Hitting the Hight Street..

I don't usually go on about shopping. I dont usually do much clothes shopping outside the charity shops.

Avid followers of my blog will be aware that I'm having a little trouble in the footwear department due to cycling all these steep hills and dodgy breaks.. and now they are definitely on their last legs... So to continue with my consumer thread.. and also I know some of you cant sleep at night worrying over my ever thinning footwear, I have an update on my old converse situation.

So I've just got some shiny new No Sweat fair trade baseball boots. They are made in a factry in Jakarta and there is a card with a breakdown of worker hours (40) pay & benefits. I can now steap in little puddles without getting wet feet and know some poor sole is not living as a barley paid abused slave for the likes of nike (who own converse) to make them for me.



Oh, there there were complaints about not enough pics of me (ta for missing me ;-)

And not enough pics of my tan in that one..


So I've only a week or so of being online lots.. then hopefully I'm hitting the hills (well the volcanos & mountains!)..

Scummy Skipper / Dirty Dumpster Diver

skip (CONTAINER) UK
noun [C] (US TRADEMARK Dumpster)
a container designed to receive and transport and dump waste
Synonyms: ashcan, circular file, dustbin, garbage pail, trash basket, trash can, waste basket, wastebin, wastepaper basket, compost heap, garbage bag, litter basket, skip, trash bag, wastebasket, wastebin, wastepaper basket

I got that look again today. That disgusted horrified look. "Ohh! thats dirty" .

I told someone that sometimes I eat from skips.

If your not familiar with the practice of dumpster diving reading this you might to still be in that horrified stage - posibilly picturing me fighting with rats for that half eaten meals... but next time someone in Leeds makes you roast asparagus with fresh basil pesto and home made guacamole.. or in wellington fresh kumara soup and toasted onion bagels.. wonder where the ingredients came from.

You can get all sorts from skips & bin. Clothes, furniture, kitchenware.. well anything and everything. But why I especially like dumpster diving food is because it used to make me so mad to see what's in there. (Ok it still does but hey somthings its hard to be horrified when your faced with nice big punnets of blueberries & strawberries or a gialnt box of shitake mushrooms).

As an example the Leeds 'magic skip' its a veg wholesaler which means as it has to go on to other places stuff would be thrown away before it turned. Most of it is packaged up so its not even slightly gross. And things like Oranges & Bananas have their own skins. So.. I'd read the boxes & packets and they'd be from Brazil.... Zimbabwe... New Zealand.... All over. Somebody grows this food, and is probably underpaid for it, then we put it on a plane pumping out heaps of carbon dioxide so we could eat things out of season, and then while most of it was still perfect to eat - maybe a moldy orange or soggy mushroom, in a pack of totally good ones - we chuck it away to fester in a landfill where is can leach out methane and add more greenhouse gasses to our out of control climate. Thats disgusting. Thats horrifying.

So I'm dirty? Redifine dirty.. whats really dirty is what we leave behind.. the chemicals we put down our sink and over our houses & gardens, the carbon and toxins we pump into the atmosphere, the feces we flush down the loo into the watercourses & sea, the plasitc we throw away and the veg we dump in landfills adding to the climate chaos. This dirt will be around for a long time, it will outlive us. Our kids and grandkids can clean up our dirt.

And they call me dirty for recycling perfectly good food.

So I skip to reduce my carbon footprint, to live cheaply and cos its fun! The magic skip in Leeds was like the local shop.. you'd meet friends there as you perused the selection. Wellington has a cake skip... Fresh bread, donuts, almond croissants, pecan pie, chocolate cake.. hmm am I even beggining to tempt you?

If your all really good and post nice comments I'll tell you the story about how I got half of Christchurch police after me for dumpstering..

--

i just found a whole directory on yahoo on Dumpster DIving.. its under Hobbies?!

If you missed that link before this is really good carbon footprint calculator.

The Macadimia nut dance...

I've finally given up trying different routes to cycle to work.. it was becoming frustratingly comical as I'd look at the map and find ''direct' looking routes across town then try them out and find mysef on a roller-coaster of impossible hills you have to push your bike up and that I diddnt dare cycle down with my dodgy breaks.. If these hills were in the UK they would have a cliff lift up them I've nearly worn through my shoes slowing my self down!


However - I was drawn on by the belief that if I looked hard enough I'd find an MC Echer route that would mean I could go downhill all the way... there and back.. but sadly no avail. Looks like I can't beat physics..

When I'm feeling uber fit I go the the 'Rocky route' which involves finding the biggest steepeds hill and pushing my bike up it, in the hope the rest of the way will be downhill (which as the name sugests is Rocky's cycling strategy) It kinda works...

I seem to be reverting to my NZ shape pretty quickly.. might need some bigger trousers but ohh blimey.. cold pressed macadima paste mmmm like better then marzipan, and no sugar ,I could eat a kilo a night ..



So not much going on right now.. seems a bit topsy-turvy having had the most crazy 6 months ever doing lots of insanely exciting things... and now I'm not up to much for a couple of months i write a blog! Ahh but lots of you are a long way away.. so i suppose that the point. The last few months in England/Scotland/Ireland/Wales&Spain will have to wait for my memoirs.. (wondering how many people are now wondering exactly how to bump me off!)

I've got a new room with a deck outside dieactly opposite the flashing 'Samsung Mobike Phone' sign.. but soon I hope to come home on a balmy evening and sip G&T's on my deck as the sun goes down (or at least roobois tea). You'd think I'd know better than to hang out on decks after that party though!


My flatmates are ace and theres aways something going on and people to hang out with. The include these guys. Eabha is one and a half and every night I come home she rushes over to put my cycle helmet on, shes dead cute. The local Food not Bombs runs from our place and a heap of assorted meetings and discussions are going on in the living room most nights.

There was an Auckland 'Women Take back the Night' which was fun, after we took the road for a while the (male) cops showed up sirens a blaring and not a single one of us even acknowledged their arrival..

Oh yeah.. I'm not compleatly kicking my heals.. very busy setting up Indymedia climate soon to be at climate.indymedia.org we hope!



So I'll leave you with a word from Mr Bert and his moist throat:

Oh I love chinese supermarkets!

xx
ps. and I'll put some new pics on flicker soon, from before my bag got nicked, theres been a delay as to add to my fun my laptop is very poorly.. she must have heard me say too many times "but at least Priss [my laptop] diddn't get stolen!

But to be going with, if you havent already seen them, are some pics from Stirling, Mayo and Escanda (spain) and the best of pics of the world from my travels. http://www.flickr.com/photos/cookielovescake/