Routine. Routine the great equaliser. The great smotherer of all things different. The inevitable steamroller of all the peaks of life. It’s what we hold to; it’s what we’ve come from, and what we’ll always return to. Routine and time. Time the great healer, time the memory fader, time the double edged sword, time the… ok enough of the cheesy philosophy, I don’t think it becomes me as of yet, I’m still too young and I don’t have a beard. But I think you know what I’m getting at. Two days back and it seems like I never left. Like the past six months was some feature movie I watched last night. Are we that desensitised or forgetful? That six months of adventure is just part of our routine entertainment? Or is that just blatant prosperity, that we take those … Read More
The closing scenes
How does that old saying go? ‘What goes around comes around?’ And so it was that after years of hustling, bargaining, and taking advantage of vulnerable motorcycle sellers in New Zealand, the exact same thing happened to me in Holland. I sold my bike. But being in the precarious position of wanting to fly home, and selling just when winter’s about to start, I got cleaned out with a steel wire brush. Ok maybe not that bad but at least a plastic bristled brush. Putting it in perspective it was only a few hundred dollars loss which isn’t bad for 8,500 km and six months of use. But I’m comparing the deal to my three other bikes I’ve owned in NZ where I actually made a profit when I sold them again. Which is a decidedly better position to be … Read More
The old and the new
Anyone who knows their New Zealand history knows that it was a Dutchman that was the first European to discover NZ. But did you know that he named it after an area in Holland? Well, not him but his cartographers anyway. I rode around Zeeland in the south of Holland, or Old Zeeland if you prefer, just to see whether it really is anything like my homeland. And it was! Take away the windmills, quaint villages, and people driving on the wrong side of the road and it could have been any beach on the Coromandel or Far North. There were white sand dunes, tufts of tussock grass, and waves. Of course the sea is a lot colder being the North Sea so I don’t think there’s any swimming between the flags here. There’s also the Dutch answer to tides … Read More