The LONG Bike Ride / Auckland / Fucking Google
Last weekend on Sunday I asked Theo if he wanted to go for a long bike ride. He's said before he does and when we go riding he always wants to know how far we've ridden (which I always record with my Fenix 6 watch because I'm a nerd). So I thought I'd see if he wanted to do an extra long ride out to the Puketapu pub! He was sure that he did, so we got on our bikes and off we went. He did such a great job too, it's an 11.2km ride and it wasn't until about 8km in that he decided he really was tired and he'd was getting sore legs. You can't blame him, those tiny wheels need so much more peddling than my huge bike with gears. But full credit to him, he solidered on. It was a bit hairy riding up along the riverbank paths, I forgot of course that there's quite a steep drop on either side of the path, because they are essentially banks to stop the water from flooding if the tide rises too high. He really seemed to enjoy the ride though, even when we got quite a few strong headwinds that made it hard. That said, I don't think he'd want to do it again, nor would I take him, it was a little bit too much of a strech for a 5yo in hindsight.
Eventually though we made it to the pub, where we had a little celebration for having ridden 11.2km with only one minor crash along the way (he got the wobbles and fell over near the Arena). Sarah and Beth were there waiting for us, having driven the car with the bike rack to ensure we didn't have to ride back! The pub was packed, of course, which I'd forgotten about. We had booked a table, but it took an hour and a half for our food to come which was crazy. At least we could buy some potato crisps for the kids to eat, and there were books to read and live music to listen to. Which reminds me of Theo's fantastic joke, copied and pasted from Sarah's telling of it:
Waiting at the jam-packed Puketapu for lunch, and Theo is extra hungry after biking 11km.
Live music in the garden, the singer starts an emotional cover of Sinead O’Connor:
“It’s been 7 hours and 15 days…”
Theo without missing a beat announces loudly “That’s how long we’ve been waiting for our food.”
Poor Beth couldn't understand why Sarah and I were HOWLING with laughter, tears rolling down our faces, while Theo just sat there with a big grin on his face, realising that his little joke was actually brilliant and that we loved it. Good work buddy.
Has been much of a muchness otherwise. Last weekend after swimmign we took the kids for a snack and then got some things from the arts and crafts shop in Taradale. Beth got herself a learn-to-sew thing and Theo got himself a claw with bendy fingers attached to strings. It was a bit fiddly to put together but he seems to enjoy it, haven't seen much of Beth's sewing thing so not sure if she really enjoyed that or not.
We got the Asbestos results back from our pool fence - it's not Asbestos. So I chucked it all on the skip on Sunday morning in the howling wind and pouring rain.
Sadly we can't say the same for the fucking shed, it is Asbestos. So when that finally comes down we'll need to faff around and spend a lot of money to get rid of it "safely". What a pile of shit it is, but there's no way around it that I'm aware of. Maybe I can get Asbestos certified myself and remove it. We'll see. Anyway it's still standing for the moment so we don't need to worry just yet.
At least the skip is filled TO THE BRIM wtih stuff now. It rained all weekend just gone, so I had to get out there on Sunday in the pouring rain to finish filling it. It was a pretty average weekend for the kids really, they did swimming on Saturday morning and then we went to the cafe, from then on it was pretty much an iPads day. Sunday was more of the same, at least in the afternoon the rain stopped for 60 mintues and I coudl take Theo for a bike ride. Not an 11k one this time, just 2km round the block with Biscuit.
Thursday and Friday I was up in Auckland with Grant, working on our various Points of Presence to bring them up and get them going bigger, better, faster etc. Wednesday night I took a NOW car home (left my bike out the back of work) and Thursday morning at 6am I was on the road. I picked up Grant in Taupo (he'd driven his car up there as he was staying there for the weekend) and we headed off. We stopped in Hamiton first, at the same exachange where I did a presentation to Spark staff ~10 years ago about the CGNAT on the MX960s. Then to the Kapua Datacentre, which is actually an amazing datacentre. Clean and perfect and amazing!
Then we zipped into Auckland, which took ages. Went to Mt Eden, installed the card, went to 220 Queen St and unloaded a server and quickly racked it in the 15min loading zone on Queen St. Then checked into our hotel, I went to the NZIX meeting at Longroom and then back to the hotel for dinner with Grant. Up at 5am on Friday and back to 220Q to get the server configured and working, then a quick breakfast, then to Mayoral Drive to patch, then to Vocus Parkhead for a couple of hours of patching, then to Glenfield exchange then drove home. The drive home took AGES because we got stuck in Fielddays traffic.
I got home at about 9:30pm after dropping Grant off, pretty shit for having left Auckland at 1:30pm. Plus I did stop in Taupo after dropping Grant off to get a Subway for dinner.
The only other thing I did on the weekend was look at migrating Sarah's email to Google Worksapces, which OF FUCKING COURSE THANKS GOOGLE has fucked up her personal account. It's all still there, but migrated to some werid arse temporary account. Can I call them? Of course I farking can't. Ugh. I'm so pissed off. There's nothing I hate more than stuffing up Sarah's work stuff, it's a nightmare. At least we have a temp solution in place, but ugh. When she contacted me this morning and I logged in and saw the error, I felt sick to my stomach and had to get up from my desk and go for a walk to feel less shaky. It's not the end of the world or anything, but it was exactly what I tried so, so hard on Sunday to NOT do. And still Google somehow managed to back-end fuck it up for us. RAGE AGAINST IT ALL.
Otherwise, things are good. Oh, Paul at work played a prank on my by sticking a cable tie to my bike while it was out the back, so when I rode off last night it went KLACK KLACK KLACK. I thought the back wheel was stuffed again and I was ready to get crabby at the bike shop. But no, it was Paul. I've told him he's a marked man.
Tim