Sunday, September 28, 2008
Going out and the social constuct of "the bartender"
When we went out in NZ, it was to pubs that we knew and more importantly pubs where we knew the bartender. This was so that they would make us fun interesting drinks before we headed on to the next bar. The Bartender was the most important man of the evening as if we knew him the night would be very interesting. If we somehow happened to stumble into a pub whose bartender was unknown to us, it was a problem quickly remedied and the progression of the night was taken in a new direction as we acquainted ourselves with this new friend. The night was comprised of a bunch of friends sitting around different pubs and drinking novel mixed drinks before moving on to the next pub. In Rochester the bar scene is different. I would in this place like to comment on American cities and contrast them with New Zealand cities, however, I only went to pubs in Auckland and Rochester. Different big cities in America may have similar attributes that I am unfamiliar with. That being said, the pub scene in Rochester is far different. Namely, we don't go to pubs. The times that I have have been a great time, highly enjoyable, but in a completely different sense. They are a time of sitting with one or two friends and drinking a beer, we generally stay at the same pub throughout the night and there have never been, in my experience, any heretofore unheard of mixed drinks. I want to go on a pub crawl with Sam again and have Jono mix us drinks. The friends I have here are not bartenders and the bartenders are not ostensibly befriendable. This is one thing that I miss.
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
Nelson
First off, I would like to say that there will be no pictures of this trip. I made sure to charge my camera battery before I left, but apparently I did it wrong and drained the battery instead of charging it. This was really frustrating as there were a ton of great things to photo throughout the weekend.
I was apprehensive about the whole trip as it was solo and I had no phone. I ended up using Sam's old one, which turned out to be a necessity. I had pre-booked a super shuttle to pick me up at 4:30am so that I could make the plane on time, but they ended up not showing up, and as I had not left myself a very large margin for error time-wise, I ended up hailing a cab and paying way more that I should have to get to the airport. I never found out what happened to the super shuttle.
I arrived in Nelson early and the host of hostel I was staying at, The Bug, came to pick me up in an old time VW bug, it was pretty cool. Went to the Isite and booked a trip to Abel Tasman for the next two days and spent the rest of the morning looking for something to do in Nelson. It is a quiet town, reminded me a lot of Bozeman or even Jackson Hole minus the ski hills. I ended up renting a car, a manual, and heading out to the Motueka river to do some fly fishing. the
water was frigid and I ended up not getting so much as a bite. But I did have a good time and enjoyed myself in the fishing. I had a little run in with the car. Having the extra foot and hand to think about was a bit much for me and I ended up turning onto the wrong side of the street. I couldn't figure out how to put the car in reverse (there was a ring around the stick that you had to lift that I didn't know about) so I pulled into a car park and called the rental place. I was so pleased that got it all figured out that I didn't think as I was pulling out of the park lot and I went into the wrong lane. It just happened once, and on a deserted street no less, no one was coming but there were some guys working construction on the side of the road who swore at me. The whole incident got me pretty nervous about driving and it was kinda stressful for the rest of the day. I got back ok though, no accidents or anything. The next morning I turned the car in and got on the bus for Abel Tasman.
Took the water taxi to Tonga and walked to the Anchorage hut for the night, it was a 4ish hour hike along really nice easy terrain, I did most of it in my jandals. The aquataxi took us around and showed us some stuff that I would have taken pictures of if my camera had any batteries. This included a marine reserve and some seals swimming around in the area. I rode the aquataxi with a number of older people, five of whom comprised the bulk of the Nelson city tramping club. I ended up falling in with them for the day and I was instructed on most of the native flora and fauna by one of those older, izzoine gentlemen, the kind who know everything about where ever they happen to be at the moment, and I did learn a lot. We separated as when they arrived at the hut they were staying in, and I continued to the next one. I chose to take the path labeled "low tide track" and was almost in over my head, the bottom was
nice and muddy and I almost lost my jandals and ended up having to strip my jeans off so that they wouldn't get wet as I forded the estuary. After that the track had some steep hills but nothing bad, it was a pretty easy hike all in all. There was one other are that claimed to be a low tide crossing, and I tried to make that, but after just about getting trapped by the tide out in the mud flats, I ended up going around the long way. A warning to anyone doing that tramp: the tide comes in very fast, it's not a good idea to try to risk it. I arrived at the hut just before dark, threw my bag on a bed, drank my wine and ate dinner. I went to sleep pretty early and got up pretty late. I was one of the last out of the hut, but I had a 4 hour hike and 7ish hours to do it in. I ended up hiking nice and easy and getting out about half an hour before the bus came to pick me up. I ended up getting off the trail just before the end and onto a beach, the tide was out at this point and there were sand dollars, cushion stars, and mussels all over the place. The sand dollars were all covered by a little sand, but you could easily find them as the sand covering them had the standard five pointed star-shape-pattern that they all have on their backs.
I checked into the hostel called "accents on the park" that night as the bug was full. There happened to be a huge international fiddle music weekend going on in nelson that weekend and most of the musicians were staying at the same hostel. I went down to the pub in the basement and listened to great Irish music for a half an hour, met a kiwi girl who was pretty cute but it turned out she was kinda young. Then all of the sudden everyone emptied out of the pub and it was practically just me and the bartender. He said that there was the big concert of the weekend going on then, but I probably wouldn't be able to get a ticket as they had been sold out for a couple weeks. He ended up giving me his, which he got for free as a complimentary thing for housing so many of the musicians, but since he was on shift he wouldn't be able to make it. The concert was great, there was a couple locals playing, who were pretty good, then a group from Australia and finally a guy and girl from Ireland, native Gaelic speakers both and that was pretty much amazing. After the concert they all went to the local pub and played until like four in the morning. The next day I bummed around Nelson and ended up at a pub that afternoon listening to them jam some more. It was quite annoying that I didn't have my fiddle to play with them, but what can you do? Slept at the bug that night and flew back the next morning.
I was apprehensive about the whole trip as it was solo and I had no phone. I ended up using Sam's old one, which turned out to be a necessity. I had pre-booked a super shuttle to pick me up at 4:30am so that I could make the plane on time, but they ended up not showing up, and as I had not left myself a very large margin for error time-wise, I ended up hailing a cab and paying way more that I should have to get to the airport. I never found out what happened to the super shuttle.
I arrived in Nelson early and the host of hostel I was staying at, The Bug, came to pick me up in an old time VW bug, it was pretty cool. Went to the Isite and booked a trip to Abel Tasman for the next two days and spent the rest of the morning looking for something to do in Nelson. It is a quiet town, reminded me a lot of Bozeman or even Jackson Hole minus the ski hills. I ended up renting a car, a manual, and heading out to the Motueka river to do some fly fishing. the
water was frigid and I ended up not getting so much as a bite. But I did have a good time and enjoyed myself in the fishing. I had a little run in with the car. Having the extra foot and hand to think about was a bit much for me and I ended up turning onto the wrong side of the street. I couldn't figure out how to put the car in reverse (there was a ring around the stick that you had to lift that I didn't know about) so I pulled into a car park and called the rental place. I was so pleased that got it all figured out that I didn't think as I was pulling out of the park lot and I went into the wrong lane. It just happened once, and on a deserted street no less, no one was coming but there were some guys working construction on the side of the road who swore at me. The whole incident got me pretty nervous about driving and it was kinda stressful for the rest of the day. I got back ok though, no accidents or anything. The next morning I turned the car in and got on the bus for Abel Tasman.
Took the water taxi to Tonga and walked to the Anchorage hut for the night, it was a 4ish hour hike along really nice easy terrain, I did most of it in my jandals. The aquataxi took us around and showed us some stuff that I would have taken pictures of if my camera had any batteries. This included a marine reserve and some seals swimming around in the area. I rode the aquataxi with a number of older people, five of whom comprised the bulk of the Nelson city tramping club. I ended up falling in with them for the day and I was instructed on most of the native flora and fauna by one of those older, izzoine gentlemen, the kind who know everything about where ever they happen to be at the moment, and I did learn a lot. We separated as when they arrived at the hut they were staying in, and I continued to the next one. I chose to take the path labeled "low tide track" and was almost in over my head, the bottom was
nice and muddy and I almost lost my jandals and ended up having to strip my jeans off so that they wouldn't get wet as I forded the estuary. After that the track had some steep hills but nothing bad, it was a pretty easy hike all in all. There was one other are that claimed to be a low tide crossing, and I tried to make that, but after just about getting trapped by the tide out in the mud flats, I ended up going around the long way. A warning to anyone doing that tramp: the tide comes in very fast, it's not a good idea to try to risk it. I arrived at the hut just before dark, threw my bag on a bed, drank my wine and ate dinner. I went to sleep pretty early and got up pretty late. I was one of the last out of the hut, but I had a 4 hour hike and 7ish hours to do it in. I ended up hiking nice and easy and getting out about half an hour before the bus came to pick me up. I ended up getting off the trail just before the end and onto a beach, the tide was out at this point and there were sand dollars, cushion stars, and mussels all over the place. The sand dollars were all covered by a little sand, but you could easily find them as the sand covering them had the standard five pointed star-shape-pattern that they all have on their backs.
