Working from home is the greatest thing for me.  Lots of phone coaching from the comfort of Domestic Executiv HQ.  Imagine the shock when this week it was back to face-to-face business.

No more slouching around in my casual gear.  Taking breaks to play with the bassets and put the washing on the line.  No opportunity to check on the chickens and collect the eggs.  No it was back to the real world of work in the big city.

In between appointments I venture off for some photo blogging.  No idea what I might snap but no sooner had I stepped from my clients office I found an interest in alternative transport.

There are a growing number of green taxis around town.  They are hybrid cars that are supposedly greener than the average cab.  They are certainly green – luminous green in fact.  They are a cool addition to the public transport system in Wellington.  Not quite the London cab but nevertheless a feature of the Wellington city scape.

But here was something I’d never seen before.

They were parked by the station and I couldn’t work out whether they were really taxis for hire or just advertising hoardings.  Or perhaps both.  I was too shy to ask but was happy to take a sneaking picture of these two guys who were clearly not busy and not that bothered about drumming up business either.

As I wandered off to my next appointment I started to wonder how many alternative forms of transport were there.  Apart from cars, buses and trains.

Here’s the Wellington Harbour ferry/taxi/bus which takes a route across the harbour and back around the bays.  The alternative way to commuting to work.  To be honest though I think I’d give this a miss on a windy day.

There was plenty of people transporting themselves around on these.

Everywhere you looked people were running in their lunch break.  Kiwis are very outdoorsy in that way.  Always looking for the next endurance challenge.

This looks more like my sort of transport.

I’ve not given up the thought of a basset harness for Fortnum and Mason so that they could either:

1. Pull the wheelie bin to the top of the drive
2. Haul the recycling from the back porch cupboard to the barn
3. Race along the Rimutaka Incline trail with me in tow.

Hang on a minute, I think the last of these actually happens quite often when they are chasing another person, person on bike, another dog or a pigeon.

Yes, Wellington is full of people moving around.  I for one enjoyed the walk along the waterfront.  It has not been a great place to walk all week.  We’ve been experiencing terrible storms.  More on that story later.

For now I’m not thinking I need to find the most exciting and innovative way of transporting myself around town.  Something stylish.  Something useful.

Maybe next time I’ll try the taxi bike.  Hopefully it will be less hair raising that the last time I took a human powered transport which was in Agra in Indian when I went to visit the Taj Mahal.  If it wasn’t for the fact I was still feeling shocked and car sick from the actual driving in the car I would have probably hopped out and walked instead of clinging on for my life as our intrepid driver pushed his way through massive crowds waving a big stick to get the beggars and hawkers away.  I really would have rather walked.

No danger of that happening here in Wellington.  It’s a much more civilised place.  As long as the wind is not blowing nor the rain lashing down in a vertical direction!