Yesterday was quite a day for cycling. It started off in the morning with a jaunt along Te Atatu Road at the back of the local annual Christmas Parade, just behind the kindergarten and before Santa Claus. Just to make it more exciting, and so we wouldn’t get mistaken for passers-by, my sis and I dressed in Steampunk. We had a ball.

Then, in the evening, we joined hundreds of Auckland cyclists who were doing the annual Bike Rave from Mission Bay to Victoria Park market. The idea is to wait until dark, synchronise music, turn on the lights and glitz, and head along this deliciously lovely ocean-side cyclepath, stopping for occasional events on the way. It was a long night but such fun.

At 11pm, we loaded our bikes up on the back of our cars, and headed home, long before the event officially finished.

I started into cycling again in 2008, and immediately wondered why I hadn’t been cycling before that. I am a definite EASY RIDER cyclist – I don’t wear lycra and I don’t go for speed. I go for the adventure. This was my first pic on the Handlebra Easy Rider club blog.

I was thrilled to be on a bike, and I have replaced that one four times. There’s something about leaving the cares of the day behind, and heading somewhere unhindered by traffic, with the wind in your hair, and sailing almost effortlessly along. We have cycled now (my sis and I) almost every weekend when the weather is good, and still not tired of it. Here we are blinged out for the Bike to Work day in Feb 2010. Helen won the prize for best dressed, which was another BIKE.

Here’s a favourite spot on my regular morning walk – across a little bridge on the walkway there are overhanging branches that form a tunnel. At the further side the path swings off jauntily into the sunlight, with a cute tree further on, disappearing beside the meadow. The pictures depict me at various times during this year, after setting up my self-timer on iphone, so that the feeling I always get is captured: Me walking into the Light.

There’s something about that scene that is very evocative to me – of my own beliefs, of a personal striving to step from darkness, of an adventure waiting. I suppose most of all it speaks to me of the joy that comes after sorrow, or the beauty and life found after a period of hard struggle. Whenever I walk through here, no matter what season, I am uplifted. I glance to the right – as you see I am doing today – and see the city in the distance on the other side of the harbour. From here, I cannot hear the traffic steadily creeping towards it from the motorway. It looks like a far off dream.

And I took the time, today, to sit on this seat, facing the sea but hearing the birds all around me, the meadow soughing softly in the breeze, the SMELL of the flowers and seedheads around me. What luxury to stop for a moment and soak it in, in perfect serenity, for a while.

I thought it was time I wrote down my ramblings in a blog. My trip to Scotland earlier in the year was a great start on blogging again, and out of those posts came a book: Following Claire!

So, here I am today, picking up the virtual pen again, and writing my thoughts in the hope someone else might find them interesting. I love the glimpses I get into other people’s lives through the blogs I read, and so I am offering this wander into life in Te Atatu, Auckland, New Zealand, for you – dear reader – to enjoy.

We’re starting at the very beginning of summer here in the North Island, with a record hot season approaching. I started my 60th year in October, and it has been one of my best so far. You find me at this moment financially bereft, (note: trip to Scotland from other side of the world), and having spent a year doing nothing but explore possibilities I’ve only ever dreamed of. It has not been lucrative by any means, but it has been rich with variety, possibility, and creative expression.

For one thing, I’ve become completely immersed in social media. Just a few years ago I was a dabbler on my own personal Facebook page and that was it. I joined Twitter, and sat waiting to see what would happen. Not surprisingly, nothing did.

And then I discovered Outlander. That is, I started listening to audiobooks of the series while making my way in to work on the bus. I got hooked. Soon after that, STARZ started making the series in Scotland, and I joined all the fan groups I could find on Facebook. A deluge of pictures and posts followed that initial foray, and still flood my newsfeed. When I started posting my memes of OutrageousOutlander on Twitter, the posts suddenly picked up interest. I was stuck with the twitter tag I started with -@sniskybobfry – unaware that I could change it. And now, nearly 3,000 followers later, it is too well known. I kinda like it anyway. Sorry, I’m rambling. . . I’m going to stop now. I’ll pick up this thread on a later post.

Today I’ve taken my early morning walk down by the inner harbour, and enjoyed the myriad of seedheads, daisies, Queen Anne’s lace, and grasses all forming a complex pasture between walkway and sea. So wonderful to breathe in fresh air and start the day well away from screens, computers and  traffic.

I’m back in front of those very screens now, of course, and ready to stop and sit out on the porch for a while, with a cup of tea. I hope you’ll join me.