today is day 2. oh yes…same day blogging. last night my friend joanna turned out to NOT be out of town, and came by to pick me up about an hour after i’d fallen asleep.
we went over to her place, where we didn’t do much, and after about 40 minutes or so, i confessed that i was really quite tired. she didn’t have a car…she rides a scooter…some of you may recall The Incident With The Scooter from earlier this year, which disabled me for nearly 2 months (it was the cause of the sprained ankle), so i opted for the walking home option.
so then this morning, she emailed and said, “hey, come over and we’ll walk to point chev beach and have a swim.” since 94% of my plan for my time in new zealand is to walk a lot and rid myself of the pesky holiday cookies which are stubbornly maintaining their residence on my mid-section, i was like, “ok.” so i walked 2kms to her house, then we walked 5km to point chev beach…had a swim…i discovered what a horrible, wretched, no good, very bad idea it is to walk barefoot on wet, sandy concrete after not going w/o shoes + socks for nearly 6 mos. my poor, tender, winter-feet.
then we i was too much of a wuss to walk all the way back, so we caught the bus…with a detour to the library. hey, i need books or i’ll get bored. of COURSE the library was closed. (nz-ers take more days off that we americans do.) she’d told me she knew a fantastic place for pad thai, which is basically my favourite ever, so we headed there…after i’d eaten, i was about ready to fall over. you see…i did not walk 7-8 FLAT kilometers. auckland is built on the auckland volcanic field…and it is very up and down…a less extreme san francisco, if you will. knowing how to do a hill start (handbrake on, disengage clutch, handbrake off…no rolling. voila) became a valuable addition to my skill set when i last lived here.
after i came home and took a delightful nap, i walked another 2km or so to go get food from the market for dinner. and i figured walking that much in one day (10km = 6.2 miles), i was allowed to eat ice cream. and ice cream didn’t require cooking. so i had jelly tip and cucumber slices.
and just so this post isn’t without images…here is a photo of our garden. new zealanders call their backyards gardens. they also call it a garden when they plant vegetables. which my only as-yet unmet flatmate has done…very green of her, wouldn’t you say, to reduce/reuse/recycle the auckland recycle bins?
(the driveway is a bit sloped…)
You are going to come back from this trip a twig…you’re doing so much walking!