I checked into the hostel called "accents on the park" that night as the bug was full. There happened to be a huge international fiddle music weekend going on in nelson that weekend and most of the musicians were staying at the same hostel. I went down to the pub in the basement and listened to great Irish music for a half an hour, met a kiwi girl who was pretty cute but it turned out she was kinda young. Then all of the sudden everyone emptied out of the pub and it was practically just me and the bartender. He said that there was the big concert of the weekend going on then, but I probably wouldn't be able to get a ticket as they had been sold out for a couple weeks. He ended up giving me his, which he got for free as a complimentary thing for housing so many of the musicians, but since he was on shift he wouldn't be able to make it. The concert was great, there was a couple locals playing, who were pretty good, then a group from Australia and finally a guy and girl from Ireland, native Gaelic speakers both and that was pretty much amazing. After the concert they all went to the local pub and played until like four in the morning. The next day I bummed around Nelson and ended up at a pub that afternoon listening to them jam some more. It was quite annoying that I didn't have my fiddle to play with them, but what can you do? Slept at the bug that night and flew back the next morning.
Monday, May 26, 2008
Arthur's Pass
"Once a journey is designed, equipped, and put in process, a new factor takes over. A trip, a safari, an exploration, in an entity, different from all other journeys. It has a personality, temperament, individuality, uniqueness. A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us. Tour masters, schedules, brassbound and inevitable,dash themselves to wreckage on the personality of the trip. Only when this is recognized can the blown-in -the-glass bum relax and go along with it. In this a journey is like a marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it." John Steinbeck, 1962, Travels with Charley
Caught the airbus Thursday morning, flight out at 1100 went from Auckland to Wellington to Christchurch. Arrived just before Kieft and met him outside the international gate. Took the bus into town and walked through the main square to find the wicked van rental company. It was cloudy and raining which was kinda a bummer. The first thing Tyler noticed as we got off the bus was a sign on the top of a building: "IBM". We got some pictures, him with his sign and me in front of the cathedral (god did not smite me down from on high so I figure it must have been ok) and then we continued on to the rental place.
We got our van, 'Foul Notions' with a quote on the back saying: "A wise man covers his arse, a smart man leaves his pants on." It had a kitchen in the back, with a pump sink and a counter, there was a gas stove, some chairs and a table inside that folded down into a bed. It was a great van all the way around. By this point it was too late to drive anywhere that night so we went to the shopping center and stocked up on food and gas. Once we were provisioned we sat to make some plans as we had no idea what the weekend would entail. While we were shopping a lady decided to give us some advice. From everything she told us, I realized the wisdom in two of the lines written by Steinbeck: "A man who seeing his mother starving to death on a path kicks her in the stomach to clear the way, will cheerfully devote several hours of his time to giving wrong directions to a total stranger" and "The impulse of the American woman to geld her husband and castrate her sons is very strong." She wasn't American and we weren't her sons but if she wasn't trying to castrate us I don't know what she was doing. Tyler, being less experienced and thus more susceptible to such advice was quite strongly affected by her warnings, and I was getting worried that he would call the trip off. To his credit he endeavored to see it through, and I am ashamed for ever doubting him.
Her advice is, for the most part, lost to my recollection. This may be due to the fact that it extended over the better part of an hour. I recall only three points she made: first that the weather in Arthur's Pass is horrible, snowing, and most likely impassable, second that Christchurch is a bad city - we should not trust anyone there as they will most likely add drugs to our drinks and commit other such unthinkable atrocities, and third that it would be best if we headed north to spend the weekend at the hot springs. Her advice was as long and glorious as it was wrong. We ended up doing almost the exact opposite of what she told us.
We spent Thursday night, the first night, in Christchurch. We found a car park in the botanical gardens and left the van there and headed into town. As we were leaving we saw some guys breaking into a van parked near ours, and with the fell advice ringing in our ears we decided to walk the away from the city for a couple minutes, then double back past our van to make sure that ours wasn't next. We turned around a bit early as they were still working on the original one when we passed again, so we stood in the shadow of a tree and watched for a while. We were getting pretty nervous about the situation. The tension we felt was diffused quite effectively when a locksmith van drove up.
Our night started at the Bog, which was interesting as I was in the bog in Auckland the day before. From there we walked around, found a souvenir shop, a billiards hall and a couple other pubs, until we arrived at the Grumpy Mole Saloon. It was dry, had a fire, and 3$ beers and we were set for the evening. Presently a kiwi approached us, 18 or 19 years old, scrawny as hell and pissed as. He introduced himself to us as Karl and proceeded to tell us about a number of his nefarious and surprisingly improbable sexual escapades. They were quite interesting and kept the two of us entertained for a while. We eventually decided that he was going to show us the club that was most hopping that night, which happened to be across the street (Christchurch isn't all that big). The bouncer apparently knew of him and wouldn't let him in so we parted ways and Tyler and I went into the club. It was still a bit early and no one was there so we promptly left to try and find our wayward friend, but it was of no avail. We went back to the Grumpy Mole and ended up at the club later that night. The club itself seemed fine to me, although I was quite intoxicated at that point, but Kieft said that it seemed really sketchy, although he admitted that the lady's dire warning was still on his mind. We ended the night with a nice walk back in the rain and once Tyler was able to de-stress a little bit (yeah - that's what they're calling it these days) we hit the sack. It was a good night, but I had one hell of a hangover the next day.
The next morning we started out toward Arthur's Pass after buying myself a merino and possum fur hat - which was quite expensive, but well worth it. Though it was still cloudy, the drive was beautiful, the leaves were changing colours, and the road was empty. We arrived at Castle Hill and stopped for some pictures. Some of the pine trees there were bright orange, while others were the standard green. I couldn't decide if they have some species of deciduous pines or if some of the trees were infected with something, but it was quite an interesting juxtaposition.
We didn't stop to climb then as it was a bit wet and we wanted to get to the pass to do a tramp before it got dark. An hour later we arrived at a huge sign welcoming us to Arthur's pass national park, so we got some pics and continued on our way.
The weather didn't improve in the pass at all, but we were able to get some good views and pictures including this one of Mt Rolleston, which I am very proud of.
she will stand forever
elegant in mystery
a brief passing for one
to meet and learn and know
her ephemeral eternity
(This poem was an addition on 11 Nov 2008. I found it in the archives of my computer. I believe that I wrote is as it references this picture. As I don't often write poetry, I think it a good idea to include it here lest it be lost.)
We stopped in at the visitors center at a tiny town named for the pass and checked the weather, hoping it would be clear enough to hike avalanche peak in the morning. We were told that the weather is so variable that we would need to check again in the morning and we were given some other tramp ideas to fill the rest of the day. We hiked to Devils Punchbowl Falls, a short easy hike to a fairly impressive 130m falls, and then we went up to the Temple Basin Track which turned out to be a ski hill. We have no idea how one is supposed to get from the car park to the base of the lift, it took us over an hour. We continued up a scree field under the lift line and were met by a group of Keas.
The kea is related to the parrot, the main differences being that keas are green with red under their wings and they live in alpine areas instead of the tropics. They are very smart and quite cheeky. They love to pull apart anything they can get ahold of, including cameras and cars, and they have been known to bite peoples legs to startle us into dropping food that they can then steal. We had no food and kept a tight hold on our cameras, and the keas kept their distance. The first one swooped over us and landed less than a metre from where we were walking and just sat there showing off for us to take pictures of.
We got to the top of the ski hill and screed back down - a pastime I find a great amount of guilty pleasure in, as it is so much fun and yet it erodes the mountain so bad. The return trip took less than half the time going up did.
We were both quite cold by the end of the tramp, as neither of us had gloves and it was quite cold, not rainy but definitely cold. We went to a pub called Arthur's and had a hot chocolate and some dinner and hung out for the rest of the evening, then we retired to our van, camped and slept. We were the only ones in the whole town of Arthur's Pass who didn't live there, and there can't be more than 50 or so people living there - the barmaid at Arthur's was the same all three days as was the lady working at the visitors center.
