northlandboy

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Ch Ch Ch Changes

May 21st, 2010 · Blog

I’ve finally gotten around to moving my blog across to Wordpress. This was triggered by Blogger dropping FTP support, but really, I should have done this a long time ago.

As you can see, it tidies up the look a lot. Yes, the Cutline theme is frightfully common, but too bad, it’s a nice clean look. I do quite like the rotating image across the top of the page – every time you reload, or click on a new page, you’ll see a new image. You can use the Tags on the right hand side to choose all posts related to a country I’ve been to, and when you’re reading a post, there will always be a link to the next and previous posts. This will make it far easier navigating the older posts.

All the old content is still there, but in a new format. You should still be able to post comments, etc, but you won’t be using Google logins – you can just enter whatever details you like.

There will be problems, not least of which is that I’ve moved the base links around – instead of having the blog at northlandboy.com/blog, it is now going to be at northlandboy.com/- this will affect your bookmarks!

RSS feeds have also changed – this is now at http://northlandboy.com/feed. If you are reading this via the old RSS feed, you must update your reader now, or it will not receive any new posts.

Any problems, please let me know, so I can get it fixed ASAP.

Still to come: Interactive route maps, perhaps with links to posts and pictures. At some point my older photos will get moved to Picasa, to make slideshows easier. I’m also going to put together a “highlights” slideshow.

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Family First

April 30th, 2010 · Uncategorized

Last weekend, things got a bit busy around here. My older brother was competing in the Cure Kids Adventure Race. This coincided with a weekend featuring both my 3 year old niece’s and my father’s birthdays. Somehow this morphed into a family gathering, and next thing most of my family were descending on St Marys Bay.

Because my brothers, sister, and parents all live in different cities (and countries), it’s not often that we are all in the same place at the same time. Weddings and funerals it seems. Last time was not under the best of circumstances, but this time things were a fair sight better. More laughs this time:

From Auckland Miscellaneous

With some people staying with Anna and I, and others staying nearby, we ended up with a full house on Saturday night – brothers and sister, with their partners and children, in-laws and out-laws, plus a few hangers-on. Rather good times, eating some good food, having a few drinks, etc. Turns out that having a game involving putting out candles with the palm of your hand is not the best idea, as one contestant can attest. But it was a good time, catching up with family.

The following morning, Anzac Day, we weren’t in the best shape for getting up to go to Dawn Parade. There’s always next year for that. But Nic and Dave put together a nice breakfast, followed by one proper photo of the lot of us:

From Auckland Miscellaneous

House felt a bit empty by the time we finally got rid of the last of them…Oh and Nic got us a great present, which I’ll send photos of once we get it mounted and displayed – a destination roll from a 1980’s bus, showing various locations around the upper North Island. Very fashionable it turns out (I had no idea).

Oh and there will be some changes before the next blog post – I need to change to Wordpress, will take a bit of mucking around to get things working. Hopefully all links will keep working.

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Chilling

April 19th, 2010 · Uncategorized

I can’t say I’ve been overly stressing myself since I returned to New Zealand. Things have been very low key, no rushing around trying to find work, no running around the country, just taking it easy. The routine last week was something like: Get up, take dog for long leisurely walk, pick up paper on the way back along Ponsonby Rd, have a late breakfast, read the paper in the sunshine, ooh look it’s time for lunch…you get the idea. It does make it easy that I’ve got a fully set up house here, and it’s not like other times between trips, when I would be moving around, sleeping on couches.

It’s been nice to be home. One of the problems of moving around is that no matter where you are, you always seem to be missing somewhere else that you’ve been. But as I said before, this time I feel ready to be in New Zealand. Sunshine for the first week, along with catching up with friends and family certainly helped. Most importantly, I now have a steady supply of Vogels bread and peanut butter, not to mention wide distribution of superb meat pies.

Savings won’t last forever, so I will start actively seeking employment soon. Truly. Really. I will.

Oh and a special mention of Cascade Designs, the makers of Therm-a-Rest sleeping mats. My Prolite 4 had started delaminating, after hundreds of uses. But they have a lifetime warranty, and the local distributor honoured it. Sent it in, and they quickly sent out a replacement. New model too, same size and weight, but 20% warmer. Nice. The only thing that I’m annoyed about is that these are listed as $100USD on the US website, but locally sell for closer to $300NZD. Should be more like half that – dunno if it’s the distributor or the local retailers jacking up the prices.

