Category: Blog

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.

Kohi Beach

Wow, it is finally done !  My house has been pretty much cleared of all its stuff.  Just waiting for the guy who is going to pick up the TV and then the last of the furniture is gone. All that is left are a few personal belongings that I will take with me when I go dossing for the next 3 weeks, a couple of boxes to go into storage after breakfast tomorrow and Cheeky the cat. If hasn’t done a runner today – he was here this morning for breakie but I haven’t seen him since. I was hoping to take him to his new home today but  it will have to wait until tomorrow morning now.

Most of my furniture has been taken by my youngest son, Aiden, he will use some and store some at his flat. I am not really interested in having any of it back again.

The only piece of furniture I am keeping is a beautiful coffee table Domenic (my oldest son) made me for a Christmas present 3 years ago.  I am renting a 1 * 2 metre storage unit which i have crammed full of books, clothes and other bits and pieces over the past week. The coffee table and final box load will go in tomorrow morning.

So, tonight is my last night in the house and I am camping in my own bedroom ! Tomorrow I clean and pack my gear and shut the doors for the last time.

House –  I have some good memories but I never did like you !

 

Summer was a gift to my oldest son, Domenic, a few years ago. Unfortunately Dom is now living in Queensland now and cannot look after his cat.

I have tried to re-home him myself, but that has proven unsuccessful, so this morning I took him to the SPCA for re-homing. I am sure they will have no issues finding him a home as he is a very affectionate cat. Though he has taken cat laziness to a whole new level!

With strands of white fur stuck to most of my clothes I will be taking him where ever I go.

My daughter Meliesha has been living in Europe, mainly in the UK,  for over two years now and has come home for Christmas and a bit of summer sun.

Sadly, I move out of the house in three days and will be dossing at friends myself so she cannot stay with me more than a couple of nights, the house is looking fairly sparse as well. She also had to spend this morning sorting through her old possessions to work out what needs to be stored or thrown away, so not the best welcome home in the world.

It is awesome to have her home and great to see she is well and still smiley and still loses everything in five minutes and is exactly the same as when she left, except she has a funny English accent and says “quid” and “sofa” and “sweets”.

This banner was hung on the fence up my drive way when we arrived from the airport. Mel has the bestest friends and brothers.

On Friday night Fetus Productions and The Features performed at the Kings Arms as part of the Flying Nun 30th Anniversary series. Both bands featured Jed Town. The last time I saw Fetus Productions was at the Windsor Castle in 1985 and they were possibly the loudest band I have seen, I must look for any photos from that gig (edit – I found 1 only, below)

They were OK, Features were better on the night and they played City Scenes which was cool, they didn’t play it at the AK79 Reunion shows a couple of years back.

Jed Town –  Fetus Productions at the Windsor Castle, 1985

After another great off road run last weekend and a massive case of FOMO (and maybe 3 glasses of red), at the last minute I decided to enter the 32km Cranleigh Kauri Run across the Coromandel peninsula. A number of my running buddies were doing the 70km ultra-marathon, but I wasn’t feeling like I was missing out that much ! With only a 12 km under my belt in the past couple of months the 32 had me nervous enough as it was.

We had a great drive down to Coromandel township on Friday afternoon where the ultra guys left me after a late lunch to drive up to Fletcher Bay, where their run started at 6.00 am on Saturday.  I mooched around Coro for a couple of hours, took a photo of how scary the hills we would be running tomorrow looked, had a meal in a local cafe and an early night !

An hour after the 25 ultra runners had started their run I was having breakfast in bed in the motel, before heading off for the 8.30 bus to Waikawau Bay for the 32k run start –  at a leisurely 10:30. The late start really screwed with my nutrition planning as I just did not eat enough for the length of time I was on my feet and I ended up feeling quite nauseous later in the run.

Last night the forecast was for a cloudy day with little wind which is just perfect for a long run. However, as usual, the forecast was wrong and it was sunny with a strong breeze, which made for some tough running and out of the sun it got quite cool on the exposed ridges.

The bus got us to the start just as the first of the ultras were coming through and I was lucky enough to catch Shaun moving at an awesome pace through the transition after 4 hours and 38 kms.

Note the cold pizza in the hand, awesome 🙂

The walk to the start

The 32km run started with a 2k run along the beach, which is just stunning and with the tide low it was not too soft under foot.Yeah ok, I look a bit of a muppet, but it was damn windy and those bibs were not exactly flattering.I wanted a nice slow start to avoid blowing out early, so kept to the back of the pack.

The beach was followed by a nice bit of bush single track with a number of small stream crossings where I managed to pick off a number of the slower runners and then a long climb up to the first drink stop, a hard climb with a stunning view back over the bay from the top.

The next dozen or so km’s crossed over the spine of the peninsula with some gruelling climbs and some fun descents.  In places the scenery was just awesome, one of the prime reasons for doing this run.(look at that wind in the pungas !) The scar in the bush is where we are heading next, and as you can see below it was as steep as it looks, and not the hardest part of that section of the trail.

However, from the top the views to the eastand west

were really worth it. (sadly neither me or my camera were up to these shots).

The final section up to the highest point was a fun piece of gnarly technical single track that I would normally have really enjoyed, but I was feeling pretty broken after 4 hours of running and took a  fairly conservative approach to avoid busting an ankle.The view from the trig (and the highest point of the run) back down over Coromandel township and the gulf was inspiring.

From the trig it was a 5km run down to the finish line at Coromandel School, I was feeling a bit nauseous on the run down so had to stop and walk a few times as the bouncing was pretty unpleasant and could have got messy.  I finished in 5:01, 85^th out of 104 finishers, very pleased with the result as I was really expecting to take around 6 hours due to my lack of  running.

After my race was done I waited around in the sun for the rest of the ultra guys to roll on in. Shaun had been in for a while before I arrived, finishing the 70k in 8 hours 15, with the winner of the ultra finishing in a stunning 7 hours !

Mal (and Sal who beat me by 5 or so minutes)Vicki (and Dougie who had been apparently puking for hours).and Barbarella.An awesome result for all the ultra runners, a first official race for Vicki, Mal and Shaun. I stand in awe of anyone who can complete a 70k event over that (or any other) terrain. It was a great event, with a great feel amongst all the competitors.

The beers after were great 🙂 though it was an early night for all.