The next morning we got up, made shake and bake pancakes and were told that the weather was too cloudy and snowy to go up avalanche peak. We were advised that the west coast might have better weather and it should be fun to go and see the glaciers. We decided that this was a good idea and headed west.
There was a large bridge called the viaduct that was built some years ago, as a human structure I didn't find it quite as neat as Tyler did, but it was impressive. There were even some covered parts of the road that diverted water or falling rocks over and away from the cars.
The drive to the Franz Josef Glacier was pretty neat. There is only one road in the area that goes from the east to west coast and we were on it and yet we didn't pass another car but every 10 minutes or so. As soon as we got out of the pass the weather improved to no end. It was suddenly sunny and warm. The drive to the glaciers was scenic but long, and we arrived with enough time to hike each of them before the sun set. We were not actually able to walk on the glaciers as that requires crampons and a tour guide and more money than we wanted to spend, but we were able to get right up to the bottom of each of them. The picture below is the Fox Glacier. Apparently they are both advancing and doing so about 10x faster than any other glacier in the world as their catchments are so wide and the mouths are so narrow. There were signs along the road driving in that pointed out where the leading edge was in 1750 &c. It was quite apparent how far the glacier had retreated since then, and even though it's advancing now, there is a long way to go before it gets anywhere close to what it was then.
We cooked dinner at the town of Franz Josef and started back to camp somewhere closer to Arthur's pass that night. We were running low on petrol but the prices were so high (2.10$/Litre - we paid 1.83$/L in Christchurch with a .10$/L off coupon) we didn't stop to fill up. We finally coasted into a town called Hari Hari and stopped at the petrol station. The price was 2.13$/L but there was nowhere else and we were completely out. The only problem was that the station was closed. We stopped at a pub and asked about where we could get petrol and were told that the station would be open again on Monday. It was Saturday afternoon and our planes left on Monday morning at 6 so that wasn't going to work. The Bartender suggested that if we were to go to the owners house and ask politely, he might be willing to open the station for us. We did and he did, and he only charged us 20$ as an opening fee - good way to make money if you ask me, and I noticed that the alleged "opening fee" didn't go into the cash register with the petrol money either. But at least we weren't stranded in some little nothing of a town the entire weekend.
We were able to get all the way back to Arthur's Pass that night. I drove, which was quite enjoyable, and as there is no restriction against open bottles of beer in the car, Kieft had a few on the way back (there are restrictions against driving under the influence and even if there weren't I would have refrained - a.) I was driving and b.) it feels to weird to drink in a car anyway.) He was in a pretty happy state by the time we got to the Pass and we ended up making the bed and heading to the only open bar in town. That makes it sound like there were lots of bars which is misleading: there were only 2, this one, which was open and Arthur's, which was closed. We had a pint or two and headed back to the van to get an early start on the day and hopefully, if the weather improved, on avalanche peak.
The clouds were present in the morning, but they were higher than the previous days and moving so the DOC lady gave us a tentative 'all's clear' with a warning to watch the weather and turn back if the visibility got low. That's all we needed - we bought some gloves and started out, up the Scott's track to avalanche peak.
We choose Scott's track instead of avalanche peak track as it was allegedly less steep and easier to descend were the weather to turn bad. It was incredibly steep, and we were left wondering what the other track must be like. We felt like we were on Gollum's endless stair, and not even out of the bush yet, there was still a huge alpine meadow and then a ridge to traverse.
The Keas came out once we were above the bush line. 8 of them and the circled up around us, we took a bunch of pictures and moved on and they proceeded to give us an escort up the mountain, alternating between hopping and short flights, they took us from the bush line to nearly the top of the meadow.
We got some good views the higher we got until we hit the clouds and the views were mostly restricted to a couple hundred metres. The picture below is just before we lost most of the scenic views. Short range visibility remained surprisingly good as there was no point that we couldn't see the next 4 or 5 markers going up and at least 6 or 7 on the way back down. We stopped a few times to reevaluate whether it was a wise choice or not: the wind was blowing, it was quite cold, the clouds may move in and moor us in fog, &c. We were about to turn back and all the sudden most of the clouds in the near vicinity blew away and we could see all the way down to the valley floor so we decided to move on.
Once we were on the ridge, the snow started accumulating and the fog got thicker, but we could still see markers both up and down the ridge so we pressed on. This picture is in the middle of the ridge somewhere and as you can see the visibility was pretty good, even with a camera which always makes those kind of things look worse.
We had started hiking at 0950 and summited at 1200. It was cold and windy and snowy and slippery and we didn't dally long, a couple pictures, a quick pee off the top and we were on our way. We did pause long enough to vocalize both of our thoughts that tyguy should have been there with us.
Coming back down is always worse than going up, and that is where most of the accidents always happen. We were accident free which was good, especially on the ridge where a slip would have resulted in a harrowing fall off the side of one of two cliffs. The clouds had moved in lower while we were on top and there was some snow on the path in the meadow that hadn't been there earlier which made the path muddy as it melted underfoot. We stopped to eat a sandwhich just above the meadow and the keas met us again shortly after we continued on and gave us another escort down through their territiory, which ended with a fly-by: all 8 of them swooping low over our heads and landing in unison just before we entered the bush. I hope to see keas again before I leave New Zealand as they are the most amazing birds. This picture was taken as we were getting out of the clouds, just before the keas met us.
the rest of the hike was uneventful, and as the last leg of hike like that generally go, it seemed to take forever. We were down where it was warmer and started peeling off layers of clothing (I had: underarmor, a t shirt, a solomon vest, a polar fleece, a long sleeved shirt, a hoody and a rain/wind shell, gloves, and my possum hair hat and I was still a little chilly).
Once we were down it was straight to Arthurs for a hot chocolate and then we headed back towards Christchurch as Kiefts plane left at 0600 the next morning. We stopped along the way at Castle hill so I could climb, but it was still a bit wet, and there must have been about a million sheep in the area the day before, I couldn't climb much and the car stunk for the rest of the trip.
Castle hill in itself was amazing and I hope to go back with a guidebook when it is not so wet someday. There were huge boulder fields that had 500 boulders a peice scattered around the valley. It is a climber's dream.
We arrived in Christchurch with enough time to buy a kebab and drink some tui's before heading in to watch Indiana Jones. Normally I would balk at watching a movie on a trip like this but it was a fitting end to the weekend and neither of us were up for much else. We found the airport afterwards and then a campsite. Then we decided that since it was still early we would drive down to the ocean and look around. We found a huge peir, bigger than anything they could possibly use - we figure it was a symbolic dominance struggle - "we have a bigger peir than you" and all that jazz. Then we headed back and hit the hay.
The next morning we awoke and I took him to the airport and dropped him off at 0445. Then as I didn't want to go back to sleep and I still had half a tank of petrol I drove around for a while to see what I could find. Not much is the verdict on that one, I found the university of canterbury and walked around in it for a while at 0530 in the morning - there wasn't much going on. Then I headed to town to cook food and clean the van to turn it back in. I cooked on the side of the road which was really sketchy, but whatever, and turned the van in at 0830. I needed to be at the airport at 1000 so I had plenty of time to kill, I walked around the square and toured the cathedral and did some window shopping then got on the bus and headed back to auckland.
A final post script: I arrived in auckland at 12:20 and took the airbus back to uni, I arrived with just enough time to drop my stuff off at parnell and get to class. I had gone 4 days without a shower and at least 3 without a change of clothes, but I sure as hell got to class. They were two good lectures too.
Caught the airbus Thursday morning, flight out at 1100 went from Auckland to Wellington to Christchurch. Arrived just before Kieft and met him outside the international gate. Took the bus into town and walked through the main square to find the wicked van rental company. It was cloudy and raining which was kinda a bummer. The first thing Tyler noticed as we got off the bus was a sign on the top of a building: "IBM". We got some pictures, him with his sign and me in front of the cathedral (god did not smite me down from on high so I figure it must have been ok) and then we continued on to the rental place.
