STICK MAN

I bought a FIZAN Explorer hiking pole yesterday from Katmandu.

It's a nifty little bit of kit that was useful yesterday.

I had gone out to Petone - aka Robzone - to meet up with Richard and Shelley to watch the rugby on-screen at a pub. Hiking, exploring and Katmandu all were relevant words as the getting there proved to be a bit of a trek.

I left the apartment at about 2PM with plans to get to Petone by 3PM.
I went to the bus-stop in Manners street which is only a few metres away from the end of our lane. I waited, with other people for about 20 minutes for a bus, which is unusual for central Wellington, until someone came along and said that all busses were being diverted because of the 'Black Lives Matter' march.

I walked down to the end of Victoria Street and back across to Willis street and caught a bus to the station there. This bus joined stop-start traffic which was being held up by the march down Lambton Quay and took a half hour to get anywhere near the train station so I jumped off the bus and walked the rest. This jarred my knee a bit as I'd hurt it playing tennis a couple of weeks back. I arrived at the station to discover that trains were not running to Lower Hutt and were replaced by busses. I toddled along to the bus stop and saw the bus I wanted for Petone pulling away. The bus monitors said there would be a 30 minute wait for the next bus to Petone. After 25 minutes some busses arrived and I and others wanting to go to Petone were directed onto a bus only, after a 10 minute wait, to be shooed off because "sorry, this bus won't stop at Petone" and put on another bus and an obligatory 10 minute wait. Eventually I arrived at Petone Train station which, in the spirit of Monty Python's Cheese Shop sketch was uncontaminated by trains. I set off walking up Jackson street.

A little way along I saw a Kathmandu store which, no surprises there, were having a 50% off sale. I went in and purchased the hiking stick as I knew that this would help in walking and take the weight off my painful knee injury. I thought $39 marked down from $79 was a very good price and am happy with the purchase. The salesman put a street walking attachment on the bottom which will protect the carbon tip.

Good old Richard was outside the pub waiting for me (and missing vital parts of the game) as I arrived. While Shelley bought me a beer I successfully managed to distract Richard enough to miss a Wellington try (which were very scarce in this game against Auckland). I showed him my hiking stick and he was very impressed. I know he likes such things having been given some by an old geezer - see SLIP SLIDIN' AWAY

I didn't get much of a chance to try out the FIZAN Explorer as R and S kindly drove me back to Wellington. I'll get out and about today to give it a workout.