Author: wheresphil

Over the past month I have started this post about a hundred times, deleted most of them, left and restarted some, deleted those and ended up with a list.

The foundation of this plan of mine started close to ten years ago, back when I was mountain biking frequently and the internet was exposing us to multi-day scenic riding events in some very cool places. My friend and riding buddy, Miles was very attracted to the idea of the Trans-Africa ride, north to south over a few weeks, but for myself I liked the idea of the multi-day Trans-Alps race in Europe. After months of reading and pondering I decided that this would be my 50^th birthday present to myself,  and the idea of having my 50^th in Europe was conceived.  Over the past few years my riding has languished and the training involved was too hard (I need some concrete pills), but as the idea of having my 50^th in Europe never really left I elected to leave my job in June/July 2012, take a couple of months break and see the bits I missed when I was there in the eighties.

As happens all too frequently circumstances changed at work, I was extremely stressed, over worked and in the end so unhappy I gave three months notice and resigned in October. This left me with the prospect of going to Europe over winter or finding an alternative – so the visit to SE Asia was planned.

Numerous people who know me well, have asked why SE Asia ?,  and why so long ?  The why is easy, I have always wanted to visit Angor Wat and I want to see orang-utans !  That is it!  I could easily do those in a couple of weeks, so why so long ? Buggered if I know !

SE Asia is so severely outside my comfort zone, everything about going there and being there is a challenge.  From getting off the first flight in to the heat and humidity of Singapore to the complete lack of a plan of how, where and when it should end is just not how I roll or have rolled for the past 49 years.  I believe that if I can survive a few weeks, months even better, travelling in SE Asia, then I can survive anything !

I see this as a challenge to myself, an opportunity for me to change the way I see Phil Platt, and hopefully make him a better person at the end of it. If I don’t do the time  and leave for Europe or back to New Zealand in a couple of weeks I will not see this as a failure, but I will be glad that I at least  tried !

Below is the list of why I think this idea is a bit ridiculous.

Like many people I have irrational fears of many things;  Spiders, snakes, sharks, heights, unexplained noises at night, other peoples driving on tight, windy roads with cliff edges, being mugged (experienced it, not nice !), being scammed/pick pocketed etc.

I also have a completely rational fear of zombies and sometimes they DO keep me awake at night, this is completely true and I will get up in the night and close a window if I am feeling it !

I dislike; heat and humidity, crowds, drunks, loud people (especially loud drunk people !), smokers and worst of all  – other peoples bad taste in music.

I am uncomfortable with; standing out – hence I don’t do street photography, confrontation – even with people i know, being alone – I can easily go into hibernate mode if I don’t watch out, approaching strangers for companionship or to travel, seeing the poverty, beggars, the crippled and the other sites and smells of the third world.

I suffer from insomnia and really like dark, quite, cool places to sleep, or I will go days without sleeping.

In a way I am quite naive, I have no idea if my plan, or lack of plan is a good thing, if cruising SE Asia on my own at 49 and 25 years away from any other travel experience is a smart thing to do

So all in all is this trip “Crazy ? yes, Dumb ? no !  I guess I will find out.

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 !