We got our van, 'Foul Notions' with a quote on the back saying: "A wise man covers his arse, a smart man leaves his pants on." It had a kitchen in the back, with a pump sink and a counter, there was a gas stove, some chairs and a table inside that folded down into a bed. It was a great van all the way around. By this point it was too late to drive anywhere that night so we went to the shopping center and stocked up on food and gas. Once we were provisioned we sat to make some plans as we had no idea what the weekend would entail. While we were shopping a lady decided to give us some advice. From everything she told us, I realized the wisdom in two of the lines written by Steinbeck: "A man who seeing his mother starving to death on a path kicks her in the stomach to clear the way, will cheerfully devote several hours of his time to giving wrong directions to a total stranger" and "The impulse of the American woman to geld her husband and castrate her sons is very strong." She wasn't American and we weren't her sons but if she wasn't trying to castrate us I don't know what she was doing. Tyler, being less experienced and thus more susceptible to such advice was quite strongly affected by her warnings, and I was getting worried that he would call the trip off. To his credit he endeavored to see it through, and I am ashamed for ever doubting him.
Her advice is, for the most part, lost to my recollection. This may be due to the fact that it extended over the better part of an hour. I recall only three points she made: first that the weather in Arthur's Pass is horrible, snowing, and most likely impassable, second that Christchurch is a bad city - we should not trust anyone there as they will most likely add drugs to our drinks and commit other such unthinkable atrocities, and third that it would be best if we headed north to spend the weekend at the hot springs. Her advice was as long and glorious as it was wrong. We ended up doing almost the exact opposite of what she told us.
We spent Thursday night, the first night, in Christchurch. We found a car park in the botanical gardens and left the van there and headed into town. As we were leaving we saw some guys breaking into a van parked near ours, and with the fell advice ringing in our ears we decided to walk the away from the city for a couple minutes, then double back past our van to make sure that ours wasn't next. We turned around a bit early as they were still working on the original one when we passed again, so we stood in the shadow of a tree and watched for a while. We were getting pretty nervous about the situation. The tension we felt was diffused quite effectively when a locksmith van drove up.
Our night started at the Bog, which was interesting as I was in the bog in Auckland the day before. From there we walked around, found a souvenir shop, a billiards hall and a couple other pubs, until we arrived at the Grumpy Mole Saloon. It was dry, had a fire, and 3$ beers and we were set for the evening. Presently a kiwi approached us, 18 or 19 years old, scrawny as hell and pissed as. He introduced himself to us as Karl and proceeded to tell us about a number of his nefarious and surprisingly improbable sexual escapades. They were quite interesting and kept the two of us entertained for a while. We eventually decided that he was going to show us the club that was most hopping that night, which happened to be across the street (Christchurch isn't all that big). The bouncer apparently knew of him and wouldn't let him in so we parted ways and Tyler and I went into the club. It was still a bit early and no one was there so we promptly left to try and find our wayward friend, but it was of no avail. We went back to the Grumpy Mole and ended up at the club later that night. The club itself seemed fine to me, although I was quite intoxicated at that point, but Kieft said that it seemed really sketchy, although he admitted that the lady's dire warning was still on his mind. We ended the night with a nice walk back in the rain and once Tyler was able to de-stress a little bit (yeah - that's what they're calling it these days) we hit the sack. It was a good night, but I had one hell of a hangover the next day.
The next morning we started out toward Arthur's Pass after buying myself a merino and possum fur hat - which was quite expensive, but well worth it. Though it was still cloudy, the drive was beautiful, the leaves were changing colours, and the road was empty. We arrived at Castle Hill and stopped for some pictures. Some of the pine trees there were bright orange, while others were the standard green. I couldn't decide if they have some species of deciduous pines or if some of the trees were infected with something, but it was quite an interesting juxtaposition.
We didn't stop to climb then as it was a bit wet and we wanted to get to the pass to do a tramp before it got dark. An hour later we arrived at a huge sign welcoming us to Arthur's pass national park, so we got some pics and continued on our way.
The weather didn't improve in the pass at all, but we were able to get some good views and pictures including this one of Mt Rolleston, which I am very proud of.
she will stand foreverelegant in mystery
a brief passing for one
to meet and learn and know
her ephemeral eternity
(This poem was an addition on 11 Nov 2008. I found it in the archives of my computer. I believe that I wrote is as it references this picture. As I don't often write poetry, I think it a good idea to include it here lest it be lost.)
We stopped in at the visitors center at a tiny town named for the pass and checked the weather, hoping it would be clear enough to hike avalanche peak in the morning. We were told that the weather is so variable that we would need to check again in the morning and we were given some other tramp ideas to fill the rest of the day. We hiked to Devils Punchbowl Falls, a short easy hike to a fairly impressive 130m falls, and then we went up to the Temple Basin Track which turned out to be a ski hill. We have no idea how one is supposed to get from the car park to the base of the lift, it took us over an hour. We continued up a scree field under the lift line and were met by a group of Keas.
The kea is related to the parrot, the main differences being that keas are green with red under their wings and they live in alpine areas instead of the tropics. They are very smart and quite cheeky. They love to pull apart anything they can get ahold of, including cameras and cars, and they have been known to bite peoples legs to startle us into dropping food that they can then steal. We had no food and kept a tight hold on our cameras, and the keas kept their distance. The first one swooped over us and landed less than a metre from where we were walking and just sat there showing off for us to take pictures of.
We got to the top of the ski hill and screed back down - a pastime I find a great amount of guilty pleasure in, as it is so much fun and yet it erodes the mountain so bad. The return trip took less than half the time going up did.
We were both quite cold by the end of the tramp, as neither of us had gloves and it was quite cold, not rainy but definitely cold. We went to a pub called Arthur's and had a hot chocolate and some dinner and hung out for the rest of the evening, then we retired to our van, camped and slept. We were the only ones in the whole town of Arthur's Pass who didn't live there, and there can't be more than 50 or so people living there - the barmaid at Arthur's was the same all three days as was the lady working at the visitors center.
The next morning we got up, made shake and bake pancakes and were told that the weather was too cloudy and snowy to go up avalanche peak. We were advised that the west coast might have better weather and it should be fun to go and see the glaciers. We decided that this was a good idea and headed west.
There was a large bridge called the viaduct that was built some years ago, as a human structure I didn't find it quite as neat as Tyler did, but it was impressive. There were even some covered parts of the road that diverted water or falling rocks over and away from the cars.
The drive to the Franz Josef Glacier was pretty neat. There is only one road in the area that goes from the east to west coast and we were on it and yet we didn't pass another car but every 10 minutes or so. As soon as we got out of the pass the weather improved to no end. It was suddenly sunny and warm. The drive to the glaciers was scenic but long, and we arrived with enough time to hike each of them before the sun set. We were not actually able to walk on the glaciers as that requires crampons and a tour guide and more money than we wanted to spend, but we were able to get right up to the bottom of each of them. The picture below is the Fox Glacier. Apparently they are both advancing and doing so about 10x faster than any other glacier in the world as their catchments are so wide and the mouths are so narrow. There were signs along the road driving in that pointed out where the leading edge was in 1750 &c. It was quite apparent how far the glacier had retreated since then, and even though it's advancing now, there is a long way to go before it gets anywhere close to what it was then.
We cooked dinner at the town of Franz Josef and started back to camp somewhere closer to Arthur's pass that night. We were running low on petrol but the prices were so high (2.10$/Litre - we paid 1.83$/L in Christchurch with a .10$/L off coupon) we didn't stop to fill up. We finally coasted into a town called Hari Hari and stopped at the petrol station. The price was 2.13$/L but there was nowhere else and we were completely out. The only problem was that the station was closed. We stopped at a pub and asked about where we could get petrol and were told that the station would be open again on Monday. It was Saturday afternoon and our planes left on Monday morning at 6 so that wasn't going to work. The Bartender suggested that if we were to go to the owners house and ask politely, he might be willing to open the station for us. We did and he did, and he only charged us 20$ as an opening fee - good way to make money if you ask me, and I noticed that the alleged "opening fee" didn't go into the cash register with the petrol money either. But at least we weren't stranded in some little nothing of a town the entire weekend.
We were able to get all the way back to Arthur's Pass that night. I drove, which was quite enjoyable, and as there is no restriction against open bottles of beer in the car, Kieft had a few on the way back (there are restrictions against driving under the influence and even if there weren't I would have refrained - a.) I was driving and b.) it feels to weird to drink in a car anyway.) He was in a pretty happy state by the time we got to the Pass and we ended up making the bed and heading to the only open bar in town. That makes it sound like there were lots of bars which is misleading: there were only 2, this one, which was open and Arthur's, which was closed. We had a pint or two and headed back to the van to get an early start on the day and hopefully, if the weather improved, on avalanche peak.
