That’s the Birkenhead Bus Company located down the road from us a mile or so. At some point it was sold to Ritchies whose logo is on the van at the left. You still see a few Birkenhead Bus logos around, but mostly it’s Ritchies now.

Ritchies is the biggest contractor supplying the Auckland Transport buses. They also do a lot of charters etc.

And now they’re owned by KKR. You know: giant grinding global wealth-sucking private equity juggernaut KKR. Unfettered lightly regulated quarterly returns to billionaire investors KKR. The Monopoly man with his top hat KKR.

If things play out like they usually do, the new owners will be squeezing and hammering dollars out of that funny tan and green building with its sweet 1940s lettering until there’s nothing left but a pile of rubble, and then the government will come in and pay for the cleanup.

Or maybe modern management methods will enable better service at lower prices so the poor and elderly who rely on buses can lead happier lives and the taxpayers who fund the service will keep more of their hard earned money.

If I were a betting man I know which one I’d pick…

After weeks of training camp in Australia, more weeks of acclimation in Japan, the actual Olympics, and two weeks of quarantine on the South Island, our neighbor Caitlin is finally home, weighted down with her gold medal.

As the Minister for Covid Response embarrassingly said the other day, it’s important to get out and spread your legs during lockdown. Here’s a few pictures of things we’ve seen during our leg spreading sessions this week.

We found some new trails in the neighborhood.

Dinosaur 107 on a big old tree stump is kind of an intriguing sight… where are the other 106? Extinct?

A kereru or wood pigeon.

A fairy castle and plant shoppe from one family who still has the energy to make every home school day an adventure.

The government position in this and our previous lockdowns is to not worry because essential services including supermarkets are still going to be open.

And I have to say things have run surprisingly well. The supermarkets have stayed open, along with the mom and pop shops. The buses still run. And all the free health care is still there and still free.

But this time, delta variant time, is harder. Some infectious people visited our local store, potentially exposing almost all the staff. They are self-isolating for 14 days, so no store. We’ll have to go down the road!

The NZ government’s Covid Tracer App is pretty good and nearly everyone uses it to scan QR codes at nearly every public location. Helps a lot with contact tracing.

But now that we’re in lockdown, it’s simpler.

We’ve watched this flower spike grow and grow over the past few months. When we went to take this picture we found out it was covered with bees. Lots of good bee meals there.

According to the internet, this plant is a fox tail agave, more academically known as Agave attenuata.

On a memorably unmemorable day in France some years ago, I discovered the beauty and charm of old door knockers.

Today on our lockdown walk, we spotted a nice knocker, and then the next two houses had good ones too.

We think maybe it’s a bit of neighborhood rivalry, like on those streets where everybody has to do Christmas lights.

That’s my former colleague and current buddy Lucio enjoying a plate of food at the Pachamama Latin American market last Sunday. Lucio is Brazilian, which is similar but different to the Spanish speaking countries who made up the market vendors, so he and I (along with Indian colleague and buddy Yaseen whose hand you can see on the left) could all feel like tourists together.

The market itself was smaller than we expected. We had lunch, got some treats, and basically that was that. I wasn’t even going to post a story because I didn’t get any good pictures.

But then, on Tuesday, we started hearing about Covid-19 in the wild for the first time in about 8 months. And then on Wednesday, while we were all doomscrolling the list of “locations of interest”, there it was: the Pachamama market.

We apparently missed being there at the same time as the infectious person by a few minutes… whew! So, no danger after all. But I will definitely remember that market more vividly than otherwise.

I’ve been geeking out on spaceship books more or less since I could read. And even in the space operas that feature warp drives or wormholes or some other faster-than-light engine, it seems like there’s always a need for impulse power.

And so the term “delta v” is a long-standing part of my vocabulary even though I don’t know anything about rocket science. It refers to the amount of impulse needed to effect a course change in space. More impulse means more fuel. Captains worrying about having enough fuel to outrun the aliens / asteroids / proton storms is a pretty necessary ingredient in those books. It’s just one of those ideas I grew up with.

