Posts by Sam F
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And so on.
The time I was biking along, cutting through to the left of stopped traffic, and the front wheel slipped down into the gutter and I ended up falling onto the left front quarter panel of someone's car... then reflecting about 500m down the road what might have happened if I'd done that in moving traffic and fallen in front of a car.
There was also the time when Dad managed to shut the power cord of a toasted sandwich maker inside the hot plates while it was still plugged in and working - cue tremendous bang, a ball of blue light about two foot across, and a few reflective minutes on the part of everyone in the room.
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But when we let them do it, they'd want to do things like painting guitars on the guitarist's naked chest (rejected Screaming Meemees video script from Andy Shaw).
Ah, right...
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Possibly I just think they look suspicious because it's night, and they're dressed in black, but I wouldn't advise anyone to use it as a footpath at night - there's long stretches where you'd be a long way from any help, with plenty of places for some creep to hide.
I'll never forget the shock I got one night when I was crossing the bridge by Pollen Island on the NW cycleway - and nearly ran into an apparently homeless gentleman just sitting there at about 10pm. He didn't mean any harm to me, and I recovered enough to say hi (and he responded in kind), but it was still a bit of a jolt.
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Wait, she caught a taxi (both ways?) to a cycleway?
I dunno - I just passed her as she was rolling slowly and a bit shakily along, then when I turned around at the other end and came back she'd already parked the bike and was signalling a Commodore taxi which was pulling into the carpark.
I think Barbara from Cycle Action and Christine Rose of the ARC arrived by bike, but certainly I don't think any of the other dignitaries did, so I'm not trying to single Ms Lee out.
ETA: the bike that Chris liked and Ms Lee tried out was indeed the Civia Loring from Rode. I like those too - was nice to see one on a rack at the Mount Albert shops when I was on a recent errand. Almost too nice to shop on?
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Nice to be at the opening, and lovely to meet Russell, and I *think* I met Sam, but not sure on that.
You may well have. I was the short bloke in the white Diadora shirt with backpack. Sorry for failing to introduce myself properly!
Impressions:
Someone (it may have been Barbara) shared a story of kids counting the cyclists with CAN backpacks as they rode past: "that's seven less cars, eight less cars, nine less cars..."
Lots of people on classy folding bikes and big white-tyred cruisers, someone had a track bike, and an even braver chap showed up with a penny farthing! The whole gamut. And of course it was neat to see kids enjoying the ride.
'Twas good to see Wayne Macdonald from NZTA there, and he had a good long cycle along the new section on one of the Nextbike rentals. (Previously I'd only seen him at the Getacross harbour crossing protest saying "No!", so this was a nice change of pace).
Heck, even Melissa Lee had a brief wobble along the first fifty metres or so (on a classy green urban bike brought along by Rode of Point Chev) before dashing back to catch a taxi at Nixon Park.
Hopefully we'll see more improvements in some kind of reasonable timeframe - I still think it has taken shamefully long to get this done - but it's there now and the opening made for a good morning out.
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When and where is the NW motorway cycleway opening tomorrow? I'd like to get along!
10:30am, at Nixon Park in Kingsland.
(I have the morning off work - see you there?)
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Love that response letter.
Me too.
Funny, the phrase "core incompetencies" came to my mind unbidden just the other day, and there it is in the letter. Synchronicity? I wonder how widespread the turn of phrase is.
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Triangle's The Beat Goes On, quite possibly the worst TV show in New Zealand's history.
+1. Mesmerisingly bad.
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Sorry for the brief interlude - it is tangentially related to the original topic - did anyone catch One News' segment on the Featherston POW shootings last night (video is on the other tab)?
In February 1943 a bunch of Japanese POWs in a camp in Featherston refused to join a work detail, the alleged ringleader was threatened with a pistol and eventually shot at, and then the soldiers had no choice but to open up on the rest of the POWs because they were advancing with big nails, which they had apparently sharpened up to make them even pointier. Ah, right.
It must have been horrible, says local historian, what with our boys having to shoot because... because one of our boys had started shooting?
48 prisoners and 1 guard were killed - we saw the grave of the guard, not of the remaining victims - and there was a brief recap of NZ veterans' opposition to a memorial garden on the campsite, then some fluff about the wounds healing over time... and then: "The 10-part series The Pacific begins tonight at 8:30 on TV One".
So to recap, we had a story in the middle of the news hour, not tied to an anniversary date of any kind, not featuring any new historical findings, and not even particularly respectful to the victims of the shootings, whose deaths were framed, ridiculously, as some kind of extension of the Pacific war onto our own New Zealand soil!!!1! - in short, no news value at all, just lame dressing-up of a really shameful episode in NZ wartime history for the sake of flogging another TV One product.
Can you tell I was not particularly impressed?
Anyway, derail over, carry on.
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The US Govt. has brought a war to their neighborhood for completely made up reasons and yet we can just hand wave it all away as shouldn't have been in a warzone.
What did one of the crew say when he heard there were children in the van? "Their fault for bringing kids to a battle"?