, but the enforcement was often a bit slapdash. I was buying alcohol from the age of about 17 with absolutely no trouble at all (mind you, that was in Dunedin). On one occasion, my flatmate (who'd just turned 20) was carded and didn't have any ID with her age on it - so she got me (aged 18) to pop in and pick up the booze. After a while we moved to the UK, where binge drinking is so deeply ingrained in the culture that they give you a pint of Stella to drink while you wait to pass through immigration. While we were away NZ dropped the drinking age to 18 (thereby enshrining in law how things were actually working), and tightened up the enforcement on selling alcohol to minors (as now 15-year olds were buying bottles of vodka). So we've come back and discovered a situation where most places that sell alcohol have a policy of carding everyone who looks to be under a particular age. But that age is not 18. Rather, in order to avoid those tedious "But I'm 19! I look 19! You can't card me!" arguments, the policy is typically to card everyone who looks under 25. Except at the Willis St branch of New World, where the policy is to card anyone who looks under 30.

That's 30.

As in, a bit (17%) under twice the drinking age.

Now that's what I call cautious.

I should also point out that I have never, ever, been carded. Which leads me to the conclusion that now I'm 30, I must look it.

blinding! April 17, 2006  

Had Jim, Jo and wee Evelyn down for the weekend. Good fun was had by all. One thing, though - I've got to watch out for Rebecca's amazing mimicking tendencies. If she hears something once, she can often reproduce it with surprising accuracy. Such it was on Friday afternoon, on the Petone foreshore, with the phrase "Now that's a pimpmobile!".

Listening to: Reproduction, by the Human League. Their debut album from 1979. Prior to them obtaining female vocalists and going all new Romantic. Very dark post-punk Sheffield electronica. Lots of lyrics about death, mutilation, futility, etc. Reminds me a lot of early period Coil. You can see the seeds of them deciding not to go into full-bore miserabilism, though: they cover 'You've Lost That Loving Feeling'. OK, it's ironic, but you can see the pop sensibility breaking through the boo hoo klang klang. Sample lyric: 'Dehumanisation / it's a complex word / it's been around / since Richard the third' (Blind Youth).

Reading: Love and Other Near Death Experiences by Mil Millington. I laughed immoderately. Darker than his previous work - with most of the main characters having serious mental health issues (the protagonist has a serious case of PTSD, for example). Still very funny though. Very English humour (as opposed to, say, Welsh).

Seeing: the Patricia Piccinini exhibition at the City Gallery. Interesting stuff. The digital photography stuff looks a bit ropey (as far as thought-provoking digital image manipulation goes, the mob at Worth 1000 tend to have the advantage), but the physical sculptures and the sketches are excellent. Somewhat if early period H R Giger was an Australian environmentalist. I particularly liked the Cyclepups series of sculptures, and the various Surrogate creatures.

Watching: Bad Santa. I laughed immoderately (also). This and It's a Wonderful Life and you've got your festive season cut out for you.

Drinking: Adnam's Broadside. Pure silk.

are people people? April 11, 2006  

Three days worth of lightning storms. It's pretty impressive. We've only lost power once, and that was in the middle of the night (don't ask me how long it was for). We've had a fair old quantity of torrential rain, hail, etc as well. Our drive - which the neighbours in front assured me occasionally had slight 'inability to cope with volume of rain' drainage issues - has been fine so far, though. The rain would have to be well beyond torrential and up to the Sustained Biblical proportions to threaten our house.

Went for a very nice walk through the Gilberd bush reserve the other afternoon. It's a nice wee track, only a couple of K long, that goes along the hillside in the bush between a couple of the newer roads in Newlands. It's on the harbour side of the hill, and basically runs down the hill a bit, then cuts across and along a couple of hundred metres below the ridgeline. This section of the hill is all bush, and is too steep to build on (for Wellington, that's saying something). Added to which, the track traverses several minor watercourses. Permitted for both walkers and cyclists, though if you were doing it on a bike you'd want a serious granny ring for some of the sections (there's a couple of short sharp climbs). Lovely walk through nice bush with good views across the harbour. Not too long (took me about 15 minutes), but you could take longer if you wanted. If you're knocking around the north end of Newlands (and these days, who isn't?), it's well worth a quick look.

