Rarotonga

Quite the trip. Started at 6am on saturday morning with Gael waking me up. I was worried that I was the last one and they were all waiting for me. Turned out the I was the first and she was hoping that I would get everyone else up. Seth argued with me: "Hey -time to get up" "no it's not." TJ was asleep in his room, lights on and door to both the room and flat wide open. Sean was actually pretty excited cause he thought it was 4 not 6, once he figured it out he was fairly disappointed. Lee just went back to sleep, I had to go get him up again, Tex was furious and he chewed me out for a couple minutes before I could get out of there. Ten minutes later, Gael asked me to check on everyone again - just to be sure they hadn't fallen asleep. Lee was, Tex yelled again, but the others were pretty good. Ended up getting out of Parnell by 6:25 - only 25 minutes late. The same thing happened at each of the girls' residences. Got to the airport and were actually on time for the flight much to Gael’s surprise. Most of us slept the entire ride as no one actually got in the previous night before 2 - but that is a story in and of itself as the night after most peoples midterms usually will be. The island was pretty cool. I'm not going to go day-by-day since I really don't remember what happened each day, but here is what we did:

Lectures: some were better than others – the ones on Polynesian migration, local fishery ecology and some disease going around, even the one on the macroeconomics of the islands were pretty good, however the one on the genealogies of the chieftains of the clans of the islands got pretty long and boring. The last one was some old guy talking about his monopoly of the interisland trade business. I don’t know whether to classify that as boring or interesting -he was almost to quite to hear, but the stories he told were about stowing away and harboring goods illegally in different ports around the world. He led a pretty interesting life.

Cross Island walk: absolutely amazing, poured rain the whole time so we were soaked through. It was only about 2 miles but it was barley a track even, without a guide we would have been lost. On that note, our guide was amazing. His name was Pa, and he does the walk three times a week every week, and he’s only 68. His wife is a princess from Poland and he did the entire walk barefoot. He wore a pair of the good kind of short running shorts – I was about to ask where he got them. Took a couple hours to complete the trek. Forded some rivers and no one even tried to stay to the rocks cause we were all so wet at that point anyway.

Snorkeling: I didn’t take my contacts and I was furious at myself for the lack of foresight. Had to swim around with my glasses in my hand and hold them up in front of the mask to see anything. Needless to say I saw a lot of the really colourful things, and I’m pretty sure that most of the cryptic ones were easily able to avoid me. Still it was pretty sweet, saw a royal blue starfish and some giant clams which were really cool.

Dances: A number of times we got to go and watch the native dances of the islands. These were amazing – predominantly younger kids as most of the ones our age go to New Zealand to make money. They were really good though. The girls did the whole hula dance thing while the guys did this weird shake their knees in and out thing that was amazing to watch. Really enjoyed the dancing and the music. There was a competition at the end of the week, whole schools from around the islands got together and we got to watch, the whole population of the island was there in the ‘National Stadium’ which was not much bigger than the Palestra (for the UR readers) or the north gym at the high school (for the Bozeman ones). The whole thing was pretty cool.

Running: weekly mileage went from 65 to 75 to 35 once I got to the islands, way to hot and way to full of a schedule. Only ran once a day and it had to be in the morning since at night people let their dogs out. It only took one night run to convince me that the morning was the way to go. I am a dog person, but I hate it when they chase me. Also there was only 2 ways to run: clockwise or anti-clockwise. It got really repetitive.

Drinking: we drank lots, there were plenty of bars, and though they didn’t sell any alcohol on Sunday, I happened to find some germans on the beach who invited me to share a gin and tonic with them, it only took about 20 minutes and they got at least 6 shots worth into me. We stopped buy the airport shortly after that for some food (cause our hotel didn’t have any – they were closed on the Sunday). It was by far the best panini that I have ever eaten, no one else appreciated it quite as much as me though. The bars were pretty decent. Good dance parties with the islanders – quite the cultural experience there.

