I was walking home Sunday morning, coffee in hand. Glancing over my shoulder, the road behind me was empty and the far side had tons of time to stop ahead of the crosswalk. On about half way, it was becoming clear that the driver of the little red car had no intention of minding his legal obligation to stop for me.

Fuck, man, straining my already hoarse voice. Hearing me through his open sunroof, I think it was the first he’d noticed that I was there.

Drunk? Blind? Stupid? Sure. It pains me to think that some people have driver’s licenses.

Not more than 10 steps down the road, an older Indian man with a warming smile fixed everything. He simply said to not let it ruin my day.

The sun was shining, the wind was calm. The world was singing spring. Why should I let one moment ruin it all?

Thank you, sir.

The poster for the next Richter City Roller Derby bout is out in the open. Only 2 weeks plus change until the girls get together to knock your socks off. I won’t be in town to ref the event, but I’m sure my partners-in-crime will handle the job just as well.

If you are in Wellington, you should be there.

In a very short while – not that short, but getting closer – I will be boarding a series of planes to take me from this small island to the other side of the planet. I have been doing a lot of research, from books and on-line, text and photo, studied languages and maps to get this far.

I’ll be landing in Frankfurt, but it’s not Germany that will take my time. I’ll head off to catch a train from Berlin to Poznan to begin the first of the 5 countries that I plan to travel through.

I will certainly be taking pictures along the way, rather than resorting to linking to other peoples’ photos. If given time and network access, some of them may be posted here while I am still traveling. No guarantees, though. I may be left with a huge pile to sort through at the end, some of which may land here, either as a trickle or a flood. In any case, it may be better to watch facebook and twitter to see what’s happening along the way¹.

¹ I may or may not update Cedric’s twitter. He’s currently neither followed nor following anyone. It’ll depend a lot on whether I can get relatively cheap mobile phone access when I’m over there.

There is an ongoing process to attempt to curb mobile phone use while driving. This is a good thing – too many people die on New Zealand roads. This article on Stuff really irks me:

Joyce said it was important to strike a balance. He did not believe drivers would accept a ban on hands-free cellphones, which were an essential business tool for tradesmen and small businesses, who might be economically disadvantaged if they could not be contacted while travelling.

Joyce: let’s rephrase, shall we?

There may be tradesmen and small businesses who might be economically disadvantaged if dead.

National: safety standards take priority over money making. Learn this before someone runs me over.

For the first time in nearly a decade, I went skiing. New types of skis, new kind of snow, new terrain and lots of unhelpful muscle-memory. Oh yeah, and no confidence. I have a season pass for Mt. Ruapehu and I hope to be getting more use out of it before my upcoming vacation, but this trip was one for the bruise books.

The weather was stunning at the start – very light winds and quite sunny – but the hills were packed. School holidays had lightly dented the anticipation of getting back on skis. We fought the queues and got up the hill a few times before lunch. Heading back out was a lot colder, as a storm was set to roll in. This is where things started to go wrong. There was a fair bit of ice around and I let myself get into situations outside of my comfort zone. That’s where the muscle memory kicks in and does those sorts of things that you really don’t want it to do. Dragging heels leads to popped bindings and having to recover skis from further down the hill. Add in a few icy falls and the scrapes and bruises moved into both larger numbers and larger shapes. It wasn’t until the last run of the day that I got back into a solid rhythm and started having fun again.

Unfortunately, the weather descended overnight and everything closed up for Sunday, citing blizzard conditions. Fair enough, I probably needed the recovery time. As it stands, I’m not rushing out to buy a bunch of gear to get me through this season. We’ll see what happens over the next 2 months, which may put me in line to gear up with the end-of-season sales. If I’m still standing by then.

In lieu of posting one of the many threads that are running around in my brain, I am taking the easy way out and posting another photo that I pushed onto flickr. This is an old shot, taken from the passenger seat of Shaju’s car while driving around somewhere in Alberta. It happened to cross my radar as I was rebuilding my photo database¹ and thought that I could get some interesting colour/texture out of the clouds. I kinda remember taking the picture, but I only really have the details embedded in the EXIF data. Metadata to the rescue!

¹ f-spot decided to eat its database for some reason. This happened to also highlight some timestamp problems that have been bubbling below the surface. I may get around to writing about it. Maybe.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been adjusting to the new training schedule for Richter City Roller Derby. The new venue is nowhere close to home and I can no longer count on getting there quickly and easily. We’ve adopted a car-pool scheme that has me grabbing a bit to eat after work in Petone before being picked up. Unfortunately, Petone seems to roll up and go to sleep after 5pm and restaurants are slow to open for dinner. This leaves me hunting for good, light food on a time constraint.

I’ve tried Lone Star and I don’t want to repeat the experience. Overpriced and overly rich food, accompanied by horrible music – no thanks. For round 2, I went to the cafe at Lighthouse Cinema. It wasn’t bad, but I got zero 3G coverage inside the building, which cuts my options for futzing around. It’s not the end of the world, but I’ll keep searching anyway. I may try one of the pubs next week.

The wind woke me up last night – that never happens. I had to get up and shut the window because the wind was knocking the blinds against the window frame. Winter has blown in with all its turbulence. As a tribute to the coming storm, I offer this photo. It was taken on a rainy night last week, the poor umbrella having been sacrificed to the season.

If you look closely, there is a bit of an ugly smudgy thing in the shadow on the footpath. I have no idea where that blemish comes from, but 3 of the pictures on that roll have similar problems in different locations on the photo. It’s a bit bummy, but there is nothing I can do about it.

I booked my flights last night for my next vacation. I will be spending several weeks in Eastern Europe later this year. Having been reading through the travel guides for a few weeks, the excitement levels are building. International flight prices are fairly low right now, so my budget will be used more as being-there money rather than getting-there money, which I am thrilled about.

There is a ton of stuff to do before I go—travel insurance, rail passes, itinerary, and so on—but I still have a few months to get it all going. Not long, but a long time to wait.

I have been off work for two days as a result of being sick¹. I think that I am showing signs of improving, but it is never easy to tell from the first person.

Being drained is boring. I now have a solid plan for my upcoming European vacation and have been fixing some nagging computer problems. However, I suck at actually resting. I snuck out of the house for a bit today to try to track down a single fold-out map for the countries of choice – no luck there. I assume that doing some language study is also not resting. So it goes.

I should be back at work tomorrow. If not, I will be pounding on the door of our IT department to get us some real work-from-home options. This is silly.

¹ I am reasonably sure that I have not contracted whatever swine flu thing that is causing the media to panic. The person I caught the cold from only had a cold. So there.