39: Colonial Knob Hike (Elsdon, Porirua)

I woke up this morning to a beautiful New Zealand winter day. Pristine conditions with clear blue skies and and crisp winds blowing from the northwest. This past week was particularly heavy in the work department, so after finishing up some projects at home, I decided to venture out and take a hike (tramp in kiwi terminology) to the summit of Colonial Knob. I'd heard about it and read a few things on it, and amazingly for the past 9 months that I've been living here in Titahi Bay, I somehow managed to evade this mountain literally in my back yard (not on purpose, though). As with nearly everything I do, I always have a digital camera on hand to capture the action. Most of my friends live in Wellington and with the price of fuel these days at $2.12 per litre (or $6.70 USD per gallon), it's hard to attract any exercise buddies up this way. Click on each photo for larger view.

30: Titahi Bay Panorama

Greetings all,
Well, I have since moved on to another level of progression here in New Zealand. I was living in town for most of 2007 due to my work and school obligations being on campus. However, with the recent ethics committee approval of my PhD project, the study will now be focused up the road in Porirua. I will be running subjects through the City Fitness health club in Porirua so I decided to move about 5 minutes away to the panoramic beach community of Titahi Bay. Take one look at the photos and it's not hard to see why I made the jump. I am also working out of City Fitness, so it's a two for one. My life is now effectively centralised in one location, which will cut down tremendously on petrol costs. By the way, by comparison, it's still cheap in the US, even at $3.50 a gallon

For information on each photo, simply place your cursor on top of the photo. Click on each photo for a larger size