You know it is Christmas in Auckland when Santa (now) appears on the Whitcoulls building. He used to be on the old Farmers building and first appeared in 1960…
Yes, he is creepy !
Jangly pop afternoon today, Cloud Nothings…
http://soundcloud.com/filter-magazine/cloud-nothings-stay-useless
My favourite apartment building in Auckland – The Courtsville. I have never been inside 🙂
I love pohutakawa trees – otherwise known as the NZ Christmas tree, due to them blossoming this time of year.
I have tried to photograph them for a while but the wind has just been strong enough to not allow close ups, so this is as good as it gets . I will still be hunting for the definitive pohutakawa shot before I go in 6 more sleeps time.
This one was taken at Mission Bay.
Derelict Barber Shop on Great North Rd, just outside of Avondale.
I have driven past this place thousands of times and have always said that one day I would stop and photograph it. I have been waiting for the right light, but with “summer” what it is I am not sure I am going to get it.
When we first came back from Europe in 1988 we lived in Avondale and the shop was a going concern and I had a couple of cuts here.
The Huia Rd Bush Runners (HRBR) are a group of passionate and dedicated Waitakere Ranges trail runners. The group has existed for a number of years and hold semi-organised trail runs three times a week. I had my first ever trail run with them a few years ago and managed three runs before badly spraining an ankle. I run with them rarely these days as timing doesn’t always suit and a lot of the runners are just too fast for me !
I managed to get out for a run with them on Saturday, in a slow and short group fortunately. We all started off together and I was mostly keeping up with the fast guys for the first couple of KM’s of mostly downhill, but at the short/long run junction I split off as I knew I could not keep up for much longer. It proved to be a wise decision as I was stuffed at the end, even after the short and slow run !
We ran down towards Piha, which is probably my favourite section of the Waitakeres. There are some lovely trails ,with an occasionally runnable ascent and some nice streams and the wonderful Kitekite falls.
The tracks we ran were Home, Connect, Piha Valley Track, Kitekite Falls, Winstone and back along Home to the start. It was an hour and a half run over just under ten km. The conditions under foot were just incredible considering it is a week until Christmas ! Deep sucking mud, shallow mud, mud puddles and a slippery surface between the mud.
It was a great wee run. Due to the weather I didn’t hang around waiting for the long run guys to come in and have a post run beer. I didn’t have a change of clothes and needed to get clean and dry.
I used the default camera app on my Galaxy phone for these images and wow, massive improvement in quality over the Small Camera app I downloaded. Small Camera now deleted and I will stick to the default.
One week to go !
To cap off a very hectic few days I went to see Texan post-rockers Explosions in the Sky at the Kings Arms (KA) Tavern on Friday night. I am a big post-rock fan and was disappointed to miss them last time they came to NZ, so was looking forward to this sold out show.
I have three of their seven albums; Those who tell the truth shall die, those who tell the truth shall live forever. (2001), The earth is a cold dead place (2003),Take care, take care, take care (2011)
As you can see they have some interesting album titles and track names and I have used numerous of these as photo names. I think most of the images I had in the exhibition in 2009 had titles stolen from EITS songs !
I kinda like the new album, but must admit I did not enjoy it as much as the earlier stuff, but it does follow on the musical path they have taken. Live, however, Take care kicked ass, the songs just deliver so much more live and loud and watching the band added to the aural experience as well. Sadly they didn’t play “first breath after coma” or “glittering blackness” which are my favourite two tracks of theirs, but they did play “your hand in mine” which is right up there.
I have heard a few songs from Ghost Wave who played in support, but had never seen them before, I was pretty impressed, a good mix of noisy guitar pop with some classic Flying Nun sounds thrown in, very clear references to The Clean and The Bats in a number of the tracks in their set.
All up an awesome show, partly ruined for me by the amount of people who just seemed to be there to be seen to be there. Lots of people at the back chatting through the quieter moments of the Explosions set, was a bit frustrating for those of us there for the music.
I have a better feel for the new Panasonic camera now so these are better shots than I got at HDU, though I really wished I had packed the 5d. With a sold out show I did not get a chance to get close enough to the other side of the stage to get shots of the musicians there.
First post from a cafe with free wi-fi, getting the travelling groove on now, 8 days to lift off !
I was at my sister’s house this evening and she was fretting that my nephew, who is away for a few days camping with friends at Tawharanui, hadn’t texted her all day – even though the arrangement was he wouldn’t text everyday ! This got us talking about how mobile phones had changed the expectation of parents on the volume of communication required by their children. I commented on how we used to bugger off for the entire day when we were young and no one worried at all, well maybe they did and we just didn’t know it ! I must ask my mother.
