New-to-me bicycle

October 15, 2020

Back in January I had spotted a garage sale in Paraparaumu. There were two bicycles. I got up early at the airbnb and walked to the sale at the Kāpiti Collective early Saturday morning and saw that there was a $20 bicycle and a $200 bicycle. [… Some months later,] I bought a new bike in Plimmerton and rode it back home. While walking to the seller’s place I noticed that his neighbour had a bunch of bicycles and a motorcycle, so I figured (correctly) that he would have a bike pump. […]

New Zealand Restaurants

October 3, 2020

I consolidated the list of restaurants we liked in New Zealand from my monthly summaries so far. Considering how few days we spent in Christchurch there are a surprisingly large number of restaurants from there. In general we’ve been doing a lot of cooking at home. Wellington Upesh Kitchen: Our favourite Kelburn take-out place, Malaysian and South Indian Harbourside Market: Sunday market with food trucks Best Ugly Bagels: Montreal-style bagels

September: Canterbury and Level 1

October 2, 2020

Spring in New Zealand Once again, spent two-thirds of this month in Wellington. The other 10 days were around Christchurch and Kaikoura. Currently no trips planned until November 27, although perhaps Auckland for not-Nationals judo tournament in early November. We are moving 700m down the street tomorrow though. The lease on our current place ended and so we looked around for alternatives (although a fun fact is that, like in Ontario, a fixed-term lease automatically becomes periodic upon completion in NZ and needs to be explicitly non-renewed 21 days before the end date).

Long-Delayed Trip Report: Queen's Birthday Weekend in Charleston

September 10, 2020

The plan, then, was to get in some climbing on granite in Charleston for the Queen’s Birthday long weekend. Side note: In Canada [except Quebec], Victoria Day is the Queen’s Birthday (unofficial start to summer), scheduled for the last Monday preceding May 25, while in NZ, it’s the first Monday in June. Close but not quite, and the weather is different. Kind of like many things in NZ. It’s a different country.

Our First Great Walk: the Heaphy Track

September 5, 2020

Finally, part 1. Part 2: Pohatu Penguins. Part 3: Arthur’s Pass and the TranzAlpine. Part 3b: BreakFree on Cashel. All the pictures: gallery Introduction As soon as the Great Walks bookings opened after lockdown, we thought we would sign up for at least one, to see what they were like. At this point I can’t remember why, but we chose the Heaphy Track as our first Great Walk. This is the longest great walk at 82km, and we would be doing it in the middle of the “winter”, sharing the track with mountain bikes.