Our Adventurous Walk to School

Our walk to school every morning involves many ups and downs, but the best part is going through Alberon Reserve. It is delightful to live in a place with such nice flora! Note P's cute uniform!

The Wintergardens at the Auckland Domain

On the afternoon of the first day I was in Auckland we went to the Wintergardens at the Auckland Domain. A domain is like a park. The Wintergardens are greenhouses, they are for keeping plants warm in Winter.


This is me. I am looking at BIG FISH in the water. They reminded me of Isabel, my old goldfish.


This is a caterpillar I saw in the greenhouse. (It will be a Monarch Butterfly! A and P doubt this however.)


These are enormous Pitcher Plants hanging over an HUGE lily plant. Pitcher plants eat insects!!! The happy, friendly excitable plant keeper showed us pictures of babies sitting on the lily pads (for this type of lily, there are apparantly only two of this species grown outside of the amazon).


This is the bottom of one of the pads from the lily being held up by the keeper.

I liked the Auckland domain because of all of the different plant we saw. We also played football (errr, soccer), harassed some ducks, and saw the big ferns in Fernz Fernery.

P (with contributions from A and B)

Multiplying Bloggers

In case you haven't heard, A and P finally made it to Auckland! They arrived last week and we have been busy getting the apartment in order, traveling to beaches (this is Cathedral Cove), and settling P into her new school.

All 3 of us will now be posting to BRAMPA - it should be obvious who is sending the message (posted by A, B or P...)

There might be some kinks in the works while we get used to posting with different accounts. Thanks to everyone that helped with the final move! Br(AmPa)

Flying to Auckland

This is me at the San Francisco airport.

I made it! They have lots of cool places here.

My school is very different...each building has 3 or 4 classes.

This is me again reading about Queen Elisabeth before she became queen.

On the Midnight Boat to Kawau

All my (not so) hard work getting to know how to sail and crew on racing yachts led to being invited on a destination race to a nearby island, Kawau. The trip down involved me, the two boat owners, and the wife and small daughter of one owner. This boat was quite a bit bigger than the one I usually race on. Combine that with some pretty good sized seas and the spinnaker that was flown to good effect up to North Head and you have some exciting sailing.

Even more exciting when the skipper went under water while dropping the spinnaker during a gusty wind shift and an unexpected broach. In any case, we lost most of our lead but got it under control and had a nice reach up to Kawau. It was at night, by the way, and I got my first sighting of the Southern Cross. We ended up 2nd on the line and 2nd on handicap.

Kawau Island is beautiful; the bay we anchored in has an impressive Victorian mansion built by an early Governor.

There was some neat fauna - some of it native, like this weka. Apparently there are kiwi but I didn't see any.
There were wallabies, however!
Apparently this island and the eccentric ex-governor introduced quite a few species to NZ. Modern conservation ethic in NZ keeps you from doing this for a good reason. One of the species introduced to the island was the Australian opossum, now it is a scourge to the native bush all over NZ.

On Saturday the skipper dove for scallops and we fished. I caught three Kahawai on a total of one baiting and two casts. Not bad.

But I did not win the competition - they wouldn't count my double catch as one fish.

These plants look familiar - straight from AZ?

The skipper and I raced home on Sunday. We got a poor start this time and spent the day dealing with gusts and wound up putting a reef in. That's not the way to win races but it was a good idea under the conditions.

Near Takapuna we (almost) ran into competitors racing tornado's (the Olympic catamaran class). One of them went flying by at 20ish knots just astern with a displeased look. The next weekend was the world championships so getting in the way this time wasn't so bad.

Auckland Anniversary Day

This monday marked the 168th year (or so) of the existence of the regoin of Auckland as a place of note to westerners. The event is celebrated with a massive regatta, one of the the oldest and largest anywhere. What this meant for me was a lively downtown, lots of neato boats sailing the Harbour, and lots of fireworks.

I went down to the viaduct harbour to check out the sites. This is a happening place on any weekend night, but it was especially packed due to the carnival and free concert going on.
Dads, little girls, and a carousel.
Valuable prizes.Exciting signs. And rides.
And simply HUGE yachts. Can anyone tell me the rigging on this one? These old boats are all 50+ years old and still racing.
A wooden tall-ship, the Soren Larsen.
The next day I biked around to Mission Bay to get a view of the regatta. There were hundreds of boats racing about but I could not make sense of it from so far away. It would be better to join in next year if I can.
This young sailor had his hands full keeping his dinghy upright on the ramp. What fun!

Shifted!

I moved last week - now at a much nicer, larger apartment in Parnell (suburb near Auckland central). Still very near work and downtown, and Pascal will go to a very nice school. Ever move by bike (and, to be perfectly honest, one trip in a car, thanks DW)? It's fun if exhausting. I'm up to about 10 fully-loaded trips on my bike to the various stores to outfit the apartment. And every evening for the next week I will be taking one surplus chair home from work. Most of the looks I get are along the lines of "oh, that poor man" but some seem to get it and smile.