My name is John Crichton… I’m lost…
An astronaut… shot through a wormhole…
In some distant part of the universe… trying to stay alive…
Aboard this ship… this living ship…
Of escaped prisoners… my friends
If you can hear me… beware
If I make it back… will they follow?
If I open the door… are you ready?
Earth is unprepared… helpless
For the nightmares I’ve seen
Or should I stay?
Protect my home?
Not show them that you exist?
But then you’ll never know…
Farscape Opening Text, https://amp.reddit.com/r/farscape/comments/2iopok/transcript_of_opening_sequence/
I’ve included the opening text from Farscape because, at this moment – in this time – this is how I’m feeling.
Shot through a wormhole, doing a cycle tour in a distant part of New Zealand. Trying to stay alive. Very unprepared.
Should I have stayed at home? Should I have played it safe?
But then.
I never would have known the wonders that I have seen…
LEAVING AUCKLAND
I’m staying at Miranda Springs Holiday Park, after a hard, hot, ride up through the Hunua Ranges in Auckland.
The Hunua Ranges are just outside of Ardmore, which is a defence area. A tiny road cuts its way through the lovely New Zealand bush, as I cycled my way to Miranda Springs.
For reasons which will come clear in the next posting, I wasn’t planning a big cycle day. Miranda Springs, 60km from where I got to yesterday, was always going to be my destination for today.
The ride itself was pretty easy. Yes, hot and sticky, but I’ve come to expect that. I had some good chit-chat with the locals at Hunua, but on the whole, this was a nice easy 4:45 hour, 60km ride to someplace I knew not about.
Cycling into Miranda, my initial reaction was…. disappointing.
Scenery wise:
- It wasn’t volcanic red, hill and windblown like Cape Reinga.
- It wasn’t harsh, desolate and inhospitable like 90 Mile Beach.
- It didn’t seem populated with a community that all knew each and congregated around the General Store, like Broadwood.
- It wasn’t located in a rolling hillside, surrounded by mangrove swaps and wetlands, like Awatere.
- It wasn’t a hippy-haven “drop in, turn on, tune out” area like the Hokianga, where locals stop and chat with you about the New Years they spent at The Gathering in Takaka, Nelson.
- It wasn’t the deep sub-tropical, thick, forests in mountainess areas around Tane Mahuta.
- It wasn’t surrounded by commercial pine forests, which had replaced the native Kauri forrest’s, but with community spirit that is obvious for all to see, like Donnolly’s Crossing.
- It might have a farming background, but it had not been as agricultural and prosperous as Dargaville has been in the past.
- It didn’t have the rich aromatic pine smells of Helensville/Massey, or the wealth of Auckland, or its poverty.
In fact, it is flat, pretty empty of forrest, sparsely dotted with a few cows. There’s no pub. There’s no food stores.
There is only one thing that makes Marinda Springs EXCEPTIONAL: Miranda Springs Holiday Park: https://www.mirandaholidaypark.co.nz/
One of the most relaxing and restful places I’ve visited yet. Its vocanically heated spring water pools are exceptional – equal to any Japanese Onsen Rebecca and I visited in Japan.
After a hard ride, its waters were healing.
If I stayed home, played it safe, I never would have known the wonders that I have seen…
Compare this guy…
