A week ago today, Kristina and I set off for a long weekend in The Hamptons to celebrate our second wedding anniversary and my 33rd birthday. The Hamptons are a group of villages and hamlets in the far-east end of Long Island, renowned for their picturesque scenery, great beaches, and an abundance of multi-million dollar properties. This was our (modest) accommodation in the hamlet of Bridgehampton, right in the middle of it all.

We left New York early enough after work to avoid the evening rush-hour (which meant it only took us an hour and a half to get here rather than three), and immediately set about exploring the area. I'm a huge fan of winding back-country roads buried amid awesome scenery, and The Hamptons didn't disappoint!

And the suburban areas didn't disappoint either. It would be a struggle to find properties worth under a million dollars here, and many push the $100 million mark and beyond (many of which are owned by big-name celebrities, but there's little chance of getting this close to those).

14, because 15 would be reckless.

The first little village centre we checked out was Sag Harbor. Nothing too interesting about it, other than this dog on the roof of this car hehe.

We spent most of the next day in and around the town of Southampton, and first up was the village of Southampton (yes, you are reading that right - they share the same name). Southampton is generally considered one of The Hamptons two most prestigious communities. A large number of wealthy and influential people have homes here, giving Southampton its reputation for affluence and exclusivity.

These would be Kristina's friends if she was a Hamptonite.

And these would be mine hehe.

I did make 'friends' with this pimple-faced power-tripping parking officer however who looked to be fresh out of high school. He claimed I made an illegal U-turn across the double-yellow lines there, but I would argue I turned to pull into a diagonal parking space and therefore did not perform a U-turn hehe. Either way, he let me off with a warning; how big of him. As it turns out, he was just one of dozens of relentless pimple-faced power-tripping parking officers throughout the whole area.

Here we have a fine example of Hamptons fashion hehe. Not exactly my cup of tea :)

Even the board shorts were a bit too short for my liking. I do have the thighs for them though ;)

From art galleries to antique shops to everything else a Hamptonite might need, Southampton has it all.

And there is no shortage of awesome cars on the road! Porches, BMW's, Audi's, oversized SUV's, you name it. Convertibles in particular seem to be a popular choice.

Couple of Bentleys (convertible again).

Shit here's a nice one - look at that colour! Oh wait, that's ours ;)

Here's that dog again hahaha!

Old restored cars also seemed to be a popular choice.

So that's the village of Southampton in a nutshell. Power-tripping parking officers aside, it's a really nice little spot to wander through.

We'll have none of that on this block!

Outside of the village centre we checked out some more of the stunning local suburbia, and I invaded everybody's privacy with my camera. I could quite happily live in any one of these :) Even the local church (below-right) is a cute little thing.

From there we headed down to the beach to soak up some much-needed sunshine!

It was a long winter!

While there were plenty of sunbathers on the beach, the water was absolutely bloody freezing hehe, and no one was game enough to get in. My feet were hurting just getting this shot!

Beach-front homes come with a whopping price tag, but I'd personally prefer something away from the beach. No good comes from salty air!

Later in the day we headed further east to the town of Easthampton, which (like Southampton) also contains a village of the same name. Aside from the windmill on the left, it was basically more of the same. Pretty bloody nice huh! The street on the right had about half a dozen celebrity-owned homes on it alone, none of which could be easily seen from the road.

The next day we ventured out to the easternmost point of Long Island (and New York state). The Montauk Point Light here was apparently the first lighthouse to be built in New York state, and the first public works project of the new United States, so there you go. It's now the fourth-oldest active lighthouse in the US. At $8 for parking and another $9 entry fee, we didn't bother going in. Instead, I double-parked (at the risk of getting another telling off from the parking officers), snapped this, and left :)

This here is the centre of the hamlet of Montauk. Unlike The Hamptons nearby, Montuak has a much more laid back atmosphere. Most of the clothing shops here sell surfing gear as opposed to pastel-coloured sports jackets for example hehe. There's little of interest here though, so instead I amused myself by playing with a parking officer and our car alarm while he was marking the ground with chalk to keep track of how long each vehicle had been parked. Video here :)

A friend in New York recommended this place for lunch, actually called the Lobster Roll but better known as simply "Lunch" due to the big sign on the roof hehe. This place has a huge laundry list of various celebrities that have eaten here over the years, including US presidents. Being a busy Sunday though, I think they were all hiding today.

