New Zealand's famous bigot

Sitting in the airport in Hong Kong and Paul Henry's in the South
China Morning Post. Great what one small-minded bigoted jerk can do
for New Zealand's international reputation. It also made me think
about how tenuous our reputation is in other areas; the clean green
myth which we rely on for our tourism billions for example. One
incident which gets the attention of the international media is enough
to change a lot of minds.

...and a close up

"So we reckon it's time that a New Zealand APA pulled on its Dockers, flashed its Blackberry, and generally talked louder than everyone else at the bar. Here it is."

Tuatara APA reverse label

Tuatara APA

I had bought a FYO rigger or two of the Tuatara APA from Regional Wines and Spirits a month or two back. At the time I thought it was one of the tastiest beers in the country. My opinion didn't change much at the launch party (also at RW&S) when the beer was released in bottles.
In general, I prefer my beer fresh from the keg, especially with styles like APA where the large amount of aromatic hops seems to fade with age, but given that the Tuatara APA had just gone into it's bottles (and isn't on the FYO system at RW&S right now) I thought I'd give it a try. It's absolutely as tasty as the fresh brew and the larger size 500ml bottles are a nice too. The labeling is also nicely done. I'll try to post a picture of the back of the bottle next.

Oktoberfest

Mike's Oktoberfest at Urenui outside New Plymouth. Not much to be said really; great weather, great people, great beer. Some curious local entertainment, and some even more curious locals. And (what looked like) good surfing the next day at "The Graveyard", a small beach off the surf highway south of the city.



Picasa pictures here.

Waiopehu Hut

A couple of photos from the trip last weekend to Waiopehu hut with Dmitri, Shriv, Matthias and Lisa. While the rest of the country had gales and storms, we just had clag. No views, but no real wind or rain either.

10-09 Waiopehu Hut

Waiopehu Hut

Moving House

Fourteen hours on Friday to moves all our boxes and such.



Then two more days to shuffle boxes and furniture around and finding space for things in our new home.



It's all worth it though.



Many thanks to David and Dmitri and Lorraine for all their help moving things.

10-09 Moving House

Munted, at last!

I ran the Mukamuka Munter last Saturday, along with Erich and Krista. It was a little sketchy as to whether I'd run in the end; I'd had some sort of flu for the week leading up to the race and on Thursday afternoon I found myself out of breath after going up the stairs at work. Friday night I had some pre-race nerves and it seemed a shame to waste them by not running. We needed to get up before six on Saturday morning and I figured that since I couldn't really distinguish between the general misery of waking up early and the pain of being sick so I must be better.




[Photos from Krista.]

The weather was entirely perfect for racing: cold, sunny and no wind. The race involved a couple of river crossings which would have been tricky after rain, and things would have generally been miserably and slippery. I didn't see Erich after the start. I was trying to put my GPS back in my backpack as the race started so I wasn't even particularly sure if he was ahead of me or behind me (but I figured behind.) My strategy was to pick a person who seemed to be doing a decent pace, and to stick with them as long as I could. this worked pretty well for the first 12km --- as far as the mouth of the Mukamuka river valley where I started to flag, and the first person passed me. Going up the river valley I dropped at least half a dozen places and gained none. Despite this, the Mukamuka valley was probably the highlight of the race for me --- bouldry, rough, numerous river crossings and generally a pretty wild and isolated feeling place.

Near the top of the valley, my calves started to cramp and they continued to do so from South Saddle to the Orongorongo valley. From here, the rough terrain was pretty much over. And so were my legs. Somewhere along the final 10km first one thigh, then the other started to cramp. As long as I kept running and taking small, small steps they were mostly okay, but if I tried to stretch out my stride, or even walk (and by this point I knew I could walk faster up the hills than the small steps my running allowed) my thighs would cramp up and I'd topple over --- pretty scary given that it hadn't happened to me running before. Annoying too, since, apart from the cramp, I was feeling good. The last 3km down the sealed road to the finish line, I made in a strange sort of straight-legged waddle. It worked though. I got there without stopping or keeling over or anything. And I was there before Erich, 3hr:41mins, not quite as fast as Steve was last year and well behind the winning time which was a pinch under 3hrs, but fast enough that I was pleased with myself. Erich was about 13 minutes behind me and Krista was a fair bit behind him, though still grinning a whole lot when she finished.

Mukamuka Munter

Putting things in boxes

I'm sick as a dog today, with some nasty fluey/cold thing that came on super fast. (Erich will hoping that it slows me down for the race next Saturday but he won't be so lucky!) One consequence of this bug is a lot of sitting around at home, hence these two posts in quick succession. Another consequence is more packing.

N. and I bought a little apartment the other month and so I've been spending my spare (and occasionally un-spare) time putting things in boxes. (N. would have been boxing things too, but she's in Japan.)







Lots of Boxes! (And evidence, in case you ever needed it, that the cameras in phones are pretty crappy.)

The moving date is just under three weeks away but, other than taking a couple of days off work, I don't think it would have been possible to get everything done in time without starting as early as I did. Though I do admit that I shouldn't have packed all the tin openers over a month before moving --- I had a bit of trouble when it came time to get the beans and tomatoes out of their tins for my re-fried bean the other night.

The apartment we're moving to is quite a bit smaller than out current place, but quite a bit nicer too --- at least we think so. I don't have any of my own photos of the place but I've snaffeled the low-res. ones that the Real Estate Agent used for the advertising on her webpage (don't tell), with all the lovely furniture from the current/previous owners.











(you can click on the wizz-bang slide-show to go through to the Picasa album.)

When puncture protection is no protection

Flat tyres are the curse of my cycling life. There are few things less pleasant than having to stop on the side of a busy road, in bad weather, to change a bike tyre which is covered in who-knows-what-toxic-road-sludge and all because some drunken moron (who will probably run me over in a month's time) threw his empty beer bottle out the car window. At one point I was getting a puncture every couple of weeks until i) I got into the habit of regularly inspecting my bike tyres for sharp objects which were stuck in the rubber but hadn't yet caused a puncture, and ii) got myself some tyre liners from Slime. Slime are the folks who make those fancy tyre tubes filled with some goop that is supposed to be self-sealing if you get a puncture. I'm not sure exactly how the goop works but I imagined that it could glue a tube to a tyre, or leave you with a slow leak that couldn't be patched afterwards of something. The tyre liners, however, are nice and basic --- a thin(-ish) strip of some flexible plasticy stuff. It feels sort of soft if you poke it but it seems to stop things making their way into the tube if they puncture the outer tyre casing. I've had a pretty good run with the slime liners so far, a few thousand kms cycled with no flats --- though I've still had to replace a couple of tyres when they got so cut up that they started to split. But even then, the tube stayed fine --- until last Thursday when I was cycling home down the side of State Highway 2 heading into Wellington. I felt that dreaded squishy feeling coming from my rear wheel. Luckily, I was on the part of the road where it is possible to climb over the barrier on the side of the road and use the track/cesspit/official cycleway to change my tyre, with an extra couple of metres between me and the cars. I couldn't see anything obvious stuck in the outside of my tyre. (I've learned to always look for things after replacing a tube only to have the new tube be punctured by the same piece of glass still stuck in the tyre.) The slime liners still looked fine too; but there was an obvious hole in my tube, running along a thin line. It seems that where the ends of the slime liner overlap the upper-most end had been pressing slightly into the tube (I try to keep my tyres at about 120PSI) and had pressed all the way through. So --- a puncture from my puncture protection. I'll stick with the tyre liners anyway though. I've certainly had far, far fewer punctures since I've been using them. It's just annoying that I don't seem to be able to get free of this problem of flat bike tyres.