all good things

I realise that the safety-tether-thing to which people walking to and from the bungy-pod underneath the Auckland harbour bridge are attached (though only on the way there in our case) is mostly there to reassure people but surely people might be slightly more reassured if they were attached to the inner rather than outer railing so that at least if they fall over and lean against the outer railing and it gives way and they overbalance over the edge they wouldn't end up falling into the water attached to a large and heavy piece of metal. I wondered whether to point this out to my fellow jumpers but a few looked nervous so I didn't. One bloke ended up not jumping after a minute on the edge; hopefully he was refunded and hopefully they didn't stick the video of him standing shaking on the edge on the same DVD as the shot of his girlfriend's jump. BTW if anyone is going to be in Auckland at some point over the next twelve months and fancies pretending to be me for a couple of hours I have a voucher entitling the bearer to an half-price jump which I doubt I'll get to use.

We will be coming back at some point, though.

***

More speak and some links at some point later; I found an open wifi in the airport but unfortunately it's in the check-in area rather than in departures so I shall have to disconnect and be securified shortly. Only thirty-six hours until we're home. I shall of course provide a full account tomorrow.

***

After the final final final re-packing of stuff and checking of the hotel room for things which had escaped from bags and quickly booking a slot on the bungy for the afternoon we attempted to find the art gallery to look at some arts and possibly get some breakfasts. Despite apparently being open 10-5 M-F at 10.5 on M the gallery seemed to be obstinately shut so we wandered through the nearby park marvelling at the vastness of the trees for a bit before getting breakfast elsewhere then wandering along to the Sky Tower. Although it had sounded reasonably impressive on paper the Sky Jump was looking increasinly unthrilling; the people coming off it weren't quite as unimpressed as the people glumly emerging from the Zorbing-balls but didn't have the hyped look of the recently-bungied. Possibly because of the price. The tower itself was reasonably interesting; although the windows on the lower observation deck are a little bit gakky and smeared the extra $3 to get to the upper level meant less people and slightly cleaner glass to look at the slightly better views, albeit with a slight blue tinge although far better than the cloudy brown effect of the ancient windows of Berlin's Fernsehturm. The lift was similarly slightly better and had a nice glass floor to watch the ground disappearing through.