Category Archives: around home

around home, bikes, family, friends, London, MTB, UK

Ipswich, Canterbury & the most cyclists I have ever seen at once

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It’s been most of September since I got back from Edinburgh, so I must have a few little trips & events to write about. Hopefully the blog editor behaves itself this time. I’ve now worked out how to work around the annoying changes to Blogger – apologies to those that receive this twice.

A day or so after I got back I was off to Ipswich for a long weekend staying with Te Puke & Palmy friends – Louis & Emma. They have been in the UK for a little over a year & seem to be quite enjoying living in Ipswich. It was great to catch up – & quite like I remember flatting: generally eating, watching sport & a bit of mountain biking. Louis & I loaded the two bikes (it’s good to know bikes can fit in Micras with the seats down) & set off north-east for Thetford forest. My first singletrack in the UK this visit. I see now why Suffolk is known for being flat – we didn’t exactly have a lot of climbing to do. There were four different trails, apparently of varying difficulty, & we did the two “hardest” ones. It was great to be out riding in the forest & there were plenty of people out & about (but not too many on the tracks). We managed to occupy ourselves for three hours & Louis did heroically when the seat on his borrowed bike worked the bolt loose & kept tilting up at the front. There were some nice little bits of flowing singletrack, but these were few & far between & generally the trails seemed poorly designed. I got quite excited when I saw these signs –

– warning of almost certain death, but in the end it was less challenging than the Diamondback/Dipper in the Redwoods & one small part of it was quite fun. Nonetheless, it was great being out & I more than happy to go out for some doubletrack around some woods closer to Ipswich on Sunday afternoon.

The two weeks since then have been spent organising things, brief bike rides (two hours) locally & the odd trip in to London to see sights (National Gallery & Portrait Gallery were very good – must go back to see the majority of exhibits that I didn’t have time for; back to the Imperial War Museum; really enjoyed poking around Campden Markets & wishing I had a budget that extended a bit further) & friends.

Two weekends ago was a big family get together for Trish’s (the second cousin I’m staying with) birthday. It was great to catch up with quite a few people – most of whom I had met last year. I have since seen photos of our trip in 1987 to the UK that I have not seen before – the infamous Renault 11 makes an appearance & I was a lot cuter.

Saturday last, Trish & I took a pleasant little day trip to Canterbury (a certain line from The [real] Office keeps coming to mind). After lunch, we took a look around the Cathedral (didn’t see Blackadder around or Baldrick trying to sell dubious relics). In some respects it was another great big cathedral (more of which I’m sure I will see) – but I was surprised at how it kept on going, it was a lot larger than I expected on first sight. Afterwards we took a stroll along the river in part, & then around a lot of the old walls of the city. It was warm close day & there were plenty of people out enjoying the weather & I was surprised at how many teenagers & students were around.

Yesterday was the Mayor of London’s Skyride. For six hours in the middle of the day, a loop was closed off that went from Tower Bridge, along the Embankment to Trafalgar Square & down The Mall to Buckingham Palace. Coming back the other half of the loop split off & took in St Paul’s. I biked from home in Sidcup & met up with a small group three and a half miles down the road. From there we set off for Greenwich & met up with hundreds of others. Biking from there & over Tower Bridge it started to get chaotic with so many on bikes taking over the roads. It was great joining (as it turned out) sixty-five thousand other cyclists in the city on what was a beautiful day. Of course, it was rather congested & slow going – but no one seemed to find as there were bikes everywhere, not cars, taxis & murderous buses. A great range of bikes on display – fixies, roadies, a few mountain-bikes, town/city bikes, unicycles, penny-farthings, even a pedal-powered piano, clown bikes & best of all – kids everywhere on little bikes, trailing bikes having a ball. Six hours & thirty-odd miles later, I was pleased to make it home exhausted.

around home, family, friends, London, UK

London & off south

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Another day, another train & a chance to catch up on the last week’s happenings since arriving in London. Have just come in to Waterloo to catch a train down to Southampton – the National Rail trains sure are a lot more pleasant than the tube, & so they should be. I am going down to the Isle of Wight to catch up with Ben & Gina (former Pukekohe flatmates) before they head off back to NZ (after two years, I think, here) via South America. I think we will be heading to Cornwall to check out the Eden Project.

A nice relaxing day at Andrew & Shelley’s on Friday, where we traded a few media files (so now I have old Seinfeld to watch when desired), I put my bike together (hopefully the last time for a while), discovered my first bike-in-plane damage (cracked helmet, grrrr), went to Sainsbury’s, repacked all my stuff & prepared for the cross-London trek on Saturday. My destination on Saturday was Mum’s cousin’s, Trish, house in Sidcup – down towards Kent. The Patricks kindly let me store the stuff I didn’t need immediately in the attic & I was off to London Bridge on the tube with my bike & rather full Macpac. One small hitch was I couldn’t take my bike down the escalator on to the Northern line, so had to bike a couple of stations (Moorgate to London Bridge). It took a little getting used to carrying a full pack on a softtail in traffic (they drive on the left hand side here, time to get reused to that), but it was easy to find my way & I really felt like I was in London (except the weather was nice) with the skinny streets, black cabs, double-decker buses, old stone buildings & so on. Even got to ride across London Bridge before getting to the station, hopping on a train, biking the mile or so to Trish’s house & arriving at about the time I had guessed.