As I started writing this post I was reminded of that conversation and how when I was in my early teens we used to spend a few days up at Mangawhai each summer and my friends and I would go spearfishing in the estuary. We would be gone for hours with snorkelling gear and spear guns and come home late in the day with the occasional fish for dinner. No one ever came to look for us, even when a large school of sharks swam up the estuary and the beaches were all closed… We spent many happy summers snorkelling at many beaches around Auckland and further afield.
When I left school many years ago, through a lack of any direction, I followed my dad and did an aircraft engineering apprenticeship with Air New Zealand. I stuck out the five years of the apprenticeship, but left soon after as engineering really was not my thing. Soon after I started the apprenticeship I realised what I really wanted to be was a marine biologist, but I never did anything about it at the time, or ever since and have only done one dive in the last twenty years.
Hmm, rather long pre-amble, sorry ! back to reality !
An acquaintance of mine, Alex (I am sure he will appear later in this blog as I am staying with him in Kuching), told me about the awesome diving to be had all over SE Asia so I decided it was time to live that thirty year old dream and do a dive course before I left. I signed up for a four day course with the local PADI shop, Dive HQ in New Lynn and completed the course last week.
The first two days were spent watching videos and answering questions in the mornings with the afternoons spent practising the skills in the pool in the afternoon. It was certainly interesting and at times challenging, learning to do some of the skills around things that can go wrong takes a certain amount of trust that you are not going to suck in mouthfuls of water with each long breath. The last two days were open water dives and sadly we were not graced with good weather!
Wednesday we went to Jones Bay on the Tawharanui Peninsular, ideally we would have dived at the Goat Island marine reserve, but the wind and swell direction put paid to that. Jones bay was still rough, but once under the surface the visibility improved slightly and the swell dropped. We completed two dives and demonstrated a number of skills to the instructor.
Jones Bay
Gearing up
There was no improvement in the wind on Thursday and the showers were far more frequent so a decision was made for us to dive in Lake Pupuke on the north shore. This was greeted with some nervousness as someone drowned there earlier in the year on a dive course, though not with out school. I was glad we did it, I can say I have dived there and will never need to repeat ! it was an interesting dive, though with a lot of surface chop the water was quite murky. We did two short dives and demonstrated the remaining skills and then got out fairly quickly !
Lake Pupuke
Ready to go, warmer in the wetsuit, yay for summer 🙂
I enjoyed the course, glad I did it in NZ before I left, diving in cold, murky and choppy waters means I will be completely relaxed in clear, warm and still waters in SE Asia – just make sure there are no sharks !
After a reasonable bike ride on Friday and a good four hours of walking on Saturday I was not fully committed to a warm run in the Waitakeres on Sunday morning ! But this was one of my last chances to run around the cascades section of the park and I was very keen to go there as the trails were new to me.
Vicki and I met for a pre-run coffee at Arataki (parking in the new “long term Hilary Trail” car parks !) and then headed off in the car to the Cascades trails.
The tracks start on a nice graded metal trail with a number of steps, clearly designed for tourists to see this beautiful section of bush. Sadly not far in to the bush we came across a massive (and ancient) Kauri lying dead next to the track 😦
I have seen a lot of signs regarding Kauri Dieback disease and the shoe cleaning sprays and notices are all over the ranges, however this was the first time I had really seen the impact of this fungus on a mature tree. It is utterly tragic ! There were a number of dead and dying Kauri all thorough this section of park, though fortunately there was plenty of sign of young growth as well. I just hope they do not get infected as well.
My daughter has borrowed my little camera so I didn’t haven’t on the trip and completely forgot to use the Galaxy phone to take a picture when we passed the dead kauri. However I did remember it later when we passed the new growth. Very disappointed in the resolution though I may need to play with the settings a bit.
Over almost three hours of running and walking the hills we were back at the car. I was utterly knackered after the 3 days of activity. Great trails, great views and a good fun run, especially running down Pukematekao !
We ran Lower Kauri, Long road, Fence Line, Anderson (Up, up and more up !), Scenic Drive, Pukematekao Rd and Track.
Almost caught up with the blogs, dive school to go !
I have been using the Flickr photo website for quite a few years (http://www.flickr.com/photos/philternz/) though I have been pretty slack with photography in general and uploading to Flickr for the past couple of years, letting my membership lapse for a chunk of that time. I have recently re-signed up my membership and am planning on using it for photo uploads on my trip.
For most of that time I have been a member of the NZ Flickr Meetups group (NZFM) (http://www.flickr.com/groups/nzflickr/ ) and have been a group admin for a long time as well. In its first few years the group was very active, with a number of photographic (and beer related) meet ups and I have met a number of awesome people (some are even great photogs) through the group. As it got larger and the percentage of members who attended events fell off it kinda lost its fun, especially for us admins, and the group has languished (IMHO) for a while. It has, however, had a wee kick along through Facebook.