The Hotel: if anyone goes to the cook islands and is looking for somewhere to stay don’t stay at the Aquarius. Even though their major industry is tourism, these guys were not friendly at all. We came in late and fairly inebriated one night, and not wanting to wake the others in the hotel went out to the bar area. I was the first one out there and I was standing looking out the window waiting for the others and this security guy shows up and shines his light in my face and starts chewing me out. It lasted a good 10 minutes and the whole time I was just apologizing and trying to calm him down. Apparently they don’t lock the booze cabinet and so once the bar closes they don’t want people there; something I would never have even thought to try was checking to see if the beer was unsecured. All we wanted to do was sit and sober up for a while before bed. After a while Kate came in and started to fill up a pitcher, he started in on her then and kept going on her for another good 10 minutes about why, if they don’t want us in the bar, we can’t just get water and go to our rooms either (he kept saying that someone did clean the whole barroom for us that night and with us in it, it would get dirty before the morning, so we figured that going to our rooms was fine but definitely not so). He finally allowed us to sit down and left. He came back once to yell at us for being to loud – which we really weren’t very loud at all, it was mainly the noise of the chairs on the floor. That was it for the night, I retired and got up the next morning for a run. I was wearing my running shorts and shoes getting ready to head out and this guy comes up (this is at 8 in the morning – he and I were the only two awake) and tells me that we ARE in a hotel and I need to put a shirt on and be decent. I was thinking – wait a sec, we’re in the middle of the south pacific on a tropical island – why would anyone care if I wear a shirt or not? Especially this early in the morning. I just turned around and walked off, it wasn’t even worth my time I decided to listen to him. DON’T stay at the Aquarius.

Religion: We went to church on Sunday morning, because everyone does apparently – although the church was quite empty. The Service was interesting, but in Maori so we could not understand much of it. Pa kept saying on the hike that once the missionaries came in the 17^th century, the islanders accepted christianity in one hour. He said this a number of times, it was quite disturbing. The old religion is completely lost at this point, there used to be idols on the walk apparently at the very top, but they were all destroyed at the suggestion of the missionaries. It was a typical church service, came out with the realization that lots of people actually do believe this and the children have no opportunity to even hear another side to the story. Very disheartening. They did feed us afterwards though, which was quite nice – the fresh fruit was amazing. Also directly after the church service I found my fingernail clippers in my pants pocket I had been missing them for at least 3 weeks: I figure that god was just happy to have me stop by for a visit – or is that slightly cynical?

It was a cool trip, but the girls all had to room together so by the end of it they were all crazy. I was reading Baboon Metaphysics the whole time. I tea sreally interesting to hear about how the baboons interact in their social groups and then turn around and watch the IES guys and especially girls interacting in such close proximity, there were a suprising number of similarities. I'm getting pretty bionerdy now so I'll end with this: It was nice to get home.

BIOSCI 330: Freshwater and Estuarine Ecology: Field Trip

Saturday - headed to campus to learn about some inveterate identification. 10% of the grade was turning in 8 annotated drawings of different insects. A good lab - I really enjoyed drawing pictures, but by the 4th or 5th it all got pretty old. Still it was a pretty easy lab for that much of our grade.
Sunday - got up early and headed out to the Waiwera estuary to take some samples and determine any faunal trends that exist along the halocline up the estuary. Each group did two transects, our first was on the shore, found a couple of sand hopper isopod things and some beetles that looked like ladybugs except they were brownish white and black instead of red and black and they were buried about 20cm down in the sand. The second transect was quite a ways up the estuary and it was ridiculously muddy. It started only about ankle deep, but standing there sifting muddy clay and before long the mud was mid thigh deep. It has been ages since I've gotten to play in the mud like that - it was great fun. Found a bunch of crabs some shrimp and a bunch of oligocheate worms. For day trip it was pretty fun.

Fire, Ice and Computers

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To know that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

Frost was clearly wrong on both accounts - the world ends when you spill water on your computer. Especially when it happens the week before everything is due and you didn't email any of the papers to yourself. On that note - I was pretty sure that the world ended last night, turns out it was just a slight pause, surprising how similar they feel sometimes. After a night of air-drying and a hair dryer (which was actually too hot and ended up melting my 'delete' key), I realised that the world was still in working order. The offending water bottle ended up across the room and most of its contents are currently discoloring my wall. It was a long night.