Fast forward to dinner, and we settled on this place after driving past it several times. It turned out to be a fantastic little Greek restaurant, which was convenient since Kristina and I met in Greece and it was our anniversary today :) The restaurant is contained in this 200-year-old house - very cool! And that was that for The Hamptons, and another year of my random life.

Guess what day it is in the USA today? Well the clue is in the title, but it's National Doughnut Day, celebrated on the first Friday of June every year hahaha! 'Murica! To celebrate, Krispy Kreme gives away a free doughnut of your choosing, but I figured I'd grab another dozen while I was at it, because I'm a glutton. So ahh, happy Doughnut Day everyone.

Saturday night, Kristina's out of town (on another one of her 'work' trips in the Caribbean somewhere - what a life), so I'm chilling out here with the television and eating doughnuts when I hear a distant screeching of tyres followed immediately by a lot of commotion. That was followed by some sort of alarm, and what sounded like a vehicle taking off in a hurry with more screeching of tyres. Within 30 seconds I had my shoes on, camera in hand, and was running out the door hahaha! Apparently a black Chevrolet Suburban, which was parked where I'm standing on the left, reversed at full speed over this tree and slammed into the front of our local wine shop on the other side of the block, right in front of a crowded sidewalk of people drinking in front of the neighbouring pub. He then took off again (forwards this time) and got the hell out of there. In the centre shot above there's a guy standing on the corner in a white shirt - he apparently tried to pull the driver from the vehicle but without luck. He did get a partial license plate however, and claims the driver was extremely intoxicated. Exciting stuff, but very lucky he only mowed down a tree and not a crowd of bystanders.

Another glorious spring day in the Big Apple, and I spent it cycling a full 50km (30 mile) loop of Manhattan via the Manhattan Waterfront Greenway. I didn't bother photographing everything since I've already done all that before (here and here), but just for fun, here are a couple shots from today anyway. Left is the view looking north towards One World Trade Center from Battery Park at the southern-tip of Manhattan, and centre is beneath the George Washington Bridge looking across the Hudson River towards New Jersey. Anyway, before all of that, action ensued! Follow the dotted line on the map above.

A couple sections of the Greenway path leave the waterfront and go on-road for a way (until such time the powers that be get around to making it fully off-road). I'd just entered an on-road section and was heading west along 61st Street. I stopped at First Avenue at a red light just in time to see a rather out-of-shape guy who looked to be in his fifties frantically running across the intersection in front of oncoming traffic and south down First Avenue, screaming at something in the distance. A little further down I could see some kid also running (though somewhat less frantically). My first thought was this kid had just swiped the guy's wallet or phone or something. My first impulse is always one of curiosity, and my first instinct is always to help people, always (as much as people, pedestrians especially, piss me off sometimes). So I ran the red light, cut up all the traffic, and set off to catch up with this guy and find out what the hell was going on. By now he'd turned west along 60th Street, and I pulled up beside him and asked "Are you chasing that person for a reason?" "My dog! My dog ran away! My Dog!", came the very out-of-breath response. I didn't see any dog, but I guessed he wasn't referring to the kid hehe, and instead assumed the kid was also chasing after this dog. "Ok, no worries - I'll go get him", and I screamed off, against the flow of traffic to catch up to this kid. Heading north now beneath the exit ramp of the Queensboro Bridge, I caught up with the kid and yelled "Which way did the dog go?!" "Straight through, he ran straight through the intersection [with 61st Street]!" Ploughing through another red light and heading towards 62nd Street now, I called out to a pair of pedestrians ahead regarding the dog and they pointed me east along 62nd Street. When I emerged on 62nd I did now see the dog, bolting along the sidewalk at full speed back towards a very busy First Avenue, with another pair of pedestrians ahead of him. "Stop that dog! Stop that dog!" They turned, saw the dog coming at them, and made a good attempt but to no avail. First Avenue had the green light so I was sure I was about to see this dog get smacked, but thanks to some heavy braking and quick maneuvering, he managed to avoid everything and started charging north along the sidewalk again. I then came flying out of nowhere, cutting up all four lanes of traffic again, and hollering at pedestrians along First Avenue to stop that fucking dog hahaha! I must admit part of me was enjoying this ;) Anyway, while he was running along the sidewalk I was alongside him on the road, and planned to get ahead and cut him off at the intersection of 63rd Street. Instead he turned down 63rd and right into a large group of people who just happened to be loitering on the sidewalk. I hollered at them to stop the dog which they successfully did. Phew! I then asked them to hold onto him for a minute while I go find his owner, who was no doubt still frantically running around somewhere, or keeled over and having a heart attack hehe. I found the kid first and pointed him in the right direction, followed soon after by the owner who was extremely distraught by this point, but extremely relieved when I said we have his dog and he's perfectly fine etc. I led him over to the group, and I didn't get a photo but man - you'd have never seen a guy so happy to get his dog back, nor so out of breath hahaha! He could barely manage a thank you but a big thumbs-up sufficed :)