Great to catch up with family (Mum & I had visited last year) & later in the afternoon Trish’s sister Jan called in after visiting their mother (my great-aunt, I think – I will have to get up to speed on genealogical titles with all the distant relatives in this country) close by. After a catch up, I was pleased to have a willing audience for the best of my photos from the States. Much of the rest of the weekend was spent unpacking & sorting & a few small walks. Managed to get a 500GB hard drive to back up my laptop & Sunday afternoon Trish took me to check out the nearby Biggin Hill – a famous Battle of Britain airfield – nice to see a NZ flag & some names of those Kiwis who had served there.

Monday I was itching to get on the bike – even if it was on tarmac & not singletrack. I rode northeast (got a new sim card for my rather aged, but still working, NZ Nokia) until I was about to ride in to the Thames & then I followed the cycle & footpath all the way to Greenwich.

Most of the way it was light industrial stuff & pretty grotty as one would expect. There was a big civil & marine project going on – a power plant that will incinerate solid waste barged down from the city.

Next door was a huge waste water treatment plant (that accordingly stunk – it was just like being on that Environmental Engineering field trip all over again, except I didn’t eat as much) & another power plant where they burn the left over solid waste.

Cycled past the Millennium Dome/O2 arena that looked pretty disgusting really, the grounds had really been let go – but I suppose people don’t go there to look at the outside. When I eventually reached Greenwich, it was much I remembered – I had a little ride around but due to riding shoes & sweat, didn’t feel like going in the Maritime Museum (missed it last year). Did however find the burger shop that Cabby & I went to last year – ordered a massive Kiwi Burger. If McDonald’s sold Kiwiburgers like this in NZ, the country would be even fatter. It was gargantuan – a huge Scotch fillet & all the standard Kiwi fare on burgers: lettuce, tomato, beetroot, cheese, egg, onion & pineapple – & almost got the better of me. Unwisely, it was straight back on the bike for the (more) direct route back home; somewhere on the A205 I picked up the London Cycle Network & followed that home. It was very well signposted & took me off the main roads; nice to be home after twenty-eight miles of stretching the legs.

My first attempt at dealing with British bureaucracy was my appointment at Barclays on Tuesday to open a bank account. It didn’t get off to a great start when I arrived at the Hammersmith branch well early & found that it was closed for the week for refurbishment. The much maligned British customer service looked to be well deserved as no one had bothered to tell me. Anywho, I went off to the branch at Shepherd’s Bush (the only thing I knew of this place was that it featured in the Only Fools & Horses song) & was very well looked after & happy to be impressed by the guy who set it all up for me. With a bit of time to kill before my next appointment I had got a rather brutal, but good haircut, from a Hungarian girl whose own haircut looked like it fell out of the sixties & took over her head. A few more tube rides (got good value from my day travel card, sixteen stations & eight lines – & a bus ride) to get up north to meet a NZ friend for a bit of a tune up for my back (we met when he was completing chiro college). Great to catch up & share travel stories (Andrew is London for a short while between months in SE Asia & a year in South America). Popped in to Covent Garden to visit a coffee shop of one of his friends, which was so small we had to share a booth with a Asian couple) & then a cider with another Kiwi. We were all off to meet some more friends before they went on to salsa lessons & I went to pick up my remaining bag from the Patricks. Who should rock up but Hayden – a family friend who was a year ahead of me at school, who I think came to my first birthday & our parents go way back. Quite amusing, as I don’t think I’ve seen Hayden for at least six years, maybe eight or nine. A late night home after dragging my bike bag across the city.

I seem to have got my sleep-ins back to nine o’clock (it’s hard) & what was left of Wednesday morning was spent booking train tickets – this trip to Southampton, Monday’s ride north to Mum’s only maternal uncle’s funeral & then Tuesday on to Edinburgh for the festival & hopefully tattoo. And also investigating a bit of a jaunt over to Paris mid to late-September. In the afternoon Trish & I took a bit of a trip out in to the Kentish countryside to Eyrsford for a stroll. There was a great old viaduct,

the rain held off, quite a few horse that had covers over much of the head (which from a distance look like it blindfolded them – but didn’t – can anyone tell me why?), & a big old manor house that tried to pass itself off as a castle (it had a big gatehouse, but that was about all). On the return to the car we went up a side road & climbed a decent hill to Eagle Heights, where we were just in time to see the bird of prey showing. They had all sorts there – eagles, vultures, falcons & the show was quite good with a lot of swooping just over head height of the audience.

