I have a road bike from when I used to cycle to an old job before I got my drivers’ licnce. It’s about nine years old but still goes well.

The ride is certainly not short – 15km each way or 30km total, not including the ferry ride inbetween.

And that was the biggest problem with that ride – missing the Birkenhead ferry and having a half-hour wait for the next one. Where’s that harbour bridge cycleway when you need it?

Birkenhead Ferry at Northcote Point, and a local

Aside from that, it was a good exercise. I’d left a change of clothes at the school in case I ever did this – that was six months ago so they were a little dusty – but meant I didn’t have to take a change with me. The school has staff shower facilities too.

I caught the ferry to Northcote Point for the outward trip, and met it at Birkenhead for the homeward trip. On the city cide, I used the Northwestern Cycleway up to Carrington Rd, including its just-opened new section through Kingsland.

The new section is great – and well lit too. Unfortunately the next section between St Lukes Rd and Carrington Rd is incredibly poorly lit and I nearly lost my balance after striking a rock I didn’t see here!

To carry my equipment with me, I’ve upgraded to the Logitech Kinetik backpack, which is a rigid backpack designed to carry a laptop plus a whole bunch of accessories.

Logitech Kinetik backpack

I’ve managed to fit all of these into that bag:

• My laptpop with charger
• Commonly used tools
• Jacket and umbrella
• Cabling
• Lunch
• Breath mints (important!)
• A paper file
• Extra discs and recovery equipment

And my little laptop fits into a separate well-protected compartment, leaving the main laptop bay free to fit a second laptop or additional gear. I’ve already used this to move a couple of serviced and spare laptops around from and to a couple of clients.

I’m going to try to bike a bit more often. If I can get a cheap second bike, it may even be an option to bike to the local train station (Mt Albert). The problem is there’s no lockers there. Mt Albert and Baldwin Ave stations have missed out on the Wedst Line upgrade.

I didn’t think it would start out that way because I’d missed my initial bus (a 241 starting at Owairaka).

I got on the following 233 – a bus that dillies around the St Lukes mall. Not content with that, I jumped off at the point on Sandringham Rd where the two sets of routes join up and got on the next bus to turn up – a 246.

Not only did that bus pass the St Lukes one, it also passed the 241 I had missed to start with.

I got off this bus at Kingsland Station and ran onto the train that was there, which then proceeded to pass the bus I’d just got off.

If I hadn’t missed the initial bus, I’d not have made it on the train. That was the fastest PT trip I’d had in from our Mt Albert home, ever.

Coming home in the evening I figured it couldn’t get any better than that.

It did

Non-stop to Kingsland with just me on board (single-occupant train?). Outside we're bypassing Newmarket.

Arriving at Britomart off my North Shore bus, I headed down the escalator at 4:48 to find a train on Platform 5 going straight to Kingsland at 4:50, non stop. And a whole carriage, just for me!

We passed a lot of confused people at Boston Rd and Mt Eden wondering why the train wasn’t stopping.

Once at Kingsland, the wait for my bus was a whole thirty seconds.

If only it could be like that every day…

Ok, so the train was for the rugby, but at 4:50, two and a half hours before kick-off, few others were there to use it. I think there were about five or six others in the carriage behind. Nobody in the two cars in front.

Since my last post, I have continued with using Auckland PT as my primary means of travel.

Modern Newmarket as seen from the train. Watching the system develop from the hell-hole it started out as, into the beginnings of what will be a world-class system has been interesting, and I have high hopes for the system post-electrification.

I am now using Remuera’s buses to access a new client out there, usually from Newmarket Station.

One thing I’m beginning to enjoy when out on some of these trips to casual or on-call clients is exploring the local cuisine in the nearest town centre to where I’m working that day. Last week it was Nuffield St in Newmarket, the week before that it was a little cafe at the Remuera shops. (Oops, I’ve forgotten the name of both.)

I also enjoy the random conversations that happen with fellow commuters. The other week I got chatting with someone involved with Good magazine while at Kingsland Station.

And as much as it seems to scare people, I’m beginning to enjoy the walks.

I carry my toolkit and equipment needed in a single-strap backpack over one shoulder and my lightweight ultraportable laptop over the other shoulder. They usually balance out quite well.

Wet-weather gear – an umbrella and jacket – live in the backpack.

