Queen Charlotte

Last weekend was the annual Vorb pilgrimage to the Queen Charlotte Walkway - 70 km of bushy singletrack, with the odd beautiful view, mad weka, and luxuary resort (see Punga Cove photo above - cheers Moki) thrown in for good measure.

And what a great weekend it was. It rained most of Sunday, and didn't get over 13 degrees, but there were some very cool things from the weekend, including:

• Beer fuelled bike soccer (so much harder than it sounds) on Saturday at Furneaux,
• The downhill into Anakiwa - fast with lots of sweet jumps
• The ferry that carted our bags everywhere so we didn't have to
• Picton fishburgers
• The downhill to Torea Saddle - rocky and swoopy through beech forest
• The merciless piss taking of Owen/Stu/Tom/Anyone from Christchurch
• The 10 minutes of sun while lying on the grass in Anakiwa
• A hot shower and nachos after riding 70km in the rain
• Getting there first, even though it wasn't technically a race
• The bike almost working flawlessly (and contributing to the Team Giant bike soccer win)
• The ferry being overtaken by 40 broken mountainbikers telling tall tales

Ply My Fritters

When I got the first Fly My Pretties CD, Live at Bats, I wasn't initially that impressed. I hadn't seen the live event, and though at the time was pretty heavily into the Black Seeds, coulodn't see through the clutter inherent in any live recording.

A few listenings later and that all changed - it started getting a lot of stereo time, and eventually made it into the car to become an integral part of every reoad trip.

Today I picked up the second album - The return of FMP, and after one brief listening so far, I'm having similar reservations, but I suspect for the opposite reasons. This time I saw the event, and it was great. Will the live recordings ever manage to live up to the real thing, or is my memory of the concert just too fresh?

Time will tell...

It's New! It's Improved! It's Grey!

Strange things are afoot at the Circle K...
Yes folks, I finally got around to playing with my template a bit, and now it looks like this.

I highly suspect it to look even more different in a short while.

Please hold the line caller.

Ha ha. Found it.

See post below.
(and for the something New Every Day List, images need to be converted to RGB before the can be added to blogs).

Handbook of highway construction

I've been playing with Google Maps lately when I have a couple of minutes to kill, usually travelling through the American heartland looking for freeway cloverleafs, and other pinnacles of highway design. On reflectio I think there's two reasons I like doing this - Douglas Coupland's Gen X or Microserfs made reference to a book on highway design, and I have this nice small artwork by Danny Landall that is done on a page ripped out of an old highway construction manual.

Here's my favourite freeway find so far - from just outside Phoenix Ar, and if I can find it, the work by Danny.

tra la la la la la la la la

Yesterday was Santa Parade day! What joy!

We bumped into a friend of mine and we stood at the back of the crowd and made cynical remarks about how close some of the floats were getting to the trolley bus wires, so I managed to not be entirely overwhelmed by all the good cheer and random tantrums. But it did make me realise that christmas is alarmingly close.

When I was a kid I'm sure christmas parades were bigger, and shinier, and, well, better (and I used to ride 87 miles to school on horseback with no shoes and only gravel for breakfast).

Deck the halls...

On Friday night we mixed it with the cool (young) crowd, at Indigo for soulful songstress Hollie Smith. Opening act was Fat Freddy's Dallas, doing a largely acoustic set. Then on to Hollie Smith, and her 'vey own band' for a solid followup performance to her somewhat brief Fly My Pretties appearance.

It was nice - good songs, stunning voice, cool atmosphere. I quite like her EP, but it comes across as muted and overmixed against the live version, but I guess that's not uncommon.

And I didn't even say'Indigo stole my baby' once!
How's that for mature?

Seize the day (and the wine)

So I'm sitting in Mr Bun eating a chicken and avocado on rye sandwich (result of 5 minute health kick due to watching Supersize Me last night), sitting at a bench that looks out on that wee street outside Askew.

A car pulls up, turning right onto the bigger street with the sushi place on it, and the passengers are all pretty tough looking. The car's there for a bit, which strikes me as strange, as there are no cars on the other st for it to wait for.

Then a woman gets out, walks over the pavement, and picks up a case of wine that is being transferred between courier van and the wine shop on the corner.

Oh the drama - car takes off, wine shop guy shouting, runs after car, bystanders get involved, but I think the car gets away.

Part of me is outraged, that this goes on in central Wellington, and that there aren't police on every corner with guns, like in London.

But a part of me is also going good on them for seizing the opportunity. Is this bad?

Courting Danger

I went to court today. Well, it wasn't court proper - it was the small claims tribunal. A friend was taking a former client to task over a contract breach, and I was there as a mute support person. I thought this would have been a lot more fun, and had devised a series of physical communications actions that would mean I could communicate vital information and shape the outcome without being un-mute. Kind of like baseball players. Or mimes.

But in reality it wasn't so exciting. Very interesting, but not what I'd describe as fun. It kind of made me want to be a lawyer, which really freaked me out.

All part of life's rich tapestry really.

Dynamite

I may just well be the last person in the world to see this, but watched Napoleon Dynamite for the first time the other night. I enjoyed it from that quirky low-budget-hip-young-filmmaker makes good perspective, and felt some connection to the central characters, but on the whole wasn't as blown away as I expected to be by it.