Their collection of other animals – cheetahs, camels, Siberian & normal huskies, storks (which are not at all good looking – why would one want a baby to come carried by these?)

– was good, but I couldn’t quite work out how they fitted in to the birds of prey theme. The owls

& eagles on display were very impressive – the Bald American eagle made a lot of noise, but I suppose that could be expected.

Not much more to say, perhaps I’ll look at the countryside whizz by for the last twenty odd minutes of this trip – oh, nice email from Southern Cross Travel Insurance, they are going to pay out for my very expensive & next to useless hospital visit. Woohoo – I might be very boring & pay off the rest of my student loan.

around home, family, friends, travel, USA

This was supposed to go up two days ago…

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Sunday 7 June 2009

So apparently it’s 1.20 pm in LA, but after crossing the Date Line for the first time & flying through the night I feel like I usually did after a 12 hour night shift (which this flight is in some ways – admittedly there is no molten iron, dust or things to organise & the food is much better) – mostly awake, but slightly seedy. The little monitor in the back of the seat says “Time to Destination – 1:04” – the States are getting closer!

The last two weeks have been nice & relaxing staying at home in Oamaru sorting out last minute details. Apart from being chilly, the weather was generally great (although the little bit of snow down to sea level was quite exciting – & a bit early in May). Twas great to spend time with Mum, Dad & Adele before running away to the other side of the world. Saturday was another pack up before we drove up to Christchurch & the last dinner (& bottle of wine) together, before flying up to Auckland on Sunday morning. In trying to use my new cash card I managed to get it swallowed & destroyed by the ATM – which very much limited my ability to get cash around the world. Nevermind, thankfully National Bank has a few branches open on Sundays & I was able to make a withdrawl by filling in a piece of paper – how quaint – & a new card is on the way to meet me. Big thanks for Andrew & Kate for ferrying me to & from the airport, storing my stuff for a couple of weeks, feeding me & seeing me off.

0:51 – closer still.

Why have I not discovered upgrades & the Koru lounge before? I should travel more. From the huge baggage allowance (with a bike & a full pack it turns out I need it), no queues for customs, sitting in a lounge for two hours & not having to eat fast food, to great food & service, & the chance to get something resembling a sleep (I think I may have managed five or six hours – usually it’s close to nothing) it’s been great. Most importantly, however, were the couple of episodes of The Big Bang Theory – Season 2 of course hasn’t screened in NZ yet (of course according to Brian, the Prime Minister of NZ, The Matrix has just come out on video). Also got a bit of a refresher of Season 2 of Conchords – may have been funnier than the first time.

Five minutes until descent…

Not long until I can put my bike together, start riding some American trails & hopefully lose a bit of weight that I’ve put from not riding & eating too much in the last few weeks. But large American portions might do me in. Blinds up – funny, this side of the Pacific looks much the same.

9.20pm

Not super tired, so trying to do the “go to bed at the normal time” to get in to a routine. First sight of US land reminded me of General Melchett looking at the wrong side of a map of the frontline – a barren featureless expanse. Then LA started – & just kept on coming. Quite the opposite of flying in to Heathrow last year – grid patterened streets, flat ground & no greenery. Despite leaving an hour late, the flight landed on time, but we did have to wait on the taxiway for a little while. Got out of LAX easily & quite glad to recognise Bev & Chris (family friends that moved to San Diego eighteen years ago) as soon as I pushed the trolley around the corner.

I never get used to looking left to cross the road quickly & this time proved no different. I enjoyed the two hour drive south to SD & the chance to have people to chat to & catch up with & discuss differences between little NZ & life in California. As expected, everything is just much bigger (fourteen lanes of freeway, SUVs, suburban sprawl, a huge Marine base & so forth). Nice to get to the Turners’ home & look out over SD, have dinner & play Boggle that was mercifully in some form of English – not Klingon. Time for a bed – must be fresh to put the bike together and start exploring (not necessarily related events) tomorrow. And try & get the wireless working.

around home, family, NZ

Oh – the pressure

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All this time I thought it was just Mum that read my ramblings here & they served no other purpose than recording for posterity how I pass some of my time. After being told more often than usual over the last fortnight that my blog would be read, there is a little pressure to come up with some interesting tales. Alas, you will be disappointed – I’ve just checked iPhoto & I haven’t taken any photos since the Queen Charlotte; therefore I can’t have done too much in the last seven weeks! Since that wonderful Easter weekend I also haven’t done a single twelve-hour shift, which has greatly improved my sleeping habits (& if I’m lucky, stopped my forehead growing up).

