davetapson

I hope like hell that any indication the politicians are going to raise their salaries over this time will be met with righteous indignation and suitable vengeance.

Yeah, that's like saying "Check, a designer shack on Clifton beach is expensive". But yep, property is not cheap here, anywhere. There are some places where the income/property price ratio are better than others, but nowhere is it cheap. Property price vs Income from Core Logic below. Couple of things to think about: House price demand driven by - lowest ever interest rates - cash in pocket due to Covid travel restrictions - low LVR reqts - folk returning to NZ with cash (lots) in their pockets - no capital gains tax charged on investment properties - can claim interest cost back from tax These dropping: - evidence interest rates will rise (longer term fixed rates now 3.5% or so) - borders beginning to open - LVR reqts for investment properties becoming quite stringent - they say more folk will return to NZ post Covid, Tony Alexander says not. (watch this space) - talk about CGT - removing allowance to claim interest costs from tax (this going to be an investment property killer) - personally I think this is wrong, although I can see the point. Either allow business costs to be claimed, or don't. Don't fiddle. So... likelihood is that property prices will stagnate, maybe even drop a little. But no one can see the future... Bottom line: Go live in Christchurch.

How much Kiwis spend on travel, according to Tony Alexander (I suspect that part of this is that everywhere is cheap compared to NZ... but having not made it off the NI (Rangitoto is as far as I've got, not even Waiheke ) since I arrived in Oct 2018 it's just conjecture for me): "... spending $10bn previously allocated to overseas travel each year, we have seen a surge in residential property purchases develop in this unusual point in time." $10b Kiwi. Not peanuts. I wonder what the net balance of inward vs outward tourism is? Could be lockdown has been more injurious to external tourism than local...

Re. the outsourcing of fish stuff, the local Chinese takeaway cooks snapper fillets for $1 - see quite a few folk taking in fresh fillets of a Sunday evening. Filleting is easy, happy to give a filleting workshop... Although I suspect @Intern would probably give my technique a bit of a skeef look. (Start with a slice across fish behind head from skin to backbone, run knife along top of back to slice fillet off bones - angle the knife against the vertical back bones. Half way down the fillet will be a row of horizontal bones, just cut through these using as much force as necessary and continue angling knife against vertical bones. Will hit ribs at some stage, run knife against these until knife hits skin on bottom of fish. Cut along bottom to free fillet. Then if you fancy, flip fish and fillet over so the fillet is skin side down on board, then run knife between fillet and skin, angled towards the skin. If you can get good grip (which is why leaving fillet attached at tail can help) you can slice the fillet off the skin in one sweep. Cut skin off tail, turn over, repeat. Done. If we getting technical, one of the local guys I spoke to said that you can gut snapper by merely grasping the loose skin by their throat and just pull. The skin will tear and the guts and all will come out. I've not tried it, but seems the simplest and least messy way to do it. The thing with snapper being that you have to leave it sufficiently whole for the Fisheries Officers to be able to measure it, so can't fillet it on board...

The mussel farms are legendary. We were camping out on the Coromandel one time at Te Puru and the boaties were catching so much they came over and said 'here you go' and gave us a bunch of fillets. Same time there was a Maori family who where tucking into a bucket of something so went over to have a look and came back with a basin full of pipis. TBH preferred the snapper to the pipis...

Need to get an mtb for 10 yo. Bit stymied with the 'but he will grow out of it' but that's part of the deal I suppose. Small adult 27.5? Probably Torpedo 7?

???????????? Yeah, and the sights you see are not quite what ones fantasies might mislead one with when one imagines nudist beach...

Bushman's Grill is like Spur with better steak house ambience, and small kids play area. If you looking for Spur experience (i.e. if you have young kids!) it's well worth a go. https://www.bushmansgrill.co.nz/

(note to self: learn to use multiquote)

Looks like you got the track covered!! The view as you rise up and over from the initial climb is just spectacular. I love it. Your next mission, should you choose to accept it, is to find a route from Okura River Mouth back to Long Bay somehow through the farmland. I've seen people walking it, but not managed to find a cyclable track. Maybe at low spring tide it might be possible to cycle the beach towards Okura. Have a look at at this track at Devonport - it doesn't look much on the map, but is one of the most entertaining rides I've found around the area - it takes you up to the North Head and across some funky bridges on the harbour side of the track with views over to the city. I cycle this from Murrays Bay / Mairangi Bay / Windsor Park (where we are now) along Beach Rd to the starting point of this route on Lake Rd. Stop for a coffee on King Edward Parade. There are a couple of alternatives leading up funky climbs in Devonport village as well as a route to Stanley Bay and back over a bridge over the Naval Base but that is too fiddly for me. https://www.strava.com/routes/2819001694226079444 The route is created as a run as if you set it up as a cycle it doesn't allow some of the zigs and zags. I have a back route off North Head, but Strava won't agree that there are paths there. If you were to run it, you could run along the beach to North Head. I've tried cycling it but the sand is very loose and uncyclable, unlike Takapuna beach etc. As an aside, if you are looking for routes, follow Braam Swanepoel on Strava, he's ridden just about everywhere there is to ride around the North Shore... https://www.strava.com/athletes/39332328

We have Sunrise Ave that goes up the East side of the ridge, and a Sunset Rd that runs down the West side... Somebody being cute in the past.

