A short visit to Aotea Square.

(This is an old post that I have had stashed away for a long time. Other posts kept bumping it, but I finally got around to publishing it. )

It was mid-winter (July) as I took these photos in Aotea Square. That's just off Queen Street in Auckland.  

I discovered that they had erected an ice rink there, and some other little structures.  

Welcome, Come

Allie brought the boys to the rink not long ago and they had a blast.  Both have done more roller skating than ice skating but caught on quickly.  Allie reported that because the rink is temporary, and Auckland's climate is not really conducive to maintaining ice, they found that the surface of the ice was actually wet and that a fall meant an instant soaking for knees or backside.   

These little plastic geodesic domes are interesting. You can reserve them to eat your purchased or picnic lunch lunch in. Protection from the wind, solar heating, comfy chairs, pillows and blankets.  I don't know what they cost.  

Boy, that's one dark cloud looming over the Town Hall Building. 

I'll end this short post with this totally unrelated photo. 

After I left the Square, I continued on down Queen Street, heading for Britomart and the train back to Henderson.  

I stopped into a little shopping plaza and happened upon this arrangement of steps and escalators which I found to be camera-worthy. The narrow escalators, just one person wide,  moving in both directions were sandwiched between the static stairs (I assume also intended for separate up or down travel) on the lower level, and were repeated with a different arrangement on the upper level.   

"That's a lot of stairs," I thought to myself.  

Whoever designed this sure had grandiose plans for moving the multitudes that would shop here.  

Maybe a sort of, "If you build it, they will come," plan.  Hasn't worked out so well though. At least not while I was there. The place was empty.  (this was pre-Covid)  

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 Some thoughts while leaning on a railing in an empty mall.

If we can ask:  If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to here it, does it make a sound? 

Then we can ask:  If an escalator moves in the mall but no one is around to ride it, has it really moved?

It's obvious that there are two sets of static stairs next to the moving escalators. Like the escalators, I assume that one is intended for the up folks, (on the left) and one is intended for the down traffic. (on the right)

My question then, is, would it take you longer to traverse the static stairs, if you did it in the 'wrong' direction?  

The only difference my camera sees between these stairs and the escalators is their number, color and width. It lives its entire 'life' through a succession of very fast blinks. To the camera, neither of these move.   

If I were to center a box on the opposing middle handrails of the escalator, would the box spin?  

Would it spin differently whether I was going up or down?    

If I turned the box over, would it spin in the opposite direction?  

What would happen if I put the box on it's side?????

If you've had one too many drinks in New Zealand and your head is spinning, is it doing so opposite the way it would in Michigan?  

If you were to increase the speed of an escalator, would each step get smaller and more numerous along the length of the escalator?

If that were true, then people movers should be traveling really, really fast.    -djf     

World's steepest escalator?

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