Welcome back to Mostly Good Ideas! This is the continuation of a semi-regular series (hopefully) where we write brief but fun descriptions of some of our low-carbon adventures, what we learned, what we ate and what we saw on the way. Sort of in the vein of these previous low-carbon adventure reports except maybe a bit briefer because as Shreyas says, “the blog needs content”. With that said here’s a bit about going to the Waitakeres this Labour weekend. Just a day trip because of sickness/need to rest/desire to make ice-cream 

Who: Shanti and Shreyas

Transport forms: bike (let’s not talk about how Shanti’s bike derailleur needs replacing or tuning or SOMETHING and how this means I need to either pour heaps of time into fixing it or get a new bike to make summer bike adventures possible. This depresses me too much when I think about it.) And walking!

Distance: 50 km! Pretty cruisy, about 500 vertical metres

Shanti: Shreyas and I had been discussing halfheartedly what we should do on Labour Weekend for a week but rainy weather made some of the more ‘actually going away plans” (biking to the Whangaparoa Peninsula or Long Beach or biking to Piha to camp) not very appealing and all the trains out west had been replaced by buses, meaning we didn’t have that as a back up option. Oh well! Sunday had pretty nice weather so after some faffing around (aka Shreyas whispering tender loving words to his bike and I cleaned my chain) we packed some brie and crackers and set off from Sandringham towards the North Western cycleway, having several diversions of thought along the way about what sort of gap in traffic is safe enough to cross the road. 

I discovered this route last year when I stayed out in Oratia for a data journalism workshop and biked (despite everyone else driving – it wouldn’t have been too bad of a walk from Sunnyvale either!) which meant I had a few evenings to explore around the West Coast Road, including discovering the Parker Track. Running through it (after biking up the decent hill of Parker Road) on an orange-sunlit winter evening was probably my best and most holy run last year. These small shreds that keep me going outside even when I really resent the Auckland suburbs for being so suburby. 

Some things I noticed: the lovely rippled texture on the kauri trunks, the translucent newly unfurled mahoe (I think?) leaves. How even the somewhat cloudy Henderson creek is kind of delightful when it tumbles and bubbles – running water is so good for the soul. The buzzing of someone’s water-blaster, and the singing soaring feeling of gliding downhill. As Eula Biss says, cycling can feel much more like flying than the metal tube aeroplane experience!

Shreyas and I found slightly different paces but stayed pretty close to each other. One disadvantage of biking is that it’s harder to have a chat while you go, so I think the walking leg was good for that. I wanted to go swimming at Point Chev on the way home but it started pouring, so we went straight back instead, which I regretted since five minutes later the sunshine was completely back. But lying on the deck reading The Anthropologists was nearly as good and I managed to get a stormy swim on Monday instead. 

Shreyas: It was nice to get out to the Waitakere Ranges on bike again, my previous (and first) experience being a moderately challenging (at the time) route through Taupaki. Sunday really is the best day to go, with a lot less traffic in the area compared to other days. We chose to go along the Northwestern Cycleway before heading south through Henderson, which was a mix of nice paths through the parks and extremely poor excuses for bike lanes.

The Parker Track is definitely worth a visit as it’s quite accessible – it’s not super deep in the Ranges and has you turning off the main roads pretty quickly, and has some great flora to check out. Big fan of kauri trees, both living and when woodworked!

I also continued to try out my new Ricoh GR IIIx digital camera which is a very portable street-shooter that has quite a large following around the world. It’s much easier to carry on bike trips and tramping than a DSLR or mirrorless camera, or even some of my film cameras.