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Swansong

April 9th, 2010 · Bike Touring

Before setting off on this trip, my father said that he thought this would be my swansong, my last trip of this kind. He was right, in a way. I don’t expect to do any more long solo trips, although that doesn’t mean my travelling days are over.

A couple of years ago, I wondered if I would be able to settle down, and do the house/dog/white picket fence thing. Well, it wasn’t to be – I couldn’t settle down at first.

How things have changed – most of those elements are now in place, and I expect to stay in the same city for at least the next three years. It doesn’t mean that I won’t be doing any more trips like this ever again, it just means they will be shorter trips over the next few years, and probably closer to home. I still want to ride across the USA, but it can wait a while. It will still be there in 3 years, it’s not going anywhere (no matter what the radicals might say). It will be a slightly different place then of course, but that’s neither here nor there.

And you know what? I’m happy about being home. More than that, I’m ready to be home, and settle for a while. If I hadn’t done this last leg, I would have wondered about it, wondered if I was doing the right thing in staying at home. It was probably a good thing that I chose Patagonia for this trip – because to be completely honest, I didn’t really enjoy it. Could have been a different story if I’d been back in China. Would I have wanted to come home from that?

I have thoroughly enjoyed riding around the UK though. It can be an underrated place, but if you’ve got the money, it’s a great place to ride around. Probably just as well I added this onto the end of the Patagonian trip, because it gave me quite a boost. It’s also one of the few places you can spend hours riding every day, and still gain weight, from all the beer and stodgy food.

Jan also pointed out one good thing about having completed my RTW circuit – I can now go anywhere, I’m not constrained by having to complete the loop – instead I can choose destinations on the basis of interest, not geography. We’ll see.

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Transit

April 6th, 2010 · Bike Touring

I have to admit to being a bit negative about stopping off in Singapore on the way back home. I can’t really remember why I decided to stop here, since I find Hong Kong more interesting. For some reason I decided to stop in Singapore for five nights on the way home, although later I changed this to 3 days.

But when I arrived here, I started to recall why I like travelling in Asia, and why I find Asian cities so much more interesting than Chilean or Argentinian ones. As soon as I saw people squatting down to rest, I felt like I was getting back into it. Other classic sights too, like the old Chinese man with skinny arms and legs, but a big belly, which he is trying to pull his pants right up over. You can see him thinking to himself “Yep, that’s just about done it, I reckon one more firm tug and I should be able to get my belt up to my nipples.” He seems to be a security guard of some description, but he’s about as effective as the guards Jeremy Clarkson is referring to here. The humidity hits you like a wall, but it feels like a comforting blanket to me. The food stalls everywhere are one of my favourite parts too – especially here, where there is such a variety.

Singapore does have a couple of unique bits – e.g. people will just do things to be helpful, or because it’s their job, and not expect a tip. At the airport, I needed to get down a couple of levels of travelator to the left-luggage office, to deposit my bike. Due to construction, the lift was very slow and busy, but I was initially told I couldn’t take my bike on the travelator. So the lift attendant pushed my luggage trolley all the way, chatting pleasantly as we went along, but didn’t even hang around to let me tip him, as I was about to do.

There is one thing that causes me problems in Singapore though, and that’s bedbugs. Last time I was here I got bitten, and within minutes of lying on the bed this time I had bites. Must be at least one hundred bites on my back. Little bastards can’t just take one bite and feed – I think they keep moving along, searching for a vein. It was a pretty crappy hotel, so I decided to splash out – Wotif.com had a fantastic deal for a 5-star hotel, for a very reasonable price for Singapore. So, for my very last night in a hotel on this trip, I’m staying in rather nice surroundings. Will have to checkout at 11:59am tomorrow, make the most of my time.

And then it’s home, time to sort out my gear, wrap up the trip, and settle down again. Will do a couple more posts over the next few days.

One more thing – my last residence in England, “Slatters of Downley” was once again superb. I must write it up on TripAdvisor.com. Special mention of the Danish food, and the provision of a bike box, and transport to Heathrow. Saved me a fair bit of hassle there.

Oh and that’s what my back looks like – two main tracks from the nasty little biters:

From Singapore

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