June 21, 2008

Time for a good Whinge

Whinge-the act of complaining.
This post is about two things that I will have a whinge about. One is an extremely negative whinge and the other one is neither negative or positive. The first one is a typed story and the other has been produced into a short film. Two treats in one blog.
AlbanyMegaCenterParking
Where do I start? How can I relate this to those back in the States? For starters the person who designed the car park should be hung in public and humiliatied. Secondly the person that hired him should be hung next to him and all those that agreed the car park was good should be put on trial to loose their construction license.
The parking lot could be compared to the model from Zoolander. It seems like it needs to be atleast six times bigger. The Megacenter is less than two years old and is the only mega shop within miles, so people come near and far to shop. The Megacenter is a mall with a supermarket and a Kmart, you would think that would clue the carpark designers in that there needs to be an extra ordinary amount of carparks to suffice the amount of traffic that it would need to manage. For an example the supermarket has sixty-one spots allocated to it for their shoppers... SIXTY-ONE? Do you want the supermarket to fail, go bankrupt and go out of business? Really?
In order to find a spot you need to lap the parking lot atleast three - four times minimum... it gets to the point where you start thinking that it would be better to go home than to go shopping. The only reason that we go to this Megacenter is because the supermarket there is new, clean, and gots the best deals around... for those reasons we have been putting up with that mess of a carpark. Today however it has crossed the line and we have decided to go else where with plenty parking spaces. After lapping the carpark five times we finally found a parking space on the opposite end of the MegaCenter. Did our food shopping and got the hell out of there...
So that is just the start of the Whinge... being a few thousand carparks short is a big deal, but what is more of a big deal is the layout of the lot. It is not the standard row of spaces all in a nice big lot, it is a maze of retardeness. Go down one aisle dead end, U turn go down the next one and it leads you to Hank in a yellow rain coat where you have to give the password to continue to the next aisle, make a left down that aisle and dum dum dum... dead end U-turn it around again. I think you get the point...CHAOS
The conclusion is that we are NEVER going to the Megacenter for food shopping ever again! I mean that and Leo and I will stick to that. I am sorry that the supermarket is going to lose our sales but they need to do something to help change that darn car park. So if someone that is connected to the Albany Megacenter or connected to New World Supermarket reads this, they should hear "Get your act together, otherwise you will keep losing customers!"
A ShortFilm
Here is the World Premire of "LawnMower"
Rating - M for Mature do to explicit launguage

June 18, 2008

HurricaneOne TV June 17th

Sorry for the delay of the News program this week. Without further ado HurricaneOne This Week...

June 16, 2008

Delayed...RingStinger

Hey Everyone sorry for the delay in posting my HurricaneOne News This Week. The main trouble is that it has been rainy and nasty here the last two days and I have not been able to film with good light.(Not that the light in the other ones is any good) It is so dark that I can barely see myself on the video. I know turn on the inside lights, and I have but they are just horrible and make weird shadows and stuff. I am going to give it one more day... I will have it posted by Wednesday... hopefully... until then I will leave you with a little tale.
RingStinger
RingStinger is an event that is put on by the Takapuna Harriers. This is the running club that I have recently joined. The event consists of two 6k loops (12k) Through mostly muddy ass trails and some road. Some take it serious and others not so. The event was held on June 1st 2008 at 14:30. Leo and I like to do our long runs on Sunday so we figured since it was free entry and a sausage sizzle afterwards...why not do it as part of our long run.

We started with a half hour run first, we tried to time it so that we arrived at the start at the same time the gun was being fired for the start of the "race"... Either our timing was way off or they started the "race" late. I tend to lead toward the latter. We tucked in the back and ran at our won pace. We passed person upon person...when we entered the trails we just followed the person in front of us. BIG mistake as they did the same and it was the wrong way, we got to a dead end and had to turn around. Now we were somewhere in the middle.


As we ran through the trail I didnt see what the big deal was about the muddy conditions. Untile we made a left about 15 minutes into the run and there it was the first of many mud pools. This wasnt your ordinary mud on an ordinary flat trail these were mud pools that seemed to be perfectly placed on the steep inclines of the trail. We used our hands and feet to dig up the mud pool, I was the jackass that wore white and didnt want that to get dirty. We came across four other mud pool inclines along the trail until the mud trails led us onto some dirt and rock trails that ran around the perimeter of Tuff Crater.(Dont worry MikeyPee will go onsite)


As we ran along the crater is dawned on me that we had to do a second lap of the mud pools and I thought to myself o great someone is going down. We continued along passing more people and more people. It got to the point that there started to be rather large gaps in between the people. Its alright we slowly picked them off. we worked our way up and at the end of the first lap we were inside the top 20.


As the second lap started a spectator yelled to us that the first woman was just ahead. Leo really didnt care as we were running a long run and the other woman was going at it fierce. We however eventually caught and passed the first woman, just in time for the mud. The first woman who is now in second latched onto us like a letch on its prey. We didnt try to drop her but made her feel funny. Leo and I talked about runs, workouts and many other things that we could do in the upcoming week. We also made sure to talk about how much further we were going to continue running after we finished the 12k "race". The trails and the crater was a beautiful sight, it led us back onto the road and towards the finishline, but first we had to tackle a big uphill and a steep downhill. We figured surely we would get passed on this last bit. The second woman dropped back and back we got to the top and she had fallen off...so we had thought. On the steep down hill the second woman let her body go and she raced down the hill as an uncontrolled mess. Leo and I moved out of the way, someone who was risking their life over a silly "race" need not get in our way.


I chuckled on the inside as we got to the finishline and saw her take out the first three spectators. She had won the womans "race" but what was the big deal. Anyway Leo and I continued on I ran another 21 minutes while Leo ran even further 28 minutes. We then headed to the Sausage Sizzle grapped us some grub and H2O. We sat and waited for the awards and spot prizes. We heard what the big prize was for finishing in first, a meal for two at some local eatry. No big deal Leo won a raffle and received a nice bottle of white wine. We finished our sausages and water and headed for the exit. We walked back to our flat mud covered and all having a great laugh about the day that was.

I hope that you have enjoyed my tale. I hope to get that news cast up soon, I am real sorry for the delay, but there is nothing I can do about the bloody weather. Enjoy the read...