Spacing out. A lot.

For whatever reason, I made plans to meet up with Dale and Rachel at 8AM Friday morning to bike down to Sumner for breakfast. There was definitely a party of some kind going on the evening before but I did a good job of getting water into my system before sleeping, and I even got about 6 hours of sleep!

We met outside of Dale's flat and rode down to Sumner. It was a beautiful morning though it was a bit chilly. We made it down to Sumner and found that both of the cafes on the beach were closed for another hour (as I predicted). We found one in town that was just opening and waltzed right in.

The menu said WTF which, to me, means "what the f***!" so here's a picture of that:


Here's a picture of what I had for breakfast. "Coddled eggs with sausage":


I tried to convince Dale to skip his lecture and come for a sweet bike ride up over the Port Hills the other direction from last time, but he declined and flew home on his bike. Rachel came down to Sumner for a bit of a walk and we talked about life, plans, insecurities... basically we discussed how coming out here to New Zealand had given us tons of perspective and we weren't necessarily sure if it felt good.

Rachel biked home and I stayed at Sumner for about an hour. I wrote out a chorus to a song that needs writing. Then I got on my bike and, deciding I wanted to have a day at the beach, rode over to South Brighton. South Brighton is just across the water from Sumner Beach.

Here are some pictures from South Brighton:

My bike and bag at the entrance that I used to get to the shore:


Looking down towards Sumner:


The rest of this day I just did a lot of thinking. Thinking that needed to be done. I thought about my life and future. I thought about possibly staying here another semester and why I feel inclined to do so. I thought about the career path I've always thought I'd pursue and decided that it's unlikely that I'll follow that path. I thought about how it can be frightening to get the kind perspective that I'm getting here. Then I wrote a verse and a chorus for a song.. "Lone man walking on the beach, what's troublin' you?" is the first line. I just saw this guy walking by and was inspired to write about what it seemed he was thinking (or what I was thinking).

I ate an apple and peanut butter after an hour and rode up to New Brighton. Here are some pictures from there:

Looking down towards Sumner (much further away than before):


Here is my "sand angel". I was wearing my wind breaker:


I then went for a walk on the pictured pier. It was a nice walk and I enjoyed getting out over the waves. Then I realized that I really wanted a bit of company. I was exhausted from thinking about myself in such depth. I sent texts to just about everyone in my phone but nobody wanted to come down to the beach to hang out.

I rode home from New Brighton just following signs for City Center and made it back to where I new where I was quite fast. I realized on this little bike ride the thing that makes bike riding so cool. The most important thing that you are constantly thinking about while riding is how hard you're going to work. You get to put in exactly how much effort you want to, always, no matter how steep or flat the slope.

I was biking through Hagley Park on my way to Ilam when I saw all of the netball courts filled with people. Having never seen any netball really, I decided to go check it out and I went over. It turned out that every court was filled with 9-12 year old girls. I felt a bit creepy but stayed about 20 minutes just to get the idea of the sport.

Netball!

Then I rode home and found a bit of company

Oh yeah, between Hagley and Ilam some guy dressed in full cyclist attire on a nice looking bike passed me but he wasn't going too fast. I shifted up my gears and rode his tail all the way home. I thought about what all of the people at the bus stops in between Hagley and home were thinking about this guy who looked like a pro being tailed by some bloke on a 50 dollar bike in a pair of running shorts and a cotton shirt.