"Who were you talking to just now?"
"Myself."
"You talk to yourself?"
"Yes. Don't you?"
"Not out loud, I don't."
"Ooh, hark at little Ms internal monologue."
"That's Doctor internal monologue to you!"

And so the long winter evenings wear on.

Had a moment of great personal satisfaction this morning. The first time I rode in to work, I went down the Ngauranga Gorge very slowly - I don't think I broke 30kph at any point. I was acutely aware that I was riding a skinny-tyred road bike on a 1m wide strip of concrete between a precipitous drop and a stream of traffic, with occasional medium-sized rocks on the footpath. I was passed by two other riders, both of whom were doing a significantly higher speed than me. As the weeks go past, I've gotten more comfortable with high-speed descending, confident that I can dodge the rocks, etc. This morning, about 2/3 of the way down, rounding a corner I spotted a bloke in front going somewhat slower than me. I got reasonably close to him and then started braking a little harder so as to hold position. I was confident enough (heck, we weren't going that fast) to have a look down at the speedo. Turned out this bloke's dawdling downhill speed was just shy of 46kph, so I must have been quietly doing somewhere north of 50kph to catch him up. Nice.

Of course, I then had a headwind on the way in to work, but the thought was there.

You never notice tailwinds. You just think "Ha! The training is kicking in! I'm getting stronger! My mighty legs can maintain this scorching pace indefinitely!" Headwinds, you notice.

it's more fun to compute April 05, 2006  

I decided to take the back way home the other day. I figured, rather than going along the Old Hutt Road and then straight up the Ngauranga Gorge, I can turn off early, go up the Kaiwharawhara/Ngaio Gorge, and then cut around the back way through Khandallah and Johnsonville to get home. This should enable me to shift the big climb to earlier in the ride, with a few smaller climbs thrown in (but staggered, so I've got time to recover in between). I even had a look at the map that the Greater Wellington Regional Council produce, and worked out a short cut that should knock off a corner of it.

Rather unfortunately, the map I was using to plan my route was missing a fairly vital feature.

Countour lines.

Everything was fine until I got to the top of the Ngaio Gorge and hung a right onto the shortcut. OK, it had been a hard climb, but this was expected. What I didn't expect was quite how much more climbing then presented itself. It turned out that the route I'd chosen more-or-less followed the ridgeline, leaping up and up, further up to the top of the bloody hill. After a lot more lumpy climbs (and a few pretty sharp downhills), I got home ten minutes later and 3k further than normal. An interesting experience, though - I may do it again here and there to stave off boredom. However, day to day, it looks like the Ngauranga Gorge is still the go. Ah well.

Maybe I'm still getting used to Wellington, but a weather forecast that includes the phrase "winds gusting to 100kph" makes me think "I'll take the bus today."

Things we've seen recently:

• Brain Dead - or, if you've got the American edition, Dead Alive!. We moved back to NZ from Japan at the start of 1992, so I can remember this one being released. It's vile. I mean, it's pretty funny, and it's definitely going straight for the gross-out jugular. While I like a good horror movie if it's well done, this is a bit too OTT for me. It's not so much a horror film as a gorefest. That said, it's well made, there's some hilarious moments, and you can see Peter Jackson's sensibilities shining through. According to the IMDB, some rental editions of this came with vomit bags - that's probably a good thing. And hey! It's great fun playing "spot the Wellington location". I came over all patriotic during the sequence in the botanic gardens playground.
• Napoleon Dynamite. I first heard about this when I read an article by Simon Pegg (co-creator of Spaced and Shaun of the Dead) praising it to high heaven and saying that it was this incredibly great wee indie movie that was going to get very minor release and that it was incredibly worth the time and effort to track it down. The fact that we rented it from Civic Video in Johnsonville shows that he was half right. It is indeed an excellent, excellent movie, but it slightly cracked over the 'tiny indie movie' threshold. Chances are you've already seen it; if you haven't, do so. And now I know why I keep seeing people around town in 'Vote for Pedro' t-shirts.

