Homemade sandwiches packed, my sister and I rode into Wellington
to meet the Get-out-the-vote bike gang. The mission? To
ring our bike bells, wearing orange clothes, telling locals to get
out and bloody well vote in the National Election. It seems ringing
your bell and wearing orange scares some people so we decided to
become rolling billboards and wrote our message on our arms.
We stayed party-neutral and cycled behind our leader Tim who was
pulling a trailer speaker system playing classics such as Bob
Marley's 'Get up, stand up, stand up for your rights!' as we weaved
our way around Wellington's waterfront and back through the main
city streets.
We arrived on Cuba street, a bustling pedestrian quarter just
after a man blew up a car in political protest. You can see the
video of the event here.
Next stop was for icecream on Oriental parade where we stayed
with the colour theme and ordered a classic Orange Choc Chip double scoop. It was a
scorcher of a day and as I watched the Oriental Bay fountain
exploding off shore and sticky orange goo melted down my hand, the
familiar saying popped into my head: You can't beat Wellington on a
good day.