Windy Tops

Tag: shoes

  • Torches, boots, hills and Wellington

    For all of today, Wellington was doing a cute thing that it does several times a year. The clouds come in low over the harbour and drift over the city. Living in the hills, it’s possible to either be inside the clouds, or above them and looking down over a flat desert of smooth drifty white. In Northland, on the western side of the Tinakori Hill, our view of Otari Wilton’s Bush was relatively clear but for the walls of fog creeping around the end of the hill and making their way towards us, but always evaporating before they reached us. Many people living in the cloud would stay at home for the day, believing it to be dreary and depressing weather, but I find walking through this subtle kind of environment fascinating.

    Stacey and I went for a walk down into the central city, 20-50 minutes away depending on urgency, and the view over the harbour was iconic of these kinds of days. Much of the mist would have evaporated by the time we saw it at 11.30am, but with the Orongorongas highlighted by their contrast in the background behind the city and the harbour as they lead towards the southern extent of the Tararuas, it’s a good sight all the same.

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  • New street shoes from Newtown

    Usually I wait until Christmas Eve before doing the Christmas shopping. I figure there’s little point in prolonging the stress when it can be conveniently and efficiently crunched into a few hours on the day before Christmas. This year, I’ve had to take that period of stress and shunt it forward a few days, because Stacey and I are about to head up to Taranaki for Christmas with her family. I finally figured out what to get for Stacey, and all it took was for her to drag me into a shop and show me. The best part is that it’s not too volumous, so I haven’t had to spend extra money on more wrapping paper.

    I also had a few other errands to run. The primary one of these came as a consequence of Wellington finally having had some decent rain a couple of days ago. After a few pathetic attempts at rain over the last couple of weeks, we actually had a persistent downpour for several hours during the middle of the day. This event coincided with my discovery that I seem to have walked through the soles of my work shoes again, and this was the reason for the errand.

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  • A dusty evening

    Well last night I went to clean the remaining dirt of my shoes from a couple of weekends ago, and it was challenging to say the least. It probably wouldn’t have been so bad if it hadn’t been necessary to walk through a bog (thanks, Cows) to get back to the van. As it happened, I could have made good use of a chisel. The calm, evening air made for a very dusty time when wiping the dirt off, but I finally got it to the point where I could put a bit mroe wax stuff on them.

    It’s back to the Tararuas tonight. The plan is to leave Wellington about 5.30pm and walk to Field Hut tonight. Tomorrow we’ll make our way towards Kime, and head down Tregear Ridge, camp somewhere on Saturday night, and make our way back to Otaki Forks on Sunday.

  • Hooray, I got my shoes back

    Two weeks, three weekends, plus an additional week of drying out time later, my trampey boots finally came back from Christchurch. (This is a 35 minute flight or overnight courier.) They had a note attached from the distributor saying that unfortunately the rubber wasn’t split enough to be able to repair them, and suggested that I keep wearing them. The retailer then had them fixed in Wellington, and I got them back again. I wasn’t really expecting to get a credit, and after the previous experience I wasn’t so surprised about the length of time it took, but I was a bit flummoxed that they didn’t even repair them at all.

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  • Problems with Salomon Alp-7 GTX boots

    So anyway, here’s what happened to my new boots. In summary, be cautious before buying Salomon Alp 7 GTX boots, because in my opinion they aren’t that great. To be fair, my opinion’s probably been influenced by the problems I’ve had with getting them fixed under warranty.

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  • Walking around the sanctuary

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    Yesterday I went for a walk around the Karori Wildlife Sanctuary (again), after the physio actually suggested that I should go for more walks again to get a better idea of how much my knee’s been improving. The weird thing has been that it feels as if it’s very suddenly gotten much better. As in, I can suddenly walk down steps without having to swing down the bannisters after the first few. I wasn’t expecting it to go away quite so suddenly, and I’m a little concerned that it might come back again just as suddenly.

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  • A short walk in new shoes

    Well I’ve decided after yesterday’s walk that I might try to tone down the walking a bit again for a few days. I took my new trampey boots for a walk around the fence-line of the Karori Wildlife Sanctuary, being cautious not to get them too wet until I have a chance to waterproof them properly. They did okay, but I think they need more walking in. My knee also started aching a little again, particularly on the down-hill. This is getting really frustrating, but I guess it’s just something to put up with for a while. More time to practice Spanish and watch old Futurama episodes, I guess.

  • Shiny new boots

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    Yesterday I bought some shiny new boots. Someone told me a while ago that New Zealanders don’t have a very good reputation for looking after their trampey gear, so I thought that perhaps I should take a photo of them before I trash them.

    Here they are.

    They even still have the label attached.

    In any case, I’ll make an effort to keep a record here of any misfortune they might happen to suffer under my ownership, and make notes of how they cope with it. This afternoon, I’m planning to take them for their first walk, if my broken knee can handle it okay. (Nothing too strenuous, just a walk up to the air traffic control radar dome behind Wellington’s wind turbine, and wandering around that area for a while.) I expect to suffer a blister or two as a result.

  • Stacey’s dad broke my knees

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    Uphill

    Hmmm, first entry. Why do I want a weblog? I don’t know; just to try it out I guess. Please accept it as my own contribution to the useless content of the web.

    I was actually warned on this trip around Mt Holdsworth about bouncing around too much on the track. Someone (I forget who) pointed out to me that I should really be careful of damaging my knees. Anyway, I didn’t listen much then, and a few weeks later I managed to jar my right knee into quite a bad state.

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