Oh, and if you looking to eat out, do yourself a favour and hit La Spiaggia in Murrays Bay - best steak in the country so far. You should be able to walk... Trying Bushman's Grill tonight which is supposed to be good.

And if you feeling strong, you just combine them. Would be approx 60km with more ascent than you could feasibly find in Gauteng...

The other nice ride is straight down Beach Road the other way to Devonport. There are some nice tracks across bridges etc, not MTB, but pretty entertaining. If you have Strava I'll point you to one of my tracks so you can see the route. I'm a bit busy this weekend, and unfit, so riding with me would not be a huge amount of fun. Can point you to some folk who ride Saturdays, but they've all moved to eBikes, unless you have one? Ebikes with them doesn't = gentle ride.

Hey Kenneth - just head off down Beach Road Northwards until you see the turn off for Long Bay Regional Park (Google Peter Blake Marine Education centre, that's the road), take a left accross the bridge into the park then head through the park on the road, to the boom gate, through that, look for a turn on a walking path to the left, follow that - will take you into the park - not rough MTB, but got some nice up and downs and beautiful. On the track, take the 100 acre wood loop to the left - it will bring you back onto the track but adds a bit off off road. The path will take you to the Okura River Mouth which is turnaround point. It's a nice ride from RB and doesn't require driving to Woodhill.

And there we go... https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/300276451/suspicious-item-found-during-armed-search-on-aucklands-north-shore-made-safe

Had some weird happening up at the top of Sunrise Rd near Rangi. Cops all over the place, carrying pretty interesting looking tactical rifles. All my dealings with NZ police have been with pleasant, polite, helpful and unthreatening individuals - this includes dialing 911 for a lost kid when said kid disappeared while walking home. (Got confused about the route home - took a turn that would have lead to our previous house and then none of the turns after that worked.) So was interesting to see what the hard-core version looks like when it gets wheeled out. Seems mostly plain-clothed, and heavily armed - and female (not mostly female, but there were some slight chicks carrying big gats. Thats 'gat' as in gun, not gat as in...) I think there is an under-current to this society that is not that readily apparent.

Got a link?

The strange thing was, as you are riding along (we did quite an ambitious ride), you pass folk on normal bikes (like your own bike!) and just think 'shame...' - but it's not a patronising thing, it's a realisation that normal bikes are just dead dead dead. And this is me riding a borrowed, medium size, female oriented frame with flats (I've not ridden with flats for 20 yrs)... You can choose the power settings the bike is using - my fanatic mate tries to leave it in 'eco' which is enough to overcome the mass of the bike plus a (fair) bit, I just used what I needed to be able to keep up - he's a machine, I'm not. I did manage to finish the ride on one battery, he used just over half and the third guy, who'd been carrying a spare battery (in case I ran out) used a battery and a third or so. So a group of unmatched riders can go out and as long as the good riders aren't hooning it on max power, the weaker riders can keep up.

I was looking at a beautiful piece of property in Dairy Flats with an agent, and he said to me "Don't come and look at this property if you can't afford it, it will break your heart" (yeah, too late.) Same with ebike - don't ride one if you want to keep riding your old bike - it will break your heart.

That was my point of view too. One of my buddies is a fanatic cyclist, cycles every day etc. His cycling group slowly converted to ebikes but he held out for two years or so until one of his buddies eventually said to him "look, just try my ebike" He's converted, and showed me his fitness profile - probably 20% up on when he was riding a normal bike. Can only ascribe it to being able to exercise for longer in more useful fitness zones, while having more fun. They also have more weight and big fat tyres which means you can smash your way around places like Woodhill with impunity. If we weren't still trying to get into the property market I'd not think twice.

The Saffas in Browns Bay rave about Sherwood Takeaways - you need to ask for 'soft chips' - but they didn't really have the slapness that slap chips require... for me anyways. https://goo.gl/maps/JGwBuu9Lukmaq6QH6

Yeah, so at risk of being fired from the forum - got invited by a buddy to use his wife's eBike to ride out Puhoi valley, back down the Waiwera valley via the far side of the Island. EBikes are where it is at. Normal bikes are dead. They just don't know it yet. https://www.strava.com/activities/5070686274

Yeah, they see vehicles moving and figure out that as they're moving, the light must be green and just go. It's a first world problem. Not used to having to figure out what to do when things don't work! My cousin runs safaris for Americans. He says the main difference between them and us (and in this case probably Kiwis and us) is that as soon as they get hit by a curve ball, they are stumped and can't move forward. We are so used to dealing with curved balls, we don't even notice them.

Haha - I had no idea! Was being serious The missus got hers pretty much like that - they called her practice up and asked 'anyone want a jab...?'