Climbing Orientation Trip - Froggart

Climbing trip to Froggart Edge. Amazing trip. Left Friday afternoon and drove with 3 other guys - everyone else at least got girls in their car, but whatever, had a nice talk about philosophy and religion. Got to the camp site before anyone else and were pretty worried that we took a wrong turn, but people showed up about half an hour later. Had one of the most awkward evenings of my life as no one knew each other and everyone was just trying to make conversation, but it was dark enough that no one could see who they were talking to anyway - I met most of the people in the next two days and I don't have the faintest idea of who I was talking with that night. ended up sleeping in the hammock under a awning for a BBQ. Next morning drove to Froggart edge and the committee members started setting routes. Took a while, but as they finished everyone started climbing. Good routes - very impressive, I ended up doing a couple top ropes early on to get warmed up then a couple leads, one of which was slightly above my level and was pretty freaky. The rock was called 'pocketed ignimbrite' and it was really shrarp, but had deep pockets all over the place. One route was called 'Bring your daughter to the slaughter' it was labeled as a signature route, quite an amazing climb, maybe 25 meters high, with a horrible little crimpy start, a nice ledge to get up on, followed by a face with nothing to hold onto, had to stand on tip toes on the edge of the ledge and reach up as far as possible to grab a little ledge and do a pull up over it, the rest of the route was pretty decent, except for the last move - some opposition and then a layback into a series of razor-edge two finger pockets. It was rough. At the end of the day they let me clean the anchors from some routes on lead which was really cool. Then we headed back to the campsite and prepared for a par-tay. Got a run in first with Till, about 7mi I think - he kept complaining about eating ice cream just prior to me making him run, but then kept dropping the pace down-we were going like 6:15 by the end of it. He kept pointing out landmarks: 'see this gate? it's only 10k more from this gate' and then 10 minutes later - 'Ahh, we're at the hill, it's only 15k more from this hill' - we only had about 45k left to go by the time we finished. Got back and stood in the lake for a while then ate sausages and got pissed for the rest of the night - I put up the hammock and we promptly blew out some of the stitches by putting 4 pissed people in it. Next morning went back to the edge, some more leads and then back home, with the same four guys I rode over with - although there was close to a 50/50 ratio on the trip.

Biosci 333 - Marine Ecology: Field Trip

Didn't pack the night before - to tired from the climbing trip. Got up at 5:45 and packed, showered and had a bite to eat, then hiked over to the bus stop. Plans for the trip include: Seaweed lab on Monday at the Leigh Marine Lab, stay overnight and then do an Ecological Survey of the shore at the Leigh Marine Reserve on Tuesday. We arrived at the lab around 8:45 and a guy (not our professor) showed us where the bunk room was and announced (in response to a query) that guys and girls can room together*, everyone piled into bunks - about 4 to a room, I was with 2 guys and a gorgeous girl from Canada - Chelsea, and headed down to the lab. The lab was well equipped - computers, spectrophotometers, and a full set of pipettes for every group. We waited for a while and at 9 a scientist from the lab, who none of us have ever seen before came in a started teaching us about seaweed and their nitrogen uptake and complementarity among resource use. We paired up (I was with Chelsea) and started the lab. It took most of the day, we ended up skipping a couple repeats on trials that we had to go back and do, but it was pretty successful. It was the first time that I have actually enjoyed doing lab work for a class - I found the lab well designed and, while maybe not useful for my everyday life, at least it was similar something I see myself working on in the future. The professor who taught that day disappeared and we never saw him again - although I think that he will give us a couple lectures later on. We were given no instructions*, there was no chaperone*, we didn't even know what time we were starting the next day*. I ended up going for a run later that night - it was pretty cool, up the hill and from the top I could see most of the bay and even the lights of Auckland off over the hill. It took an hour or so and when I got back all the kiwis in the class (who by the way still seem to be stuck in the late 80's/early 90's - mullets, and short shorts &c.) were just heading out to play 'spotlight' (one person has a flashlight and everyone else tries to get to the top of the hill without being spotted) then sardines, and finally capture the flag*. We ended around midnight. I felt like I was back home in high school playing games - it was amazing. I had such a great time. The next morning a kiwi - Lee - and I went for a half hour jog at 7am and got back to shower and eat some breakfast - still with no instructions as to where to be and when. The day ended up beginning around 9:00 with a lecture by this old guy - Bill Balantine - who is my new hero. He has been surveying the same 5m x 5m patch of rocky beach once a month for the last 21 years. He seemed completely insane. It was very impressive everything he was talking about. I wish I had it on a tape recorded - the speech really made an impression on me. When he was done, we found our professor waiting to talk to us about the survey: how to identify different habitats - by substrate, wave exposure, tidal height, and species presence - and lay out a transect and quadrat system (basic ecology procedure, and one that I really don't like - I don't think it gives very accurate information about an area - I want at some point in the next few years to come up with a better system). But after lunch we headed down to the shore to lay out out quadrats and start counting species. It took most of the afternoon and as the low tide was at 4:46 and the bus was coming at 5pm a few of us ended up without low tide samples. A great trip though - really fun, a great way to meet kiwis and get to know the lab - a place I would love to work at eventually.

