I like to ride my bicycle.

If I'm honest, the one thing that sticks out most for me in the year 2009 is bicycles. That pretty much sums up where my focus was for most of the year. Bicycles and sustainability. And finding a million ways to cook awesome food utilizing silken tofu.

What I did with my bikes was I took the first bike I got in 2008, and I did it up a little bit, made it a bit nicer, and then sold it for more than I bought it for. Combining that money with the money I got for Xmas I bought another BMX frame, and built up ANOTHER bike. It was that bike that I crashed and broke myself with. After that accident I went on the sickness benefit because of my injuries for a little while, which brought me in enough income to put towards ANOTHER BMX, which was better than the previous by far. However, I realised that BMX bikes are probably not the most suited for long distance riding, or commuting, which was something I wanted to get more into. So, that's when I decided to sell that bike, and buy a single speed road bike instead.

That's when things started getting crazy. I bought a fixed gear wheel set for cheap on Trademe, which was decent, and got into riding fixed. And I started riding my bike into town all the time. Whenever I would go to the yoga centre in town, I was riding my bike. This did wonders for my health, and my mental state I think. I would ride everywhere, whenever I had an excuse I was riding. I made friends with all the bike shops in the area, always looking for deals on parts and tuning everything up right.

One weekend two of us decided to attend the E.C.O. conference, to network more with eco groups. The conference was far out west, but I was determined to ride to it, partly just because I liked riding my bike, especially long distances. And partly because I was determined to start relying on sustainable transport more often, especially when taking part in eco events. Unfortunately my friend wasn't much of a cyclist. Like, not even slightly. We rode together from Otahuhu to New Market, and it took significantly longer than usual. I was going perhaps a quarter the speed I normal travel at, and he was still lagging behind! From New Market we caught the train to Swanson, deep in West Auckland, and from there had to ride up this steep and windy hill to get to the conference centre. It took us about an hour or so to get up the hill and find the place, yet only ten minutes heading back down the hill. As we got close to the retreat centre my rear tire got a puncture. Did I mention it was raining? That was a definite adventure. And I don't really know why we attended the conference to begin with. On the way back into town we stopped off for a soak at the pools in New Market. When we got out to ride to the yoga centre for a special program that evening, the Auckland rain really hit us hard. We arrived absolutely saturated!!

It was around that time that I started attending meetings to organise for a big climate change action on the 24th of October. The 24th of October was an international day of action against climate change, and in New Zealand a large number of events took place on that day. At the first meetings we had for this in Auckland, different ideas for different actions were put forward, and we split up into groups who would focus on one specific action. I joined the other cycling advocates to organise a mass bike ride through the city. We had many meetings over the next few months, and the result was really an amazing event. In the end we had over 400 cyclists meet up in the city, and cycle together 12km to Mount Eden. We had a team of about 12 ride guides, who blocked traffic at intersections to ensure that everyone was safe as we rode. Some of us had practiced that route up to ten times, just to make sure the ride was perfectly, and it did for the most part. It was a huge success actually, a highlight for the cycle advocacy movement in Auckland for sure.

(I led the ride on the 24th. This is me on my green machine at the front of the ride)

Another inspiring event that I attended in May of 2009 was the GetAcross March, which was a protest action calling for cycle and pedestrian access to Auckland's Harbour Bridge. This bridge effectively splits Auckland in half, and if you are a cyclist, that means that if you want to get over to the North Shore, you need to shell out for a bus or a ferry to get you there. It is a definite barrier to sustainable transportation in the city. So in May around 5,000 people showed up to a protest to march across the bridge to show their support for pedestrian and cyclist access to the bridge. Unfortunately, although the police were happy to allow us all to have access to the bridge, the transport authority for Auckland said 'NO'. The head of the transport authority was actually at the protest, and repeatedly told everyone that they would not be allowed access to the bridge. Unfortunately for him, and the two dozen or so police officers who were to try and keep five thousand people off the bridge, people power had spoken, and we all decided that we were going to go on the bridge anyway.

