Just when I thought I was getting bored with walking around the neighbourhood, I went down a side street tonight that I hadn't been down before, and found this view of a house with a flagpole flying the Jolly Roger.  It's good see Kiwi individuality asserting itself in interesting ways.  This flag should be visible from the motorway, but I've never noticed it, maybe it's new.  Oh, the roof isn't really striped, it's just what happened to the tiles when I shrunk the picture - click to get the larger, slightly better-looking picture.

The amazing shrinking me

I finally patched my favourite pair of jeans, only to find that they're *really* loose.  I think I'm going to take the plunge and buy a smaller pair.

A week in review

Somehow a whole week has gone by and I haven't blogged it.  Sorry.  I have done some walking though. Tuesday: Being the last Tuesday of the month it was time for a Uniforum regional meeting.  I walked down to the railway station and caught the train into town, knowing I would get a ride home with Steve.  On the way to the meeting I detoured to take pictures of the Cave Troll in Civic Square - the delightful beastie that graced the entrance of the Embassy Theatre when Fellowship of the Ring was first released, it was brought out again for the Return of the King premier.  It's much easier to photograph in Civic Square without the trolley wires and things that get in the way at the Embassy.  I wore sandals that day because it was so hot I couldn't stand the thought of putting socks and shoes on - bad choice, I gave myself a big fat nasty blister on the ball of my foot.  And just to make life more fun, Steve had left his carpark access card in a very safe place - inside his car, inside the carpark building which was safely locked up by the time the meeting was over.  Doh!  Digby gave us a ride to the railway station, but of course we had to walk home at the other end.  Up the hill.  Still wearing the same sandals that gave me the blister. Wednesday: I gave my blister the day off. Thursday: My car was booked in for some work and a WOF, so I drove into town and spend the day there.  Mostly I was in the library doing some family history research, being nice to my nearly recovered blister, but I did a little bit of wandering around.  No hills. Friday: <thinks> Oh, yes.  That was the day Steve came home earlier than I expected, and when I got home a short while later I didn't realise he was there, and I thought I was going nuts because I knew I had turned the alarm on when I went out.  I don't think I did any walking that day, other than around the shopping centre - it was too hot. Saturday: I woke up way too early and couldn't get back to sleep.  So I did something really weird: I did my walk in the morning.  I enjoyed it a lot, because I was listening to Kim Hill on the radio, and I usually find the first two hours of her show to be be the best.  Most Saturdays I sleep through it and listen to it later on the video recorder (we have Sky Digital which relays a few radio stations).  This week Kim talked to a correspondent from Houston about politics, Bush's "election candy" Mars mission, and the death penalty.  Up until the death penalty part I had quite liked the correspondent but then I got the horrible feeling he was one of the many Texan citizens who think the state has a right to play God.  Then on a lighter note Kim interviewed an astronomer, about Mars of course but also about the "spokes" in Saturn's rings and the rotational period of Uranus.  Great stuff, may she never run out of astronomers to interview.  While all this was going on, I a walked a long uphill route along the streets on the hillside here, right up to the top of Victory Crescent and on to the far end of Chastudon Place where some pricey houses look out over the rest of Tawa.  This was the furthest I had been on that uphill route and it still only took me an hour - I must be getting something right. Sunday: Dance practice was suffiently energetic, thanks, and besides, it was absolutely bucketing down with rain.  Not very summery but it will make the farmers happy I suppose. Monday: Oh, that's today already.  I was grumpy and didn't feel like doing much of anything but I might as well be grumpy out walking as moping around at home.  I went down to the Linden shops and just kept going along Collins Ave which was a gentle uphill gradient - not punishing like Fyvie Ave or the Scots Bransle.  Then I turned around and came home to cook tea, still a little grumpy. Now, here's that cave troll. Grrrr! Take that, you... you... kids!

Excuses

I was tired.  It drizzled.  I was busy.  I was job-hunting.  My legs were aching.  I went shopping.  I forgot.  I did enough exercise in the weekend.  I had a bad hair day.  I walked from library to the supermarket and back, does that count? Oh well.  I'll do better tomorrow.

Dance practice was nicely energetic today, so no hills were required.  Instead, I went to meet the new baby Isabelle, and then played geek for a few hours.

Another late-evening walk around the streets.  Tonight I wanted to spend about an hour walking, but I didn't really want to cover the same old streets again.  So when I got to the main road I headed north, where I hadn't gone before since there are no obvious blocks to circumnavigate.  I decided I would go in that direction for half an hour and see where it got me - and where it got me was all the way to the next major intersection, and up the hill to the start of the road that goes to the rubbish tip.  Woo!  From there, I could go up the road towards the tip, then take a side-street that leads to a shortcut to the unofficial dirt road that comes out just up the street from home.  Cool! I could do all the uphill stuff in the middle of the walk and finish by going downhill - so that's what I did, and I finished with five minutes to spare.  I think I'm going to use that route again.

Well fancy that!

I parked beside the Eldson Youth Camp and was about to head off along the usual familiar track, when I realised there was another track off to the right.  This had previously been overgrown and messed up due to flooding, and until today I wasn't even sure there it was meant to be passable.  But apparently the Porirua City Council have done some work on it, and now there is a clear path.  This path skirts along the edge of the reserve and comes out at the Aparangi Cres entrance - an entrance of which I was previously unaware.  After that, it's not so much a track as an old firebreak which wanders along a short way and then goes pretty much straight up the side of the ridge, at what feels like a nearly vertical angle (in reality probably about 30 degrees).  This firebreak-track also shows signs of recent work, some of the gorse having been hacked back.  Unfortunately there are new gorse seedlings appearing already so it's a never-ending job for them. I bravely struggled all the way to the top of the ridge and was rewarded with quite a good view of the Porirua harbour and surroundings.  Being such dull weather though, the photos didn't come out very well.  This one was taken on the way down, perhaps you can get a hint of how steep it is from the photo.  The big white rectangular building is the former Mitsubushi vehicle assembly plant known as Todd Park, named after either Todd Motors or the Todd family, I'm not sure which.  When I was shown around the facility in the late 1980s I was told it was (or had been) the largest factory floor in the southern hemisphere.  Sadly, it became less and less economically viable to assemble cars or trucks in New Zealand, Mitsubishi Motors started importing complete vehicles, and eventually the plant closed in about 1998.