Surf to City and Multicultural Celebrations

This last few weeks we have been embracing the local events, before they wrap up for the winter. The last two weekends saw us complete the annual Surf to City ILT sponsored event and also an embracing culture multicultural festival of food  and dance. 

I don’t normally bother with the surf to city. It is a 3, 6 or 12km walk, ride or run from Oreti Beach to Queens Park. Frankly, 12km doesn’t excite me enough to want to pay to enter, but when Mark asked me did I want to cycle it as part of his work’s team, I thought ah, why not. If I added the 16km to the beach from my house to the 12km it might just make for a fine day out! So that is what I did. On the mountain bike, which by butt is not used to! Mark ran the 12km, leaving his car at the park and getting the bus to the beach, which meant I didn’t have to add the 10km ride home onto the end. We were one of the first to get to the park though, when we had fought our way through the bottleneck and the crowds, having to walk for the first 20 mins before we could even get on the bike and ride!

 

I cycled it with a client of mine, Hannah, who wasn’t sure if she would make the distance, then quite soon down the road asked me to go faster! She was just fine!

I have made a huge effort to keep the knee moving this week, I now have mega drugs which are actually working to curb the pain, enabling me to do slightly more than I have been (although walking is still rather crap so I will have to stick to water or wheels!) I have managed to both swim and ride twice each this week, which is great news. (I try to ignore the awful concoction of opiates that I take to enable this to happen).

 

sunny outdoor ride
rainy indoor ride

Then this weekend was the multicultural festival of food and dance. I always love to go to these, because you get to try unusual foods from far away places that you might otherwise not be exposed to. (plus some odd art selfies..!!!)

 

Here is a tiny taster of just some of the performances that were on during the day. Great to see so many other cultures (other than NZ and Maori) celebrated and embraced.