Well the people have spoken. We have had a major swing to the Right with a National-led government elected last night. Still, it’s not all doom and gloom for us. Despite the national trend the Greens increased our share of the vote and have gained a further two (and hopefully, three) Members of Parliament. Congratulations to both Kevin Hague and Catherine Delahunty, as well as our returning MP’s Jeanette, Russel, Sue B, Sue K, Metiria, and Keith - and commiserations to Kennedy Graham who is so close. Fingers crossed for those special votes to get Kennedy into Parliament!
Alan stood for the Greens in the Waimakairiri electorate and his campaign went well in what is typically a difficult electorate for us - Waimakariri takes in the rural towns of Oxford, Rangiora and Kaiapoi as well as part of northern Christchurch not to mention the large farming community included in the electorate - typically National voters. Alan was able to improve the Green party vote and gained 5% as a candidate. Clayton Cosgrove of Labour narrowly headed off a strong showing from Kate Wilkinson of National to win the seat - a seat that had been previously won with a comfortable majority. A similar thing happened in our own electorate of Christchurch Central with a close race between newcomer Brendon Burns and the sitting list National MP Nicky Wagner - at different times during the counting of votes it looked like National could win those seats.
Over 100 Green members and supporters had a party in Christchurch to watch the results come in and celebrate the end of the campaign which has involved lots of work from everyone. Thanks to all of those who helped in whatever way they could whether it was the sterling huge efforts of our candidates, David Moorhouse our campaign manager, the billboard teams, and everyone who spoke to people, handed out bookmarks or campaign material or delivered to letterboxes. We ended up having a rather late night celebrating (or was that drowning our sorrows at the overall result??)
If you want to see some of the campaign material it is on the Green Party website.
What have I been up to since June?? I decided at short notice to go and work at the Broken River Ski Area for the winter so I was away up there from late June until mid October. Had a blast and got lots of skiing - more on that soon!
I was surprised to see a comment on my post on making panniers, so I had a look to see what the ranking was on Google. I was stunned to see that my blog ranked #2 for a search on DIY Panniers!
I’ll have to post a follow-up now with more information :o)
We went to see a film at the film festival last night - In the Shadow of the Moon. This was a great historic movie about the Apollo missions as told by the 24 men who have been to the Moon. It included heaps of footage of the first landing as well as other missions (including the near-miss with Apollo13 as shown in the Tom Hanks film) which I’d never seen before.
I’ve now found that the entire film is on YouTube in several sections, it’s well worth a look if you haven’t seen it. Here is the first part, click on Menu to get to the rest and hover over each clip to see which one it is (they’re not in order). If you double click on the video, it will open in YouTube where you can view it full-screen.
The weather has finally broken! We woke up to overcast skies and cooler temperatures. The weather didn’t look very nice towards the Rainbow so we were pretty lucky with our timing.
The day began with a bit of a climb up our of Hanmer Springs to the Hanmer River bridge. From here the road was pretty good all the way to Culverden. Read the rest of this entry »
Yet another fine day! We were pretty lucky with our weather, clear blue skies all the way. The only complaint was the temperatures which were pretty hot.
Megan passing Island Saddle Hut (not visible) and the upper Wairau Valley
The day started with a gradual climb towards Island Saddle. After passing the Island Saddle Hut, the grade started to steepen and climb toward the saddle itself. Read the rest of this entry »
The wind had dropped quite a bit so the cycling towards the Rainbow was much more pleasant. We were fortunate to meet the people from Rainbow Station moving a mob of sheep so we were saved the side trip to St Arnaud to sign the indemnity forms for access through the station. Read the rest of this entry »
One of the reasons for planning the trip north to south was a bit of intelligence that the prevailing north westerly was a tail wind from that direction. The bit that my internet sources neglected to mention was that this same wind is a head wind in the Wairau - which is also slightly uphill all the way. Read the rest of this entry »
About time I wrote a story about our big Easter cycle trip. So here it is….
We started off in the pre-dawn darkness at about 6am to catch the train to Blenheim. It was the first time I’d done the Coastal Express, so I was looking forward to the trip. Alan got his first puncture just as we rolled into the station. It was off with the panniers and the bikes went into the baggage car.
We’re about to head into town for the Earth Hour festivities (on our bicycles, of course). We’re going to help out at a Green stall then settle down in Cathedral Square with several thousand other people to watch the film The Eleventh Hour on a big screen. Hopefully it won’t rain!
Megan Hieatt and Alan Liefting live in Christchurch, New Zealand.