Friday, March 29, 2024

FROM THE RIDGE: Tales from The Big Smoke

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Like most rural blokes, Auckland is not my destination of choice. Our wives and partners don’t appear to have the same aversion – something to do with the copious retail outlets available.
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In this case, I’ve been called upon to drive Jane up to Auckland for some tennis coach commitments.

The first of these was to get her to the tennis courts on Stanley Street to participate in a cardio tennis demonstration before the ASB Classic women’s finals.

Son two and I were impressed to sit and watch her and her coaching colleagues demonstrate their skills on centre court.

Then we sat back to watch Kiwi lass Paige Hourigan and her partner Taylor Townsend play, and eventually lose to, Eugenie Bouchard and Sophia Kenin in the doubles final, followed by a good tussle in the singles final between the emerging talent of 18-year-old Bianca Andreescu and Julia Goerges, with the latter winning her second successive title. 

We’d never stayed in the city centre and I took great pleasure in checking into the Sky City Hotel on a deal intended to entrap gamblers, with no intention of losing a dime in that den of vice nearby.

I once lost $5 in a casino in Las Vegas and decided that was all the gambling industry was ever going to get of my hard-earned cash.

I haven’t even bought a lotto ticket and must be many thousands ahead of the average punter.

Equally determined to restrict the amount of rural capital being injected into the city economy, I’ve bought nothing but food. The shopkeepers implore me to grace their establishments but I have no difficulty resisting.

Mind you, with two Auckland-based sons having resented for two decades a cancelled visit to the Sky Tower when they were children as a punishment for poor behaviour (nothing like learning about consequence early on), the sentence has finally been served and we took them for dinner up there, giving the Sky City shareholders the opportunity to extract some decent return on the discounted room.

I’m not keen on heights but the views are impressive and alcohol obviously alleviates fear because it became more pleasurable as the evening wore on.

I’d never walked around this city before and today while the coach attended her conference I enjoyed a walk across to and around the Auckland Domain ending up at the War Memorial Museum.

I spent a couple of happy hours there luxuriating in the ability to wander as I pleased and read anything I chose without the clamouring of sons telling me to hurry up which so blighted museum and gallery visits of the past.

This city is now chock full with the ubiquitous Lime scooters posing hazards to riders and pedestrians alike. Stories around the world abound of the injuries sustained from these things.

Walking out of the museum, there was one just crying out for a novice rider.

I downloaded the app, worked out how to pay and set off.

Given I spend my life on motorbikes, so wasn’t going to experience the novelty of simple independent motion like most of the other users, it was still good fun.

And an efficient means of transport. I see my twenty minute trip spanned three kilometres, cost $7 and saved 757 grams of carbon to boot.

Top speed going down a hill was 30km and with no helmet potentially fatal if one came off or hit a car.

But I can only see this sort of disruptive transport option becoming a major feature of cities around the world.

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