Kerosene Bicycle Lamps

   Quick post on a bicycle that lives in the Te Papa Museum in Wellington, New Zealand.  This bike is awesome, mainly due to its functional styling in the traditional ladies riding style (British, which is not too far off from Dutch). 

Specifically, though, it is awesome due to its front and rear lights, which are not electric, but rather fossil fuel powered - I hadn't seen this for bicycles before.  I believe they're kerosene lamps!

(Yeah, I'm an environmentally conscious person, but I like these because they're bicycle related - very much more environmentally friendly than fossil-fuel car or even horse power, I believe.)

Wellington, Te Papa Museum, take 2

Outside the museum there was an old Vauxhall in excellent condition, that, apparently, someone had driven that day. Amazing that this would be their commuter car! Email me if you want more pictures of the dashboard or steering mechanisms.

I really should have done a second take with this movie, "Places Not to Fall Down, Episode 4," but I figured enough talking in a museum. Sorry for the bad audio. Transcription below.



"Hi, It's Holden and we're in Te Papa, the Wellington National Museum, and this is another episode of 'Where not to fall down' (sic) and that's on these huge massive bronze spikes that are like (unintelligible) 6 meters high, and you don't want to fall on them. Bye."

Wellington

Spent the day walking around downtown Wellington yesterday.

I was able to take a look around the Te Papa - New Zealand's national museum. Saw some exhibits on the native Maori peoples (not unlike those at the Auckland museum -- which were more complete, I thought), the environment in NZ (complete with magnitude 5 earthquake simulation and volcanoe demonstrations), and some local artwork. It was way too big a museum for 1 day, and the feet were aching.

Also had a chance to look at the botanical gardens and ride the historic Wellington Cable Car (and watch the nearby cricket match happening in the park).

Oh, and I like this huge billboard ad for Adidas that shows the traditonal Haka dance. Possibly the best two videos on youtube, very worth watching:

Video 1

Video 2 (Not sure where that second link went...)

Deft.

More clear cutting

So here's my first picture from the north island of New Zealand. It's the hills and skyline of Wellington, as you come into port. (Okay, there are some other nice buildings, for sure.) I was just amazed at how much "forestry" was going on in the background, to have such a noticeable impact on the hills. Picture to right pops to full resolution.






On the south island, you can really see how "efficiently" they work.