The clouds were present in the morning, but they were higher than the previous days and moving so the DOC lady gave us a tentative 'all's clear' with a warning to watch the weather and turn back if the visibility got low. That's all we needed - we bought some gloves and started out, up the Scott's track to avalanche peak.
We choose Scott's track instead of avalanche peak track as it was allegedly less steep and easier to descend were the weather to turn bad. It was incredibly steep, and we were left wondering what the other track must be like. We felt like we were on Gollum's endless stair, and not even out of the bush yet, there was still a huge alpine meadow and then a ridge to traverse.
The Keas came out once we were above the bush line. 8 of them and the circled up around us, we took a bunch of pictures and moved on and they proceeded to give us an escort up the mountain, alternating between hopping and short flights, they took us from the bush line to nearly the top of the meadow.
We got some good views the higher we got until we hit the clouds and the views were mostly restricted to a couple hundred metres. The picture below is just before we lost most of the scenic views. Short range visibility remained surprisingly good as there was no point that we couldn't see the next 4 or 5 markers going up and at least 6 or 7 on the way back down. We stopped a few times to reevaluate whether it was a wise choice or not: the wind was blowing, it was quite cold, the clouds may move in and moor us in fog, &c. We were about to turn back and all the sudden most of the clouds in the near vicinity blew away and we could see all the way down to the valley floor so we decided to move on.
Once we were on the ridge, the snow started accumulating and the fog got thicker, but we could still see markers both up and down the ridge so we pressed on. This picture is in the middle of the ridge somewhere and as you can see the visibility was pretty good, even with a camera which always makes those kind of things look worse.
We had started hiking at 0950 and summited at 1200. It was cold and windy and snowy and slippery and we didn't dally long, a couple pictures, a quick pee off the top and we were on our way. We did pause long enough to vocalize both of our thoughts that tyguy should have been there with us.
Coming back down is always worse than going up, and that is where most of the accidents always happen. We were accident free which was good, especially on the ridge where a slip would have resulted in a harrowing fall off the side of one of two cliffs. The clouds had moved in lower while we were on top and there was some snow on the path in the meadow that hadn't been there earlier which made the path muddy as it melted underfoot. We stopped to eat a sandwhich just above the meadow and the keas met us again shortly after we continued on and gave us another escort down through their territiory, which ended with a fly-by: all 8 of them swooping low over our heads and landing in unison just before we entered the bush. I hope to see keas again before I leave New Zealand as they are the most amazing birds. This picture was taken as we were getting out of the clouds, just before the keas met us.
the rest of the hike was uneventful, and as the last leg of hike like that generally go, it seemed to take forever. We were down where it was warmer and started peeling off layers of clothing (I had: underarmor, a t shirt, a solomon vest, a polar fleece, a long sleeved shirt, a hoody and a rain/wind shell, gloves, and my possum hair hat and I was still a little chilly).
Once we were down it was straight to Arthurs for a hot chocolate and then we headed back towards Christchurch as Kiefts plane left at 0600 the next morning. We stopped along the way at Castle hill so I could climb, but it was still a bit wet, and there must have been about a million sheep in the area the day before, I couldn't climb much and the car stunk for the rest of the trip.
Castle hill in itself was amazing and I hope to go back with a guidebook when it is not so wet someday. There were huge boulder fields that had 500 boulders a peice scattered around the valley. It is a climber's dream.
We arrived in Christchurch with enough time to buy a kebab and drink some tui's before heading in to watch Indiana Jones. Normally I would balk at watching a movie on a trip like this but it was a fitting end to the weekend and neither of us were up for much else. We found the airport afterwards and then a campsite. Then we decided that since it was still early we would drive down to the ocean and look around. We found a huge peir, bigger than anything they could possibly use - we figure it was a symbolic dominance struggle - "we have a bigger peir than you" and all that jazz. Then we headed back and hit the hay.
The next morning we awoke and I took him to the airport and dropped him off at 0445. Then as I didn't want to go back to sleep and I still had half a tank of petrol I drove around for a while to see what I could find. Not much is the verdict on that one, I found the university of canterbury and walked around in it for a while at 0530 in the morning - there wasn't much going on. Then I headed to town to cook food and clean the van to turn it back in. I cooked on the side of the road which was really sketchy, but whatever, and turned the van in at 0830. I needed to be at the airport at 1000 so I had plenty of time to kill, I walked around the square and toured the cathedral and did some window shopping then got on the bus and headed back to auckland.
A final post script: I arrived in auckland at 12:20 and took the airbus back to uni, I arrived with just enough time to drop my stuff off at parnell and get to class. I had gone 4 days without a shower and at least 3 without a change of clothes, but I sure as hell got to class. They were two good lectures too.
Sunday, May 18, 2008
Extreme Edge, The Quarry, and Ti Point.
This weekend was full of climbing. It started at the Extreme Edge on Friday night, what a huge gym. Apparently it used to be an airplane hanger, and it was completely covered with holds and ceilings and rules and whatnot. Case in point: I began to teach till to lead belay so that he could belay me in the future. I was yelled at by three separate people that you are not allowed to teach lead belaying in the gym. This greatly confused me as I find it much safer to teach them in a gym than outside. After I cooled off from that, I had a great time climbing, there were a bunch of routes that were within my ability enough that I didn't feel overtaxed, but that still gave me a challenge. Also I rode over with a guy by the name of Crispin, who reminded me completely of Chris Nolan, so I had a great evening reminiscing about the glory days. I have to admit it made me quite homesick for the ROC.
The next day was pretty laid back, didn't do much, was planning on going to Ti point early with some of the climbers but they bailed. Ended up calling Bogdan and going to the quarry with him, set the top rope on the far crack and abseiled down, it was pretty sweet, Bogdan had a lot of fun. He's from eastern Europe somewhere, I can't remember exactly - Czech republic maybe, and I met him at the gym a couple weeks ago and taught him to lead. We climbed the crack for a while and then headed home as it was getting dark.
Sunday morning at 5 I got up and headed to uni to go to Ti Point with josh, keatin, and danielle. We left very early, and I slept most of the drive. Apparently we stopped for gas at one point and josh bought us all coffee, now I don't actually like coffee, but I felt that it would be poor form to refuse and as it had been a couple years since I last tried it, I thought that maybe it would be better this time around. It wasn't better. It was actually still pretty gross. But I drank it and thanked him and was on a caffeine high for the rest of the morning. Ti Point is a little bit south of Goat island and right on the coast. The holds were mostly sloppers and the rock was sandy so there wasn't much to hold onto. 
I started a lead in the morning and very quickly decided that it wasn't worth killing myself on so I quit. Tony started to to finish it for me and ended up clipping weird and taking a fall. He swung about 2 meters and smashed into the side of the cliff. It was lucky that he had a helmet otherwise he would probably have a concussion, as it was he got out with a sore tailbone and a bunch of scrapes. He sat out the rest of the day. All in all, I found the climbing there to be very tough, and quite scary. Even as a belayer it was scary as they were on a heap of jagged rocks just above the high tide mark and never had a level place to stand. Tony was the only fall, and when we got back the club passed some new safety restrictions about wearing helmets and whatnot. I did climb a couple routes but they were all on top rope and very few of them were clean. An interesting place to climb, but not one that I will go back to.
The next day was pretty laid back, didn't do much, was planning on going to Ti point early with some of the climbers but they bailed. Ended up calling Bogdan and going to the quarry with him, set the top rope on the far crack and abseiled down, it was pretty sweet, Bogdan had a lot of fun. He's from eastern Europe somewhere, I can't remember exactly - Czech republic maybe, and I met him at the gym a couple weeks ago and taught him to lead. We climbed the crack for a while and then headed home as it was getting dark.
Sunday morning at 5 I got up and headed to uni to go to Ti Point with josh, keatin, and danielle. We left very early, and I slept most of the drive. Apparently we stopped for gas at one point and josh bought us all coffee, now I don't actually like coffee, but I felt that it would be poor form to refuse and as it had been a couple years since I last tried it, I thought that maybe it would be better this time around. It wasn't better. It was actually still pretty gross. But I drank it and thanked him and was on a caffeine high for the rest of the morning. Ti Point is a little bit south of Goat island and right on the coast. The holds were mostly sloppers and the rock was sandy so there wasn't much to hold onto. 
