11-29-10

Wellington

When I left Auckland I noticed that there was corn growing when we got out of town a ways. It was what looked like “knee high”  but by the time we got down to Wellington area the corn was just coming up to about six inches high. It was an all day bus ride south and not sure if it is because I am that much further south or if it has to do with the land quality or weather patterns.

It is hard for me to remember to be walking on the ‘wrong’ side of the sidewalk. I can tell the locals all walk on the left but the tourists can be anywhere. Crossing the road is the same as over in OZ…. Rubber Necking required….

While I was in Auckland the band U2 was playing. Every one wanted to know if I was going….. I heard that they played to a crowd of 60,000…. Wow, I cant imagine getting into a crowd like that. This week Bon Jovi is playing here in Wellington. I am not going to that one either. It seems that these Kiwi’s are not left out of mainstream music.

It is so different walking down the street in this city, people actually make eye contact, and smile or nod….

I took the bus and went looking at bikes today. Some were electric but most are diesel.
 

Here I will post some of the prices of    BMWs.

this R1200 is used. He said a new one with crash bars, bags and ready to go would be a little over thirty thousand.

This F650 was a pretty good-looking bike. It had only been ridden on the road as it was not beat up at all underneath. Only 50K kilometers and ten years old. One main problem is that it cannot be imported into Australia because it is a bike that was imported from Japan. It seems that only bikes that are imported into New Zealand can be exported to OZ. Not sure why, but the guy said I should check with the Australian embassy here to find out the details on bike importation. If I get a bike it might be nice to ship it over to OZ so I can do some more riding over there. Jeez, rules!!!

He took me to the back of the shop where they had a Kowsucking KLR with 19,000km on it. He said I could buy it for $6500 and they would buy it back at $4500. If I hadn’t said so many bad, rotten, offensive, things about them, I guess it would have been a bike I could have at least looked at seriously.

Then I walked by this little Toyota and thought that might do, but not much room to sleep in it as a camper.

A nice new Subaru would make a nice camper rig eh? Sort of a BIG little red and I know how to camp in a little red. Fifty grand… wow….. wow…. Wow….

I guess they have to charge more because they need to put the steering wheel on the wrong side to sell them here.

better camper….

I like this air vent on the back of the airport bus.

That is it for this dog log. I spent the day at the Papa museum here I Wellington and it is huge. They don’t have it laid out very good at least that is the way I found it. The kids are out of school or there were student groups coming through which made it sort of a zoo in spots. The noise was so loud I had to leave where they were. I took a lot of photos but have not gone through them yet to even see if I have any worth posting. It really is just a big sheep chute with things to see along the way.