I feel good. As mentioned previously, when we rented a car shortly before leaving the UK, we acquired a home-burnt CD of Depeche Mode remixes that someone had forgotten in the CD player. Hence, no sleeve notes or owt. So we were forced to listen to the music and judge it on its own merits (blimey!). Most of the tracks are interesting, but track 7 was an absolute blinder. Well, I got a copy of the Depeche Mode: Remixes 81-04 CD out of the library today, and I can now say with certainty that that blinding track is Pain Killer - the Kill The Pain DJ Shadow Vs Depeche Mode mix, by (funnily enough) DJ Shadow. An excellent rolling industrial dub take on it. I don't even particularly know the original song (it's from their later period), but the remix is a cracker.

mild tbi April 03, 2006  

We had one of those classic "hide the pot, hide the porn, hide the bakehead flatmate!" moments shortly before Rebecca's birthday party. Not that we have any pot. Nor a bakehead flatmate. Nor, indeed, anything that I would particularly consider porn. However, we do have several books that contain subject matter that is probably inappropriate for the under-4 demographic. These are primarily books on body modification and the like, including at least one book that was the subject of a (failed) obscenity trial in Great Britain. In the interests of discretion, given the chance of one of the books being pulled off the shelf by an inquisitive 3-year old ("Look! Pictures!"), we decided that we'd rather avoid the chance of putting one of our friends in the position of having to answer questions on genital piercing from their young children, and quietly hid the books. I must get around to establishing a forbidden cupboard of mystery where we can keep such materials that aren't really suitable for the very young.

Things you learn at work: it's possible to have a mild traumatic brain injury.

As mentioned previously, I managed to snap something with a lifetime warranty (a Crank Brothers 'Speed Lever' tyre lever). Gotta love those kevlar-belted road tyres: they're an absolute pig to get on and off the rims. Anyway, I emailed Crank Brothers asking them how to go about getting a warranty replacement, with a particular note that it might be a bit tricky since I'm now 10,000 miles from the shop where I bought the lever. The reply was along the lines of "give us your address and we'll get one in the post". Nice. To be honest, I don't massively get on with the Speed Lever, but I've got a high general opinion of Crank Brothers products (I'm a huge fan of their Eggbeater pedals). It's always good to know that design and packaging are occasionally backed up with decent customer service.

Went out to the Karori Sanctuary at the weekend. We took the backpack and lugged Rebecca around. We made it up to the old mineshaft, which was pretty great. Lots of cave weta, which are surprisingly freaky. Even though you know that they are totally harmless, it's still a bit twitchy seeing an entire wall of them. Inches from you. Blimey. Rebecca didn't go into the mineshaft (she had a "lights on!" moment in the nocturnal house at the zoo, so we thought it might not be a good idea), but otherwise enjoyed herself. We saw a weka, which she tried to go up to. It had other ideas and kept a wise distance. The ducks were more accomodating, or rather were a bit hungrier, and tried to mug her for her scone. This failed. A indignant toddler chasing a chancer duck is a sight to behold. We also saw a number of tuatara; despite them remaining stock still, Rebecca still saw them (with help) and cried out "hello tuatara!" happily. They've got a very sensible system at the tuatara enclosure there - it's a very large fenced off section (to prevent some of the native birds, notably the wekas, from predating any young tuatara), with the fenceposts numbered and a whiteboard at one end. If you get a good sighting, you write up the closest fencepost on the whiteboard, and other people can find out where to look. A very sensible system.

Today's neologism: geniud. Someone/thing that's almost genius, but not quite. Any brilliant plan with a fatal flaw. Thus, an evil geniud: someone whose idea of a sensible secret agent disposal scheme involves lasers.

archives