I started a lead in the morning and very quickly decided that it wasn't worth killing myself on so I quit. Tony started to to finish it for me and ended up clipping weird and taking a fall. He swung about 2 meters and smashed into the side of the cliff. It was lucky that he had a helmet otherwise he would probably have a concussion, as it was he got out with a sore tailbone and a bunch of scrapes. He sat out the rest of the day. All in all, I found the climbing there to be very tough, and quite scary. Even as a belayer it was scary as they were on a heap of jagged rocks just above the high tide mark and never had a level place to stand. Tony was the only fall, and when we got back the club passed some new safety restrictions about wearing helmets and whatnot. I did climb a couple routes but they were all on top rope and very few of them were clean. An interesting place to climb, but not one that I will go back to.
Monday, May 12, 2008
Froggat Take II
Supposed to leave Friday night but it was stormy and rainy and no one wanted to pitch a tent in the rain. Katie picked me up at 8:30 and we arrived at the crag at 12:00 - it was only a 2 hour drive, but the kiwis are amazing at killing time, we stopped for food before we even left, then gas half way, and then some more food once we got closer. It turned out for the best though, as no one started climbing until we got there anyway. There was about 6 hours to climb that day and I did one top rope and a whole bunch of leads. It was a great day. Headed to the campsite and played some cards, got on the piss, and watched a candle burn and drip wax all over the bottle it was stuck in - which doesn't sound like much fun, but it's something that I personally am going to start doing more often, cause it was a blast. The next day was more leading on a different crag and then we headed home at 3ish, got back around 6:30 and typed another essay for the following day. A very rewarding weekend all in all.
Friday, May 9, 2008
Jungle Party
Natalie and TJ threw a jungle party on wednesday night. It was a pretty good time, got quite pissed though. I don't think that Parnell was ready for the degree of naked debauchery that I displayed - and I thought I was going pretty consservative compared to most XC parties . . . The picture is of Adam and me and TJ. I was easliy the most naked participant that evening and I got my picture with more random girls than I even knew existed.
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
John Walker
This is a story that begins months ago, on the trip to Devonport with Jay and Bron. At the time I was looking for a book: No Bugles, No Drums, about Peter Snell. It is a fairly rare book and I had a hard time finding it in the states. We were walking down a strip mall and there was a rare books store so I thought I would drop in and see if they had it. To my surprise, they did, the owner also brought out two copies of a book called "John Walker: Champion," one of which was autographed. I got No Bugles, No Drums for 40$ and the not signed one for 20$ as I had, at the time, no idea who this guy was. It took me some time to get around to reading this book. When I finished I was very impressed. It turns out that John Walker was, among other things, the first man to break 3:50 in the mile (3:49.4). When I finished the book I got on Wikipedia to see what else I could learn about this guy. The last sentence of the wikipedia article was that John Walker currently owns an equestrian store in Newmarket (I live in Parnell, which is adjacent to Newmarket). I quickly discovered that there is only one equestrian store in Newmarket and that it was actually only .7k from my flat. This I was very excited about. It took me some time to actually get there however. 1st I didn't actually trust the wikipedia, I didn't think that he actually owned this store that I walk by every time I go for groceries and 2nd it said that he was diagnosed with Parkinson's 12 years ago, and I thought that the chance he was still actually running the store was really low.
On the 30 of April at about noon I was going down to the climbing store to buy myself a sling and I decided, completely spur of the moment to stop by and ask if he actually did own the store. I walked in and there was an older lady and a highly attractive younger one pretty close to my age sitting behind the counter. I started out with: "So, I have kind of a random question to ask you: who owns this shop?" The girl pointed at the lady and I got combined "she does/I do" after which followed a slightly confused pause on my part and I slurred out something to the effect of ohiseeiheardsomewherethat
JOHNWALKERdidandijustwantedtoseeifthatwastrue. I'm pretty sure that the only thing intelligible out of the whole thing was his name. The Lady responded, very politely that "John Walker is my husband, he's out in Newmarket right now at the bank, but he's due back shortly, come back later this afternoon and you can meet him if you would like."
Needless to say I decided to go back that afternoon. I left the shop, quite awkwardly upon retrospect, and bought my sling, headed back to my room, dropped everything off, grabbed my copies of 'Once a Runner' and 'John Walker: Champion' and headed back.
When I got back it was just the girl sitting there, she saw me and gave me a "so you're back" and I said, in the most suave and debonair way I could manage at the time: "so I am." She headed off to the back to get him and left me starting at bridles and other horse stuff. She came back in a bit, and informed me that he was on the phone and would be up shortly, so look around and make myself at home. We talked then for a bit, but I don't remember much of what was said which is kinda aggravating cause she was quite hot I do remember telling her that I couldn't really believe that this was about to happen - quite the conversationalist. She did mention that he has Parkinson's and has lost most of the feeling in his face so he won't smile at all and if he seems really serious, that's why.
His wife came back in shortly with a younger girl (who I discovered later was his daughter) and joined our conversation. When I heard footsteps coming behind me I almost didn't want to turn around, I was so nervous. The first thing he said was a curt "John Walker" and held out his hand. I wish I could say that he had a nice firm handshake, but I honestly don't remember, I was so amazed that I was actually shaking John Walkers hand, I have no idea what else was going on. I know I introduced myself - I hope I didn't mumble to bad. For the next half hour the five of us just had a conversation like it was the most ordinary thing in the world.
We talked a lot about training, what I was running, what I had run, times I ran, how old I was. The one thing he said was that for my age: if I were to run 70-80mi/week instead of 45-55, I would easily drop a minute and a half off of my 8k time of 26:12. He asked if I get injured much and since not, to definitely increase my mileage. I thought at first he meant that as long as one in not injured, one ought to increase ones mileage, which caused me some confusion as to how one knows at what mileage to stop at, but I think now that he meant me specifically, since I was not getting injured at the low mileage, increase my mileage up to 70-80, not indefinitely. He also said that speed will come with endurance, not the other way around, so I will get more speed just by virtue of the fact that the mileage is higher. While it is wise to run speed workouts, they should take a second priority to the miles, and especially do not over train them: going full pace or all-out on repeat drills will break the body down and not help. He said that his fastest 800 (1:44 - still the second fastest New Zealand 800, second to one that Snell ran) was run on a 110 mile week. He gave me the names of streets to train on, none of which i had heard of before and all of which were Maori names, so they all sounded the same, and I have no idea what they were. The one that I remember was that he said there was a running track about 2 miles down Broadway (I think) just straight down. I ran down there and couldn't find it though. Also he did a lot of training at one tree hill (down the same way) and on the waiatarua track to the west - somewhere I really need to try before I leave here. I mentioned that I try to run twice a day and his responce was that it's good, but make sure that I go at least 10mi in the morning and a 6k at night. I'm not sure if he meant both of them to be miles or both ks, or if he meant to mix the units, but that's what he said. That is a brief synopsis on the main points he said about training.
The discussion didn't end there however: I was grilled on my life - where I was from, how I ended up in New Zealand, how I liked it, what I liked most about it, what I was studying at uni, we even got into American politics: who I thought should be elected (not Clinton) he thinks that McCain will take the election, that America isn't ready for a black president, that Obama will probably be shot if elected, at which his daughter said: Daddy - you can't say that! (she was probably 11 or 12).
We talked for a good half an hour, starting with training, delving into everything else and then coming back to running by the end. As I was leaving he told me to come back whenever I want, and let him know how the training is going. I plan to run a 10k in June, so I think I will go before that, and maybe after wards too.
I shook every one's hands on the way out, and was then for the first time actually introduced to Katie, the hot chick, who I thought originally was one of his daughters, but I don't think so anymore. I was planning on asking him for a signature, but at one point Katie had a transaction form for him to sign, and the Parkinson's was fairly apparent - he signed with a large X, so I decided that it would be poor taste to ask for a signature - maybe I'll get a picture when I go back. Other reflections: Katie did say that this type of thing happens often.
It was quite an experience to meet him. I was shaking for the rest of the day, tried to climb and couldn't, couldn't do much in the way of work either. I'm finally typing this up on Sunday (I met him last Wednesday) and I am getting pretty shaky just remembering it all. I've been going around all week telling people that I just met john walker. I went to a comedy club on Friday night with Nicki and Ian Wallace and their family, I told Ian and he said that he used to run down by one tree hill at the same time that John did, that he would hear footfalls, so soft you could barely hear them coming behind and then John would just float by, they exchanged a 'hi John/hi Ian' and he would be gone. Ian said that watching him run was incredible, he did just float it seemed completely effortless. I wish I could have seen it.