But now we have the delta variant, a whole new delta v. And NZ made a big course correction this week… the entire country clamped into lockdown. As far as we’ve been told, everyone did everything right… but our precautions weren’t quite enough.

So, we’re burning a lot of fuel, to carry on the metaphor, trying to change course quickly and avoid the health catastrophe that awaits those who are unwilling or unable to swerve out of the way.

This outbreak, although now spreading around the country, started right in my neighborhood. It’s a sobering thought to realize that last Sunday I was at two or three of the “locations of interest” just minutes away from the index case guy. Lee’s fully vaccinated and I’ve had one dose, so our personal risk feels pretty low, but still, yuck.

For now, it’s work from home, take walks around the neighborhood, haul out the bike trainer for some hard exercise, set Netflix on ‘binge’, and wait.

Fingers crossed.

There is big money in enterprise-level IT stuff. Which means there’s a big marketing budget. And so I found myself a guest of a company I don’t even buy from at last night’s All Blacks game vs Australia. We had seats in a Chairman’s Club box pretty close to field level. That meant a great view of the field, a bar and buffet, and even a post-game appearance by a former Al Black and current coach. Sweet as!

As usual, the All Blacks won, meaning we kept the Bledisloe Cup for the umpteenth time. Yay.

Here’s the opening haka, which is supposed to intimidate the opponents. Seems to work!

After the game they took us all to a big and popular downtown club. Not the sort of thing I do. I’ve crossed some age threshold, because instead of saying to myself something like “wow that girl is hot!” I was much more thinking “I wonder how her folks deal with her dressing like that?”

It was great to be wined and dined, even if I’m too old and jaded to be quite as impressed as I might have been a few years ago.

Got my first shot today, thank you Pfizer!

NZ has rolled out the vaccine slowly, but that’s been a considered decision. By closing the borders, we have mostly kept the disease off the island. We can manage without tourists and overseas holidays for ourselves. For a while.

But now that the frontline workers, senior citizens, and medically fragile have had a chance, we’re into the general population phase of the vaccination campaign. I became eligible on Friday and got a Sunday appointment.

Bam! This is what good governance feels like.

We’re right in the middle of winter.

The weather forecast for later in the day is wind and rain, but it was a pretty morning… the water was as smooth and clear as being in the pool.

Three rainbows so far.

This magnolia tree, and others like it around the city, are among the very ‘spring’ blooms as the days start to get longer. It’s a slightly mixed blessing for us because this, our Olympic gold medalist neighbour’s tree, does block our view out to the bay, but they’re very pretty and attract a lot of birds.

Last weekend we went all the way out by the airport to see the the start point for the new Central Interceptor wastewater tunnel. They’ve spent a couple of years digging this hole and lowering the tunnel boring machine into place. Digging along at a few feet per hour, the tunnel will eventually stretch right across the city and bring dirty water back to the treatment plant.

Up top, it looked like any construction site. And you couldn’t really see much at the bottom of the shaft. So, probably the best view was watching the 15-minute video.

That’s how big the tunnel will be. Thanks for the picture, helpful Watercare employee!

Having a big open house like this was a cool PR thing to do, and we learned a little bit about sewer systems and boring stuff (hah, that’s a joke that nobody ever thought of before). (or did they?)

It never looks as dramatic in the pictures as it does when you’re out there swimming. And in real terms it wasn’t… the biggest waves we encountered were maybe – maybe – six feet crest to trough. But when you take a glance in front and see nothing but a wall of water, or even worse when a poorly timed breath finds you unexpectedly submerged for a second, it’s a bit full on! It does feel like you’re in the wash cycle, especially close to shore where the breakers break.

The swim group is now in its full winter routine… only about 45 minutes in the water followed by a hot shower at the surf club and a latte across the road. During coffee time we work on our story in case we run across anybody who hasn’t heard it all before. Did somebody get blown a little ways off course, or have their goggles pushed askew? That’ll do just fine.

Aw, shucks, I can say to anyone within social distance, just a morning dip… but it was blowing a gale, I tell you what. Nah, the 55-degree water’s not that cold once you toughen up a bit. I was fine but this other guy got in between two waves and…