Back in the day we had numerous sunset shoots at Karekare Beach and I wanted to have one last session before I left. Karekare is one of my most special places and I was keen to take a few more images, both in the computer and in my head, when I went travelling.
Sadly the weather didn’t play fair and the evening was very overcast with a strong and gusty north easterly blowing. Five hardy souls turned up for the meet, and I believe it is fair to say we all had a good time ! Though there was no stunning, colour filled sunset, there was some great light, some awesome clouds and a bunch of surfers revelling in the strong easterly on the west coast beach.
Karekare surf club – one of my main reasons for living Karekare over some of the other beaches, like Piha, is there is no shops and no direct beach access, it is a 15 minute walk to the beach and the surf club is really only accessible by 4-wheel drive or quad bike.
The walk to the beach – awesome clouds and some distant NZFM members (Chris, Brett and Donelle) and as much sunset as we got.
The beach “feature”
The clouds were just stunning, a high solid bank with some fast moving low clouds underneath, made for some interesting light and with the use of some ND filters some great long exposures. I was really pleased with how these came out given the strength of the wind gusts and the only protection I had for the tripod was my body.
The sun had long been set and two surfers were still out making the most of some of the best conditions in a long time, their anxious dogs were eagerly and patiently waiting for them to get out of the water. They were still surfing after we left and it was pitch by then !
We finally left the beach for the 15 minute walk back to the car park and stopped for one last image on the way.
It was a great wee shoot, on a great beach !
Thanks Brett, Chris, Dan and Donelle for coming along and making it a fun time, and SUUUUUUCKERS to those who whimped out cos the weather wasn’t great 🙂
This post was created while listening to Christchurch band Coate, who really remind me of The Get Up Kids, which is a good thing. As WordPress is so shit to edit on and my skills on this netbook keyboard are so bad, I listened to the entire album, and iis really good. Download it free from Bandcamp.
A few years ago a day off work for a day trip to ride the mountain bike trails in Rotorua was a fairly regular occurrence. Since I have been running more and riding less, trips to Rotorua have become very rare indeed.
Now that most of the pre-trip tasks have been completed and I have a bit more time I managed to convince my long term riding buddy, Miles, to take last Friday off work to go riding.
I stayed the night at his place and we were up early, got the single speeds loaded on the car and were on the road before 8.00 AM. We took a petrol and coffee stop at the BP service centre just past Papakura and my damn car failed to start, shit balls ! A $195 membership renewal later and the AA turned up and confirmed the issue was the starter motor. The AA guy gave it a good smack with a hammer and we were off, under the advisement that the starter had 2 or 3 more smacks in it before it died. With that in mind we decided to continue on the way to Rotovegas and take the risk, the weather was awesome and it would be my last chance to ride there for a while so what the heck.
The rest of the drive down was uneventful and we were only half an hour later than expected to the trails. As neither of us had ridden there for a while we decided to stick to a route that was loosely familiar to me and, as we were on single speeds and I was not feeling on top of my fitness, we stuck to the middle and inner trails.
We rode the road up to Hill Rd with the aim of starting with the Rollercoaster track, but the trail head had been forested and was too hard to find so we shot (I walked) up the road a bit further and started the ride on Chestnut Link.
After not riding for a while I was extremely cautious on the trails. Riding way too slowly while sussing out my balance my front wheel hit a root and I did a slow rotate over the handlebars and on to my face on the ground, awesome, 50 metres into a ride and I am down. ! Fortunately the only thing hurt was my pride, though I never really recovered my confidence and did not rail the trails as fast as I have in the past.
The morning was quite warm and humid with a bit of pollen in the air, unusually I struggled with breath on a couple of occasions and had to have a mid trail rest on the Chop Suey track. We rode the ‘Chinese menu” trails then down the awesome Dragons Tail track, followed by some forestry road up to Challenge Track.
(mmmm, should have sucked in that gut a wee bit harder)
Every time I ride the Rotorua trails and get to the Dipper track I have a debate in my head as to whether this is the best bike park trail in the forest, or maybe the country. For a reasonably flat trail it is just so much fun, beautiful fast track with some awesome high-speed, bermed corners and a couple of small humps to get a bit of air off.
It is always a great ride at Rotorua !
The best news was the car started first time to get us home, and then again the next morning when i drove it to the auction house for sale, i think it knew it was its last journey.
PS – the car sold yesterday for a shit load less than I would have liked, but I was warned it would and at least it is sold.
Where is Phil now? 
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