Of note, was Luke & Naomi’s wedding in Rotorua on a very gloomy ANZAC day. Also, ventured out in the afternoon with Roger & Andrew to watch the singlespeed nationals. It hardly rained at all & had Roger & I wishing that we were more organised & had actually entered. Near the end of the race, we ventured out to check out the course – Yellow Brick Road, gravel road, Pondy New, Rollercoaster tail & most of Old Chevy was a very nice ride. Of course it would have been hard work for me after three laps on a singlespeed, but the trails were in very nice condition. As was to be expected there were some great costumes – my favourite was a guy riding with an ODT satchel on his handlebars, a supersoaker, blood stained trousers, a colourful knitted jersey who protested his innocence when you called out to him. Possibly very bad taste, but I thought it was pretty funny. The shortcut was also amusing as to be allowed through it, the competitors had to skull a can of the sponsor’s product (The Pride of the South) or eat a dry Weet-Bix. One wasn’t allowed to opt for four cans of beer, as that would make it rather hazardous riding (don’t drink & ride). Coincidentally, met up with a couple of QC riders from two weeks before.

Strangely for me, I managed a couple of great rides at Woodhill (strange for the number, not the quality & enjoyment of the rides) – one was in the dry when the sand was slow, but fun for the unpredictability; the other the day after heavy rain – always good to have the sand stuck together. The other notable ride was the 24 hour Moonride again in the Redwoods. This was the third in year in a row I had done the 24 (nothing compared to most of my team mates) – & the second year in a row that it rained heavily for fair chunks of the Friday. Thankfully, it stopped raining by the time we put the tent & set up camp. For the first time in three years, I didn’t ride first & missed the extra kilometre or two of tarseal. Unfortunately, the track was the same as last year, but with a lot less water & mud. I found the track pretty boring and it didn’t have any decent hills (up or down). After running out of fuel on the second lap of my first double (we did doubles for about the first twelve hours), I made sure I ate heaps – we were well catered for, thanks Libby. To break the boredom up, I did a double on the Peace – it was pretty cruisy, unfortunately it was geared too high, so I was spinning on the gravel roads. Caught up with plenty more Hawkes Bay mates from the QC, did another lap on my singlespeed & then managed to break a small, simple, but important suspension linkage (the dogbone) on the i-Drive. Annoyingly, it happened right at the start of my lap – but pleasingly, I could still ride my bike – albeit with the bottom bracket now free to float around & crash in to the swingarm when I went over a bump. I had the pleasure & pressure of riding the last lap for our team. I rode on Michael’s Santa Cruz – much more XC oriented than my bike. I took it pretty easy & managed not to become closely acquainted with the Rotorua dirt (c.f. last year where I lost count of how many times I fell in to the mud) & crossed the timing mat for the last time with ten or so minutes to spare.

The reason I haven’t been doing too much riding or travelling around is that I’ve spent the last few weeks packing up my NZ life & saying goodbye to many & trying to organise bits of a holiday in the States & then living in Britain. Last week I resigned from NZ Steel & next week I leave these fair shores. The basic plan is two months in the States staying with friends (one month in San Diego & one month in Philadelphia) & taking small trips around bits of what is a rather large country. I plan a road trip up to the Grand Canyon, Hoover Dam, Las Vegas & maybe riding in Moab and also five to seven days in each of New York City & Washington DC. I arrive in London at the start of August & hope to get up to Edinburgh for the festival during the latter half of August. After that, I will probably be almost broke & will start the (likely to be difficult) job of finding gainful employment. Needless to say I’m getting pretty excited.

So the last few weeks have been full of packing, giving things away, persuading people to store things, changing addresses, cancelling accounts & other necessary but tedious tasks. On the bright side, it has been a wonderful excuse to catch up with a lot of people & share some fantastic meals. However, I realised today that it was almost three weeks since I’d done any riding & all that food intake was catching up with me (the days of dreaming of reaching 50 kg are well over) – I dragged my first mountain bike of my parents’ garage (I am now down in Oamaru & Timaru spending my last days in NZ with Mum, Dad & Adele) & went for a short ride in the bitter cold. How I ever managed with a rigid frame that was too big for me is a mystery – also the skinny knobblies, cantilever brakes & cheap grip-shift were a reminder of how much I enjoy my softtail (even the singlespeed is nicer to ride!).

Wednesday night was the first night that I spent in the house that Adele & I bought together at the end of February. Although the bed wasn’t conducive to the best night’s sleep, it was good to finally stay there – even if I did get all sorts of landlord-esque jobs. Below are a few photos (thanks Adele) as I’m sure all this text is getting rather tedious. Wonderfully, as I found out in the foggy winter, the house has new carpet in the living areas, new double glazing, a heat pump & underfloor heating in the bathroom (that is now turned on). Adele loves it & I won’t spend all my savings overseas.

One can almost see the sea-view in this view from the living area