*denotes things I think would be different if the trip were in america

Kinloch Climbing Trip

Left at 6:00am Friday morning to avoid traffic, and needless to say - I don't remember much of the trip. I later realized that Cat, the girl who set up the great weaving adventure, was driving us and it was an architecture field trip that we were on. Me and about 15 architecture students (Marc 'Tex' and Louisa are both architecture students) did a 'site visit' which, I discovered, means running around some plot of land trying to decide what they will propose to build there. It was actually really interesting. I learned a bunch about both architecture and New Zealand terrestrial ecology. Cat's mom is a botanist and she knows pretty much everything about all the plants we saw (the site was about 2 hours south of Auckland, it was an undeveloped mountain and neighboring valley - aptly described by the kiwis as 'bush'). She taught us about the different gum trees that were introduced to the area, the native trees that are still present, a certain shrub who's leaves, when chewed act as a mild anesthetic, and when boiled make a tea that will cleanse the blood. There is also a plant - 'spear leaf' I think was the common name, that was originally identified as two different organisms due to the degree of difference between the juvenile and adult. A guy named Mark (not Tex, a different Mark) who was from Scotland gave me a good rundown on what architecture actually is (it's about creating a space, and connecting it to another space and then forming an envelope for your connected series of spaces) in a magnificent Scottish accent - which was pretty much the best part. Once that was over we continued our drive down to Taupo.

We arrived in Taupo a couple hours before sundown, found a friend of Louisa and Marc's (Rob) and went to Hell's Pizza. Then hike up to a camp site about 2 miles from downtown. The next morning I ran back to town, met Rob and set up a cab to take us to Kinloch, I also procured a map and climbing guide to the area. Then I ran back, packed everything up and waited for Rob and the cab. The cab ride cost 75$ but they gave us a huge discount - only 10$ a person, and they let us off right on the beach outside the only store in Kinloch. We got some food and figured out how to get to the crag. It said that permission was required so I called the number, talked to some lady - who seemed to think that we needed to go to some place back in taupo (I think) to pick up the permission slip, and then the phone cut out and we figured that was all the permission we needed. It turned out that there were about 6 different places to climb, 2 accessible only by boat, 3 about an hour and a half tramp away, and one about 3 minutes walk from the store. We set up camp and started climbing. It was 11:00 or so when we began and almost dark before we finished. I got a ton of leading in - which was awesome, and Marc got to lead his first outdoor route. A couple times through the day people came to either climb or watch us as they walked their dog - the cliff was right above the waterline and in clear view of the town. On his first climb - a top rope tex got stuck, all the sudden the rope bound up somehow and he couldn't go up (no holds) or down (no slack). I ended up giving the belay to Rob (tying him into my break and then untying myself) and got Louisa to belay me as I led a neighboring route (she had never lead belayed before - kinda sketchy, but she did well) to save tex. What happened was that his rope slid into a crack and then the belay rope went in on top of it -neither could do much of anything. I pulled them out and had to hold them free as Rob lowered Tex back down - we didn't climb that route anymore. One of the groups that came to climb was three Czechs. They were really cool and pointed out all of our gear that was made in the Czech Republic. There was one route that got me - it was rated as a 20 -a 5.10/11 back home, although the ratings were really off - I was able to get up to the penultimate bolt and clipped in - which was quite a feat for me, but it was soo far from there to the last one (which I couldn't even see) and there wasn't much for holds. The Czechs ended up climbing another route and abseiling (kiwi for rappelling) down to clean it for us. I never got another shot at that route and I was pretty tired the next day so I didn't even attempt it. That night we got some Tui from the store back in town and sat on the beach getting pissed and watching the sunset next to what most americans know as Mt Doom across the lake. As we were preparing food later that night, one of the Czechs brought out a drum and started playing for a while - it was really neat. More climbing the next morning although it was quite a bit less strenuous, and then a frantic pack job when we realized that the taxi was due to pick us up. Got back to Taupo (this time 15$ a person) and got some kebabs from a Turkish place - really good - then caught the bus back to Auckland. Went for a run that evening and ate at Louisa's place. Then back to Parnell to pack for the Marine Ecology Field Trip.

Flight of the Kiwis

The other day some (female) architecture students asked to borrow my climbing rope for a movie they were making. They allowed me to take part as well. Their assignment was to make a video commentary on teaching and community or some such nonsense, and they decided to do some sort of symbloic maori weaving. Myself and three others were used to hold the rope that they wove around us, so we sat for a good 45 minutes holding this rope out at shoulder height as they tried to figure out how they were gonna do their weaving. The girls were really cool, I actually like them alot, but it was hilarious to watch them debating back and forth about whether to weave the black up and twist it with the white or bring the blue in and use that to twist it all together. I kept breaking out in laughter when I recognised how perfect Flight of the Chonchords does representing the kiwis. I still can't get over how perfect that film is. If anyone wants to experience New Zealand culture - that is the movie to watch. The girls actually ended up buying us beer afterwards and one of them even drove us down to Taupo the next day.