I think it's fair to say that had I not been in the right place at the right time, on my very quick and nimble beast of a bike (plus three years and 10,000kms / 6,000 miles of experience in dealing with New York City traffic), that dog would have been long gone! So I'll consider that my good deed for the day :) The owner didn't appear to have had the dog on a lead which is a bit of a no-no, and I'm not sure why the dog bolted off like it did. It occurred to me later that maybe it wanted to get the fuck out of there and away from that guy hehe, so maybe it would have been better for it to have escaped and ended up elsewhere. Who knows. Anyway, tomorrow's another day.

So as if a four-month road trip around the USA wasn't fun enough, Kristina and I have just booked flights to New Zealand for this Christmas and New Year. Given it will have been four years since I was last home, it's high time for a visit! And to celebrate, here are 69 facts about New Zealand that'll blow your mind (apparently), such as we have the world's top travel destination based on some international survey (Milford Sound, on the left), we have the world's steepest street (Baldwin Street in Dunedin, in the middle), and we have a bird found nowhere else in the world that eats cars (the Kea, on the right). There's also a bit in there about former All Blacks rugby player Wayne "Buck" Shelford, who had his scrotum ripped open in a bad tackle during a match against France in the 1980s, lost four teeth in the process, and was taken off the field with one testicle literally hanging out. Rather than going to the hospital, he had the team physio stitch his nut sack back together and continued the game. A subsequent blow to his head later in the game left him concussed, and he took no further part in the match. To this day, Shelford has no memory of that game hahaha! New Zealand, ladies and gentlemen!

A couple months back after Kristina and I collected the car from the dealership, I put the feelers out and asked around for a cliché little Hudson Valley spot that would be make for a good day-trip from New York. Several folk mentioned the village of Cold Spring, so after several failed attempts due to whether, here we are :) Cold Spring was established in 1846 and was named after... a cold spring which is around here somewhere. It's about an hour's drive north of New York and is home to just 2,000, though its population swells a little during summer weekends with an influx of tourists.

Much like The Hamptons, its main street (called Main Street) is nice little drag to walk along, and seemed to be littered with antique shops. Kristina naturally gravitated towards the more country oriented of these shops hehe.

And across the street here we have Doug's Pretty Good Pub. That guy sure seems to think so.

If you need a break from antiques, you can take a detour through the residential side streets and see how these village folk live.

Main Street finishes down on the shore of the Hudson River at this quiet little spot (quiet for us city folk anyway) with awesome views of the other side.

A cool million for a river-front home...

Boat parked out the front...

And the wife on the back :)

Also on the river we found Moo Moo's Creamery here, and figured the crowd of tourists gathered outside couldn't be wrong. Well they certainly weren't, and I spent the next ten minutes sitting on the river and fighting to keep two large scoops of fast-melting "Chocolate Chocolate Chip" ice cream in check. Kristina opted for a cup instead - good thinking.

The view looking west over the Hudson towards Storm King State Park. Nice.

After cleaning chocolate ice cream off my face, we jumped back in the car and went to check out some of the lakes in the area, hidden deep off road in these stunning forested areas. Apart from the one on the right there, they all ended up being surrounded by private property so we couldn't even get close enough to dip our feet in :( It's all a bloody nice area nonetheless!

The lake on the right up there was actually part of this cute little cookie-cutter community that we just kind of stumbled into. In hindsight I'm not even sure we were allowed in there based on some of the looks we got from the locals, but oh well - I drove around and took photos anyway ;)

Back to Cold Spring for dinner at this awesome pub plonked right next to the main train line running through the valley (and beyond to Boston, Chicago, and Canada). Once upon a time this was the original train station for Cold Spring, before it was moved 100 yards down the track for whatever reason. So dinner was accompanied not by music, but by huge passenger trains thundering past, which was great :)