While the weight of this got heavy after a while when I first started out, I’m no longer noticing this so I guess I’ve built up a bit of back strength. I haven’t had any need to go to the chiropractor this year either. He’s probably wondering where I disappeared to.

I’m also getting more comfortable with walking longer distances. I’m now occasionally walking directly to the nearest station at Mt Albert – a 2.0km walk – rather than catching a closer-by bus to get to/from Kingsland or town.

Another recent development that I think is great is that Google Transit now covers all of Auckland’s public transport – bus, rail, and ferry. It works brilliantly on my cellphone (a Nokia N97 mini) and although it uses a bit of mobile data, Vodafone’s $10 per month data plan more than accommodates it.

Google Transit does assume an integrated, transferable ticket – for example it often suggests catching a bus closer to where you’re standing which goes partway to where you’re going then transfer to the correct route. While this works for those of us with Monthly Discovery passes, that’s not many people. It’s less than optimal for most other users with single-operator monthly or per-ride passes, or those paying cash. Roll on integrated ticketing!

I’ve had a couple more outings using Cityhop cars too, once to transport computer equipment and once to collect an item after-hours. Worked out smoothly both times.

I’m still annoyed at the loss of the GPS display at the Kingsland Station stop on Sandringham Rd, and I hope it’s not long until it and the bus shelter there is reinstated. Having the screen there is so much less stressful than craning your neck and keeping alert for when your bus suddenly jumps out from around the blind corner. Indeed that was one of the push factors that had me start to walk home from Mt Albert Station instead of attempt the bus transfer.

My fitness level seems higher from the walking, and I’m getting to the point where I dislike when I do have to drive. Overall getting around Auckland has become far less stressful for me so I’m more aware of those times when it is stressful. Dealing with traffic is high on the stress list.

Monday March 29 was WOF and service day for my car, and I was going to drop it off for that on my way to meet up with Jon Reeves from CBT to attend the Waikato Trains NOW! petition (I was photographer), but I hadn’t used it in so long, the battery was flat and it wouldn’t start. That was kind-of amusing. Fortunately I was able to just leave it behind and catch a bus in instead.

Overall it’s continuing to go well. I’ve somehow managed to escape a number of rail meltdowns that have affected other people, and one even worked out in my favour. Friday March 26 was a dream run when it felt like everything was timetabled to fit around me! (more in a separate post later).

Sorry for the lack of updates, hopefully there’s still a few of you still around to read these!

I'm sure it was right here...

This was where the bus shelter opposite Kingsland Station on Sandringham Rd was.

It’s made way for the rebuilding of Sandringham Rd for the Rugby World Cup.

I hope it returns soon…

Good thing I always have an umbrella in my backpack. It may be getting more use soon.

And at least the realtime display hasn’t been taken away too…

Dannemora is east of Botany Downs.

View Larger Map

It’s typical of recent developments in the area where, looking at a map of it, it looks like it was assumed that everybody drives. It’s that spread out with a lot of distance between spine routes.

It’s nowhere near anything remotely resembling “rapid transit”, however I felt like a challenge so I thought I’d try to get there without a vehicle anyway.

Step one was to get to Penrose to pick up some parts from PB Technologies, one of my suppliers.

From there the next stop was Dannemora.

When looking up how to do that, I was surprised to find there is a more-or-less direct bus from Middlemore Station to where I was trying to go – except it was set up a little weird.

From Middlemore there’s a route 575 to Botany. From Botany there’s the Botany Loop (rotues 660 and 661) going around some of the suburbs north and east of Botany – Meadowlands, Howick, Half Moon Bay – with Meadowlands close to where I was heading.

Interestingly, the same buses serve both – they start as a 575 at Middlemore Station, and become a 661 at Botany. In the other direction, the 660 becomes a 575 continuing to Middlemore.

The bus trip took over half an hour but I made use of the time by writing the first half of this blog entry. As I type the bus is turning into the interchange at Botany Town Centre. I’m the only passenger on board, and the driver seemed a little surprised that I wasn’t getting off at Botany.

At this client’s home, we started discussing transport and I got to show them the Free Parking video as well as Josh Arbury’s overlay of land use for Botany Town Centre down the road.

He told me that even with all that parking, it gets full and very difficult to find a park there, and that the bus may well be an option. So we had a look at the timetable.