When I arrived at the protest there were a whole bunch of speeches taking place, but I quickly got bored of them. Instead I made my way over to the police barricade which was blocking access to the bridge. It was there that Wayne, the transport authority head, was standing. A few of us on bikes stood there and mocked him for a good while, as slowly more and more people made their way over to the blockade. Wayne continued to deny us access, so a few of us thought we would make our way to the other motorway entrance down the way, and see if the police blockading there would be more lenient with us. When we arrived there, we found four police officers, and a lot of space to walk around the barricades, even with our bikes, which is what we did. To be honest, I was expecting to get arrested that day, because I was just determined to get on the bridge. But as it turned out, so was everyone else.

As I rode my bike up the motorway entrance, I saw that huge amounts of people were also fighting their way to the motorway. I actually saw a family scaling a fence to get on to the motor way onramp. The father climbed over first, the mother passed over the baby, then the baby stroller, and then she climbed the fence. It was amazing. I made my way to the entrance to the motorway, and there were four police officers now trying to keep a few hundred people off the bridge. It wasn't going to work. Suddenly, we saw a group of breakaway cyclists come from further up the motorway fly past us and up the bridge. There was a huge cheer, and it was on, we all rushed the bridge, and five thousand people disobeyed the authorities to have their say on sustainable transportation.

(That is actually me with my fist in the air riding over the bridge...)

That evening I was scheduled to cook the feast at the yoga centre, which I did. But my mind was fully occupied with thoughts about what had just happened on the bridge. To me, it was really inspiring to see so many people make a firm stand like that, it felt awesome to have taken part in such an event. The biggest civil disobedience act in New Zealand history. And it looks like it was a success. While cooking I was constantly texting friends who had also attended the protest, and I was searching all the news articles about it on the internet from my phone. It was an inspiring event.

And throughout this year the Sustainability Network that we were running at Auckland University was taking on a more and more stable form. We were having effective meetings, things were actually growing and developing. I remember after one meeting having a chat with one of my friends from the monastery about how satisfying that meeting was, and how it was completely the opposite of the frustrating meetings that I took part in a few times a week as part of the management and leadership team at the monastery.

Because I was cycling so much, I decided to put the time and effort into putting together a really nice bike. I bought an old '74 frame from TradeMe, and started doing it up, with good quality, vintage bits and pieces. I had it powder-coated a nice metallic green, with chromed forks. I bought new-old-stock bits and pieces for most of the components, and a few retro pieces here and there. The result was a masterpiece if I do say so myself. And one that was such a dream to ride around the city, to get me everywhere I needed to go without relying on fossil fuels for my transport.

What all of this did for me during 2009 was make me realise that the things I actually got a kick out in my life were no longer things with spiritual focuses. I also wanted to be an effective radical, and I felt that I could do that much better outside of the religious community I was part of than inside. My mind was always thinking about how to fix up my bike just a little bit better, where to ride that day, and just craving the feeling of going fast with the wind rushing past me as I rode. I was inspired by all these community drive protests I had taken part in. They made me feel like I was part of something bigger, and that was actually going somewhere, instead of being stuck in what was feeling like a stagnant community with little forward movement or development. Our meetings at the monastery were getting increasingly frustrating for me, as we spent hours discussing the same things, and never progressing on anything. Meanwhile I was attending meetings with various groups, including our own Sustainability Network, which was always developing and pushing forward. I realised that my desires to the life of a sage was decreasing day by day, and my desire to be an effect agent of social change came back to the forefront of my mind. Since I had started feeling more and more let down by the decisions of the management committee at the yoga centre, I just found myself becoming more and more dissatisfied with the community I was in. Interacting with the monks at the monastery and dealing with the other managers in our wider community just started to become more and more frustrating for me.

Over the year things just deteriorated continually in that direction, until I started to realise that I now had more reasons to leave that community then to stay. But I also knew that it wouldn't be easy for me to just get up and leave, and it wouldn't be easy for the monastery to suddenly lose the manager who was the only one that currently understood all the systems that kept the monastery function. So I devised a plan to slowly back out of my duties until I felt I could leave altogether.