On the 30 of April at about noon I was going down to the climbing store to buy myself a sling and I decided, completely spur of the moment to stop by and ask if he actually did own the store. I walked in and there was an older lady and a highly attractive younger one pretty close to my age sitting behind the counter. I started out with: "So, I have kind of a random question to ask you: who owns this shop?" The girl pointed at the lady and I got combined "she does/I do" after which followed a slightly confused pause on my part and I slurred out something to the effect of ohiseeiheardsomewherethat
JOHNWALKERdidandijustwantedtoseeifthatwastrue. I'm pretty sure that the only thing intelligible out of the whole thing was his name. The Lady responded, very politely that "John Walker is my husband, he's out in Newmarket right now at the bank, but he's due back shortly, come back later this afternoon and you can meet him if you would like."
Needless to say I decided to go back that afternoon. I left the shop, quite awkwardly upon retrospect, and bought my sling, headed back to my room, dropped everything off, grabbed my copies of 'Once a Runner' and 'John Walker: Champion' and headed back.
When I got back it was just the girl sitting there, she saw me and gave me a "so you're back" and I said, in the most suave and debonair way I could manage at the time: "so I am." She headed off to the back to get him and left me starting at bridles and other horse stuff. She came back in a bit, and informed me that he was on the phone and would be up shortly, so look around and make myself at home. We talked then for a bit, but I don't remember much of what was said which is kinda aggravating cause she was quite hot I do remember telling her that I couldn't really believe that this was about to happen - quite the conversationalist. She did mention that he has Parkinson's and has lost most of the feeling in his face so he won't smile at all and if he seems really serious, that's why.
His wife came back in shortly with a younger girl (who I discovered later was his daughter) and joined our conversation. When I heard footsteps coming behind me I almost didn't want to turn around, I was so nervous. The first thing he said was a curt "John Walker" and held out his hand. I wish I could say that he had a nice firm handshake, but I honestly don't remember, I was so amazed that I was actually shaking John Walkers hand, I have no idea what else was going on. I know I introduced myself - I hope I didn't mumble to bad. For the next half hour the five of us just had a conversation like it was the most ordinary thing in the world.
We talked a lot about training, what I was running, what I had run, times I ran, how old I was. The one thing he said was that for my age: if I were to run 70-80mi/week instead of 45-55, I would easily drop a minute and a half off of my 8k time of 26:12. He asked if I get injured much and since not, to definitely increase my mileage. I thought at first he meant that as long as one in not injured, one ought to increase ones mileage, which caused me some confusion as to how one knows at what mileage to stop at, but I think now that he meant me specifically, since I was not getting injured at the low mileage, increase my mileage up to 70-80, not indefinitely. He also said that speed will come with endurance, not the other way around, so I will get more speed just by virtue of the fact that the mileage is higher. While it is wise to run speed workouts, they should take a second priority to the miles, and especially do not over train them: going full pace or all-out on repeat drills will break the body down and not help. He said that his fastest 800 (1:44 - still the second fastest New Zealand 800, second to one that Snell ran) was run on a 110 mile week. He gave me the names of streets to train on, none of which i had heard of before and all of which were Maori names, so they all sounded the same, and I have no idea what they were. The one that I remember was that he said there was a running track about 2 miles down Broadway (I think) just straight down. I ran down there and couldn't find it though. Also he did a lot of training at one tree hill (down the same way) and on the waiatarua track to the west - somewhere I really need to try before I leave here. I mentioned that I try to run twice a day and his responce was that it's good, but make sure that I go at least 10mi in the morning and a 6k at night. I'm not sure if he meant both of them to be miles or both ks, or if he meant to mix the units, but that's what he said. That is a brief synopsis on the main points he said about training.
The discussion didn't end there however: I was grilled on my life - where I was from, how I ended up in New Zealand, how I liked it, what I liked most about it, what I was studying at uni, we even got into American politics: who I thought should be elected (not Clinton) he thinks that McCain will take the election, that America isn't ready for a black president, that Obama will probably be shot if elected, at which his daughter said: Daddy - you can't say that! (she was probably 11 or 12).
We talked for a good half an hour, starting with training, delving into everything else and then coming back to running by the end. As I was leaving he told me to come back whenever I want, and let him know how the training is going. I plan to run a 10k in June, so I think I will go before that, and maybe after wards too.
I shook every one's hands on the way out, and was then for the first time actually introduced to Katie, the hot chick, who I thought originally was one of his daughters, but I don't think so anymore. I was planning on asking him for a signature, but at one point Katie had a transaction form for him to sign, and the Parkinson's was fairly apparent - he signed with a large X, so I decided that it would be poor taste to ask for a signature - maybe I'll get a picture when I go back. Other reflections: Katie did say that this type of thing happens often.
It was quite an experience to meet him. I was shaking for the rest of the day, tried to climb and couldn't, couldn't do much in the way of work either. I'm finally typing this up on Sunday (I met him last Wednesday) and I am getting pretty shaky just remembering it all. I've been going around all week telling people that I just met john walker. I went to a comedy club on Friday night with Nicki and Ian Wallace and their family, I told Ian and he said that he used to run down by one tree hill at the same time that John did, that he would hear footfalls, so soft you could barely hear them coming behind and then John would just float by, they exchanged a 'hi John/hi Ian' and he would be gone. Ian said that watching him run was incredible, he did just float it seemed completely effortless. I wish I could have seen it.
Monday, April 28, 2008
Hell week and the Whanganui Canoe Trip
It started Tuesday morning, I had two essays due on Thursday at 4, one due Monday at 3 and a midterm Wednesday afternoon. Finished the first essay (on the nitrate uptake rates of seaweeds) on Tuesday night, after having started it Tuesday morning. Got up early on Wednesday to begin work on the second essay (on a marine survey of the goat island marine reserve) and took a short break from 4 to 7 to begin studying for the test, take the test and eat, before returning to the essay which was finally finished by 2 Thursday morning. Thursday I got up, began the essay due Monday, attended class, edited the two due later that day, turned them in and continued work on Mondays essay. At this point I had completed 2 and a half essays and one test in two days. Thursday night we left for the Whanganui river and a canoe trip that was to last until Sunday evening.
The canoe trip was amazing. It is the first of the great walks that I have done to date (I have been trying to stay off the beaten path in that regard) but it was well worth it. It was Natalie, Mike, Katie, and myself. Mike and Katie were two of Natalie's friends who turned out to be really cool. We got to the departure area late that night. It was just some one's back field that we were supposed to camp in, which seemed really sketchy but it was owned by the canoe hire place, Wades Landing, and in the morning we marshaled all of our stuff and were on our way. They provided watertight containers for our gear which was really nice. We got packed and piled into a van. The drive actually took a long time, we left at 8:30 and stopped for morning tea at around 10:00. After milling around and buying the hut passes for the trip (180$ for a canoe and a hut pass - I think we swindled them out of a hut pass apiece) we were issued our life jackets and we piled back into the van. From there is was only a couple minutes drive to the put in site and in due time we were given a canoe, some instructions, a paddle apiece and set on our way.
We opted to do the 3 day version of the trip instead of the full 5 day as we all had class to get to, it turned out that 3 was plenty for me. The first day had approximately 6 hours of paddling and it was going to be dark at around 6:30 so we were slightly pressed for time. We did well though. Natalie was quite an apt partner and we settled into a rhythm. The front person set up a consistent paddling stroke and the one in the back followed and steered. After two hours my shoulders were pretty sore and I got to take a turn in the back. Being in orchestra for so long, I quickly followed Natalie's strokes and it seemed to work out nicely. It was much more fun to be in the back steering than in the front just paddling, but it did get monotonous in either spot for too long, and we both preferred the back. I noticed that Natalie didn't match her strokes up with mine when she was in the back and I was in the front - and it really worked the same, somehow though I couldn't bring myself to not follow her when I was in back - apparently I'm OCD a bit. The scenery was pretty neat and being on the water was such a great experience. Its hard to describe an experience like that. Every two hours or so we switched positions and even with a relaxing lunch break, by dark we did arrive at the campsite. There was a hut there that we weren't planning on sleeping in, and we pitched our tent on a set of terraces cut into the side of the hill. The vegetation was so thick and the side hills so steep that there was no where else to pitch the tent except at the DOC campsite. The hut slept about 30 and it filled up rather quickly, the campsites filled up quickly as well. It was a national holiday, ANZAC day (like our memorial day) on Friday and the weekend we were there marked the final weekend of peak season (prices would have dropped quite a bit if we had put it off one week). There turned out to be around 80 people at the campsite that night, at least 50 of which were expecting to sleep in the hut. It was a mess, the poor hut warden didn't know what to do. We cooked and went down to the shore and hung out around a fire with some foreign students doing some exchange woofing program.