Sadly weekend services are only hourly so they will continue to drive in to do their weekend shopping.

This seems a little dumb – weekday frequencies are half-hourly and one would think that in a case of the terminus of the route being  a shopping centre, potential weekend demand would be higher.

How many other routes’ usefulness is stymied by their low frequencies, I wonder?

That had one major exception – bus travel. It was just too bumpy and the hard disc on my laptop objected fiercely.

Until now. I’ve replaced my laptop hard disc with a “Solid State Disc” meaning the laptop is no longer nearly as vulnerable to bumps as before and I’m now able to work on the bus, or update my blog. I’m posting this from the back of an especially bumpy old bendy bus that’s doing my route home today.

As a bonus the laptop is now even lighter, its battery now lasts longer (five hours!), and it performs quite a bit faster too.

I chose an A-Data 300 series disc coming in at a modest 32GB. My old hard disc is now an external drive carried in my laptop bag for when 32GB is not enough.

Along the way his surrogate is destroyed and won’t be replaced, so Greer must leave his apartment himself and venture out into the world in person, an action seen as dangerous and unnecessary – why would anyone go out in person anymore?

I couldn’t help drawing a similarity to how many see travelling anywhere – why walk anywhere (or use any other means) when you can drive your car?

During the course of the movie, we got to see some of the characters’ real selves. While the surrogates were all good looking and well shaped, the real people were looking really unhealthy – overweight, pale, and weak from never going outside their homes anymore.

We’re on holiday with family in Tahiti at the moment so I saw the trip to the airport as an opportunity to try out Cityhop to get there.

While all other Cityhop locations require to return the car to the same spot you picked it up from, when I first signed up and looked around their member booking system, I noticed that if you selected The Strand as a pick-up point, the system allowed you to drop off at Auckland Airport and vice versa. “Fantastic!” I thought – we could use it for our Christmas holiday – grab a car from their Strand depot the night before, load it up, and drive in to the airport for our 8am check-in, drop it off and fly out. Do the reverse when we get back.

Their 6pm to 8am overnight rate for hiring a car is $30 – which seemed very competitive for getting two people to the airport and very convenient in that we can load up the car the night before.

Except there were some problems:
– The airport car isn’t a swipe-in car. You need to pick the key up from the Jucy Rentals depot, your booking can’t start after 5pm. Weekdays they close at 6pm, weekends 5pm, yet this is not an option when booking. Add to that for some reason it’s not always available?
– The overnight rate starts at 6pm, not 5pm, so the overnight rate is not possible without paying an additional $15 for the hour between (5pm-6pm).

I also hit another problem. I logged on to Cityhop’s site, and booked the car – pick up from the Strand at 6pm Saturday, drop off at Auckland Airport at 8am Sunday. The system said the booking was subject to confirmation which would happen as soon as possible.

Seven minutes later I got an e-mail advising my booking had been cancelled. Five minutes after that I got a call to advise that I cannot drop the car off in a different location from the pick-up point, that the booking system was wrong, and that they’ve now corrected it by removing that option.

A quick online check showed that they had indeed removed that option. The rep who called me wasn’t sure why it was there in the first place. My guess is that someone there wanted it to be an option, but it didn’t work out, and they forgot to remove it.

Apparently I was the first person to try this which is a surprise.

Unlike the usual way of working, I had to go to the Jucy office to pick up the key for the car. And the car was a manual which could be problematic for some people (I saw it as a learning opportunity and got in some manual driving lessons with family prior to picking up the car. I’m a fast learner!).

All up it looks like Airport services are an idea that Cityhop has neither committed to nor closed down. I’m not really sure where it’s at or who it’s for.

It has potential to be a good service – all they need is a car that can be picked up and dropped of anytime like all their other sites. Perhaps a reserved parking space at the domestic terminal?

As it currently stands I’m not sure if I’ll be in a rush to use it again for Airport-related journeys.

As I type, I’m on a train stuck outside Mainline Steam. Prior to that we spent about 10 minutes at Newmarket W, 15 at Boston Rd.

Mobile internet is keeping me sane and allowing me to get some work done, but for a while that wouldn’t go either. I think it’s time I rebuilt my own laptop to clean it out.

Snail race: Who's gonna go first, us or them?

… and now at 10:05am we’re stopped in the tunnel. No view here.