Road way

It’s been a year since that road connecting my neighbourhood to the rest of Hamilton opened, something I talked about at the time. That’s probably because I’ve used it so much over the past year that it feels like it’s been there for years. I use that road to get to nearly anywhere I’m going in Hamilton, so, in a sense, it really did connect my house to the city, something I talked about last year. That’s mostly about “feel”, of course, but isn’t that true about much in life?

Making me feel physically connected to the city aside, it hasn’t exactly made Hamilton feel like “home”. I think I’d say, “it’s okay”, which is the kind of non-committal indifference I’d say about things I may not love, but also don’t hate. I say that about things that I really do think are okay.

One thing that would make me like this city a lot more would be if they would finally build the small commercial area along that now year-old road, but there’s no indication that’s going to be any time soon. Maybe when interest rates finally drop?

The original part of the road we were connected to last year has a new development under construction, Orient Industrial Park, which will have warehousing and live/work light industrial units, along with “two onsite food and café providers plus an interactive indoor golfing simulator,” the latter made me chuckle.

Interestingly, at one point Nigel was really keen on us moving to a similar live/work unit on Auckland’s North Shore. The concept was new to New Zealand, and I wasn’t as keen as Nigel was (honestly, at the time I thought it sounded kind of odd). He moved on to being interested in living other places—in fact, I lost track of how many houses we actually visited, let alone how many others we just looked at from the road or online. Still, I backed him, as I always did, and if he’d truly been into the live/work units, I’d have backed him on that, too. Of course.

So: A year on from that road opening, my ordinary daily life is so much easier than it was before then: It now takes around 5 minutes from my house to The Base/Te Awa, two different supermarkets, my dentist, and Leo’s vet. On a bad day before the new road was opened, it could take me 15-20 minutes or more to get to those same places, so the road brought a big improvement.

There are several different things holding me back from feeling at home in Hamilton, but at least now I can see how the feeling could be possible—and that new road is definitely an unexpectedly huge part of why that is.

I’m still only at the start of my own personal road, still finding my way, and there aren’t any maps. But that actual new road really did help my actual and existential journeys.

This post began life as a Facebook post. That’s only relevant because that’s the only reason this is post is here. More about that soon.