The next morning we were the last to leave and started out around 9 with five hours of paddling ahead of us. Slighlty sore from the day before, but well rested and well fed. The water was pretty flat for the first two days, only small riffles to go through and we made good time. Stopped for a nice long lunch on a sandbar and checked out some caves in the canyon walls. Saw a dead sheep caught on a stick in middle of the river. The campsite that night was less crowded and had more room. There was a marae there and more cooking facilities. Had another good dinner and hung out on the beach again. There was a possum hanging out in the tree by our tent when we got back, he was pretty small and quite fearless.
The next morning we started out. The pickup site was 4 hours of paddling down the river but this time there was some class 2 whitewater, which isn't all that big, unless you're in a canoe for the first time. The day went well, I got to steer down a little rapid and then we switched to let Natalie take the big one - which was a good thing because I would have swamped us. We were told at the begining to go way left unless we wanted to swim. Mike and Katie went first and they ended up swimming. We agreed that that was the last thing that we wanted to happen and that it was best to hit the rapid hard and see what would happen. We stayed slightly left, but got scuked into it, we were able to ride it out, to much applause from those on the bank who had flipped previously. We did however take on quite a bit of water and had to go bail for a bit. We were pretty excited that we made it through and the rest of the day passed fairly uneventfully. There were some other rapids but nothing quite as big as that one. Saw another dead sheep on a hillside. Made it to the pick up site shortly before we were due. The ride back took even longer than the ride to the drop off. We started at 3ish and got back to the car around 7. Stopped in town to buy some food and arrived in auckland fairly late. It was really disapointing to have to come back to civilization.
Started working again monday morning on the essay and was finished by the time it was due - I am pretty proud of my procrastinating skills on that one.
The canoe trip was amazing. It is the first of the great walks that I have done to date (I have been trying to stay off the beaten path in that regard) but it was well worth it. It was Natalie, Mike, Katie, and myself. Mike and Katie were two of Natalie's friends who turned out to be really cool. We got to the departure area late that night. It was just some one's back field that we were supposed to camp in, which seemed really sketchy but it was owned by the canoe hire place, Wades Landing, and in the morning we marshaled all of our stuff and were on our way. They provided watertight containers for our gear which was really nice. We got packed and piled into a van. The drive actually took a long time, we left at 8:30 and stopped for morning tea at around 10:00. After milling around and buying the hut passes for the trip (180$ for a canoe and a hut pass - I think we swindled them out of a hut pass apiece) we were issued our life jackets and we piled back into the van. From there is was only a couple minutes drive to the put in site and in due time we were given a canoe, some instructions, a paddle apiece and set on our way.
We opted to do the 3 day version of the trip instead of the full 5 day as we all had class to get to, it turned out that 3 was plenty for me. The first day had approximately 6 hours of paddling and it was going to be dark at around 6:30 so we were slightly pressed for time. We did well though. Natalie was quite an apt partner and we settled into a rhythm. The front person set up a consistent paddling stroke and the one in the back followed and steered. After two hours my shoulders were pretty sore and I got to take a turn in the back. Being in orchestra for so long, I quickly followed Natalie's strokes and it seemed to work out nicely. It was much more fun to be in the back steering than in the front just paddling, but it did get monotonous in either spot for too long, and we both preferred the back. I noticed that Natalie didn't match her strokes up with mine when she was in the back and I was in the front - and it really worked the same, somehow though I couldn't bring myself to not follow her when I was in back - apparently I'm OCD a bit. The scenery was pretty neat and being on the water was such a great experience. Its hard to describe an experience like that. Every two hours or so we switched positions and even with a relaxing lunch break, by dark we did arrive at the campsite. There was a hut there that we weren't planning on sleeping in, and we pitched our tent on a set of terraces cut into the side of the hill. The vegetation was so thick and the side hills so steep that there was no where else to pitch the tent except at the DOC campsite. The hut slept about 30 and it filled up rather quickly, the campsites filled up quickly as well. It was a national holiday, ANZAC day (like our memorial day) on Friday and the weekend we were there marked the final weekend of peak season (prices would have dropped quite a bit if we had put it off one week). There turned out to be around 80 people at the campsite that night, at least 50 of which were expecting to sleep in the hut. It was a mess, the poor hut warden didn't know what to do. We cooked and went down to the shore and hung out around a fire with some foreign students doing some exchange woofing program.
The next morning we were the last to leave and started out around 9 with five hours of paddling ahead of us. Slighlty sore from the day before, but well rested and well fed. The water was pretty flat for the first two days, only small riffles to go through and we made good time. Stopped for a nice long lunch on a sandbar and checked out some caves in the canyon walls. Saw a dead sheep caught on a stick in middle of the river. The campsite that night was less crowded and had more room. There was a marae there and more cooking facilities. Had another good dinner and hung out on the beach again. There was a possum hanging out in the tree by our tent when we got back, he was pretty small and quite fearless.
The next morning we started out. The pickup site was 4 hours of paddling down the river but this time there was some class 2 whitewater, which isn't all that big, unless you're in a canoe for the first time. The day went well, I got to steer down a little rapid and then we switched to let Natalie take the big one - which was a good thing because I would have swamped us. We were told at the begining to go way left unless we wanted to swim. Mike and Katie went first and they ended up swimming. We agreed that that was the last thing that we wanted to happen and that it was best to hit the rapid hard and see what would happen. We stayed slightly left, but got scuked into it, we were able to ride it out, to much applause from those on the bank who had flipped previously. We did however take on quite a bit of water and had to go bail for a bit. We were pretty excited that we made it through and the rest of the day passed fairly uneventfully. There were some other rapids but nothing quite as big as that one. Saw another dead sheep on a hillside. Made it to the pick up site shortly before we were due. The ride back took even longer than the ride to the drop off. We started at 3ish and got back to the car around 7. Stopped in town to buy some food and arrived in auckland fairly late. It was really disapointing to have to come back to civilization.
Started working again monday morning on the essay and was finished by the time it was due - I am pretty proud of my procrastinating skills on that one.
Sunday, April 27, 2008
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Door Still Fucked
In the student commons there is a double set of automatic sliding glass doors adjacent to each other. One of these doors apparently broke down the other day, I was eating lunch and noticed people try to go through it; it never opened and they ended up running into it, looking around sheepishly, and going to the other set. A couple days later a handwritten sign on a piece of notebook paper appeared, taped to the malfunctioning doors. It read: 'Door Still Fucked, Use That One' with an arrow pointing at the working door. I was surprised that a week later this sign was still posted, however within the next few days it was removed and a new one appeared, presumable placed there by the management as it was typed and quite formal looking. It read: 'We apologise for the inconvenience, but this door is still fucked, please use the other one. Thank you.'
Monday, April 21, 2008
5k
Low mileage this last week, cause of the Rarotonga trip - a taper I guess? The race went well, couldn't sleep real well the night before. Got up in the morning, ate, Kate showed up when she was supposed to, everything worked out pretty well. Realized that I have no warm ups, ended up with just normal clothes over the running stuff. We got to the race way early - there was hardly anyone there and the course wasn't even marked yet. People did show up, I went for a nice warm up jog around the course, it was really confusing, not well marked and really random trails and streets. I got it figured out by the time it started though. Saw some guys who looked like pretty hot shit warming up, got a little nervous. They all went off with the 10k though, the 5k started 10 minutes later and it was me and a bunch of old guys. There was one who could have been a real problem if the race had been 4.9k shorter, but it seems we went out too fast and he dropped off at the 50m mark. From that point on it was just me - turned into a tempo run. And then I caught up with the slow 10kers, and from about a k until the finish I was weaving around people. It was incredibly annoying. There were some narrow bridges that I actually had to stop and walk since I couldn't get around some fat lady with a stroller. It was intolerable. Ended with an ok time: 17:55. Leaned at the tape and beat out second place by a minute or so (18:40). Kinda disapointed, all the competition was in the 10k and I was in the 5. I thought that the first race I win would have been something a little more exciting than a glorified tempo run. It was Race 2 on the Results. Kate did well, she ended up getting turned around and running a 7k, and she still got 4th in her division - pacewise she almost would have won if she hadn't gotten turned around. There is another 10k coming up in 9 weeks so I'll have to do a little better in that one, it looks like there should be some good competition there too, and Alex might run with me.
Sunday, April 20, 2008
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,
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
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 
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 17th 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.
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.
Friday, April 4, 2008
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.
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.
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
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
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.
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